Dune (2020) by Dennis Villeneuve

[The Clown Prince of Crime]

I really wasn't a fan of Paul at the beginning however the film did a good job of changing my view. His character grew throughout and I'm eager to see where his story goes. As @The Clown Prince of Crime said, he's another Neo.

It's like a mixture of Lawrence of Arabia, Matrix, SW, Star Gate...etc.

 

[Wor-Gar]

I think I may watch this again on HBOMax just to get the stink of the Lynch one out of my mind's eye.

 

[The Clown Prince of Crime]

I think I may watch this again on HBOMax just to get the stink of the Lynch one out of my mind's eye.

If I had HBO Max, I'd watch it again. I'm sure I missed some details. Stupid teens.

 

[ZE_501]

I don't think it will get a sequel judging by the small amount of people in the theater and their reaction when the film ended, "Oh my god, I have no idea what happened in that film...why you make me see this?"

There was actually a lot of positive buzz and talk of specific scenes when I exited the packed IMAX screening, and I heard people talking about going to see it later that day on the street. May do better than expected.

 

[ZE_501]

In the book does it explain why the head sith lady, who walks like emperor Palpatine in the rain scene in ROTS btw, preferred a female child over a male that Jessica had?

I’m assuming her new pregnancy will play into that explanation.

Javier should have played Obi-Wan lol

The Bene Gesserit order and their selective breeding program is much more complex than was hinted at in the film. Maybe they'll reveal more in Part 2.

Her new pregnancy is a parallel plot point and a wild one.

 

[The Clown Prince of Crime]

There was actually a lot of positive buzz and talk of specific scenes when I exited the packed IMAX screening, and I heard people talking about going to see it later that day on the street. May do better than expected.

It must of been a crowd of adults, not kids.

 

[ZE_501]

Jye wants to tear this apart lol

Well reminds me of the Middle East where no one wants to go but they want that sweet, sweet nectar of oil to get rich off of. But you have these local guys that think it is theirs cause they live there! And just like politics, you feel politics at work but dont see who is making the law. And for those shields, yeah they seem to only work with glancing blows, but you don't see anyone using projectiles. Those poison darts must be hard to come by though lol.

RE: still-suits -- difference between open desert and relative shelter, plus time of day and duration. The shields stop high speed projectiles and blows. There are weird kinetic projectiles that move slowly enough to penetrate them. Lasguns (in-universe word) are rendered impractical to use in warfare due to a catastrophically destructive interaction between their beams and shields. This from memory, it's been a long time.

 

[ZE_501]

It must of been a crowd of adults, not kids.

Mixed. Buncha 20-somethings were flipping out at the spectacle.

 

[The Clown Prince of Crime]

The Bene Gesserit order and their selective breeding program is much more complex than was hinted at in the film. Maybe they'll reveal more in Part 2.

Her new pregnancy is a parallel plot point and a wild one.

Tell me more!! You can use spoilers, although that stuff might not even make it into the sequel. Also, who's the baby?

 

[Wor-Gar]

Tell me more!! You can use spoilers, although that stuff might not even make it into the sequel. Also, who's the baby?

Watch Lynch's Dune as it gives up the secrets you seek being Part I and II in one 2.5 hour 'epic'.

 

[ZE_501]

Tell me more!! You can use spoilers, although that stuff might not even make it into the sequel. Also, who's the baby?

So ...

Spoiler

The Bene Gesserit had limited prescient abilities; through intense training and breeding over thousands of years their order was able to access genetic memories from female ancestors, but only incomplete knowledge from males.

There was a mental space they couldn't get to and it was in fact terrifying to contemplate; Guild Navigators had some pieces of the puzzle as well, thanks to long exposure to Spice which enabled them to fold space via complex (transdimensional?) psychic states that enabled interstellar navigation. Trippy, right? Well it was written in the '60s.

They had a 10,000 year old selective breeding program meant to produce the Kwisatz Haderach; a male with Bene Gesserit powers and the ability to access both sets of chromosomes and experience full prescience. The plan was to culminate in Lady Jessica bearing Leto a daughter who would wed a Harkonnen, ending the ancient feud, creating a god-like being under the control of the Bene Gesserit who would sit on the throne as Emperor.

Lady Jessica gave Leto a son out of love (she could have chosen otherwise, Bene Gesserit have extraordinary control over their physiology) ... the daughter she carries will grow up to be Saint Aliyah of the Knife; due to Jessica undergoing the torment of the ... Water of Life? I think it's called during a dangerous ritual to access ancestral memories etc. ...via the bile from a drowned juvenile sandworm ... her unborn daughter has access to all those ancestral memories and knowledge, born as what some call an "abomination" because ... well ... she's not a child when born. Not in any normal sense.

This is sketchy but more or less what I remember. If I remember right Aliyah is only special because of that, she is otherwise just Leto and Jessica's second child.

 

[matticus]

RE: still-suits -- difference between open desert and relative shelter, plus time of day and duration. The shields stop high speed projectiles and blows. There are weird kinetic projectiles that move slowly enough to penetrate them. Lasguns (in-universe word) are rendered impractical to use in warfare due to a catastrophically destructive interaction between their beams and shields. This from memory, it's been a long time.

Reminds me of Stargate SG-1 personal shields. Prob took it from Dune as it had the same strengths and weaknesses. I am assuming the poison was slow enough to start eating through shields but clearly didn't do the job with the oil bath the baron had.

 

[ebor]

Saw this D-Box Thursday night premier. Theatre was maybe 1/2 full. Great to be seeing movies in the theatre again. When the ship crashed in the sand dune I thought I was going to be thrown into the next row in front of me...

