Splendid post. I am so appreciative of you taking the time to basically read my mind while I watched this movie.
I agree 100% about Brolin's grim and flat Gurney Halleck. I think Cary Elwes would have been a better choice... Gurney is like one of the Musketeers (albeit a broody one), and that dimension is wholly missing from the portrayal.
I also think the Irullan quotes would have helped. I also missed Pitor the twisted Mentat and the Suk School conditioning, but oh well. You know Denis probably fought a room full of executives for this and that they gave him a very, very hard time about everything. They never read the book and only want $$$$. They are like the CHOAM company, but really fucking dumb.
I get it that Denis can't take the time to explain the Duniverse, but it's hella confusing to try to minimize the central themes of the novel (a sociological story centering on ecology, political ambition, and religious fanaticism) and focus on images. This will never be Star Wars, but I think he learned from the failure of his brilliant Blade Runner 2049 that a public trained by the MCU to favor simple stories riddled with puerile narrative and "character development" is easily bored. Hence Timmy and Drogo and Thanos to beef it up some, since Ryan Gosling seems to be better at refusing cereal than selling movie tickets. (which by the way is as antique a concept as Herbert's idea of computers, since now a movie's or show's success can be tracked with precise metrics on who watched it when and where and for how long, what they bought afterward, what they said, what they shared, etc. This should have been a 13-part HBO series that was also screened in theaters. That would have been a first).
One more thing: the Sardukar precedent always seemed to me to be much more like the Gurkha regiments who did the Crown's dirtiest fighting, a group that believed more in its culture of warrior invincibility and fighting esprit than any British dogma. They were like SEALS or recon Marines in that they look no further than their own group for validation.
Again, thanks for doing such a great and funny job of work here. I hope they haqve enough balls to all the way to God Emperor so we can see Leto the Sandworm and his Amazon clone guards and the endless spawn of clueless Duncan Idaho clones.
“Max Read! Max Read! Max Read!” goes the refrain. “A million deaths were not enough for Max Read, who followed me on Twitter @jimmyjazz1968 immediately before quitting Twitter, destroying my Klout Score!” — FROM “A CHILD’S HISTORY OF GAWKER” BY THE PRINCESS IRULAN. Anyway I subscribed.
Re: the question you pose about hand-held weapons: I often wonder about the obsession with mano-a-mano battle in movies like this, and especially in Hollywood super hero films. Humans seem to worship one on one "analog" fighting no matter how otherwise sophisticated the tale is, or how far forward into an incredibly advanced technological setting the story is set. There has to better ways to solve disagreements.
In the book, if I remember correctly, the Sardaukar-to-be criminals are thrown in Salusa Secundus to weed out the weak/make the rest desperate, and then religion is offered as salvation/control tool. They don't rebel against the emperor because he is their God, more or less. Another parallel between the Sardaukar and post-Paul Fremen.
Because I have a problem in my brain, I should point out that it's: Combine Honnete Ober Advance*r* Mercantile*s* which does not matter at all in this Very Excellent Post that makes me happy that Dune Fans are still The Only Good Online Fandom
I think it's the Sardukar priest you have a picture of in the post. He just likes to do little aphorisms like 'A dream is a wish your heart makes' while sacrificing guys in stone tubs.
Coming before even the studio logos, I honestly think it's just Denis making reference to the idea of a movie being a kind of dream we are about to enter into. And using the Sardauka /throat singing language because it sounds cool.
We lived in Europe when we went to see the movie - no additional printed materials for us ! Not that we needed them. Also, no deep-dive analyses then about the Dune universe, the deeper meanings, etc. It was just a movie. I still like David Lynch's version the best, warts and all.
Good catch! When Stilgar is departing from meeting with the Atreides, he says something to Paul which is subtitled "I recognize you." The HBO Max subtitles additionally show "[speaking Chakobsa]".
IIRC the guild navigators are closely held secrets of the guild, staying almost entirely in space. They don’t actually appear in the books until Dune Messiah, so those are probably just regular guild members. Hope they appear in part two though since they are so cool.
