The Spice Must Flow! Villeneuve’s Dune -

[Pokemonquistador2]

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.

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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.

Holy shit! This can't be real! This is like that fake action figure set based on the movie "Caligula":

Of course, there was rumors that Star Wars was inspired by the Dune novel. I just can't see Dune working as a kid's popcorn movie without the addition of cute animal sidekicks and the subtraction of just about everything having to do with Baron Harkonnen (aside from his fatness.) Gods, can you imagine a He-Man-like Filmation series of Dune where Paul Atreides zooms around the deserts of Arrakis with a cartoon dog helping various villages defend themselves from the schemes of the evil Baron? Real life Saturday morning Cartoons have been based on premises that were just as weird.

Maybe they thought its was Disney's The Black Hole

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That is an awesome poster. I'd love to get my hands on a full quality, full sized one.

 

[Raging Capybara]

Does anyone here know what's the rating they are aiming for this film? I really hope it's a soft R just like Blade Runner. I like a little bit of blood.

 

[Ihavetinyweewee]

Holy shit! This can't be real! This is like that fake action figure set based on the movie "Caligula":

Of course, there was rumors that Star Wars was inspired by the Dune novel. I just can't see Dune working as a kid's popcorn movie without the addition of cute animal sidekicks and the subtraction of just about everything having to do with Baron Harkonnen (aside from his fatness.) Gods, can you imagine a He-Man-like Filmation series of Dune where Paul Atreides zooms around the deserts of Arrakis with a cartoon dog helping various villages defend themselves from the schemes of the evil Baron? Real life Saturday morning Cartoons have been based on premises that were just as weird.



That is an awesome poster. I'd love to get my hands on a full quality, full sized one.

Well, there was an idea(after Star Wars) to just merchandise everything. So films, clearly not aimed at children, would get toy lines anyways. The idea being the kids probably wouldn't see the film, but they would play with the toys.

Perhaps there would be a cartoon series aimed at younger children, if the film was successful.

It was a way to offset production costs with toy company investments..

I think another example was Alien which had toys made as well.

 

[XYZpdq]

Well, there was an idea(after Star Wars) to just merchandise everything. So films, clearly not aimed at children, would get toy lines anyways. The idea being the kids probably wouldn't see the film, but they would play with the toys.

Perhaps there would be a cartoon series aimed at younger children, if the film was successful.

It was a way to offset production costs with toy company investments..

I think another example was Alien which had toys made as well.

iirc Aliens almost got a tie in toy commercial cartoon for that toy line from the 90s, and yeah OG Alien had a big foot tall toy of the xeno
but yeah Lynch Dune was shaped with an eye towards Star Warsing it up, that's basically the whole thing about the sound-based zap guns that sorta wander in and out of the story

 

[ProfDongs]

I knew there were going to be changes but as days go on they start to irk me more. Chani, and Liet were bad enough, but changing Jihad to Crusade though really shows why they're doing it. It's pure fear on the studios end, and for Villeneuve to say he has love for the Novel and still let all this happen or enable it just shows how weak he is. Makes me wonder and worry for what we haven't seen that's been changed. That's probably just pessimism, I liked his other movies but this is different. So far still gonna see it opening day I think.

 

[GhostButt]

and yeah OG Alien had a big foot tall toy of the xeno

One of the writers for the 79 Alien described the terror they were aiming for as "making a man feel what its like to be raped and having to give birth to the rapists baby" and so they designed a big black rape monster shaped like a dick, then sold it to kids!

Not once, but again in the 90s!

Fucking god I love the quaaludes and cocaine cocktail that informed so much of our childhood.

Walmart is at it again with their exclusive Aliens sets for even younger kids (think the Dino Adventure style):

 

[MysticMisty]

This image manages to somehow be reminiscent of the 70's and 80's, and thus makes me feel nostalgic for the older (kid appropriate) books I read when I was young.

 

[Dang Woodchucks!]

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.

I never understood the "Dune is "mighty whitey fantasy" meme when the whole point is that he adheres to the Fremen lifestyle and they're described to really not look that much different in skin tone, if anything the fremen might be slightly tanned due to the whole "living on a desert planet" thing. And he's not taken in with open arms immediately either, he has to work for it.

 

[King Dead]

I never understood the "Dune is "mighty whitey fantasy" meme when the whole point is that he adheres to the Fremen lifestyle and they're described to really not look that much different in skin tone, if anything the fremen might be slightly tanned due to the whole "living on a desert planet" thing. And he's not taken in with open arms immediately either, he has to work for it.

Not to mention that basically every book after Dune is a deconstruction of Dune's plot, showing that just because Paul managed to become the Emperor and led the bloodiest jihad in humanity's history, didn't mean that everything was going to go swimmingly from then on. This even pops up in Dune itself, where Paul has visions of his future and knows that his success with the Fremen will end up hurting them, yet he's unable to stop the jihad from happening. It's a major theme throughout the Dune saga; Frank Herbert was not a fan of hero worship and sought to show what can happen when people devote themselves blindly to a heroic figure.

It's encapsulated nicely in this line that a vision of Pardot Kynes says to Liet-Kynes: "No more terrible disaster could befall your people than for them to fall into the hands of a Hero."

