A thread about the Denis Villeneuve-helmed reboot of DUNE

Dune has never had a very good screen interpretation. I'm glad when they remake films that didn't work out well the first time (as much as I like a lot of it, Lynch's Dune did not work out), rather than remaking things that were good. This is a very good interpretation of the book.

XP

generally agree with that except for a case like to this. I watched the first half hour of the Lynch Dune last night and as much I like pretty much everything else Lynch has done that movie is terrible. It's ok to remake or readapt bad movies

Yeah, we watched Lynch’s dune last week and hoooooboy. I have a pretty high tolerance for bad movies, esp if they’re interesting / quirky / offkilter (which this was) but my god, I just kept wishing it would be over.

Always makes me laugh when people cover for Lynch's Dune with "but he didnt have final cut!" as if that was the main issue

I feel like Lynch's Dune serves as a bit of a rebuttal to the obsession with Jodorowsky's "lost" version. Like, you can imagine a scenario where the Lynch one got scrapped and all that remained was some production design images and there would be this whole, "Imagine what David Lynch's Dune would have been like!"

i think the backlash to jodorowskys dune vision and the work in putting it as far as it went is gone a bit far mainly because the documentary and documents that do exist and the stories around the entire effort seem to me to be more than enough output/justification

jodorowskys dune did get made, in the same way that lost in la mancha is gilliams don quixote

good take

in the same way that lost in la mancha is gilliams don quixote

Didn't his Quixote movie finally come out though?

it did and absolutely no one watched it. i have no idea if it's any good or not.

I stopped paying attention after he turned into a total crank old man. Shame he disappeared and never made any more movies

Shame he disappeared and never made any more movies

Brazil was a hell of a note to go out on, though.

i got time for parnassus actually

but he as a persona i could do without pretty much from day 1

it did and absolutely no one watched it. i have no idea if it's any good or not.

it was bad. but even if it had been good, it would have been redundant next to lost in la mancha anyway

to live and die in la mancha

parnassus was alright, I didn't like some of the CGI effects but I thought he worked around Ledger's death in an interesting way. Zero Theorem was dire. I never got around to watching Tideland which had awful reviews, but the one person I personally know who actually watched it really liked it.

Btw I haven't seen new Dune and I'm not really dying to, and I don't always love Hans Zimmer scores, but I thoroughly enjoyed this podcast on the process. Seems fun to have an unlimited budget to hire musicians and engineers to create bespoke sample instruments for your every whim!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SI28oowy4Dc

tideline execrable in more ways than i have ever found any piece of creative work and ill never watch a gilliam movie again as long as i live after it

xpost Relatedly, a pretty good promo VF bit from here:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JGLEVXJoetU

i am stoked for this to stream, so i can watch it again. i feel that i surely missed something. or i'm like, too dumb for its fine points.

The spice is oil

Coconut oil

cocaine oil

shai and muad’s trap hole

i am stoked for this to stream, so i can watch it again. i feel that i surely missed something. or i'm like, too dumb for its fine points.

lol thx. kind or mock-kind i can't say but still-- this seems like a lot of work for a heavily referential pile of-- not that much?-- that is like, very overly emphasized?

Mental oil

btw, I think I asked before, but how is this guy about to make such convincingly tactile and lived in looking FX when most movies can't come close?

I think because I've seen so many Marvel movies I kind of forgot that VFX can actually look good. It's crazy that so many other huge budget movies look so terrible when it's clearly possible to do it right.

doing it right:

https://pbs.twimg.com/media/GJokEW5WAAAQDtb?format=jpg

(courtesy twitter's @drawbrandondraw aka bluesky's @drawbrandondraw.com )

I suspect both Dune movies had longer post-production time than a typical Marvel movie these days, probably a big help re refined vfx. Maybe the realism of the actual muad'dib demonstrates this as well as anything.

It's not really dealing with many 'improbable' or 'magical' fx either though (Emperor's ship and the fire effect around it excepted) and nothing radical or OTT (apart from the infrared aspect Giedi Prime looks p boring). Most MCU films are trying to show actual 'magical' powers, 'aliens' and creatures etc. and with a kids appeal. Guardians 3 did all that pretty well.

Tideland which had awful reviews, but the one person I personally know who actually watched it really liked it.

― I? not I! He! He! HIM! (akm), Monday, March 25, 2024 9:44 PM (six days ago)

Did it have awful reviews? I recall a bunch of people saying it was one of his best films (I think it is). I like Zero Theorem too

yeah, 31% positive on Rotten Tomato's critic tally

I know it was hardly a hit but I recall people being enthusiastic about it, definitely worth trying if you like Gilliam, I've cooled on it a bit but I still think it's among his better films

The plot summary for Tideland makes it sound horrifying.

There's horrible things but the naive viewpoints of the girl and young man take the edge off

nope

gilliams lens makes it worse than the plot tbh

it was horrifying and i’ll never watch it again but it was an interesting contrast to pan’s labyrinth in that both dealt with children dealing with unimaginable horrors, but tideland really felt like it was _her_ story told by herself (i don’t know if it would be tolerable told in any other way) while labyrinth felt very much like an adult telling the story.

There's some fun in it too, I recall Jodelle Ferland being good in it (she will be 30 this year, how is that possible? I'm turning to corpsedust)

Tideland is much older than I thought. Ferland has mostly been in horror films and television

Saw the first film for the first time yesterday, really liked it. It was all good and didn’t feel like it was as long as it was. Easily my favourite part was when the desert mouse is shown and our small tortoiseshell cat froze and stared at the screen and tried to get a better look. 10/10 motion capture, obviously.

Rewatched it last night in anticipation of seeing the second part. I enjoyed it more, probably in part because I watched it on a TV with good sound as opposed to my iPad with headphones. It's visually stunning, and even if it's mostly vibes, well, so is the book (which I now need to read for the fifth (?) time).

i dont mean to gripe but if ever movies needed watching at the cinema its these

Thanks be to Odeon Luxe reclining seats in respect to that.

i was hoping 1 would have gotten a general theatrical re-release but if it did I missed it. I would not mind wasting an entire day watching these back to back in a theater.

otm. they did put part 1 back in theaters briefly, but at least in my area it was over & done with a week or two before part 2 came out, so there was no chance to double feature them, which was frustrating.

I finally saw Dune part 1 on an airplane, surely not the ideal viewing configuration, but it exceeded my somewhat modest expectations. I loved the book as a young sci-fi fan, and enjoyed the Lynch film. This version is perhaps better. It does a good job of finding the core of the story and building suspense in the right places. The pacing seemed about right. It wasn't as ponderous as I had been led to believe.

here was actually surprisingly little up-close spice-related action or even conversation

― mark s, Saturday, October 23, 2021 3:36 PM (two years ago) bookmarkflaglink

kind of weird to adapt dune and barely touch on melange

well there was a lot of different things mixed in there tbf

Melange definitely better than her sister Beyonce