I think this is a weird bit of Herbert self-contradiction — at the end of Dune, Paul meets with two men who identify themselves as Guild Navigators but are basically just normal (fat) humans. But in Dune Messiah, Navigators are fish-like humanoids (like Edric). So there's an opportunity in the second movie to give us some Guild Navigators!! But yeah, I think those are just "regular" guildsmen.
It could be that they are initiates. Maybe their helmets contain some kind of spice soup and they are just starting the process of deforming into navigators.
Something about the "Dreams are messages from the deep" quote at the beginning that I found interesting:
If you watch the movie on HBO Max with subtitles turned on it says that this quote is spoken in Sardaukar. In the theater, I thought this was supposed to be Leto II's voice but I don't see why he (or any other character this could be) would be speaking Sardaukar.
As someone who got through the first book half-way and then read the books, I still was disappointed a bit about the spoilers. Could you maybe preface/hide them even more? The movie kind of inspired me try to and pick up the books from where the movie left off (if that is even a good idea). So you might want to take into consideration the people that want to read the rest of the books after seeing the movie.
Interesting "change" from the book: The shot with the Reverend Mother flying into the Guild Highliner, passing through it and flying down to Caladan (around 20:40). It also has a point of view from the Highliner's front where we can see another planet (probably Wallach IX, the BG homeplanet). The shot seems to imply that the Highliner itself doesn't "travel"/"jump"/"whatever" but seems to function as a sort of stargate/wormhole.
Oh, I was wondering about this but wasn't sure I was seeing it right! There are a couple shots of ships flooding out of (through?) the Highliner -- it's a striking image. Nice.
Yeah will need to watch it again to do a double-take on that.. But Gurney seems suprised to see the highliner in the sky during the attack so that sorta implies that it 'suddenly appeared'. But maybe its both; that the highliner itself can 'jump' around but it also functions as a sort of wormhole/tunnel between systems.
That's how I saw them, too. Really subtly done, but I think the far end of the Big Fat Space Tube is in one part of space and the near end is in another, with the Navigator-folded jump somehow in the center. Hope we get more weird Guild shit in Part 2!
Few people know that the ships in Dune are actually academic libraries from the 1960s and 1970s, preserved over millennia because Art Brut will never die whatever you try to do to it. See this fine example from Syracuse University: https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Bird_Library,_Syracuse_University.JPG
Concerning the palm trees in the courtyard of the Atreides mansion: unless I'm misremembering, in the book they are an obscene display of wealth by the powerful rather than an attempt to reach the Fremen vision of a green planet. Another example is the custom of having guests to the duke wash their hands and throw wet towels on the floor, so that the dirty and wet rags can then be given to beggars after dinner.
The planting/terraforming occurs deep in the desert and the Harkonens and Atreides are completely oblivious to it.
Ah, right, I forgot about that! Yueh explains to Jessica why the Arrakeen natives stare at the palms with envy and hate. It's interesting that in the movie the gardener tells Paul that the date palms are "sacred," I wonder why they changed that.
Splendid post. I am so appreciative of you taking the time to basically read my mind while I watched this movie.
I agree 100% about Brolin's grim and flat Gurney Halleck. I think Cary Elwes would have been a better choice... Gurney is like one of the Musketeers (albeit a broody one), and that dimension is wholly missing from the portrayal.
I also think the Irullan quotes would have helped. I also missed Pitor the twisted Mentat and the Suk School conditioning, but oh well. You know Denis probably fought a room full of executives for this and that they gave him a very, very hard time about everything. They never read the book and only want $$$$. They are like the CHOAM company, but really fucking dumb.
