Dune part 2: the spoilers must flow (Spoilers for the movies)

[Myrddin]

As much as I think stretching their conflict over years, if not decades, is lame, I think just skipping past it during the prologue is even more so. They've set up the conflict with a pretty strong  break at the end of part 2. I assume Denis had a good resolution in mind before making that big of a change from the source material.

If not, maybe we're better off just having two spectacular Dune movies in this iteration.

 

[Kalbear]

Yeah, rewatching the first one - where it starts with Chani doing a monologue about the new oppressors and what they would do to the Fremen - makes me think that this is a more substantial change, and one that's more supported by the narrative structure. They can gloss over it but that effectively breaks a big chunk of Chani's story from the first two movies - and more importantly, why bother changing it? 

I think it makes more sense if you think that his goal and vision is to have Dune be a self-contained trilogy, and that means Chani is much more set up as the rebel to Paul's kingdom. You still get a lot of the same beats as Dune Messiah, but perhaps without some of the other weirdness that happens with Scytale and the Ixians. 

[Jace, Extat]

He can do whatever he wants, as far as I'm concerned. If you're telling me we get some kind of smug Muad'Dib mooning after an enraged rebel Chani then I'm in. 

 

[Ser Rodrigo Belmonte II]

How do they have kids if she’s rebel from the start ?

[Deadlines? What Deadlines?]

2 hours ago, Ser Rodrigo Belmonte II said:

How do they have kids if she’s rebel from the start ?

https://www.healthline.com/health/healthy-sex/angry-sex#whats-the-point

[Heartofice]

10 hours ago, Kalbear said:

I think it makes more sense if you think that his goal and vision is to have Dune be a self-contained trilogy, and that means Chani is much more set up as the rebel to Paul's kingdom. You still get a lot of the same beats as Dune Messiah, but perhaps without some of the other weirdness that happens with Scytale and the Ixians. 

I can see them approaching it like that. I guess it depends what the goal of the trilogy is as well. One criticism of the movies seems to be that they focus more on the religious angle than the galaxy wide politics, the navigators barely getting a look in during part two.

If they kept with that theme you can see how they might cut out stuff like Scytale. Would they also cut out Duncan Idaho? I kind of wish they would if I’m honest. 

[Clueless Northman]

On 3/22/2024 at 12:06 AM, Werthead said:

Obviously anyone even thinking of trying to film any of the Herbert Jnr./Anderson excretions should be beheaded before they even outline it.

So it's fine, because there's no way Villeneuve would consider this. Being a long-life fan, having read the book when he was a teen, back in the 1980s (and obviously he didn't stop at Dune but went on reading Messiah shortly afterwards, and possibly the other books), I'm fairly confident he shares the fans' doubts about Junior's claims about having genuine Frank Herbert's writings and the fans' criticism of Junior's fanfiction.

[polishgenius]

3 hours ago, Clueless Northman said:

So it's fine, because there's no way Villeneuve would consider this. Being a long-life fan, having read the book when he was a teen, back in the 1980s (and obviously he didn't stop at Dune but went on reading Messiah shortly afterwards, and possibly the other books), I'm fairly confident he shares the fans' doubts about Junior's claims about having genuine Frank Herbert's writings and the fans' criticism of Junior's fanfiction.

 

He conceived, and was originally going to make, the Bene Gesserit spinoff TV show, a prequel based in part on Sisterhood of Dune.

 

Admittedly from the sounds of it it's a quite broad 'based on', not being billed as an actual adaptation, and one that avoids directly engaging with Brian and Anderson's idiotic take on what the Butlerian Jihad was about, but still. 

[Werthead]

On 3/21/2024 at 11:24 PM, polishgenius said:

Also, as I've seen others say, if we want unfilmable, wake me when Villeneuve adapts Book of the New Sun. 

 

Pffft, easily doable.

12 hours ago, Clueless Northman said:

So it's fine, because there's no way Villeneuve would consider this. Being a long-life fan, having read the book when he was a teen, back in the 1980s (and obviously he didn't stop at Dune but went on reading Messiah shortly afterwards, and possibly the other books), I'm fairly confident he shares the fans' doubts about Junior's claims about having genuine Frank Herbert's writings and the fans' criticism of Junior's fanfiction.

