The Spice Must Flow! Villeneuve’s Dune -

[Affluent Reptilian]

I don't know why Hollywood hates gingers so much

Sure beats the endless parade of bland, lookalike blondes they seem to love to cast in everything.

After casting fucking Mary Jane Watson as a black chick there's really no more egregious anti-redhead casting decision that's conceivable. Just accept with their hatred of redheads as a fact of reality like the speed of light, and move on.

 

[Fluoxetine Man]

In an era where long-form narratives are doing quite well in a TV format, I feel like the best way to approach Dune would be with a TV series. It would let you get all the worldbuilding in without overloading your audience, give the narrative time to breathe, and allow for the inclusion of all the various plotlines without needing to cut things back. Plus there are six books' worth of content to adapt (or more, depending on your opinions on the Brian/Kevin books, but that's a whole other can of sandworms), which is more than Game of Thrones ever got. And with the budgets some TV series have these days, a Dune series could certainly look very good.

Hell, just make an animated/anime series using Jodorowsky's designs.

 

[Sweet and Savoury]

I personally stop reading after God Emperor, to my mind the story is done at that point. After that everything else feels kinda tack'd on as filler to keep the universe going.

I read all the way through once but the later books always left an off putting feeling on me.

Dunno, your mileage may vary.

 

[MysticMisty]

Hell, just make an animated/anime series using Jodorowsky's designs.
View attachment 1590284

Animating all those details would be an absolute nightmare. It's why pretty much any comic/manga adaptation will simplify designs. The easier it is to draw, the faster it is to get the final product out. A wholly CGI production would work if the budget was high enough, though.

 

[King Dead]

I personally stop reading after God Emperor, to my mind the story is done at that point. After that everything else feels kinda tack'd on as filler to keep the universe going.

I read all the way through once but the later books always left an off putting feeling on me.

Dunno, your mileage may vary.

God Emperor is the major turning point of the overall Dune saga. Judging from reactions here, I'd say that there's a decent number of people that get thrown for a loop either during or after that book.

Spoiler: ramblings about the dune saga

If you look at the overall structure, the Dune saga was set up to be two trilogies with a single volume in between. The first trilogy (Dune, Dune Messiah, Children of Dune) covers the rise of Paul Atreides to emperor, the continued plot against his life, his willing sacrifice for his children, and the rebirth of Leto II into what would become the God Emperor. Fast forward several millenia and you come to God Emperor of Dune, where Leto II has radically shifted the empire to prepare humanity for the Golden Path, ending with his dissolution into sandtrout and the scattering of humanity to the stars. Then another several millennia jump and you come to the second trilogy (Heretics of Dune, Chapterhouse: Dune, and the unfinished Dune 7), where the Bene Gesserit are forced to deal with the threat of the Honored Matres as they return from parts unknown, Arrakis is destroyed, and the Bene Gesserit begin the process of transforming one of their worlds into a new Dune.

Chapterhouse ends on a pretty big cliffhanger, as Duncan catches glimpses of an unknown antagonist and barely manages to escape their grasp with a group of refugees, and the Bene Gesserit and Honored Matres begrudgingly merge into a unified organization. Dune 7 would likely have been the conclusion to the story if Frank hadn't died of cancer before he could finish it. Again, it's up to you if you consider Hunters/Sandworms of Dune the actual conclusion to the saga. Really would like to see those alleged Dune 7 notes that Brian Herbert and Kevin J. Anderson used to write those books.