I get it that Denis can't take the time to explain the Duniverse, but it's hella confusing to try to minimize the central themes of the novel (a sociological story centering on ecology, political ambition, and religious fanaticism) and focus on images. This will never be Star Wars, but I think he learned from the failure of his brilliant Blade Runner 2049 that a public trained by the MCU to favor simple stories riddled with puerile narrative and "character development" is easily bored. Hence Timmy and Drogo and Thanos to beef it up some, since Ryan Gosling seems to be better at refusing cereal than selling movie tickets. (which by the way is as antique a concept as Herbert's idea of computers, since now a movie's or show's success can be tracked with precise metrics on who watched it when and where and for how long, what they bought afterward, what they said, what they shared, etc. This should have been a 13-part HBO series that was also screened in theaters. That would have been a first).
One more thing: the Sardukar precedent always seemed to me to be much more like the Gurkha regiments who did the Crown's dirtiest fighting, a group that believed more in its culture of warrior invincibility and fighting esprit than any British dogma. They were like SEALS or recon Marines in that they look no further than their own group for validation.
Again, thanks for doing such a great and funny job of work here. I hope they haqve enough balls to all the way to God Emperor so we can see Leto the Sandworm and his Amazon clone guards and the endless spawn of clueless Duncan Idaho clones.
i think the one thing the movie was missing was "pop-up video" style appendix entries. so thanks for this.
“Max Read! Max Read! Max Read!” goes the refrain. “A million deaths were not enough for Max Read, who followed me on Twitter @jimmyjazz1968 immediately before quitting Twitter, destroying my Klout Score!” — FROM “A CHILD’S HISTORY OF GAWKER” BY THE PRINCESS IRULAN. Anyway I subscribed.
Re: the question you pose about hand-held weapons: I often wonder about the obsession with mano-a-mano battle in movies like this, and especially in Hollywood super hero films. Humans seem to worship one on one "analog" fighting no matter how otherwise sophisticated the tale is, or how far forward into an incredibly advanced technological setting the story is set. There has to better ways to solve disagreements.
In the book, if I remember correctly, the Sardaukar-to-be criminals are thrown in Salusa Secundus to weed out the weak/make the rest desperate, and then religion is offered as salvation/control tool. They don't rebel against the emperor because he is their God, more or less. Another parallel between the Sardaukar and post-Paul Fremen.
Because I have a problem in my brain, I should point out that it's: Combine Honnete Ober Advance*r* Mercantile*s* which does not matter at all in this Very Excellent Post that makes me happy that Dune Fans are still The Only Good Online Fandom
How embarrassing!! I'm fixing it now.
The "dreams are messages from the deep" line is in Sardaukar language according to the captions, not that that makes any sense
LOL, well, sure!
I think it's the Sardukar priest you have a picture of in the post. He just likes to do little aphorisms like 'A dream is a wish your heart makes' while sacrificing guys in stone tubs.
Coming before even the studio logos, I honestly think it's just Denis making reference to the idea of a movie being a kind of dream we are about to enter into. And using the Sardauka /throat singing language because it sounds cool.
"(Nice thing about Dune the book is you get a whole dictionary and set of appendices. Filmed media could never!)"
But they did -- theater audiences in 1984 got a printed "Dune Terminology" handout on the way in ( https://gizmodo.com/david-lynchs-dune-was-so-complex-moviegoers-were-given-1622703689 )
We lived in Europe when we went to see the movie - no additional printed materials for us ! Not that we needed them. Also, no deep-dive analyses then about the Dune universe, the deeper meanings, etc. It was just a movie. I still like David Lynch's version the best, warts and all.
(Zendaya is Meechee voice)
Zendaya is Chani
And Chalamet is Muad'dib
Bauuutistaaa is Glossu Rabban
At one or two points in the movie, the HBO Max subtitles indicate the speaker using Chakobsa. Unfortunately can’t recall who or in what scene!
Good catch! When Stilgar is departing from meeting with the Atreides, he says something to Paul which is subtitled "I recognize you." The HBO Max subtitles additionally show "[speaking Chakobsa]".
IIRC the guild navigators are closely held secrets of the guild, staying almost entirely in space. They don’t actually appear in the books until Dune Messiah, so those are probably just regular guild members. Hope they appear in part two though since they are so cool.
