I want a 4 hour cut that has literally no expository dialogue or narration
― “Remember,” he says, “Noddy Holder is a gangster.” (contenderizer), Tuesday, 7 March 2017 20:08 (seven years ago) link
but would settle for 90 minutes
― “Remember,” he says, “Noddy Holder is a gangster.” (contenderizer), Tuesday, 7 March 2017 20:09 (seven years ago) link
highly recommend the book wins, much superior work
― clouds, Tuesday, 7 March 2017 22:35 (seven years ago) link
the best thing about dune (the novel) is the deep-ecology philosophy but that doesn't really carry into the film
― clouds, Tuesday, 7 March 2017 22:39 (seven years ago) link
Yeah I need to read it
― wins, Wednesday, 8 March 2017 16:52 (seven years ago) link
Love these:
https://68.media.tumblr.com/c6d0423d60034645a7e24f51baa34845/tumblr_op2re29zEX1tvemm6o2_500.jpg
https://68.media.tumblr.com/441e22399b529c2e8dc50acea9a96594/tumblr_op2re29zEX1tvemm6o3_500.jpg
https://68.media.tumblr.com/28c979094c349feb4c7977f117b9e872/tumblr_op2re29zEX1tvemm6o1_500.jpg
― Moodles, Friday, 28 April 2017 16:03 (seven years ago) link
omg yes
― Brexectile dysfunction (Noodle Vague), Friday, 28 April 2017 16:07 (seven years ago) link
nausicaa meets dune!
― clouds, Saturday, 29 April 2017 02:53 (seven years ago) link
The third one especially
― El Tomboto, Saturday, 29 April 2017 08:20 (seven years ago) link
Sign me up for the HideakiAnno-directed anime miniseries.
― Fetchboy, Monday, 1 May 2017 09:41 (seven years ago) link
Just watched this for the first time in like fifteen years last weekend. I still love it for all it's flaws, but good gosh the last 45 minutes is so rushed. You can just tell it was ruthlessly cut to get it under two and a half hours.
Also the triumphant ending with a noble race of warriors rising up out the desert to conquer civilisation can't help but feel a little uncomfortable in light of more recent world events. I understand Dune Messiah deals with the consequences of the Fremen jihad getting out of control but as Lynch never got to film a sequel, what we get is "PAUL IS GRATE AND SOLVES EVERYTHING the end."
Now I'm watching the Sci-Fi Channel miniseries from 2000. God, it's so threadbare. Awful costumes, cheap looking sets, lousy CG special effects. At least the new film, if it ever happens, couldn't possibly look this shabby.
― Pheeel, Saturday, 15 July 2017 23:43 (six years ago) link
I always thought of that version as essentially a stage play that was filmed.
― Ned Raggett, Saturday, 15 July 2017 23:44 (six years ago) link
the "non-director's cut" three-hour version is p much just as rushed in the final hour
― mark s, Saturday, 15 July 2017 23:48 (six years ago) link
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SxgDk2I_bSc
― Chuck_Tatum, Saturday, 15 July 2017 23:59 (six years ago) link
relive ALL the excitement and adventure
― mark s, Sunday, 16 July 2017 00:03 (six years ago) link
Isn't the book like that? It's been decades now (oh god) but I remember a huge amount of Paul's edification followed by womp bam boom insurgent takeover
Maybe the film colored my memory of the novel - but it certainly didn't ruin my idea of what an ornithopter should be (but by god, they tried)
― El Tomboto, Sunday, 16 July 2017 00:08 (six years ago) link
the book (which as you recall is VERY LONG) spends quite a long time on the desert stuff where the film has already begun to hurry
― mark s, Sunday, 16 July 2017 00:12 (six years ago) link
also iirc one of paul's principal dilemmas/heroic struggles is with how to overturn the existing political status quo without unleashing a "jihad" that would bring violence and destruction to the universe at large. though i can't really remember why that would have seemed so likely a proposition. kinda interesting in that it was written a decade and a half prior to the iranian revolution which to my limited understanding sorta took the global powers-that-be by surprise...? idk
also btw just gotta say i am very very late to the party on this but for those who appreciate the long-term terraforming aspects of Dune the novel, i am finally reading RED MARS, the first part of kim stanley robinson's MARS TRILOGY and it is fucking incredible on this and several other points.
