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Dune Spoiler Thread


polishgenius

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We went to see it tonight, and then I came straight here to read through twelve (12!) pages of reaction.

I had a lot of the same reactions as are already described, so I will just mention a few items that struck me.

First, the sound was violently overmixed to music.  This may be because we saw it at a Harkins theater rather than a regular movie theater.  But the Zimmer score was already like someone gave Birdy Nam Nam a handful of downers and an amp that went to 11, and it was so wildly loud to the point that we lost some of the dialogue.  (And I like Toto.)

It was very long.  Despite being reclined in comfortable leather armchairs, my back started to hurt before it was over.  And the flatness of the plot and the overlong length of some of the scenery or flying or spaceship shots meant that it did sort of feel every minute of this length.

The character I missed most was Fenring.  I understand why they might cut out the politics, but he was a big miss.

The biggest negative was that the film used the "Black character dies so the White Protagonist can prosper" trope twice.  And I would have gladly traded twenty minutes of thopter flying shots for a better insight into Jamis.  And the Kines plan was alluded to, but never explicitly described as an option for Arrakis.

Nobody in the film has good mask discipline.  Either it is important to preserve water or it isn't.

Finally, I live in the desert, and it is rarely so murky and dark.  I don't understand the lighting on Arrakis.  On Caladan, sure, make it gloomy and depressing, but on Arrakis, no.

So it was full of lots of spectacle and splendiferous effects, and it was reasonably faithful to the book's plot points.  My wife said it was like a really long music video.  But it did seem to lack much soul.

Now it is time to enjoy the Dune Re-Edition as a palate cleanser.

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On 10/25/2021 at 2:04 AM, karaddin said:

The Baron's healing pond. Ugh this was utterly disgusting and very suitable. On the whole it managed to convince me that the Harkonnen in general have diverged further from current humanity (and the Atreides) than I'd grasped on a visceral level in the book. Also was surprised that the "evil rituals" from the trailer were actually the Sardaukar, not the Harkonnen.

Olive oil and malt vinegar. Delicious.

On 10/26/2021 at 2:55 PM, Corvinus85 said:

I would be surprised if they did. Paul hasn't even gotten the Muad'dib name yet. The immediate events at Sietch Tabr need to happen. And I think they'll give us more of the events passed over in the time jump in the movie.

Additionally, I think they'll introduce Feyd and the Baron's plan for Arrakis. And likely introduce the Emperor, too. 

Yup. Jamis' funeral is kind of a big deal. Pauls words at the funeral take on a different meaning in light of his visions of Jamis in this film. 

On 10/26/2021 at 3:25 PM, sifth said:

I wonder who will play Feyd-Rautha and Alia in the sequel. I'm honestly shocked the former wasn't in part 1.

I still think Feyd-Routha will either be played by Chamelet himself (read: big BRWAAAAAA!-worthy reveal) or a much younger child actor with jedi ninja assassin abilities. The cutest, most terrifying pre-pubescent boy in the universe. The reverend mother mentioned something about "other options" that didn't really have a payoff in this movie.

On 10/29/2021 at 11:28 AM, Zorral said:

Re-watched last night.  The second time around Jamis, played by Babs Olusanmokun (an actor who is great to watch) howling in a prolonged shaking rage and beating on his chest, it feels even more problematic than first time.  Who thought it was a good idea to play it that way?

On 10/29/2021 at 11:46 AM, Myrddin said:

I read that as extreme frustration he wasn't able to kill this stripling of a boy who seems to be just stringing him along. I read it as "Step up and kill me. Don't strip me of my honor."

I thought the beating his chest was only at the beginning of the fight. Analogous a Maori war chant or Sumo wrestlers bowing or something.

I read it as confusion and humiliation. Like, "how is this kid so good?", followed by, "why is this cruel child showing me he can kill me without killing me?" Jamis might have seen or participated in dozens of these kinds of encounters in his life and never encountered this. This is not "the way of the desert", where there is a code of honor and life and death decisions are viewed in utilitarian terms. Also the Harkonnens never behaved this way.

Chani remarks that Paul is lucky to be fighting Jamis, not because he's going to take it easy on him, but because he's a good fighter and will give him a quick death. This might be a feeble joke in other contexts but she totally means it. Stilgar asks, "Is he toying with him?", even after its made clear that surrender isn't an option. Paul's mercy, and then hesitancy, are interpreted by Jamis as cruelty and he's powerless to stop what's happening to him. Hence the shrieks. 

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6 hours ago, Deadlines? What Deadlines? said:

Olive oil and malt vinegar. Delicious.