I mean, Herbert Jnr. and Anderson straight-up admitted in an unguarded interview that they made up 99% of the shit in their drivel. The only thing that Herbert's one A4 page of notes had was "Maybe bring back Paul, Chani etc as gholas?"

[Maithanet]

This movie was awesome.  I left the theater thinking that this might be the best big budget movie I've seen as an adult.  I would put it ahead of Fury Road and well ahead of the best Marvel movies.  Impossible to compare against A New Hope or Aliens, since so much nostalgia is involved.

I reread Dune a few weeks ago, which I really liked (never read any sequels).  This was a rare movie where the changes almost all worked.  Chani is just a much stronger character, and the contrast between her and Stilgar was compelling.  The movie is visually stunning, even better than the first one.  The action sequences are intense and mostly make sense.  This movie respects its audience, it doesn't shy away from presenting complex ideas. 

I have thought a lot about Paul's character arc.  Paul is less sympathetic in this movie than the book.  I can't comment on Dune Messiah, but just reading Dune alone, I did feel like he sought a path to avoid a huge war.  In a single battle, he decapitated the strength of the Emperor, Spicing Guild, and Bene Gesserit.  It wasn't a bloodless coup, but in terms of intergalactic suffering, it was fairly minor.  The idea that this was the path of least suffering available seemed credible. 

In the movie, that isn't what happened.  Paul embraced attacking the great houses and starting the war.  He wasn't surprised at all that the houses opposed him, and he immediately sought to punish them.  And for what?  Not for the Fremen, it feels like it is just for Paul.  Which makes him just another villain. 

My only nitpick in terms of changes to the book was removing the Spicing Guild.   The fact that the Fremen are bribing the guild and that is why they don't have any satellites/ flyovers on Arrakis is really important to the plot, and could have been handled with like two lines of dialogue.  Disappointing.  And they really needed to be at the final confrontation scene.  I loved how Paul addressed the Emperor, Guild and Bene Gesserit in turn, and cut them all down.  They certainly had it coming. 

[Maithanet]

On 3/5/2024 at 3:49 PM, polishgenius said:

There's a moment in the book - just after he discovers Jessica is the Baron's daughter- where he sees a branch in the timeline. One of the branches is the jihad, and he spends most of the book trying to avoid it before falling to it; but the other is seemingly worse ("the thought of that timeline and what lay along it sickened him"). 

The difference between them is marked out by, in the other, "he confronted an evil old Baron and said 'hello grandfather".   

Which happens in the film. 

So yes, Villeneuve appears to be deliberately making the movies an alternate timeline. 

This is an interesting theory, but I'm not sure I buy it.  Villenueve is a big fan of Dune, why would he explicitly want to take it in a separate direction where the books are no longer a guide?  That seems unlikely. 

That said, "hello grandfather" is without question an intentional callback to that part from the book.  So the question is just what it means.  But I don't think that neccesarily means we are on a new timeline separate from what was seen in the books, so much as that he is alerting us to the possibility that what comes next could be drastically different from what has come before.  And I felt like it was only after this point that Paul started to really diverge from what we saw in the books. 

[polishgenius]

 

31 minutes ago, Maithanet said:

 so much as that he is alerting us to the possibility that what comes next could be drastically different from what has come before.  And I felt like it was only after this point that Paul started to really diverge from what we saw in the books. 

 

But... that's exactly what being in a new timeline would entail? You don't seem to be disagreeing with me at all. 

[The Big Stink]

In the novel, Paul and Chani are fully devoted to each other and she gives him children. She opposes him in the movie. Also, I was disappointed how the Fremen culture was downplayed.

[Maithanet]

1 hour ago, polishgenius said:

But... that's exactly what being in a new timeline would entail? You don't seem to be disagreeing with me at all. 