― ﴿→ ☺ (Doctor Casino), Sunday, 16 July 2017 01:05 (six years ago) link
Do we have wormsign?🐛 #dune pic.twitter.com/Gh8Hqf4CIf— Kyle MacLachlan (@Kyle_MacLachlan) July 16, 2017
― Moodles, Sunday, 16 July 2017 01:57 (six years ago) link
Usul has called a big one!
― Dan I., Sunday, 16 July 2017 19:09 (six years ago) link
Those drawings above have to be Ryoichi Ikegami (Crying Freeman, Mai The Psychic Girl, Sanctuary).
I avoided watching this for years because Lynch seemed to hate it, I thought Sting was the main character, I don't like deserts and the only clips I had seen were of the big brain creature and the baron.
Wasn't expecting much, but HUGE HUGE HUGE surprise! There's a lot wrong with it but damn, there's a lot of great looking stuff in here, Toto are surprisingly great, Kyle MacLachlan and Sean Young look amazing, most of the special effects and settings look better than sci-fi films today, the worms emerging from the sand look convincingly massive, love all the whispery and dreamy scenes.
I like this better than Bladerunner, Metropolis, 2001, Star Wars, Alien films and any big sci-fi film I can think of right now. But it's hard to experience some of those films as fresh as I got Dune, they're weighed down by their pop culture legacies.
I actually don't think Jodorowsky's version would have been better, it would probably be an even bigger mess with fewer good parts (although the soundtrack probably would have been better).
― Robert Adam Gilmour, Sunday, 1 October 2017 14:09 (six years ago) link
Keep thinking of Jack Nance playing an instrument. Very funny.
― Robert Adam Gilmour, Friday, 6 October 2017 18:40 (six years ago) link
I recently watched the first half of this and found it pretty enjoyable; didn't understand why it had acquired such a bad reputation. Then I resumed the second half later and thought, "oh, I see."
― Chris L, Friday, 6 October 2017 18:48 (six years ago) link
I read the script the other day and thought to myself "this is really one hell of a stupid story"
however I do like the movie mostly for the visuals and weirdness
― Rabbit Control (Latham Green), Monday, 13 August 2018 16:36 (five years ago) link
did you feel that way about the book's story, too?
i haven't read dune since high school. i've always thought of myself as a general "supporter of dune", but even back then, during a time when my critical radar was completely non-existent and i pretty much devoured and loved whatever i read or saw, dune was underwhelming.
(response idea: 'no you're underwhelming'
but now i guess i'm the kind of jerk who wonders if dune is the most overrated book of the 1960s
― Karl Malone, Monday, 13 August 2018 18:37 (five years ago) link
this thread is about the film, not the book (another response idea)
same. and certain parts are undeniably gripping and unforgettable. the "fear is the mind killer" scene is so good.
― Karl Malone, Monday, 13 August 2018 18:41 (five years ago) link
The book isn't overrated. It's the first space opera that incorporated the scope of Tolkien, having an old fictional world with borders extending far beyond the present action, and ideas from the nascent science of ecology about the sandworm/spice lifecycle. However, filming it as a messiah/Muhammed story misses all of that. You might as well film Stranger in a Strange Land if you want SF spiritual heroics on a budget.
