hey guys adam savage here in my cave uh with a dune prop to show i know it seems
early given how recently dune came out but um i've already seen it like four times
yeah i'm kind of obsessed with the movie i love so many things about it um
yeah so i've already been out there doing my research i've already been out there on the rpf
looking at stuff that people are doing looking at the development that fans are doing of the still
suit designs i'm working on ordering some pieces of still suit and assembling my own at some point
but as i was searching on the internet low just about a week ago i decided to enter the
word chris knife uh the famous knives wielded by the fremen in the uh uh in dune uh and on amazon
low you know how many times do i'm going to say low uh on amazon i found a united cutlery
prop replica of the kris knife and here it is and i'm going to unbox it
um the pictures look fantastic uh and i love this prop i i've also always really liked the chris
knife from the david lynch dunes series but to be perfectly honest it always felt a little small
i know it's a ceremonial knife and that's a choice that one can make about a ceremonial knife but in
contrast i find these uh long daggers supposedly made from the teeth of shahu lube the sand worms
i find this piece to be much more compelling and there's a lot of narrative built into the
design of this prop and uh i'm i'm hopefully going to talk about it uh so let us practice
all right
all right there seems to be a lot of hardware and stuff for a display let's pull everything out
oh
wow nice
this is all right i'm laughing and i'll explain why uh let's get all ready before it's recycling
okay i'm laughing
i'm laughing so first of all first of all this just for a display like i get a lot of props that
have a display platforms and i rarely keep the display platforms because frankly they often feel
like an afterthought um i like to handle my props i like to play around with them and i i just don't
it's wall space i don't have wall space but uh in the annals or the realm of the uh of the display
base i have to say this is really stunning this is really really lovely uh the green background here
has a complex paint job it's got some interesting reflective highlights in
it the label is quite nice i laughed because of the text in the label the label says dune crest
knife sacred blade fashioned from the tooth of a sand worm legendary all rights reserved i mean
this is definitely what it feels like when you ask an intern to write a label just to like get
it out the door that's what it feels like that may not be the case but i i would have gone with
a slightly different label just something that felt more museum like okay uh let's um
let's take a look here we go and we'll come in for some close-ups
dude
this is lovely this is absolutely lovely let's bring you in for a close-up uh let's see here
hi hi okay uh first of all it's translucent which is beautiful uh so they've cast it probably in
polyester you can't tell unless you cut into it and i don't want to um but i'm going to assume
that this is highly brittle and that if it dropped it would shatter um i think it says polystone
um i'm not sure yeah at any rate uh it's probably delicate that aside it's beautifully translucent
but even more than translucent i don't know if you can see there is a pearlescent
specular paint over this end of this uh that gives a little extra of a highlight
in in the annals of like prop replication that's that's pretty nice for a mass market
uh piece uh and in the so and we can talk about the the the parts of a framing knife here
um clearly you've got this natural piece which is supposedly from the tooth of shah lube the
sand worm um and frankly it really looks like a a hair follicle like a giant hair follicle and
in the animal kingdom i mean there are plenty of uh toothy hair follicles to be found the kiteness
construction of hair uh can be like teeth and it totally makes sense for a large natural
uh being like a huge sand worm to have uh their teeth be actual like what we might consider
hair on a much smaller scale like a couple of thousandths of an inch the reason i bring up this
hair tooth dichotomy is because i've been thinking about this since i first saw pictures of these
apparently on one of the studio lots there is an exhibition of some props from dune i'm trying to
get down to la to go see those but what i noticed when i looked at close-ups of these and the film
also has some beautiful close-ups of this knife um is this brown part down here drifting to a sort of
a mid-range dark to light color and then this this really feels like a giant hair pulled out by its
root like that is the level of the of the of where it comes out of the being so it i don't know that
this is the narrative they had in their heads when they designed and they built this uh and i
believe these props were made by doug harlocker's team doug harlacher uh was the prop master that i
got to talk to uh in for blade runner 2049 and we'll include a link to those interviews below
because he's a master of the form um he has done uh more than a couple of denis films and
you know richard taylor and i talked a lot about the advent of 4k and how much
that increased the level of scrutiny that the that the camera uh imparts onto a prop
uh and people like richard taylor and doug harlocker absolutely are just masters of
the craft at layering in that detail so in addition to this hair follicle-like piece
that has been taken from the sand worm it then has this ceremonial metal uh metal handle but not it's
a really interesting metal handle because they show the the root here so there's a
it feels like there's a reason to the how it's wrapped around and then there's this writing i
guess this is fremen writing on both sides and when i was looking at pictures of this
prop and pictures of this knife from the exhibition i think it is entirely plausible
that this thing was cast from one of the screen used pieces i don't think this is
3d printed i mean it certainly could be but if it is it's a mass-market product 3d printed at
a higher resolution than i've seen um they're not some of the usual telltale signs of anyway
i think this was cast off a screen used piece that's my assertion i could totally be wrong
there's also here is a hidden thing to the prop that i think is really neat which is there's a
natural way to grab it it tells you how to hold it that's a beautiful thing for an object uh i mean
look you know within knife design certainly they're following some of the some of the
visual cues of knife design but i just love it when a prop feels good in your hand that
that tells me that the people designing and building this have been paying attention to
like the right things yeah in the film spoiler i'm going to talk about the film in the film
when uh zendaya's character says to tim chalamet uh you're gonna die but i'd like you to die with
honor here is one of the knives and it'd be a great honor for you to die holding this um
it's i love yours i'm just going to wax on about how much i love doing
i love exposition that doesn't feel like the exposition right she's making it she's making
so much clear in those lines about the fremen ideology there's a generosity i want you to die
with honor i mean even though you're gonna die uh there is a resignedness to the fate which
you know really speaks to like a desert culture in which the world is really cruel all of that feels
like it's built into the execution and use of this prop in the film um okay now what would i change
this is not necessarily the kris knife of my dreams i i do think that uh i
would like to make one that has an actual metal metallic wrap here um
so i may investigate 3d printing one of these in metal i don't know um but i also love the
translucent and i would love one that was actually i would love one that is actually not brittle
whether that means that i've got a hand carved one of these out of something really not brill um
or some other solution i'm not sure i haven't really thought it all the way through but oh
man this is a lovely lovely mass market prop you can get these on amazon right now they're about
165 bucks um which look i i recognize that's real money also for what this is that seems like a real
screaming deal to me uh i've bought a lot of prop replicas from companies releasing those
replicas like the crouching tiger hidden dragon licensed prop replica of the green
destiny sword is a piece of total shite it just does not satisfy any of the original looks of
the actual piece yeah no it's totally wrong um and so you can go quite far afield but here in
the dune universe they have made a really lovely prop replica thank you legendary uh thank you dune
thanks everybody for watching this is adam savage in my cave and i will see you next time
lovely all right bye