I liked Duncan-Idaho WAY more than the Lynch movie. Baron was great. Poe Dameron...I mean Duke Leto was convincing enough. The ships were amazing. Still not as good as Villeneuve's BR...but I gave Dune part 1 a solid 8/10

 

[Khev]

Saw this in IMAX today. Wow, what a jaw droppingly gorgeous rendition of the world described in the book. Timothée Chalamet was an absolutely perfect Paul. Chani, Jessica, and Gurney were highlights as well. Duncan and the Duke were passable. I liked the Fremen and adored the various tech designs though I thought the Harkonnens and especially the Baron were better realized in the Lynch version. I'm having a hard time accepting Stellan Skarsgård's mellow take on what should be a larger than life character in every way. Maybe they're saving that energy for Bautista's Rabban and whoever plays Feyd.

Speaking of Feyd, gahhh! How has he not made an appearance yet??

This is like FOTR all over again where I came away from my first viewing quite bothered that I had to wait a whole year to see Gollum. But at least it was *only* a year. Who knows if we'll even get a Part Two and if so when.

This film really flowed like a streaming show that had all the time in the world to tell it's story. Unfortunately since I deliberately avoided details about this release I didn't actually know we'd only be seeing half the story!! I figured that since this was 30 minutes longer than Lynch's version that we'd get the entire book. But it was fun to see so many scenes from the book that had been omitted from the previous film.

I hate this new G-rated sanitized PG-13 violence we get these days. I'm reminded of TDK and TDKR where apparently PG-13 means absolutely no blood *ever* in battle. Only blood of people previously wounded in battle. How are we now so far from the glory days of the original Red Dawn or even the prior version of this film? It used to go PG equals intense and kind of violent to outright gory (Raiders and TOD) which led to PG-13 being R-rated violence as long as it wasn't accompanied by *** and profanity up until about 10 years ago where it changed to having even bloodless stabbings needing to occur largely off camera. I feel like Cap: TFA might have been the last decently bloody PG-13 movie that we ever got. It is what it is I guess but man do I wish this had the same rating as BR 2049.

It's hard for me to rate this film because I'm still trying to process everything while coming to terms with the fact that we only got half the story and don't even have a guarantee that we'll see the rest.

I really liked how they changed Kynes' death from the novel. A very nice "eff you" improvised exclamation point on her part. That said I don't know that I'm a fan of the gender swap.

I liked how in the book

Spoiler

Liet Kynes was Chani's father and that her and Paul both losing their fathers in the same invasion allowed for them to quickly bond.

That little bit won't be as elegant now on film.

It's also kind of hilarious that by upping the diversity and making all the Fremen black or brown they've now instantly turned the entire narrative into another non-PC "white savior" trope which the book and previous film were *not* since everyone was white. Oops, lol.

 

[Khev]

In the book does it explain why the head sith lady, who walks like emperor Palpatine in the rain scene in ROTS btw, preferred a female child over a male that Jessica had?

I’m assuming her new pregnancy will play into that explanation.

The Bene Gesserits had a very specific father in mind for the Kwisatz Haderach so they were supposed to produce only daughters until the father-to-be was properly prepared and of age (I won't spoil who they wanted the father to be here). So Paul being born in the way that he was was completely wrong to them even though we'll later see how his coming to be does end up fulfilling a lot of their own prophecies. They were just too arrogant to believe that the prophecies would come true without their direct manipulation.

 

[loki2371]

I just finished watching this on HBOMax. So just some quick thoughts...

Over the last 2 weekends I decided to revisit the original '84 (on HBOMax in HD rather than the DVD I own) and the scifi mini series (on DVD which I own) with my son before seeing this. Wanted to revisit them 1st for a refreshing of the story. He got a good laugh at the visuals of those "old movies". But he enjoyed them, as did I. I haven't seen them in over 20 years. The original movie is not for everyone, but I find it an interesting SciFi story. Neither great, nor all that bad. There are many movies worse than the original Dune.

While obviously the visuals and sound were far superior, I feel so much was missing from this new version. None of the cast really seemed to own the characters or sell the story very well. My daughter watched it with us (but she skipped the previous versions) and it was a bit confusing for her. I've never read the book, so I really can't comment on whether or not any of the 3 versions are superior as to following the pace and story of the book, but this version seems to be somewhere in between. I felt it was missing a LOT of important story elements and characters that were either never even introduced or showed to have very little importance to the overall story.

Overall it was ok. I hope they make the 2nd just to finish the story. What a waste if they don't. And since the movie literally just ended, anyone unfamiliar must be like WTF?? But I have a feeling this isn't gonna do well.

 

[The Clown Prince of Crime]

It's also kind of hilarious that by upping the diversity and making all the Fremen black or brown they've now instantly turned the entire narrative into another non-PC "white savior" trope which the book and previous film were *not* since everyone was white. Oops, lol.

I think it makes sense for the people of Arakis to be dark skinned because the whole story seems to be some kind of Middle East allegory, and most people in the Middle East or dessert countries are dark. It wouldn't make sense for the Fremen to be a bunch of white people. I guess, they could have a few white looking people there, but I think their look fits the environment.

 

[Khev]

I didn't say that it didn't make sense for sun scorched people to be dark skinned, I said that I find it hilarious that by adding so much diversity they instantly made it a white savior movie which is the exact opposite of woke, lol.

 

[jye4ever]

I think it makes sense for the people of Arakis to be dark skinned because the whole story seems to be some kind of Middle East allegory, and most people in the Middle East or dessert countries are dark. It wouldn't make sense for the Fremen to be a bunch of white people. I guess, they could have a few white looking people there, but I think their look fits the environment.

My father was a light skinned arab he even dressed in white

 

[The Clown Prince of Crime]

My father was a light skinned arab he even dressed in white

View attachment 542639

Kind of looks like Duke Leto. Ring and all.

What's that on the ground? Some kind of bird?