 

[Tor Lugosi]

Speaking of action figures:

I wonder if history is gonna repeat itself here.
"This is gonna be the next big franchise! We gotta get out all the merchandise we can- oh, shit, it flopped."

 

[MysticMisty]

Dune has interesting visual concepts, but it's way too niche to be a moneymaker even by just adult fan standards. I think they'd have the best luck with art prints.

 

[frozenrunner]

I knew there were going to be changes but as days go on they start to irk me more. Chani, and Liet were bad enough, but changing Jihad to Crusade though really shows why they're doing it. It's pure fear on the studios end, and for Villeneuve to say he has love for the Novel and still let all this happen or enable it just shows how weak he is. Makes me wonder and worry for what we haven't seen that's been changed. That's probably just pessimism, I liked his other movies but this is different. So far still gonna see it opening day I think.

Let's be real: the term "jihad" carries associations now that it didn't when they book was written (for obvious reasons). Wouldn't that be distracting for the non-reader audience? And this movie will be a hard sell as it is.

 

[Kwopsie Peepsie]

Maybe they thought its was Disney's The Black Hole

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That should be the movie Villeneuve makes next, instead of Cleopatra.

 

[Tookie]

Umm...isn’t Dune taking place nowhere near earth? Or am I confused on that?
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https://twitter.com/mcushrish/status/1303735958215356417?s=21

If we're going to get that autistic about it, they're space muslims and part of Islam's staying power is that they don't particularly care about your race. Real life muslims would be the first to tell this guy to STFU about that line of attack. The entire point is to rope other people into it, not whine about "appropriation."

 

[дядя Боря]

Of course, there was rumors that Star Wars was inspired by the Dune novel. I just can't see Dune working as a kid's popcorn movie without the addition of cute animal sidekicks and the subtraction of just about everything having to do with Baron Harkonnen (aside from his fatness.)

Star Wars were inspired by a lot of things, but make no mistake, even before Disney picked the franchise (which is really odd to me because most people don't know what war is and my family lived through a few. There is nothing entertaining about the worst humanity has to offer) SW was way ahead of its time in terms of special effects etc. In 1977 this was as high tech as they come, even the concept of commonplace robotic prosthetics in a movie ... from the point of view 40 years ago, it was anything but strictly kids flick.

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

where is the source of this? I also thought that fremen were Zensunni muslim descendants. Gypsies are Indian and it doesn't matter if they are Russian, no such thing, they all speak Roma and have common culture independently of the country they are camping in.

Let's be real: the term "jihad" carries associations now that it didn't when they book was written (for obvious reasons). Wouldn't that be distracting for the non-reader audience? And this movie will be a hard sell as it is.

I don't think that changed at all, may be the scale changed or more muslims and terror came to the west, but that those fuckers were jihading since pedohammed started to worship moongod.

Jihad, holy war, always had connotation of total war, typically without physical location and somewhat vague on details of execution.

Crusade is much closer to Fatwah (but still far from it), a campaign with specific goals tied to specific physical locations. That being said, I am not a native English speaker although I test higher than 95% of natives.

 

[Ihavetinyweewee]

Star Wars were inspired by a lot of things, but make no mistake, even before Disney picked the franchise (which is really odd to me because most people don't know what war is and my family lived through a few. There is nothing entertaining about the worst humanity has to offer) SW was way ahead of its time in terms of special effects etc. In 1977 this was as high tech as they come, even the concept of commonplace robotic prosthetics in a movie ... from the point of view 40 years ago, it was anything but strictly kids flick.



where is the source of this? I also thought that fremen were Zensunni muslim descendants. Gypsies are Indian and it doesn't matter if they are Russian, no such thing, they all speak Roma and have common culture independently of the country they are camping in.



I don't think that changed at all, may be the scale changed or more muslims and terror came to the west, but that those fuckers were jihading since pedohammed started to worship moongod.

Jihad, holy war, always had connotation of total war, typically without physical location and somewhat vague on details of execution.

Crusade is much closer to Fatwah (but still far from it), a campaign with specific goals tied to specific physical locations. That being said, I am not a native English speaker although I test higher than 95% of natives.

I was using gypsies as a stand in for nomadic culture. I didn't specifically mean roma gypsies.

I believe I read it in a Dune apendix. Russia was the beginning of their genetic heritage. The word Sietch is derived from the Russian word Sech.

 

[Caustic Gelatin]

Seems like making a toy version of the weirding module thing with a little cheap microphone that reverb/distorts your voice would have been a no-brainer.

 

[XYZpdq]

I thought I heard from some rando online that Roma were just a specific gaggle of gypsies like calling all Indians "Delaware" or "Sioux" when in fact there were many groups that exactly weren't them and they would be pretty not happy you lumped them in with those other assholes, like if you said a Korean was Japanese.

 

[HeyYou]

If we're going to get that autistic about it, they're space muslims and part of Islam's staying power is that they don't particularly care about your race. Real life muslims would be the first to tell this guy to STFU about that line of attack. The entire point is to rope other people into it, not whine about "appropriation."

Only the Fremen are direct analogues. The Empire has some terms taken from Arabic sources, but is otherwise more of a Byzantine or feudal Europe analogue. Paul being referred to with the term "duke" in the trailer should have made that obvious, but here we are.

 

[Devilish Jack o Lantern]

I’m optimistic about this film