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Kingtheninja posted:Just finished the book last night, and I'm slowly going over the lynch movie (haven't watched in maybe 15 years). What the hell is this voice activated laser thing? I don't remember anything like that in the book and it seems jarringly wacky to come up with that kind of device.
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May 20, 2020 20:30
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Alien is good but imagine the even worse hell timeline we'd be living in if anything had prevented Dan O'Bannon from making Return of the Living Dead
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May 21, 2020 20:52
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phasmid posted:Would never have had Alien without A.E. van Vogt.
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May 22, 2020 18:56
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Having seen that film, he's in it for like five minutes of screen time and I don't remember if he was ever filmed actually moving.
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May 28, 2020 20:23
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The main problem with Paul in the miniseries is that he acts grumpy and spoiled. I understand the choice, because book Paul has been taught to keep his own council and a lot of his characterization is just stuff going on in his head. I'm one of the weird people who sticks up for the production design in the miniseries and criticizes the film. I think that an unimaginably wealthy spacefaring aristocracy ought to have extravagant costumes. Most of the miniseries' sins are down to lack of money. The film has great design, of course, but I think some of the costumes were much too samey. David D. Davidson posted:Well first there how he runs or rather used to because let's be honest now. Nobody who has ever ran for cardio runs like that. Then there are the reports of his erratic behavior like Rob Schneider talking about how Segal could go from talking to him about how spiritually fulfilled and at peace with himself to screaming at an assistant about killing "whore ex wife" in a heartbeat. Which could be mood swings as the results of steroid abuse. Dawgstar posted:It's always worth mentioning that steroids don't automatically make you ripped, they just give you the potential to be so. I could easily believe Seagal took them but was too lazy to put in the rest of the work.
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Jun 9, 2020 17:01
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I like BtB, and that might be my favourite episode.
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Jun 10, 2020 02:23
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Ingmar terdman posted:I really like how the book is set up the resemble Paul's prescience. You have the passages between chapters that "give away" the fates of various characters and even the biographies give away death years and details about parentage etc. But like Paul you only see endpoints where the paths to the endpoints remain murky.
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Jun 12, 2020 05:22
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LOL he has a battle scar at age 12 and the only difference at 17 is that his body grew to fit his head
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Jun 14, 2020 15:43
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My only impression of the Old Duke was that he was stupid for getting killed by a bull.
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Jun 16, 2020 03:46
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Kim Jong Dunc.
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Aug 3, 2020 15:28
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Well, if the Tleilaxu sell Duncan gholas to any Great House that wants one...
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Aug 4, 2020 04:46
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Apropos of nothing, considering how much fight choreography has been influences by Filipino martial arts over the past 15 years or so, I'm confident that the Kung Fu On Sand Dunes will at least be decent.
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Aug 26, 2020 18:25
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Disney couldn't possibly do Dune dirtier than Brian Herbert, so whatever.
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Sep 17, 2020 18:31
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sean10mm posted:If Dune was being written in 2020 everyone with power would be a huge moron rear end in a top hat who kept failing upwards, while everyone with half a brain was just an ever more depressed spectator.  , it was the idea that every system would produce an aristocracy of the most ambitious, ruthless, and competent. He could predict an oil crisis but not neoliberalism.
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Dec 3, 2020 22:12
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Somewhere in the appendix of the original novel, they say how fast something can go without being deflected by a shield. I can't remember it exactly, but it's very slow--like, the speed of casually reaching for your phone or whatever. So a "slow blade" requires a lot of precision in combat. This usually involves getting very close and striking from an unseen angle. They don't use spears, halberds, axes, etc. because they're not compatible with that kind of fighting. They do have guns designed to penetrate shields, but they're literally air guns and spring-loaded guns that use poison pellets and darts. They don't form shield walls or pike squares because nearly all infantry combat is highly mobile commando operations. Like in the movie, they still have airplanes and bombs and such. The books are kinda vague on the limits of a personal shield, but I presume you're screwed if the ground you're standing on is blasted to dust. When a laser gun hits a shield, it creates a nuclear explosion of varying and unpredictable force. If large enough, this is indistinguishable from using a nuclear weapon, which is the most illegal thing in the universe. Thotsky is right that the film does not clearly convey any of this. Not with expository dialogue, of course, and not with the choreography either. After the training scene, there's no rhyme or reason to what defeats a shield and what doesn't, why the dart hits Leto in the back, etc. (Based on the Zatoichi scenes in See, I think they could have done much better with Momoa.) I do think the visual effect of the red light signifying the kill; the shield effects are a step up from the SyFy series and definitely better than the Lynch film.