Yup. Jamis' funeral is kind of a big deal. Pauls words at the funeral take on a different meaning in light of his visions of Jamis in this film. 

I still think Feyd-Routha will either be played by Chamelet himself (read: big BRWAAAAAA!-worthy reveal) or a much younger child actor with jedi ninja assassin abilities. The cutest, most terrifying pre-pubescent boy in the universe. The reverend mother mentioned something about "other options" that didn't really have a payoff in this movie.

I thought the beating his chest was only at the beginning of the fight. Analogous a Maori war chant or Sumo wrestlers bowing or something.

I read it as confusion and humiliation. Like, "how is this kid so good?", followed by, "why is this cruel child showing me he can kill me without killing me?" Jamis might have seen or participated in dozens of these kinds of encounters in his life and never encountered this. This is not "the way of the desert", where there is a code of honor and life and death decisions are viewed in utilitarian terms. Also the Harkonnens never behaved this way.

Chani remarks that Paul is lucky to be fighting Jamis, not because he's going to take it easy on him, but because he's a good fighter and will give him a quick death. This might be a feeble joke in other contexts but she totally means it. Stilgar asks, "Is he toying with him?", even after its made clear that surrender isn't an option. Pauls mercy, and then hesitancy, are interpreted by Jamis as cruelty and he's powerless to stop what's happening to him. Hence the shrieks. 

That’s how I saw it.  It was well done.  To Paul, it’s a kindness to give a man the chance to yield.  But to the Fremen, it’s an act of deliberate humiliation. To them, only a coward would yield in a knife fight, rather than die with honour, so he's trying to persuade Jamis to act like a coward.  Jamis will be honoured by his band, after his  brave death, but would have been despised had he accepted the offer of mercy.  It's one of those culture clashes (like spitting before someone as a mark of respect) that's nicely done.

One of the (many) things I hated about the Brian Herbert/Kevin Anderson books was depicting them taking pleasure in torture.  They don’t.  Their attitude towards violence is quite pragmatic.

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On 9/17/2021 at 10:38 PM, polishgenius said:

Figured this was worth making what with the gap in releases.



Anyway: excellent. It didn't engage me quite as much as the book, can't put my finger on why, but it's still superb, and visually it's insane. There were some adaptation changes I liked, and some I didn't, but overall it holds together excellently and was worth the wait.

The changes I liked:

The story switch-up that gives Kynes more direct prominence, and a much better death than the original. 'his name is Shai-Hulud' indeed. It didn't just get her more involved, but allowed Duncan Idaho more to do and let him make a meaningful sacrifice, and gave a good rest-beat in the escape sequence.

Removing the detail about the Duke suspecting Jessica. I never loved that in the book, and while it wasn't a bad plot, it wouldn't have added anything to the film and, tbh, just taken unnecessary time away.

Making the reluctance about being a chosen one a bit more clear. This wasn't a change so much as an adaptation necessity, since the audience doesn't have as much time to sit with Paul's thoughts so they had to get it across, but it worked well enough. As long as non-readers can hear what he's saying in that tent sequence, anyway, coz there were places where the soundmix was off to me and that was one of them...



ones I didn't:

Changing Jessica's motivation for having Paul from wanting to give Leto a male heir to thinking she could have the Kwisatz Haderach. Not only does it make their relationship less meaningful and her a meaner, more arrogant character (and she was already plenty arrogant), but it kind of makes no sense since they otherwise minimised the rather sexist 'the Kwisatz Haderach must be male' tone of the original book (I know the sequels did also, but the OG Dune had some questionable ideas on that front).

 

They skipped Paul's naming scene, which was odd- that would have made a good final scene for the movie, since it would have happened about five minutes after where the movie ended anyway. Not only that, but the Fremen are already referring to the potential Messiah as 'the Muad d'ib', so it's not a name Paul chose for himself.

 

A huge part of the symbology of Crysknives is that once drawn, they can't be resheathed till they taste blood. Not only is this not mentioned, but Mapes unsheathes and resheathes the one she gives to Jessica.
Also, honestly, the one bad visual design choice for me in the films was that they just didn't look very good, but that's a matter of taste I suppose.



A mixed one: as I mentioned above, I think removing the male/female thing around the Kwisatz Haderach is a good thing, but I don't think they found a good replacement in the 'can bend space and time' thing, despite that being a fairly literal depiction of his ability, and therefore a fair portion of the strangeness of the position is lost. That may be fixed if part 2 does get made, though.





