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I think it's implied maula pistols are closer to air rifles? (Which were used irl militarily for a while!) Makes sense since it's unlikely Fremen have easy access to much gunpowder, even with processing in the thigh pads. Kinda funny that's just mentioned after introducing the whole dynamic of shields and the resulting swordfighting techniques, and then the rest of the story is set on the one planet where shields are a bad idea. ...and I was just thinking how it'd be funny for the Fremen on their jihad to fight on planets where shields are commonly used after being unfamiliar with them, but then I realised that's probably one of the reasons why that jihad became so brutal...
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Apr 16, 2024 15:14
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One of the things that makes Dune so interesting in my opinion is the fact that "Is Paul the Chosen One?" isn't really the important question that drives the plot. We know Paul's prescience and mentat abilities are very real, we know the Fremen prophecies are planted by the Bene Gesserit, and for much of the book we know more or less how things are going to end. The real question the book leaves up in the air is "to what extent do the Bene Gesserit really understand the powers they have concentrated in one person?". Their breeding program really does produce a person with powers vaguely resembling what they expect, but none of their beliefs surrounding that power, or their labels for it, can really adequately describe Paul. Contrast that with something like The Matrix or, in its hamfisted, retconned way, the Anakin Skywalker arc in Star Wars, where the prophecies about a super powerful hero who's going to save the day are literally true. The Matrix sequels subvert this a bit, but that also feels like something of a retcon, and probably the only way direction the franchise could go after the relatively contained and simple first film.
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Apr 16, 2024 15:21
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Personal shields would absolutely stop a regular gun's bullets. They move way too fast.
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Apr 16, 2024 15:30
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Baron von Eevl posted:No they're definitely not normal guns. Yeah, a slow pellet is like a variable speed projectile that knows when it's about to hit a shield and slows down just enough to penetrate the shield while still moving fast enough to maintain its trajectory and penetrate the target beyond the shield. It's one of those things where you're reminded that the seemingly low-tech sword-fights setting is actually incredibly advanced.
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Apr 16, 2024 16:20
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jeeves posted:Hairless Harkonens are meh I loved the design. Between their architecture, ceremonial white paint, and hairless bodies, they actually felt alien and futuristic. Left a lot of fill in the gaps for imagination figuring out what they're all about. The Atreides design was boring in comparison.
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Apr 16, 2024 16:54
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PeterWeller posted:variable speed projectile the movie goes out of its way to depict this stuff. they even have artillery shells that do it.
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Apr 16, 2024 16:58
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Doltos posted:I loved the design. Between their architecture, ceremonial white paint, and hairless bodies, they actually felt alien and futuristic. Left a lot of fill in the gaps for imagination figuring out what they're all about. The Atreides design was boring in comparison. They really do look like something out of classic sci-fi, I got almost Krypton vibes. I think the Atreides looking normal and boring in comparison is almost certainly deliberate though. If you think of them as sci-fi game factions (as they sometimes are) the Atreides are meant to be the familiar relatable superficially nice heroic faction. And they also get loving wiped.
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Apr 16, 2024 17:05
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Doltos posted:I loved the design. Between their architecture, ceremonial white paint, and hairless bodies, they actually felt alien and futuristic. Left a lot of fill in the gaps for imagination figuring out what they're all about. The Atreides design was boring in comparison. The design of everything else is boring in comparison. The Harkonens design is the only thing that stands out.
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Apr 16, 2024 17:06
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uber_stoat posted:the movie goes out of its way to depict this stuff. they even have artillery shells that do it. Yup. Lynch's Dune also depicts the slow pellets in the very scene that led to this discussion: Duncan's death. I wonder if some of the confusion about when and how he dies stems from Lynch's Dune. In the novel and Villenuve films, Paul and Jessica escape by ornithopter twice, once from Arrakeen and then once again from the ecological research station. In Lynch's Dune, these two escapes are conflated into one, and Duncan's death is moved from the research station to the palace. Ghost Leviathan posted:They really do look like something out of classic sci-fi, I got almost Krypton vibes. The Atreides looking normal is how Villenuve baits the trap that Herbert sets for the reader. You're supposed to root for Paul until, like Paul, you realize he's turned himself into a monster.
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Apr 16, 2024 17:15
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I have a vague memory of the maula pistol being described as spring-loaded, but I might just be making that up. In any case, either it's a high tech variable speed projectile, or the decidedly more low tech approach of looking at the equation for momentum being mass times speed, lowering the speed until it pass through a shield and upping the mass of the slug proportionally.