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Oct 28, 2021 02:19
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If the shield was programmed to reject anything that did penetrate it, you'd have problems opening doors or picking things up without turning your shield off first. Maybe you wouldn't be able to touch your shield belt to turn it off. The real problem with the Lynch shields is that they're never used or mentioned again, so they don't matter outside of that scene. As for "slowing down but still pushing through," the problem is that a bullet would also do that. It would have been a lot simpler if they'd just established that anything moving as slow as a sword-swing can penetrate the shield. The only reason to cleave closer to the books is if you actually want to choreograph some kind of infighting, and they didn't. Halloween Jack fucked around with this message at 03:08 on Oct 28, 2021 |
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Oct 28, 2021 03:05
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I'm amazed someone made a Dune movie where the Baron is leaden and boring. Just couldn't believe it.Kurzon posted:I don't know if it has been brought up in this thread already, but a lot of Warhammer 40,000 fans on various Reddit boards are saying that Dune is totally WH40K. I think the similarities are superficial.
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Oct 28, 2021 14:47
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Warhammer is one of those things where the parts that I like are not the parts that Warhammer fans like.
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Oct 28, 2021 15:00
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El Grillo posted:This is one of the four billion totally unexplained things that I would like to be explained in the sequel lol. There are ways to explain things to the audience without lame voiceovers or expository dialogue, but this film doesn't care about that either. I just wonder how many people praising the film ITT haven't read any of the books? Because I saw it with someone who hasn't read any of the books nor seen any of the previous adaptations, and they had the same reaction a lot of people had to the Lynch movie: this is total nonsense and I don't understand what's happening or why.
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Oct 28, 2021 15:47
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I like the part where Paul says he'd rather have a song than a fight from Gurney, and it makes no sense because there is no context to know that Gurney Halleck is a bard. Lots of little things like that. Saving the Emperor and the Guild for later is a bold choice I respect. Not so much how they replaced the repartee between Vladimir and Piter de Vries with...nothing.
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Oct 28, 2021 16:16
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Neo Rasa posted:I liked the idea of the Baron's general tone being more corporate rear end in a top hat but the total flatness was a huge misstep. quote:Giedi-Prime - ???? They choose to live like this? Are they all super pale because they built this massive city planet and then chose to live in unlit caverns instead? Like all the small bits and visuals click in the other locations to give you something. They have some goop pool you can be healed up in? I thought another big whiff was making the environments too similar. On Caladan, everyone wears black and it's greige and wet. On Giedi Prime, everyone wears black and it's always raining. On Salusa Secundus, everyone wears white and it's greige and always raining. (I did like the human sacrifices on Salusa Secundus. A possible reference to The Holy Mountain?
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Oct 28, 2021 17:08
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The part of Nayla will be played by Gwendoline Christie.
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Oct 28, 2021 17:58
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Failed Imagineer posted:So if you were introduced to a new person by a mutual friend and they were like "give us a song" to the new guy, you would be literally dumbfounded and unable to come to the conclusion that...maybe the new guy is a good singer or something? Anyway. Yet another thing that the SyFy miniseries did better with a fraction of the budget. VVVV The gently caress? Halloween Jack fucked around with this message at 18:30 on Oct 28, 2021 |
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Oct 28, 2021 18:25
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Yeah, Duncan is described as having "goat-like" curly black hair and dark skin, but green eyes. He also nearly has an aneurysm at the sight of lesbian foreplay.
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Oct 28, 2021 20:12
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Xealot posted:These kinds of complaints always feel so Marvel-y. "The film leaves space for ambiguity of meaning, and that's bad!" I like the way Denis handled the world-building, because the alternative is to explain everything in the text and bring the story to a screeching halt. The key plot makes perfect sense, so the unexplained strangeness of small details feels like an asset to me. The mentats with their weird white eyes or the Spacing Guild with their orange fishbowl helmets make the world feel lived-in and complex, whether you understand what they're about or not. Fury Road explains everything, just not with boring exposition. It's very blunt in its imagery. And despite being set in an endless desert, it's nowhere near as drab as the aesthetic of this movie. I liked some things about this movie and didn't like other things. It's 
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Oct 28, 2021 23:21
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Spice is amazing because not only is it the greatest drug in the universe, you can make the waste into everything from carpets to explosives.