I think this is a weird bit of Herbert self-contradiction — at the end of Dune, Paul meets with two men who identify themselves as Guild Navigators but are basically just normal (fat) humans. But in Dune Messiah, Navigators are fish-like humanoids (like Edric). So there's an opportunity in the second movie to give us some Guild Navigators!! But yeah, I think those are just "regular" guildsmen.
The ones we see in the movie are Guild reps. Hawat mentions that the whole operation involved three navigators; we see 5-ish fishbowls on the ground.
Damn this is some admirable close watching!! Well spotted
yeah i think they are just guild members, not navigators
It could be that they are initiates. Maybe their helmets contain some kind of spice soup and they are just starting the process of deforming into navigators.
You see one in Lynch's version at the beginning, talking to the Emperor (in the huge tank.).
Something about the "Dreams are messages from the deep" quote at the beginning that I found interesting:
If you watch the movie on HBO Max with subtitles turned on it says that this quote is spoken in Sardaukar. In the theater, I thought this was supposed to be Leto II's voice but I don't see why he (or any other character this could be) would be speaking Sardaukar.
"I speak Spanish to God, Italian to women, French to men, and German to my horse." --Charles V
Really fun and cool read!
As someone who got through the first book half-way and then read the books, I still was disappointed a bit about the spoilers. Could you maybe preface/hide them even more? The movie kind of inspired me try to and pick up the books from where the movie left off (if that is even a good idea). So you might want to take into consideration the people that want to read the rest of the books after seeing the movie.
Loved the read though!! Was super interesting!
Interesting "change" from the book: The shot with the Reverend Mother flying into the Guild Highliner, passing through it and flying down to Caladan (around 20:40). It also has a point of view from the Highliner's front where we can see another planet (probably Wallach IX, the BG homeplanet). The shot seems to imply that the Highliner itself doesn't "travel"/"jump"/"whatever" but seems to function as a sort of stargate/wormhole.
Oh, I was wondering about this but wasn't sure I was seeing it right! There are a couple shots of ships flooding out of (through?) the Highliner -- it's a striking image. Nice.
found some stuff online.
Shot that shows a different planet (likely Wallach) through the Highliner: https://i.imgur.com/jvQOciI.jpg?1
Gif of the vessel leaving the highliner (with the highliner seemingly to be moving relatively to Caladan):
https://i.imgur.com/CbgFZBB.gif
Yeah will need to watch it again to do a double-take on that.. But Gurney seems suprised to see the highliner in the sky during the attack so that sorta implies that it 'suddenly appeared'. But maybe its both; that the highliner itself can 'jump' around but it also functions as a sort of wormhole/tunnel between systems.
That's how I saw them, too. Really subtly done, but I think the far end of the Big Fat Space Tube is in one part of space and the near end is in another, with the Navigator-folded jump somehow in the center. Hope we get more weird Guild shit in Part 2!
Few people know that the ships in Dune are actually academic libraries from the 1960s and 1970s, preserved over millennia because Art Brut will never die whatever you try to do to it. See this fine example from Syracuse University: https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Bird_Library,_Syracuse_University.JPG
And the Atlanta Public Library, later a Sardaukar troopship of some distinction: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Atlanta_Central_Library
Concerning the palm trees in the courtyard of the Atreides mansion: unless I'm misremembering, in the book they are an obscene display of wealth by the powerful rather than an attempt to reach the Fremen vision of a green planet. Another example is the custom of having guests to the duke wash their hands and throw wet towels on the floor, so that the dirty and wet rags can then be given to beggars after dinner.
The planting/terraforming occurs deep in the desert and the Harkonens and Atreides are completely oblivious to it.
Ah, right, I forgot about that! Yueh explains to Jessica why the Arrakeen natives stare at the palms with envy and hate. It's interesting that in the movie the gardener tells Paul that the date palms are "sacred," I wonder why they changed that.
Probably because they saw this as an opportunity to explain the Fremen's dedication towards changing the planet