I am acknowledging the possibility that the new timeline theory is correct.  This is seperate from my comment earlier in the post that it seems unlikely that DV really wanted to adapt the first 80% of Dune, and then tell a radically divergent story for the rest of Part 2 and presumably all of Part 3. 

[Veltigar]

11 hours ago, Maithanet said:

I am acknowledging the possibility that the new timeline theory is correct.  This is seperate from my comment earlier in the post that it seems unlikely that DV really wanted to adapt the first 80% of Dune, and then tell a radically divergent story for the rest of Part 2 and presumably all of Part 3. 

It would be very refreshing though. Perhaps he'd lose points on the adaptation front, but if it makes the final product better, I'd be all for it.

[A wilding]

16 hours ago, Maithanet said:

I can't comment on Dune Messiah, but just reading Dune alone, I did feel like he sought a path to avoid a huge war.  In a single battle, he decapitated the strength of the Emperor, Spicing Guild, and Bene Gesserit.  It wasn't a bloodless coup, but in terms of intergalactic suffering, it was fairly minor.  The idea that this was the path of least suffering available seemed credible. 

This.

I have always been convinced that was how the ending of Dune was originally intended to be read. The later sequels just retconned it so as to carry on the story. Part of the reason why I occasionally do reread Dune, but not the later books.

[Maithanet]

I also thought that the ending left me a little confused.  The fremen pile onto spaceships to attack the forces of the great houses.  Do the fremen have any experience with space battles?  They have a few ornithopter pilots, but I can't imagine that is the same as piloting a starship in combat.  Wouldn't they just get wiped out?  

I know that the fremen being supersoldiers is basically part of the worldbuilding of dune.  I can accept given the weird technological limits they've described that fremen could indeed be exceptional fighters on Arrakis.  But that doesn't translate to being great pilots, or how to fight in other areas.  Fighting in a cramped spaceship or a jungle planet is gonna be very different and require tactics the fremen have never used or encountered.  

[Corvinus85]

57 minutes ago, Maithanet said:

I also thought that the ending left me a little confused.  The fremen pile onto spaceships to attack the forces of the great houses.  Do the fremen have any experience with space battles?  They have a few ornithopter pilots, but I can't imagine that is the same as piloting a starship in combat.  Wouldn't they just get wiped out?  

I know that the fremen being supersoldiers is basically part of the worldbuilding of dune.  I can accept given the weird technological limits they've described that fremen could indeed be exceptional fighters on Arrakis.  But that doesn't translate to being great pilots, or how to fight in other areas.  Fighting in a cramped spaceship or a jungle planet is gonna be very different and require tactics the fremen have never used or encountered.  

I didn't assume that a space battle ensued between the two groups. I thought that the Fremen forced the imperials to take them into the ships and begin their war. Even when I read Dune and Dune: Messiah, I always imagined that the fighting was just planetary. But I didn't read the other books. With the Spacing Guild holding a monopoly on interstellar travel I assumed that they might not permit space battles which could damage their ships. Plus, ships would likely be shielded, so I think even space battles would simply be mainly about boarding actions.

Edited March 26 by Corvinus85

[Werthead]

12 hours ago, A wilding said:

This.

I have always been convinced that was how the ending of Dune was originally intended to be read. The later sequels just retconned it so as to carry on the story. Part of the reason why I occasionally do reread Dune, but not the later books.

According to Frank Herbert, his original plan was for Dune, Dune Messiah and Children of Dune to be the full story, and Dune Messiah was at least partially written as part of the writing for Dune and might have been intended to be part of Dune itself (hence why it's so extremely short), but had to be cut out for space reasons. Herbert may have rewritten it for publication - that would explain the four-year-gap from Dune to Messiah despite Messiah being very short - but the narrative was apparently originally intended.

Children than rounded off his original story arc, and was supposed to conclude the narrative for good. He only wrote God-Emperor and the latter two books after the publisher reversed up to his house with a dump truck full of money.

[Ser Scot A Ellison]

I’m absolutely floored by the number of people (in other places discussing Dune online) cheering for KJA’s fanfiction to be made into films.  That stuff is absolute excrement.