Dune - Denis Villeneuve to direct!

[jonamok]

I tried to read that date and spat on my screen.

[Ork1927]

16 hours ago, monkeydog said:

Booked the 21th off as it's near enough to my wife's birthday that I can take her to a film I want to see as a special treat.

 

I was going to a nicely quiet lunchtime super screen on the 21st and before I could book half day I got clobbered with 2 conflicting meetings in the afternoon.

 

Thats not to say I won't be going.........

[monkeydog]

10 hours ago, jonamok said:

I tried to read that date and spat on my screen.

 

I've got more where that came from!  Happy 7st of Octobaa.

[Ryan]

On 05/10/2021 at 09:21, Disgraced Toblerone said:

Seconded by the way.

 

If you're interested in it, do yourself a favour : watch in on the biggest screen avaiable.

 

First thing I said to my wife when I got home: screw the new bathroom, first priority is getting our new TV furniture so I can finally get the sound system installed in time for Xmas.

[DeciderVT]

On 04/10/2021 at 16:41, Disgraced Toblerone said:

If you liked BR2049, you’ll like it. 

 

Uh-oh. 

[Hanzo the Razor]

This just hit the high seas. The wife and I are booked to see it at the Metro Centre IMAX on Saturday. The temptation to watch it before then is going to be hard to ignore. I must be strong!

[Harsin]

It's a hard one to judge this as it's half a film, but I liked it, The marketing hasn't done the film any favours. I'm glad that it was much weirder and dreamlike, as is befitting Dune, than the PR focussing on grey and brown space marines made it look. The start was bit clunky when they shove in chapters worth of worldbuilding into about 20 minutes, but it soon found it’s feet. It's nice to have a big budget film that's serious and earnest and not quipping and turning and winking to the camera every five minutes and layered in about 20 levels of ironic detachment and fanservice moments. Even though this is the first of two films (and a longer series of books), it felt more concerned with telling an engaging tale instead of feeling like an extended trailer for an expanded universe like so many blockbusters do lately. Some stunning visuals and Villeneuve is one of the few remaining directors who seems to know how to hold a camera still and linger on a shot.

[Harsin]

I hope some coked up exec signs off on filming the future books back to back and we get to watch Hollywood try and adapt God Emperor of Dune and how audiences react to two and half hours of a horny incel giant CGI worm man pontificating about the golden path.

 

I don't think any amount of coke would be enough to get them to make films of when the later books move into the territory of sex ninjas with magic vaginas though.

[Arn X Treme]

I need to decompress this. 

 

There was lots I really liked and a lot of things I didn't like.

 

But it's easy to see why this is ranking above Eight over at IMDB regardless of if you're a fan of the source material there's a decent movie there. 

 

 

[Harsin]

Action clearly isn't Villeneuve's strong point. The fight scenes are pretty pedestrian at best and lack oomph. The depiction of the weirding way was particularly underwhelming. Still I'll take that instead of over-edited quick-cut Bayhem seizure inducing nonsense. Also I'm not really going to a Dune movie for action in the first place, but I can see that aspect leaving the general audiences cold.

[Triple A]

Booked for Thursday afternoon - looking forward to this albeit with some trepidation.

[phillv85]

I might see if I can get the wife to go and see this at the weekend. Good to hear it's a little deeper than the trailers I've seen suggest.

[Harsin]

Spoiler

 

[Harsin]

Is this the first domino that results in the Butlerian Jihad?

 

[monkeydog]

Yes it is.

 

 

[Pob]

Shite-Hulud

[ImmaculateClump]

Cold, sterile, boring, Villeneuve.
It was alright though, the story kept me interested. Will watch the next one if they let him do it.
Lots of pomp and ceremony to give the nerds a stiffy, but I suppose how else are you gonna lend this stuff gravitas? It's either that or you shove in a wise cracking sidekick and go full star wars.
It feels very "young adult", that's the demographic this is mainly aimed at, I think.

 

Those dragonfly spaceships seem like they would be really inefficient and the wear and tear on the wings, phew! I'm usually happy to suspend my disbelief, but they were showing how heavy and mechanical the wings were when they were starting up. That'd just be a none starter, surely.
They should have had the wings hang a bit floppy so you're thinking "aaaah, right, they're very light and made out of something very strong" something like that.

 

You're just watching this and dreaming about what might have been, a garish Jodorowsky Dune full of splendour and strangeness and wonder
Can't help feeling like we got the muted, drab, mundane dune we deserved.

 

It actually worked well in terms of world building, hopefully the next part will be a lot more fun.

 

Those Apocalypse Now references were a bit on the nose, did anyone else think? Why do that?

[Harsin]

I see on Twitter hot takes about this are already coming in about it being a white savior tale from people who have spectacularly missed the point. In fairness the subversion will become more explicit in the next film if it ever gets made, but they're pretty up front in this film about telling the audience what's been going on and what the Bene Gesserit have been up to for centuries.

[K]

I thought this was quite a cool article on Dune, which covers the (false) idea that it's a white saviour narrative, and also digs out some interesting commentary on the book from Neil Gaiman, Jeff Vandermeer, and Hari Kunzru (in amidst the usual stuff about Herbert basing the book on an article he was writing about sand dunes):

 

https://www.theguardian.com/books/2021/oct/18/dune-science-fiction-answer-to-lord-of-the-rings-frank-herbert-neil-gaiman

 

It also covers the posthumously-written Dune sequels and fails to mention that they're the worst books ever written, but I suppose you can't have everything.