I wouldn't call the later books filler; it feels like Frank Herbert had a lot of ideas for this universe he'd created and kept writing novels to expand it further, no matter how bizarre those ideas were (Jeeeeeeeeews iiiiiiiiiiin spaaaaaaaaaaaaace). I'll admit that the story continued to get weirder and weirder as it went along, but I never felt like I wasn't in the world of Dune. In my opinion, there are a variety of jumping-off points during the saga:

• If you just want a fairly straightforward hero's journey story with a healthy dose of political intrigue, only read Dune.
• If you want to explore the ramifications of Paul's rise to power and reach a different conclusion with Leto II, read the first trilogy.
• If you want that, but also a really weird one-off story with a giant sandworm emperor and lots of philosophical musings, read through God Emperor of Dune.
• If you want the entirety of Frank Herbert's Dune saga and also sexfights, read through Chapterhouse: Dune.
• If you don't care about the canonical status of the prequels and sequels and just want any kind of conclusion to the story, you'll need to read the Frank Herbert books, then the Butlerian Jihad prequel trilogy, and then finally Hunters/Sandworms of Dune (you can ignore the other prequels and side stories). The sequels contain a lot of references to the prequels that I didn't know about when I read them, so I was a little confused by the various characters and terms being thrown around.

My personal opinions on the sequels are kind of mixed. Brian and Kevin definitely don't hold a candle to Frank's prose (they even admitted it would be a fool's errand to attempt to mimic his style), but they were still entertaining reads, even if it's not really how I'd expect the ending of Dune to go. There's a lot of questionable things in it (like the mysterious couple actually being the evil supercomputer thwarted during the Butlerian Jihad and his robot butler/companion(?) and not the Tleilaxu shapeshifters), and I lost count of how many gholas they ended up making. As I said, the references to the Butlerian Jihad prequels threw me for a loop, so I guess I should have read those first if I was going to go on and read the sequels. They're alright if you're fine with kind of dumb books, but I definitely find them lacking as a proper conclusion to the Dune saga.

I don't regret reading the sequels, they don't taint my enjoyment of Frank's books, but I wish we had the real Dune 7 so badly. Frank died far too soon.

 

[SteelPlatedHeart]

Umm...isn’t Dune taking place nowhere near earth? Or am I confused on that?

https://twitter.com/mcushrish/status/1303735958215356417?s=21

 

[madethistocomment]

Found this on Tumblr and thought it was pretty funny.

 

[King Dead]

Umm...isn’t Dune taking place nowhere near earth? Or am I confused on that?
View attachment 1592035

https://twitter.com/mcushrish/status/1303735958215356417?s=21

You're not confused. Dune takes place thousands of years in our future, with modern religions/nationalities having been long since erased from history (except for (((one group))) in particular). The Fremen are the descendants of the Zensunni Wanderers, a religious sect that fled persecution and eventually arrived on Arrakis. Their religion might take some terms from Muslim culture (jihad being the most obvious), and Frank Herbert definitely took inspiration from the Middle East, but the Fremen themselves are never described as looking Arabic in the books, and official art depicts them as being pretty diverse overall.

To put it more succinctly, people who think Fremen = Muslims/Arabs are dumb retards who have never read the books and don't know shit, so if you see someone complaining about whitewashing or whatever, you can safely discard their opinions.

 

[Bagronkleton]

As long as they stay faithful to the source material I'm okay with it.

Even if they don't, it'll still be better than the shit Frank's son wrote. God, those prequel books were atrocious.

 

[Shield Breaker]

After casting fucking Mary Jane Watson as a black chick there's really no more egregious anti-redhead casting decision that's conceivable. Just accept with their hatred of redheads as a fact of reality like the speed of light, and move on.

They only did it for legal reasons, same thing with Aunt May being younger, etc. Marvel's version couldn't use a lot of the iconic secondary characters.

 

[Ihavetinyweewee]

You're not confused. Dune takes place thousands of years in our future, with modern religions/nationalities having been long since erased from history (except for (((one group))) in particular). The Fremen are the descendants of the Zensunni Wanderers, a religious sect that fled persecution and eventually arrived on Arrakis. Their religion might take some terms from Muslim culture (jihad being the most obvious), and Frank Herbert definitely took inspiration from the Middle East, but the Fremen themselves are never described as looking Arabic in the books, and official art depicts them as being pretty diverse overall.

To put it more succinctly, people who think Fremen = Muslims/Arabs are dumb retards who have never read the books and don't know shit, so if you see someone complaining about whitewashing or whatever, you can safely discard their opinions.

