Sigh….
The Barron flies.
I guess the Barron Harkonnen is always going to fly.
I have made peace with this.
Hello, my Beautiful Watchers.
So Arrakis rises yet again.
Denis Villeneuve takes his shot at bringing Frank Herbert's 1965 science-fiction game
changer to the big screen.
This isn’t an official Lost in Adaptation episode but I will be discussing this film
primarily from an adaptation standpoint.
After doing this job for 6 years I’m not 100% sure I’m even capable of viewing media
through any other lens anymore.
I feel the shade of every film’s book perching on my shoulder when I try to watch them…..
Whispering to me.
Soooo…..
Bit of a mixed bag here.
Given more time to ruminate my opinion may change for the better or the worse but right
now, mere days after seeing it I’m currently feeling like there were a lot of elements
that I really liked but a few that dragged the whole thing down somewhat.
Before I begin though, can we just take a minute to acknowledge that it’s something
of a miracle this film exists at all considering the extremely cursed timeline of attempted
Dune adaptations.
If you’re not in the mood for a history lesson and want to skip ahead to the new film
talk that’s fine it won’t hurt my feelings….
Too much.
Anyways, it all started in 1971 when Arthur P. Jacobs of Plant of the Apes fame attempted
to make a $15 million adaptation with David Lean as the director, but he died of a heart
attack during production which left the rights in a tied up mess with his estate and the
film was never made.
In 1974 Jean-Paul Gibon purchased the rights from them and tapped Alejandro Jodorowsky
to bring Arrakis to life with an estimated budget of $20 million smackeroos.
He put together an impressive if unusual team, HR Giger was put in charge of set design,
Pink Floyd was contracted to write the soundtrack and Salvador Dalí apparently agreed to cameo
as the Emperor of the known Universe.
An all-star cast including Orson Welles as the Barron was rumoured to be in the works
before things started to fall apart.
There’s a whole ass documentary about this failed attempt at a film if you’re interested.
In 1976 Dino DeLaurentiis took another shot at it, bringing Giger in again to work on
the visuals and hiring Ridley Scott to direct with a projected $50 million budget.
The writing on this one changed hands a bit.
Frank Herbert wrote the first draft but it was rejected and Rudolph Wurlitzer took over,
writing a new version that Herbert described as “oversimplified”.
Apparently, one notorious draft involved Paul starting an incestuous relationship with his
mother Jessica becoming the father of his sister Alia.
No one has ever claimed that this is why Scott left the project but…
I mean wouldn’t you if a writer put that in front of you.
He went on to make Blade Runner instead so at least there’s a happy ending there.
After he bounced the project quietly shut down because it was costing too much to keep
paying writers to make endless attempts at making this script not terrible.
1981 saw the start of the first adaptation to see the light of day, the $45 million bones
David Lynch version that premiered in 1984.
You can hear my thoughts on this adaptation but please don’t because it’s a very old
video now and I loathe all of my early work with a burning shameful passion.
It’s so amateur I just can’t even.
The cliff notes are: it’s not a terrible film as such but it is fucking weeeird and
as an adaptation, there’s a recognizable amount of the book in it but a lot of liberties
were taken.
With SOME form of cinematic Dune representation finally in existence things went quiet again
until the year 2000 when John Harrison was given 20 million Scratch to turn the book
into a tv mini-series for the sky fi channel.
Again I have shared extensive thoughts on it if you’re curious or just enjoy seeing
me before I developed severe vocal strain and shouted everything in my reviews.
It was undeniably a much more book accurate adaptation and to date it’s the only adaptation
to go on to cover the sequel books, but due to a combination of bad CGI, wooden acting
and mediocre directing it utterly failed to leave a significant impact on most audiences
so it’s been somewhat forgotten over time.
The Dune curse reared its head again when Paramount Pictures picked up the rights in
2008.
Despite planning to throw 100 million drollery doos at it the production never made it off
the ground as it immediately fell into development hell and the would-be director, Pete Berg,
wandered off to make Battleship instead.
Yeah, Battleship.
The fact that Villeneuve and Legendary Entertainment were still willing to take another shot at
this book and risk 165 million dollar dollar bills despite this scoreboard of successes
to expensive failures is, I think, a testament to how important this book is to the genre
of science fiction.
The spice really MUST flow when it comes to Dune adaptations.
Going forward there will be spoilers for this new Dune film, the original Dune novel, and
potentially a few of its sequels too.
Let’s start with the positives.