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Apr 16, 2024 17:42
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Groetgaffel posted:I have a vague memory of the maula pistol being described as spring-loaded, but I might just be making that up. The appendix to Dune says maula pistols are spring loaded. They're not what fire the slow pellets, however. The appendix notes they're popular on Arrakis because of the absence of shields. There is a separate entry for stunners, which are the weapons designed specifically to fire slow pellets that can pierce shields. The appendix also notes that slow pellets are tipped with poison or drugs, so I guess they don't even need that much penetrative force.
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Apr 16, 2024 18:08
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I found the Harkonnen aesthetic particularly brilliant because it looks cool. In the Lynch movie and the game (which bases its aesthetics on the first movie), they are very gross, obviously super evil, and that kind of over the topness is fun and I have nothing against the choice. DUNC!Harks however, I can much more easily see as a people. There's a whole planet of them! Of course we also get shown a crowd unlike in the claustrophobic mad scientist lab sets of Lynch-Dune, but regardless, I can much more easily understand how a random Harkonnen soldier or citizen could actually live in this society, perhaps even enjoy and thrive in it. It's got a clear "we're strong, awesome, unified" aesthetic like real life fascists go for, but it is not informed by those, it's its own thing, and that's also what's cool about it. You can easily imagine one of the people in the arena crowd thinking "man, we have it good here on Geidi Prime - everybody knows their place, nobody has to think about fashion, the Baron wins wars throughout the galaxy, my son in his army is getting fed and has a cushy position on planet Bumfuckistan, and here I am getting to enjoy regular bloodsports". Maybe people dream of becoming a lackey of the Baron. Extremely high risk of getting offed but the benefits compared to the general populace must be amazing.
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Apr 16, 2024 19:56
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Arglebargle III posted:Dune has to be a psychedelic rock opera. There's no other way to adapt it to a musical. saw a one man show musical of dune at the edinburgh fringe last year.
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Apr 16, 2024 20:05
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Arglebargle III posted:Dune has to be a psychedelic rock opera. There's no other way to adapt it to a musical. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=F3MCzpXTELc
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Apr 16, 2024 21:14
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Simply Simon posted:It's got a clear "we're strong, awesome, unified" aesthetic like real life fascists go for, but it is not informed by those, it's its own thing, and that's also what's cool about it. You can easily imagine one of the people in the arena crowd thinking "man, we have it good here on Geidi Prime - everybody knows their place, nobody has to think about fashion, the Baron wins wars throughout the galaxy, my son in his army is getting fed and has a cushy position on planet Bumfuckistan, and here I am getting to enjoy regular bloodsports". Order must maintained at every moment showing force. Humiliating inferiors. Offering gifts to superiors. Every citizen would have one or two broken bones from police operations, or maybe a superior that took in his hands the need to increase productivity with violence. You would fear the next day. Even the high up in the chain of power will fear falling down. Perhaps the only guy happy in the harkonen worlds is that dude that take care of pigs, and sometimes mix the food of the pigs with fingers and ears of random people.
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Apr 16, 2024 22:14
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The cannons the Harkonnens are so psyched about are regular tube artillery, which mostly kill by flinging shrapnel through the air at high velocities. A shield will completely protect troops from this mode of attack unless they're unlucky enough to be injured by overpressure standing within a few feet of a shell burst, so they fell out of favor. But on Arrakis people don't wear shields and tube artillery can be used to drop caves on people's heads, which is what they're so stoked about.' Dune was written before precision artillery, so the idea that a shell could be aimed to land within a few feet of a man-sized target wasn't plausible at the time. Now armies love precision artillery and constantly try to order expensive long-range precision systems, because dropping one shell on a target is so much faster and more efficient than dropping hundreds of shells in its general vicinity and hoping you get a few hits. So from the modern perspective the idea that tube artillery is obsolete is a bit odd, but 60s tube artillery really couldn't hit a target the size of a human and a shield would protect you from the shrapnel. Arglebargle III fucked around with this message at 22:38 on Apr 16, 2024 |
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Apr 16, 2024 22:34
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Arglebargle III posted:The cannons the Harkonnens are so psyched about are regular tube artillery, which mostly kill by flinging shrapnel through the air at high velocities. A shield will completely protect troops from this mode of attack unless they're unlucky enough to be injured by overpressure standing within a few feet of a shell burst, so they fell out of favor. But on Arrakis people don't wear shields and tube artillery can be used to drop caves on people's heads, which is what they're so stoked about.' It also still works tbh. Since thinking machines are banned. And their definition of "thinking machines" is very broad, even calculators are banned which is why they use Mentats to do math. So precision anything is pretty much out of the question.