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Oct 29, 2021 00:50
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Cognac McCarthy posted:Looking forward to 2UNC, and if it does really well, DU3C
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Oct 29, 2021 06:22
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Boris Galerkin posted:Dunc questions Arrakis is the sole source of spice. Spice is a drug that extends lifespan and gives some people precognitive powers. It's addictive, and withdrawal is lethal. Many of the richest aristocrats are addicted to spice. The Emperor and the Guild restrict access to Arrakis. The Spacing Guild has a monopoly on faster-than-light travel. After computers were outlawed, the Guild learned how to navigate FTL travel by training Navigators, who are marinated in spice until they become mutants. The Guild needs tons of spice, and if they go down, they take the entire galactic economy down with them. Everyone has spaceships, including warships, but only the Guild can move anything between systems. If you're planning something (like a war) that conflicts with their interests, they'll just set shipping rates so high you can't afford them. Even when they allow it, it's extremely expensive, which is another reason that assassination and commando operations are still important in a universe with spaceships and laser cannons. So understanding this, you can understand why the Atreides can't ship satellites and orbital defense batteries to Arrakis. Regarding infantry in Dune: in that scene in the film, the Atreides troops are trying to get to their ships. When that hope is gone, they retreat but get cut off by the Sardaukar paratroopers. The Imperial/Harkonnen/Guild conspiracy can't afford to just bomb the city flat because it's the only city on the only planet that produces spice. (Two cities in the book, but nevermind.) The resulting production crisis would also make the conspiracy difficult or impossible to conceal. To this end, they need to take the palace and confirm that their enemies are captured or killed. This stuff is why Dune is so hard to adapt. Every faction is interrelated and has complex motivations, big secrets, and knows some of the other factions' secrets but not all of them. And there are chess-like setups where they could do a thing, but it would expose a fatal weakness. Kurzon posted:How were the Harkonnens going to cover up the fact that the Emperor orchestrated the whole thing to eliminate the Atreides? There were Sardukar on Arrakis.
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Nov 2, 2021 17:16
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Flappy Bert posted:With the Atreides being assigned Arrakis, what does Leto envision his plan as being? He thinks he's being set up to fail the spice production quotas, and his plan is to make peace with the Fremem to maximize production. Assuming that all goes well in a year or two, what then? In the Harkonnen mind, there are two kinds of people in the universe: Harkonnens, who exist to enjoy power and pleasure, and everybody else, who exist to be ground into the dirt so that Harkonnens can enjoy power and pleasure. The Atreides quickly deduce that there are at least 10 times as many Fremen as the Harkonnen estimate, and the Emperor knows this too. The Harkonnen make this mistake because they consider the native people beneath them. Leto, on the other hand, believes in this deep concept of power that goes beyond noblesse oblige. He understands human beings as part of a global ecological system, so that every aspect of their society and culture is part of an organic whole. To establish his own people on Arrakis, he's willing to assimilate into Arrakeen culture, even though he doesn't know much about the Fremen and can't fully grasp the implications of that. (At the same time, he's still a patriot and an aristocrat, so he's looking to assimilate the Fremen into the Imperium. As it stands, they don't see themselves as part of a greater cosmopolitan galactic society, and why would they?) Leto is a threat to the Emperor because he's trained his military to the point that they can fight the Sardaukar man-for-man. He's also opposed the Emperor in the legislature, while always playing the part of the loyal opposition. Leto's not trying to overthrow the entire Imperial system and rule the galaxy from Arrakis--which is what Paul eventually does--but he is trying to put the Emperor in a position where the Atreides are both too militarily powerful and too valuable to the entire economic system to oppose. At that point, the best move for everyone (except the Harkonnens, gently caress them) is for the Atreides and the Corrinos to intermarry. Leto knows that the Emperor sees him as a threat and is setting him up to fail. But as far as he knows, that would mean failing to keep up spice production, losing face among the other Great Houses, losing the Arrakis fiefdom, being marginalized, and then being destroyed by the Harkonnens with the Emperor's tacit approval. But if he can root out the spies and traitors and get spice production going strong, the other Great Houses won't tolerate anyone loving with that, and he'll be in an unassailable position. An alliance with the Fremen would allow him to both recruit the best fighters in the galaxy and improve spice production in dozens of ways. What neither Duke Leto nor Baron Harkonnen understand at first is that the Emperor is aware of the potential of the Fremen. He's seen the attrition rate of Sardaukar vs. Fremen, and it's easy to see how Arrakis trains people through hardship the same way he trains his Sardaukar. Once he's on Arrakis, Leto and Hawat quickly calculate that if everything goes smoothly with the Fremen, they could have an army both larger and better than the Sardaukar within a generation. They fail to predict that the Emperor, the Harkonnens, and the Guild are willing to ally to destroy the threat they pose to the status quo sooner rather than later. (And the Bene Gesserit are willing to go along with it.)
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Nov 2, 2021 19:49
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I like the interpretation of Piter as an Executive Vice President whose boss tolerates his out-of-control coke habit. Overall, I thought the way they identified Mentats with a simple little tattoo was a great touch. hump day bitches! posted:A small note is that the emperor doesn’t know the exact size of the fremen population in Arrakis, or that their martial prowess surpasses that of the sardaukar. Halloween Jack fucked around with this message at 14:45 on Nov 3, 2021 |
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Nov 3, 2021 14:43
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Starks posted:Edit: On second thought, "Spice makes you look 40 years younger" might be a tricky concept to pull off in a film, so I wouldn't be surprised if they mostly ignore it and go for an older actor with some make-up. Just get Michael Fassbender. He's only 44 and has enough Serious Actor credit.