[ZOK]

As amazing as Dune is, a point that is often missed for my money is that it is perfect adolescent boy fantasy material. Hey, here’s a teenage boy - and he turns out to be the special one all the women are praying for! He’s amazing in fights! And he beats up his perfect cousin! And he gets a hot mysterious girl! And then he becomes a man who rules the galaxy!

 

Obviously it has a multitude of complexities that elevate it beyond this, but I think acknowledging that some of it’s popularity stems from this teenage appeal is quite rare - maybe people just don’t agree? I’m pretty sure I first read it at around 12, and some of the guys quoted in the piece above seem to have read it at a similar age.

 

It goes without saying of course that most adult SF fans are men with the intellectual and emotional maturity of teenage boys.

[probotector]

43 minutes ago, Harsin said:

I see on Twitter hot takes about this are already coming in about it being a white savior tale from people who have spectacularly missed the point. In fairness the subversion will become more explicit in the next film if it ever gets made, but they're pretty up front in this film about telling the audience what's been going on and what the Bene Gesserit have been up to for centuries.

I think this is the beauty of Dune.

 

Many of its imitators Inc Starwars missed the point of who or what Paul was.

 

They even have a scene where they explicitly give the game away but most still miss the point. 

[Harsin]

14 minutes ago, ZOK said:

As amazing as Dune is, a point that is often missed for my money is that it is perfect adolescent boy fantasy material. Hey, here’s a teenage boy - and he turns out to be the special one all the women are praying for! He’s amazing in fights! And he beats up his perfect cousin! And he gets a hot mysterious girl! And then he becomes a man who rules the galaxy!

 

Obviously it has a multitude of complexities that elevate it beyond this, but I think acknowledging that some of it’s popularity stems from this teenage appeal is quite rare - maybe people just don’t agree? I’m pretty sure I first read it at around 12, and some of the guys quoted in the piece above seem to have read it at a similar age.

 

It goes without saying of course that most adult SF fans are men with the intellectual and emotional maturity of teenage boys.

 

No I think that's fair comment for when you first read it. Paul is a pastiche of Lawrence of Arabia on the surface. But hopefully most readers go on to realise that it's a critique/suversion of those tropes as times go on (they certainly will if they read the sequels as it really hammers home the point - is it Messiah where Paul is explicitly compared to Hitler and they basically say he was a scrub in the genocide stakes in comparison to muad-dib). It's bit like Watchmen where first time a lot of people read it they're young and just see wow superrheroes with sex and swears and stuff (which was pretty rare at the time) and this Rorscharch guy is a badass, but go on to realise the depths that Alan Moore was going for.

 

Quote

Herbert would follow Dune Messiah with Children of Dune, God Emperor of Dune, Heretics of Dune, and Chapterhouse: Dune. “It gets more and more abstract. [Jeff Vandermeer]  found the second and third to be deeply strange, stranger than the first one,” says VanderMeer. Herbert’s final Dune novel was published in 1985; he died of pancreatic cancer in 1986.

 

“The end of Chapterhouse: Dune is just this huge cliffhanger – clearly the story wasn’t over,” says Anderson. “In the back of my mind, I sort of always assumed that Brian Herbert would pick up the mantle and finish the last book, and after 10 years, I finally got impatient enough that I tracked down a contact for him and I wrote a letter and I said, so are you going to finish the story, because I want to read it?”

 

Now we know who to blame!

[Weavus]

4k webrip (well its an AI upscale, no HDR) is on the high seas already... hope it does not affect box office that much, want a sequel!

[Festoon]

4 hours ago, Harsin said:

I see on Twitter hot takes about this are already coming in about it being a white savior tale from people who have spectacularly missed the point. In fairness the subversion will become more explicit in the next film if it ever gets made, but they're pretty up front in this film about telling the audience what's been going on and what the Bene Gesserit have been up to for centuries.

 

I remember Noah Berlantsky getting this wrong too. The whole thing is a critique of the 'white saviour' trope.

[Festoon]

3 hours ago, ZOK said:

As amazing as Dune is, a point that is often missed for my money is that it is perfect adolescent boy fantasy material. Hey, here’s a teenage boy - and he turns out to be the special one all the women are praying for!

 

Well, the point is he's kinda not the Kwisatz Haderach, at least he's not the one the Bene Gesserit planned for.

[Zero9X]

Preferred the fincher version. Awful ending.

[Thor]

Have not read the books, and can barely remember any of the old film other than Sting being shit, giant worms, and the box of pain. Enjoyed this a lot, keen to see where it goes.

 

[Steve McQueef]

5 hours ago, Weavus said:

4k webrip (well its an AI upscale, no HDR) is on the high seas already... hope it does not affect box office that much, want a sequel!

Even the pirates are saying wait until after the 22nd, when a proper 4K version will drop on HBO Max. 

[Disgraced Toblerone]

9 hours ago, Zero9X said:

Preferred the fincher version. Awful ending.

Wat.

[macosx]

Thought it was a bit meh although there was some amazing visual sequences matched with bombastic sound. I kept thinking it would have been better served as a Netflix series.

My wife made it to five minutes before the end before retiring to the foyer. She didn’t miss much.

Spoiler

No emperor, no Irulan, Feyd etc. Mentats weren’t explained, the guild and its navigators got a cursory mention. Too many slo/mo lacklustre dream/vision sequences.

Obvs held back for part 2. But conversely Dune felt like a real place with heat and dust and the tech was well realised except for the harvester lifter that looked a bit Gerry Anderson in a few shots.