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Apr 16, 2024 22:44
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PeterWeller posted:The Atreides looking normal is how Villenuve baits the trap that Herbert sets for the reader. You're supposed to root for Paul until, like Paul, you realize he's turned himself into a monster. They could have still done a bit more than what they did.  This Dune CCG art is fantastic and intriguing.  The Gurney Halleck they gave us in DUNC was boring and bland. They both still look like 'good guys', but one has style and an air of futurism to him like the Harkonnens, the other looks like someone who would yell at you in a Home Depot parking lot.
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Apr 16, 2024 22:45
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Nitrousoxide posted:It also still works tbh. Since thinking machines are banned. And their definition of "thinking machines" is very broad, even calculators are banned which is why they use Mentats to do math. So precision anything is pretty much out of the question. They compensate lack of computers with training. Like these people that can calculate the square root of a large number instanly with a combination of tecniques and ability. On the Dune universe you have people that can do some specific job has good or better than a computer.
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Apr 16, 2024 22:50
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Nah thufir is just good at guessing and he does a lot of theatrics to make it more convincing
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Apr 16, 2024 22:53
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Tei posted:They compensate lack of computers with training. Like these people that can calculate the square root of a large number instanly with a combination of tecniques and ability. Oh, I'm sure a mentat could calculate a very accurate firing solution for a given target. But modern precision weapons rely on the weapon performing minute adjustments to their flightpath on the fly constantly to compensate for the changing environment. Something which a human just can't pull off.
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Apr 16, 2024 22:53
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Tei posted:Order must maintained at every moment showing force. Humiliating inferiors. Offering gifts to superiors. Every citizen would have one or two broken bones from police operations, or maybe a superior that took in his hands the need to increase productivity with violence.
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Apr 16, 2024 23:16
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It's so funny seeing all the posts about how Stilgar was degraded and cheapened by his blind faith and, yeah, that's what Paul thinks in the novel too.
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Apr 16, 2024 23:49
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Arglebargle III posted:It's so funny seeing all the posts about how Stilgar was degraded and cheapened by his blind faith and, yeah, that's what Paul thinks in the novel too. This better be in Messiah word for word quote:““Stilgar,” Paul said, “you urgently need a sense of balance which can come only from an understanding of long-term effects. What little information we have about the old times, the pittance of data which the Butlerians left us, Korba has brought it for you. Start with the Genghis Khan.”
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Apr 17, 2024 05:18
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hobbesmaster posted:This better be in Messiah word for word Needs to have the next scene with Paul's pet Pope bursting in like Kramer and exclaiming those are rookie numbers next to the billions Paul has killed.
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Apr 17, 2024 10:50
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Doltos posted:They could have still done a bit more than what they did. Sure they could. The Atreides could've looked a lot more weird, but I'm not sure that would've looked good. That card art is rad. Translated into real costumes on real people, it may have looked silly as hell.
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Apr 17, 2024 14:12
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I just did the back to back watch of 1 and 2 and it's pretty smooth, although there is an obvious cinematography jump in 2 (and Harkonnen planet Giedi Prime not being in black and white is super noticeable in the first). Otherwise, it's super smooth, and the score additions in the second transition super well. Stilgar's gradual progression to zealot works even better when you start with 1, too.
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Apr 17, 2024 14:14
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Darko posted:I just did the back to back watch of 1 and 2 and it's pretty smooth, although there is an obvious cinematography jump in 2 (and Harkonnen planet Giedi Prime not being in black and white is super noticeable in the first). Otherwise, it's super smooth, and the score additions in the second transition super well. Stilgar's gradual progression to zealot works even better when you start with 1, too. I'm probably misremembering, but aren't the geidi prime scenes in part one shot at night? I think the planet only goes black and white out in the sun.
