Dune... is bad.

[Tom]

Saw Play Misty for Me when it first came out and the theater erupted when he knocked her over the railing at the end.

Sometimes in person is best.

Great. Ruined it for me. You guys should have put 'spoiler alert' in the thread title. Thanks a lot. Why don't you kick my dog while you're here?

[Corso]

Dune would be better served as an HBO series, like GOT. Too much in the book(s) for even 2 movies.

Timothee Chalamet was as non-emotional as expected. Seen him in a few other things, reminds me of a male Kristen Stewart- as emotional as a cinder block.

That aside, and giving the film with "sci-fy glasses"- I liked it.

Lynch's version: hasn't held up very well. I dragged friends to see it when it first came out- they were not happy with me. I did save the flyer they passed out- as I thought it was odd. I had read the book, I assumed if you went to see it, it was because of the book.

I also have an original barf bag theaters handed out when entering "Mark of the Devil"- anyone remember that gem?

[ides1056]

Watched Apocalypse Now again last night. That is a film.

[72gmc]

Lynch's version: hasn't held up very well.

I agree that a series is better suited to this story. Syfy did that a while ago, didn't they? Probably with not much of a budget. I heard OK-to-good things from nerd friends.

Re Lynch's legendary misfire, one thing that does hold up is certain elements of the set design. The Atreides' living quarters on their home planet, the little hunter-seeker ... there was some nice retro-futurism there, not including Sting's bikini.

[TTX1]

Villeneuve is taking on difficult material with some success.

Huge ovaries required to birth a sequel to Bladerunner that was not stillborn. His general approach is limited dialog / strong narrative - his vocabulary is already there for a film that's been cut and released both with and without the voiceover narration - but I don't think anyone could have delivered something new. The best we could hope for was an extension, another chapter, with some resolution to lingering questions from the original. Which was achieved.

One problem with Villeneuve is that he either embraces or allows himself to be pushed to hyperbole. Bladerunner did not need the over the top Leto character performance. The film would have been better served by a character not unlike Bill Gates - a technocrat master of the universe - not an overt psychopath. Similarly, the gore in Sicario, an otherwise excellent film, felt gratuitous. I struggle with whether the audience needs to see this in order to fully appreciate the scope of violence, and evil, in play. Sometimes things left off screen are more menacing, and sometimes the glib explanation of "psycho" takes the wind out of the sails - personally, I think it's more interesting and disturbing when the antagonist is actually sane. Still, Sicario works where Bladerunner teeters due to Leto's nutty character.

Arrival is a near-perfect film. It achieves something that truly rare - it makes the audience feel like the impossible thing that the film describes might actually be possible.

As for Dune. As others have said, it is better suited to a lot of chapters. A lost opportunity for Netflix or HBO or Apple or even Disney - which is now actually capable of doing this stuff. It is meant for the big screen, and I'm sure the spectacle is impressive on a really good screen - but I watched at home. And for me, it dragged.

Visually, it's monochromatic like Bladerunner and Arrival - which does have the affect of taking you someplace "else," IMO. It attempts to do some new things, visually, but giant spacecraft and attending ground bases are no longer novel on the screen, and while the shock blasts and force fields do not quite resemble anything I've seen before (a compliment), I bet this treatment comes right out of video games. Very watchable. If only the story kept pace. Why do I care about this family, or their high-potential child? The movie did not answer this for me, and I was not sufficiently motivated to invent an answer for myself.

Not to quibble with an earlier comment, but sci-fi films tend to have some of the biggest budgets and biggest returns. Not fringe, by any stretch. But this is no sci-fi. Like LoTR, Star Wars, and even recent super hero films - all huge global successes - Dune is not sci-fi, it is in the far larger category: Fantasy. Simply setting the scene in space or on another (imagined) planet does not make a story "sci-fi". Using a few science-oriented terms like "laser" or "asteroid" does not make a story sci-fi. Any science-y lingo or scene setting purporting to be sci-fi is immediately nullified by the introduction of purely fantastical terms such as "warp drive" or "worm hole" or "ice-9" or "Asgard" or "cloaking device" or "time machine" - all fantasy.

Alfonso Cuarón's Gravity is Sci-Fi (and should have been titled "Angular Momentum"). Ridley Scott's The Martian is Sci-Fi.

Any story with a mcguffin like "spice", or "the force", or "kryptonite", or "one ring to rule them all" is fantasy.