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Nov 4, 2021 15:06
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I changed my mind. Bob Odenkirk.
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Nov 4, 2021 15:19
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Failed Imagineer posted:What if the Imperial Herald from the start of the movie turned out to be the Emperor? I know it's not in the book or anything but it's the kinda stupid thing Emperors do sometimes, like Undercover Boss but for the Galactic Imperium instead of a Hobby Lobby. But part of Dune's story is that the Emperor's grasp is slipping because he doesn't pay attention to the people beneath him. What you're suggesting is a lot more like the Autarch in the Book of the New Sun.
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Nov 4, 2021 16:50
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Grandpa Palpatine posted:At what point does the Baron rape Mohiam? Because I hope that doesn't make the movie. The DE is a lot of fun; it's presented as an in-universe document, so anything you don't like you can ignore. Halloween Jack fucked around with this message at 21:34 on Nov 4, 2021 |
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Nov 4, 2021 21:30
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I'm definitely going to read Hyperion
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Nov 4, 2021 22:52
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Captain von Trapp posted:The humbling thing about the book is that you start to thing "ok Gene, lay off making up weird sci-fi flavor text words" and then you start to realize with dawning horror that he's not making up any words, your own vocabulary is just pitiful in comparison. Chatelaine? Indanthrene? Paterissa? Too bad for you, better break out the dictionary. quote:Many of these were so old and smoke-grimed that I could not discern their subjects, and there were others whose meaning I could not guess - a dancer whose wings seemed leeches, a silent-looking woman who gripped a double-bladed dagger and sat beneath a mortuary mask. After I had walked at least a league among these enigmatic paintings one day, I came upon an old man perched on a high ladder. I wanted to ask my way, but he seemed so absorbed in his work that I hesitated to disturb him. 
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Nov 5, 2021 15:40
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For one, I have hard time believing he did any actual writing on them at all. Motherfucker was born on third base and hired Kevin J Anderson to run home for him.
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Nov 5, 2021 16:50
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Boris Galerkin posted:Why don’t people like the books the son wrote? The bull that killed the Old Duke wasn't just a bull, it was a mutant space bull with multiple horns and such. The Baron isn't fat because he's a perverted slob; he raped Mohiam and she gave him Fatness Disease as revenge. Jessica is the child of Mohiam and the Baron. Considering that characters in Frank's novel have access to ancestral memories, you'd think that they would mention it. The Butlerian Jihad is imagined as a literal war against the Borg and the Cylons, with special robot-killing electro-swords. The leader of the Cylons invented mentats. The Bene Gesserit's abilities are literally psychic powers, not "merely" mastery of psychology and biofeedback. Although the Emperor's right-hand man is a "genetic eunuch," he's just infertile. He can have sex, in fact he has lots of sex with his beautiful wife. Here, let me describe the sex to you at length. Paul had all kinds of adventures across the galaxy before the beginning of the narrative in Dune. It's like all those Batman and Superman spinoffs where they were already fighting crime when they were kids. Duncan Idaho becomes Cybergod of the universe.
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Nov 5, 2021 17:19
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Wasn't that in Chapterhouse, which Frank wrote himself? Sorry, I stopped after God-Emperor.
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Nov 5, 2021 17:51
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Boris Galerkin posted:So which books are considered canon then? I was listening to a podcast and they sounded like a lot of info came from the dune encyclopedia. But yeah, Frank Herbert wrote: Dune Dune Messiah Children of Dune God-Emperor of Dune Heretics of Dune Chapterhouse: Dune A short illustrated story called "The Road to Dune" Herbert was cagey about what exactly the Butlerian Jihad entailed. His other works imply that he was thinking of a surveillance state just a bit more dystopic than the one we live in today. He wrote a short story called "2068 AD" which imagines that in the future, the middle class will rebel against being constantly surveilled. There may also have been literal killer robots, and likewise, drone warfare already exists. But the crux of it was a society so thoroughly computerized that the ruling class could just quash any dissent before it gained momentum. Owlofcreamcheese posted:Herbert books they are more like a secret organization that talks to each other and flies around and makes plans to do stuff, it's a tone shift that makes it go from normal to weird. Patrick Spens posted:Alia gets possessed by the ghost of Baron Harkonen. You can talk about how it's genetic memory or whatever, but come on, that shits magic.
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Nov 5, 2021 18:53
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