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Apr 17, 2024 14:54
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Simply Simon posted:Maybe people dream of becoming a lackey of the Baron. Extremely high risk of getting offed but the benefits compared to the general populace must be amazing. PeterWeller posted:Yeah, a slow pellet is like a variable speed projectile that knows when it's about to hit a shield and slows down just enough to penetrate the shield while still moving fast enough to maintain its trajectory and penetrate the target beyond the shield. I'm not sure how that would work, though. I can't remember the given speed at which shields stop moving objects, but it's very slow. It seemed to be equivalent to the speed at which I, say, absent-mindedly reach for my coffee mug.
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Apr 17, 2024 15:01
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Eason the Fifth posted:I'm probably misremembering, but aren't the geidi prime scenes in part one shot at night? I think the planet only goes black and white out in the sun. Indoor scenes are never in B&W too.
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Apr 17, 2024 15:30
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YggdrasilTM posted:Indoor scenes are never in B&W too. Thats true; however, it's kind of tricky when you watch because in the second, everything is grey except for people's faces, so you don't really notice that it switches over.
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Apr 17, 2024 16:38
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PeterWeller posted:Sure they could. The Atreides could've looked a lot more weird, but I'm not sure that would've looked good. That card art is rad. Translated into real costumes on real people, it may have looked silly as hell. The David Lynch one hits a good middle ground we're they're all in dress uniforms but it's more subdued. Still gives them a good theme even if it's just green with tassles.
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Apr 17, 2024 17:00
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Halloween Jack posted:I thought that pellet stunners were basically air rifles, and that they had settings for different speeds. The appendix to Dune doesn't explain how the stunners work (just that the separate maula pistols are spring loaded), but it does give the speeds at which shields will allow an object to penetrate them: "depending on settings, this speed ranges from six to nine centimeters per second." Doltos posted:The David Lynch one hits a good middle ground we're they're all in dress uniforms but it's more subdued. Still gives them a good theme even if it's just green with tassles. The Lynch uniforms aren't that much more flashy than the Villenuve ones. If only David was brave enough to film a scene with the open chest flaps: 
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Apr 17, 2024 18:20
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Is it psychologically healthy to get out a ruler, open a tab to a world clock, and track how quickly you can move your index finger back and forth across a 3.5 inch line to figure out how slow the blade needs to be? It's pretty slow, but a little faster than I thought. Anyway, I really liked all the uniforms in the Lynch film. Besides being accurate to the book, they evoke comparison to pre-WWI imperial militaries. In the Spice Diver cut I really enjoyed all the scenes with the Emperor. The set design puts across that this is a fabulously wealthy society which got that way by exploiting and terrorizing people.
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Apr 17, 2024 18:44
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I'm kind of posting a little blind in this thread because I have been so enamored by Part 1 and 2 that I'm about to read the books so now I'm trying to avoid a little spoilerage BUT I have a question about part 2: The Harkonnen's war map/3D display: Sort of seems to be computer driven? My (not-yet-read-the-books) understanding is that computers are basically outlawed, for lack of a better word due to the events of 10,000 years before. Is that just a mentat powered display? Would knowing the answer to this spoiler anything in books or am I just overthinking it?
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Apr 17, 2024 18:57
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It is absolutely not a computer thing. My assumption is it's the equivalent of a 3d oscilloscope display from their radar returns. Edit: There are groups out there who are more willing to skirt the prohibition on thinking machines. But the Harkonans aren't one of them. Nitrousoxide fucked around with this message at 19:06 on Apr 17, 2024 |
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Apr 17, 2024 19:04
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Nitrousoxide posted:It is absolutely not a computer thing. My assumption is it's the equivalent of a 3d oscilloscope display from their radar returns. Thanks! It's got more detail than just straight radar returns, but Reddit has pointed me in the direction of it being mentat powered somehow.
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Apr 17, 2024 19:12
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BonoMan posted:I'm kind of posting a little blind in this thread because I have been so enamored by Part 1 and 2 that I'm about to read the books so now I'm trying to avoid a little spoilerage BUT I have a question about part 2: presumably the chanting squad of hark guys were programming the machine on the fly. there's nothing like that depicted in the books i've read.
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Apr 17, 2024 19:13
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BonoMan posted:I'm kind of posting a little blind in this thread because I have been so enamored by Part 1 and 2 that I'm about to read the books so now I'm trying to avoid a little spoilerage BUT I have a question about part 2: I'm pretty sure the idea is that it's mentat powered, yeah.
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Apr 17, 2024 19:13
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Awesome thanks that's enough for me! The mentat is such a cool idea... looking forward to reading more about that in the books.
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Apr 17, 2024 19:15
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