― Roomba with an attitude (Sanpaku), Monday, 13 August 2018 18:48 (five years ago) link
However, filming it as a messiah/Muhammed story misses all of that
There's a pretty big dose of this in the book, tbh
― Mario Meatwagon (Moodles), Monday, 13 August 2018 18:53 (five years ago) link
yes i'm unconvinced a tolkien-style epic is the best lens for "ideas from the nascent science of ecology" tho i can see how a multi-generational approach might come in handy. but it gave the ideas a good pulpy hook i guess
also, nascent? ecology p much begins with haeckel in the 1860s (when it was still called "oecology" lol), so "burgeoning" is probably a better word, bcz it was a BIG NOISE in the 60s: it hugely overlapped with my dad's job and he read dune and enthused abt it to me (age 10-ish i guess). the problem looking at it now is that the ecology is soooooooo basic. it's a one organism eco-system: does anything native to arrakis use the spice to tell the future? (the only other animal i can even remember being mentioned is the little mouse that goes "pip pop"). if not the spice only has ultra-planetary (and thus anti-ecological) function?
― mark s, Monday, 13 August 2018 19:06 (five years ago) link
there are enough Dune stans around here to get into the top 10 of our spec fic poll, but I definitely prefer the movie, warts and all, myself.
idk if the scope of Dune is really that unique, although certainly it gets brought up a lot. As far as time scales and space epics go, Foundation predates it and I'd be surprised if there aren't other examples.
as far as ecology in the genre goes, I prefer the Word for World Is Forest (which, granted, was later)
― Οὖτις, Monday, 13 August 2018 19:27 (five years ago) link
for me what was eye opening about dune was that it was sci fi about human potential not technological potential
ie the deadliest person in the story wasn't the person w/ the biggest blaster gun but the female monk who had spent the most time strengthening her fingers on the digit mill
― the late great, Monday, 13 August 2018 19:39 (five years ago) link
olaf stapledon also does the generational thing i think ("first and last men" was another book my dad recommended to me, but i never read it so i might be wrong)
i think sanpaku's right tho that dune is early on the tolkien-as-space-opera jag -- foundation is surely too early to have been able to be trying to be that (i think it's quite unlikely asimov had read him or even knew he existed when foundation was being written: LotR wasn't big news until the 60s). either way, foundation isn't a foray into the same kind of cosplay territory
(also it's terrible)
― mark s, Monday, 13 August 2018 19:41 (five years ago) link
Foundation is def terrible in a way that Dune is not
― Οὖτις, Monday, 13 August 2018 19:43 (five years ago) link
I think I read somewhere that halfway through the film D Lynch was like "I dont care about this anymore"
Interesting to note that at the time they offered return of the jedi to lynch - now that's something id like to seethere are so many endless sequels too - the story goes on and on and on
https://www.hollywoodreporter.com/heat-vision/patrick-stewart-didnt-know-who-sting-was-dune-1104219
― Rabbit Control (Latham Green), Monday, 13 August 2018 20:05 (five years ago) link
was nto aware of this but yawn, of course reboot eberything
https://www.syfy.com/syfywire/dune-reboot-two-movies-two-years-denis-villeneuve
― Rabbit Control (Latham Green), Monday, 13 August 2018 20:07 (five years ago) link
The thing that’s interesting about dune (book) re: messiah shit is that it’s clearly conveyed as a constructed thing, not real, something seeded by the bene jesserit over the millennia, a conscious plot to regain power... it’s based in real power dynamics not magical prophecies
― Listen to my homeboy Fantano (D-40), Monday, 13 August 2018 20:13 (five years ago) link
And it leads directly to the galactic genocide of billions
― Mario Meatwagon (Moodles), Monday, 13 August 2018 20:22 (five years ago) link
d'oh
― mark s, Monday, 13 August 2018 20:25 (five years ago) link
The sense of vast history is something that the book really excels at -- by presenting the then-present of the book's publication not even as a blip but as something antique and lost in a much wider swathe of lost history in turn, and rendering the organization of human society as such as a mutated amalgamation of past histories in turn, the book constantly touches between something that feels familiar and something else that feels utterly strange. It's not as distanced as it might be, but that makes concrete details -- like when the Atriedes soldiers are joking with each other like, well, young soldiers, until one of them notices Duke Leto -- all the more important, and in turn makes you think of what the concrete details of our own vast lost history really were like.