Also a note on @Arakan's  theory that it ends too soon for the rest to be in just one film. Don't think I agree - I expected it to end at the timeskip, and while it does fall short a few pages in the book, missing their introduction into the Seitch itself, that's more or less what happened. Even if they do decide to fill that sequence in, there's no way enough material in that time to fit a middle film in and no other natural place for a break after the timeskip. I'd be very unsurprised if we opened film 2 with a young Alia running about, and introduce the new Seitch characters with Paul already knowing them.



Anyway, all in all, fantastic.

 

 

 

I like Jessica a lot, yet I’ve always seen her as overweeningly ambitious.  She wanted one child to be the Messiah, and the other to be God’s prophet, and finished up seeing them both lying dead in front of her.  I’ve always thought that desperately sad.

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9 hours ago, Deadlines? What Deadlines? said:

I thought the beating his chest was only at the beginning of the fight. Analogous a Maori war chant or Sumo wrestlers bowing or something.

Only the obviously Black actor-character does this.  So this argument doesn't fly with me, anyway. It's too much like Tarzan of the Jungle, all primitive and so on.  Such a contrast to the stillness of (relatively) white Spanish actor-character Stilgar.

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2 hours ago, Zorral said:

Only the obviously Black actor-character does this.  So this argument doesn't fly with me, anyway. It's too much like Tarzan of the Jungle, all primitive and so on.  Such a contrast to the stillness of (relatively) white Spanish actor-character Stilgar.

Stilgar wasn't the one getting into a knife fight. 

It's a subjective point. I didn't get any bad vibes from that scene.

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9 hours ago, SeanF said:

One of the (many) things I hated about the Brian Herbert/Kevin Anderson books was depicting them taking pleasure in torture.  They don’t.  Their attitude towards violence is quite pragmatic.

I have close to zero familiarity with the later material. But yeah I can see how that would be a problem; unless its being used to illustrate how un-fremen the Fremen become in the later books. 

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1 hour ago, Deadlines? What Deadlines? said:

Stilgar wasn't the one getting into a knife fight. 

He was setting up to kill Jessica when she turned the tables on him.

1 hour ago, Deadlines? What Deadlines? said:

It's a subjective point. I didn't get any bad vibes from that scene.

Pretty much no one does. Like I remarked earlier, it's almost impossible to find this particular critique anywhere else on the Internet.

The reason Jamis was in a fury at the start of the fight, IMO, was because Paul had already defeated him earlier -- he was the one who Paul attacked when Jessica fought Stilgar, easily dodging his attempt to stab him... and, insult to injury, he took that gun weapon  from his belt before he took off up the cliff. So Jamis already had an extreme loss of face, which he was trying to set to rights by killing Paul in a duel. Hence his rage.

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Watching the fight back: the chest thump is a ritual movement before the fight really starts. Then during the fight he's calm until Paul asks him to submit: then he's humiliated and angry, and starts roaring, but at the end it becomes clear all but the first couple were an act because he roars in Paul's face then calmly attacks him at the end before the killing blow. 

So yeah. I don't really see the problem. Janis is an angry and impulsive character, that's pretty much all we get of him before he dies, in the book as well, but he's also smart and tough and brave. Seemed as good a way as any to show all that in a couple of brief conversations, one ambush and one fight scene.

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1 hour ago, Ran said:

He was setting up to kill Jessica when she turned the tables on him.

He also didn't say, "May thy blade chip and shatter". Not exactly ritual single-combat in that case.

1 hour ago, Ran said:

The reason Jamis was in a fury at the start of the fight, IMO, was because Paul had already defeated him earlier -- he was the one who Paul attacked when Jessica fought Stilgar, easily dodging his attempt to stab him... and, insult to injury, he took that gun weapon  from his belt before he took off up the cliff. So Jamis already had an extreme loss of face, which he was trying to set to rights by killing Paul in a duel. Hence his rage.

 That's interesting. I knew Jamis was part of the attack but I missed that. 

I did notice that Jamis is the first recognizable character seen at the beginning of the film. 

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I think ya'll may have missed zorral's point, which was not, "was it narratively appropriate to have the Fremen character, Jamis, beat his chest and growl like an angry gorilla?"

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I also think they did a bad job of showcasing how Paul was just completely pwning Jamis and not killing him as far as the fight choreography. It wasn't clear Paul was holding back, or fighting like Jamis had a shield, or any of that other than the one comment. I think they could have done a much better job of a lot of the fight choreography - but particularly that one. 

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5 hours ago, The Mance said:

I think ya'll may have missed zorral's point, which was not, "was it narratively appropriate to have the Fremen character, Jamis, beat his chest and growl like an angry gorilla?"