Specifically, the fremen are descendants of Russian gypsies(their closest Earth genetic heritage)that got marooned on Arrakis.

 

[XYZpdq]

was there ever a specific answer about why The Disney Channel showed Smithee Dune at like two am one night

 

[Marissa Moira]

Animating all those details would be an absolute nightmare. It's why pretty much any comic/manga adaptation will simplify designs. The easier it is to draw, the faster it is to get the final product out. A wholly CGI production would work if the budget was high enough, though.

They can work as 3d models, all that detail can be made into textures and maps. You can get the shading right as well so they won't look like real people.

 

[GhostButt]

was there ever a specific answer about why The Disney Channel showed Smithee Dune at like two am one night

Maybe they thought its was Disney's The Black Hole

 

[tehpope]

I though the trailer looked good. The actor playing Paul looks like a fucking teen for once. No shade to Agent Cooper or the guy from the mini-series. I don't know if I like the look of the reverend mother.

Also, fuck this trend of taking old "classic" songs and making them "epic" for trailers. I'd rather them just use that stock "epic" orchestral music trailers used like a decade ago.

wait that's a cover of pink fl- OH YOU COCKY MOTHER FUCKER
hahahahaha holy shit wtf now I love this?

edit - also does anybody have a spoonfeed of the thousand hour long full smithee of the Lynch one?
edit again found it I think https://archive.org/details/DuneTheCompleteSagaVimeo

I've got the Japanese boxsest with the 3 hour TV cut. There's a ton of repeated footage in it and that might be the reason why Lynch took his name off that version.

The Extended Version on DVD is the same cut, but in widescreen. It does miss the ending credits for part 1 (which are the same for part 2), the recap of part 1, and the repeat of the opening credits.

was there ever a specific answer about why The Disney Channel showed Smithee Dune at like two am one night

what the fuck. is there more info on this?

 

[XYZpdq]

what the fuck. is there more info on this?

the first time I saw Dune was around 1995 or so when for some reason at around 2 am (some rando in a comments section on a website says 1, but whatever) the Disney Channel ran the Smithee cut of Dune

 

[MysticMisty]

I don't know if I like the look of the reverend mother.

I always pictured her as a lot older, personally. Spice extends life and all that which is why I thought she was supposed to be really old and therefore looked pretty damn old as a result.

 

[HeyYou]

Umm...isn’t Dune taking place nowhere near earth? Or am I confused on that?
View attachment 1592035

https://twitter.com/mcushrish/status/1303735958215356417?s=21

Paul has always been white lmao. If I were to be as autistically accurate as possible, I would probably cast an Italian or Greek dude to play him, but he's definitely not Middle Eastern. For fucks sake, his last name is a reference to Atreus. As it is, at least they're casting a swarthy dude to play Leto.

The books themselves have always been criticized (unfairly) as being a white savior plot, too, so I'm not sure why the tweeter is acting like the movie is introducing this aspect.

 

[tehpope]

I always pictured her as a lot older, personally. Spice extends life and all that which is why I thought she was supposed to be really old and therefore looked pretty damn old as a result.

I liked her look in Lynch's version. Not sure if its accurate to the books though.

 

[Commander X]

People thought that Lynch's Dune was going to be the start of the next big franchise, they were making coloring books and other merchandise for it, including a cancelled attempt at a toy line by LJN, including action figures and vehicles, some of which never made it past the prototype stage, due to the film flopping.

Action Feyd with Milking Cat!

This site has some more imagery, including of those that never made it to market.

Alas, the world did not get a Gurney figure with Battle Pug.

This blog entry goes into some more detail about the toys, including the toy guys.

The idea of creating toy guns for the DUNE movie is an odd one. After all, the primary weapons seen in the film are knives and the Weirding Modules. However, that didn't stop LJN from creating two battery-powered guns, one Fremen and one Sardaukar. The Fremen weapon was called the "Tarpel gun", and it was designed for the film, and can be seen in the background of several scenes. According to the original art design of this oddball weapon, it was to fired needles. This weapon was also packaged with the Stilgar fighter.