― Ned Raggett, Monday, 13 August 2018 20:27 (five years ago) link
yeah turns out genetically engineering the ubermensch totally backfires xp
― officer sonny bonds, lytton pd (mayor jingleberries), Monday, 13 August 2018 20:27 (five years ago) link
(i think it's quite unlikely asimov had read him or even knew he existed when foundation was being written: LotR wasn't big news until the 60s)
I think this quite likely as LOTR wasn't even published at the point that even the first book (let alone original stories) was published. I think Foundation influence on Dune probably greater than LOTR's, but I concede Foundation is pretty terrible (finally got around to reading a couple of years back).
― One bad call from barely losing to (Alex in SF), Monday, 13 August 2018 20:36 (five years ago) link
it gave the ideas a good pulpy hook i guess
http://imgur.com/BQbu1q1l.png
― mick signals, Monday, 13 August 2018 21:35 (five years ago) link
lol i actually looked up the dates of foundation (which i hadn't really known) and didn't bother looking up the dates if LotR (which i thought i did know)
if you'd quizzed me pre-look-up i'd have got them both wrong: Foundation 5-6 years too recent, LotR 5-6 years too early)
― mark s, Monday, 13 August 2018 21:42 (five years ago) link
I just love how much mushrooms frank herbert was doing when he wrote the book and how much it comes across
https://www.dailygrail.com/2014/07/magic-mushrooms-were-the-inspiration-for-frank-herberts-science-fiction-epic-dune/
― officer sonny bonds, lytton pd (mayor jingleberries), Monday, 13 August 2018 21:50 (five years ago) link
Asimov on Tolkien
It was back in 1967, I think that I read J. R. R. Tolkien's The Lord of the Rings for the first time. I liked it - moderately. I felt it went on too long; that there was too much irrelevant detail; that the battle scenes were a bit wearisome. I have since read it four more times and have just finished the fifth reading. Each time I liked it better than the time before and on this fifth occasion I clamored restlessly against having it end at all. Far from thinking it went on too long, I bitterly resented Tolkien's having waited so long to start it that He ended with only time to write half a million words.
I have since read it four more times and have just finished the fifth reading.
Each time I liked it better than the time before and on this fifth occasion I clamored restlessly against having it end at all. Far from thinking it went on too long, I bitterly resented Tolkien's having waited so long to start it that He ended with only time to write half a million words.
Tolkien on Asimov (from a letter written in 1967, oddly enough)
I read quite a lot – or more truly, try to read many books (notably so-called Science Fiction and Fantasy). But I seldom find any modern books that hold my attention.**There are exceptions. I have read all that E. R. Eddison wrote, in spite of his peculiarly bad nomenclature and personal philosophy. I was greatly taken by the book that was (I believe) the runner-up when The L. R. was given the Fantasy Award: Death of Grass. I enjoy the S.F. of Isaac Azimov.
*There are exceptions. I have read all that E. R. Eddison wrote, in spite of his peculiarly bad nomenclature and personal philosophy. I was greatly taken by the book that was (I believe) the runner-up when The L. R. was given the Fantasy Award: Death of Grass. I enjoy the S.F. of Isaac Azimov.
― Number None, Monday, 13 August 2018 22:03 (five years ago) link
tolk: right abt eddison, (very) wrong abt azimov
― mark s, Monday, 13 August 2018 22:07 (five years ago) link
he would put a few weathered chanterelles in a 5-gallon bucket of water, add some salt, and then, after 1 or 2 clavs, pour this spore-mass slurry on the ground
"clavs" must surely be a robot transcriber's error for "days"
― mick signals, Monday, 13 August 2018 22:17 (five years ago) link
if you squint it looks right
― mh, Tuesday, 14 August 2018 00:22 (five years ago) link
every once in a while i encounter someone with the surname 'mapes' and it is disconcerting
― mookieproof, Tuesday, 14 August 2018 02:44 (five years ago) link
New sales guy at my office is named Feyd-Rautha Rabinowitz, so I know what you mean
― mick signals, Tuesday, 14 August 2018 02:55 (five years ago) link