 

Why? The argument only holds up (1) if that's what happened (two of you have made the gorilla comparison now - Zorral not one of them in fairness- and I think that's an extreme reach based on how he behaves in the scene) and (2) there are no good narrative reasons for Janis to act like he did. From what I think the scene portrayed the argument comes down to 'black people should never show extreme rage on screen, that's problematic'. Like I say, Zorral's point since they didn't make the animal comparison and was just focused on why Janis is shown as being angry when Stilgar is not could hold up if there was no good reason for Janis' portrayal to be different, but that's why people are pointing those reasons. 

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5 hours ago, polishgenius said:

From what I think the scene portrayed the argument comes down to 'black people should never show extreme rage on screen, that's problematic'.

I thought what @Zorral's was getting at was "Isn't there a better way to have black characters express their rage on screen?" Rather than not being allowed to do so at all.

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Is it even really an issue? Not once while watching this did I think, "Oh, look. The black actor beat his chest like an ape." It didn't even occur to me until this thread. If it was a white actor who displays anger by beating his chest, is it still an issue? I can't think of a specific example, but I know I've seen white guys do this in other films.

All I saw was a strong warrior thinking he was going to reclaim his honor through a duel only to quickly realize he was outmatched by a kid. He feared being shamed in front of his tribe and vented his anger/frustration physically. I've only seen the film once. Did he beat his chest before the fight too?

Regardless, for a production with such a broad range of multicultural representation, I find this an odd moment to fixate on. (And I'm not even arguing it's the best way to show rage. Just not something to get upset about here.)

 

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2 hours ago, Cashless Society said:

I thought what @Zorral's was getting at was "Isn't there a better way to have black characters express their rage on screen?" Rather than not being allowed to do so at all.

Right.  The gorilla chest beating was a little on the nose as far as hitting on racial stereotypes.

4 minutes ago, Myrddin said:

Not once while watching this did I think, "Oh, look. The black actor beat his chest like an ape." It didn't even occur to me until this thread.

Honestly I noticed during the film and then immediately moved on, until I recognized the point that zorral made being missed.  And, fwiw, the expressing of rage was completely apropos for Jamis, in the moment.  And GCB is certainly a way that humans, being primates, use to express fury, or frustrated aggression.  All I would say is that I noticed and thought it was... a bold choice.

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11 hours ago, Kalsandra said:

I also think they did a bad job of showcasing how Paul was just completely pwning Jamis and not killing him as far as the fight choreography.

The first exchange was 100% Jamis on the attack and Paul doing nothing but intercepting and ducking everything he threw at him.

After that Paul does make some attacks and it's a little more back and forth... but then, you know, the first time he holds the knife to his throat and asks him to yield, that does kind of make the point. And then he does it again.

11 hours ago, Kalsandra said:

It wasn't clear Paul was holding back, or fighting like Jamis had a shield, or any of that other than the one comment. I think they could have done a much better job of a lot of the fight choreography - but particularly that one. 

I quite liked the Jamis-Paul fight, to be honest, whereas I was not all that impressed with the Duncan Idaho stuff -- mostly because it basically looked like Momoa was doing the exact same style of fighting he does in See, except not pretending to be blind. They seemed to let him developed his own style or whatever, bringing to the table what he's already done before, and I'm not sure it really fit with the idea of fast defense, slow attack.

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15 minutes ago, polishgenius said:

I just don't see how people are seeing gorilla-  or even rage- in this movement. 

There's a tighter shot, I think when Paul is on the ground, that I'm thinking of. 

And, to be clear, I'm not taking a position that it should be viewed as problematic.   I just noticed a depiction that i knew some people may take issue with. 

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4 hours ago, Ran said:

I quite liked the Jamis-Paul fight, to be honest, whereas I was not all that impressed with the Duncan Idaho stuff -- mostly because it basically looked like Momoa was doing the exact same style of fighting he does in See, except not pretending to be blind. They seemed to let him developed his own style or whatever, bringing to the table what he's already done before, and I'm not sure it really fit with the idea of fast defense, slow attack.

This was something I was thinking about during the whole fight sequence, lots of it seemed pretty cookie cutter in style and there didn't seem to be very much about it would differentiate it from other modes of combat, even though the presence of shields should mean a very different manner of striking that final blow. Maybe there were a couple of times that seemed to be happening, but mostly it seemed quite standard.
 

45 minutes ago, The Mance said:

There's a tighter shot, I think when Paul is on the ground, that I'm thinking of. 

And, to be clear, I'm not taking a position that it should be viewed as problematic.   I just noticed a depiction that i knew some people may take issue with. 

Really I think anyone who thought there was something problematic about that sequence is basically a racist, and most likely in deep denial about it. I'm sure there are a few people like that. 

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