Some fantasy stories do have a sci-fi veneer, e.g., Star Trek - although even Trek constantly veers deep into fantasy.

For me, the issue with Dune is not whether or not it is sci-fi or fantasy (it's fantasy, and that's ok), or visually good vs. great (it's very good) - it's whether or not Dune 2, which has already been given a green light, will manage to payoff a huge dividend on the first installment. It's a freaking giant bet - which seems to be exactly the sort of film making Villeneuve is motivated to do.

If this is the rare example of a "sequel" that rivals the first film, Villeneuve will, effectively, beat the system - Hollywood, the audience - all of us.

[Bob Ross]

Arrival is a near-perfect film. It achieves something that truly rare - it makes the audience feel like the impossible thing that the film describes might actually be possible.

Thank you for very succinctly summarizing what made Arrival so engaging, provocative, and enjoyable. I only just stumbled across that film in the last year or two, and I found myself almost perplexed at how engrossing I found a movie about aliens that was not "about" aliens.

[davids]

Damn I loved Gravity. The only movie I’ve ever seen to justify its use of 3D.

[vertical_doug]

Arrival is a near-perfect film. It achieves something that truly rare - it makes the audience feel like the impossible thing that the film describes might actually be possible. .

But Arrival is based on a Novella by Ted Chiang which is only 60 pages long. And it only addresses one principal- Time and the notion of free will.

You can say the same of Gravity and The Martian, it has one premise- surviving in a hostile environment which will instantly kill you.

All concepts which are simple and can make a compelling movie. Dune is just too big and not compelling even though I loved the book.

Another friend who read the book just wants to see it in IMAX to see the worm. Then he is good.

[Bob Ross]

Dune is just too big and not compelling

I daresay the latter is the larger issue at hand.

[j44ke]

Well I thought it was great. Tremendously flawed, but great. Landscape is dialogue. Faces are words.

And the space ships! Whoever did them really knows how to take these tremendous volumes and make them into space ships. Arrival’s space ships were something else - perfect depiction of extraterrestrial technology in this vertical ovoid hovering motionless above the ground. These are battleship buildings - Empire! a necessity in a nomadic Imperial realm.

Anyway

[BBB]

I finally got around to seeing Dune (it was only released in Oz on 2 December). At an IMAX cinema as well.

I thought it was very well done. It's brooding, moody and atmospheric.

With the second half of the book given the green light for production, I think the pandemic will actually provide a positive. There is a few years between the start of the book and the end. Had they shot the movies back to back, the protagonist would not have had a chance to age or grow up. Now with approximately three years between shooting part one and part two, this process should happen automatically with the Paul in part two a slightly more mature version of the Paul in part one.

Interesting to see who gets wheeled in as Feyd-Rathua (Sting in the David Lynch version) and the Emperor. I though the Baron was well done.

[steve garro]

I just re-read "Do Robots Dream of Electric Sheep?"

And man, is it a fucked up book !!
Way more than I recall and much stranger than the movie - the Empathy tests, the pets, what the do to the NEXUS models, the colonization of Mars - pretty far out.

Now re-reading Dune, and man......what a load of info to take in all at once - the first book could very well be two books but I'm mowing through it, better then I thought it would be at 53.

Not going to see the movie, but a friend of mine did film on the first Dune and "A River Runs Through It" as well.

As far as lord of the Rings - why do they fall down so much?

- Garro.

[BBB]

What do you mean "As far as lord of the Rings - why do they fall down so much"? Do you mean the books or the movies?

Michael Moorcock always had a bit to say about Tolkien (see for example...https://www.newyorker.com/books/page...r/anti-tolkien), but generally the books and the movies have been critically and commercially successful.

Going back to Dune, the soundtrack was pretty good.

[steve garro]

What do you mean "As far as lord of the Rings - why do they fall down so much"? Do you mean the books or the movies?

.

The movies !!

Seriously, the hobbits fall down every few minutes

- Garro.

[j44ke]

The movies !!

Seriously, the hobbits fall down every few minutes

- Garro.

All that drinking…

[ides1056]

All that drinking…

Actually, as Saruman points out, it's leaf they are smoking. Gandalf too.

[BBB]

I think Saurman said the leaf slowed Gandalf's mind, as opposed to causing the Hobbits to fall over.

Still, with or without the weed or beer, they stand up when it counts!