The film sheds a lot of subplots but it strictly adheres to the main story beats of the novel.
Things like the Gom Jabbar test of pain, the Atraidies move to Arakkus, The Baron teaming
up with the emperor to kill their too popular for their own good rivals, the Hunter Seeker
attempt on Paul's life, Dr Yuey’s betrayal, the attack and desolation of House Atreides
and Paul and his mum cheesing it into the desert to meet up with the Fremen, one of
whom Paul has to kill in one and one combat.
I was very pleased to see that they stayed loyal to the knives and swords aspect of futuristic
warfare in a universe in which only relatively slow things can penetrate an opponent’s
personal forcefield and they clearly put a lot of thought into choreographing awesome
fight scenes that involved this struggle to get through an opponent's shield.
This particular interpretation of “the voice” had a super-strong intro that actually took
me aback for a second.
Later in the film, they kinda fell back on the more standard creepy filter to convey
it but you know it was still pretty cool.
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I like that they took the time to introduce a Muad dib for once and it was just fucking
adorable.
Stilgar spitting at Duke Leto as a sign of respect got a laugh in the cinema I was in
which surprised me because I thought that was intended as a tense scene originally but
it does super work as comedic relief.
Much like the book, the Guild Navigators in all their horrifying glory and Emperor are
kept as mysterious off-screen menaces throughout.
There’s a ton of other fun details fans of the book will enjoy seeing too.
Heck, they even included the super weird and awkward wail that Maves the Fremen does when
Jessica inadvertently confirms a part of the prophecy her people believe in.
Do you know this knife, my lady?
It is a maker- (weird wail)
Btw I actually made this (something) knife myself as a gift for a friend.
I’m going to put a video on my second channel eventually showing the process if you’re
in any way interested in that.
I was impressed that for the most part, this film achieved a near-perfect balance between
casting people who are super hot in Hollywood right now but are also pretty good for the
characters of the book.
Oscar Isaac in particular did a great job of embodying The Duke Leto Atreides while
looking like pure sex in amour.
I’ve always thought that previous adaptations have tended to lean a little too close towards
portraying Leto as this perfect, too good for this world martyr but this version of
him feels a lot more like the book character who, while a fundamentally good person was
also just this big old mess of anger issues and self-loathing brought about from having
to play dirty politics for decades.
Dr. Liet Kynes is gender-flipped but maintains the character’s mixed loyalties to the Emperor,
the Fremen society she was adopted into and her conscience about letting the Atraidies
that she had come to like and respect be ignobly wiped out.
She’s given a slightly more heroic death than her male book counterpart but nothing
super egregiously off-book you know.
Timothée Chalamet, while not a complete unknown is probably the least famous of the cast but
he makes for a pretty good Paul Atreides.
At 25 he’s a solid 10 years older than the book character but he’s got a good babyface
so I think they got away with it.
He’s definitely got Paul’s look, you know he’s small and skinny at first glance but
he can have an unexpected power behind his movements when he needs it.
I was impressed with this performance during the gom Jabbar scene in particular.
Rebecca Ferguson is..she’s fine as Lady Jessica.
There’s a tense awkwardness about her throughout the film which isn’t in keeping with the
book but again, it’s nothing too egregious.
The only exception to this casting winning streak might be Jason Momoa as Duncan Idaho
as Momoa is kinda just playing himself the way he’s done in every major motion picture
he’s been a part of.
I think Khal Drogo was the last time he played other than an energetic wise-cracking stud
muffin.
This isn’t too damaging adaptation wise because Duncan isn’t exactly a super-strong
character in the book.
He’s fairly stoic and a little forgettable as a result.
I’ve gotten him mixed up with Gerny quite a lot over the years.
So I guess whether or not you like this change in the film will depend entirely on how much
you like Jason Momoa so I was personally pretty cool with it.
Aside from once again hovering over everyone like Steve Bannon found his happy thought,
Stellen Skarsgard as the Barron Harrkonen is hands down the best interpretation of this
character to date.
He’s actually intimidating for once instead of being played up as a comedic character.
He might even be a little scarier than he was in the book this time, I like what they
did with him a lot.
Regarding casting, the film has rightly caught some flack for using so much middle eastern
imagery but failing to cast a single middle easten actor.
The Fremen are of course a purely fictional race but they are SUPER coded that way both
in the book and clearly in this film so it does seem a little shitty to not hire a single
person from the middle east.
Just before moving onto the negatives, I’m about to go off on a slight tangent because
the film included the Duke's hope that he could weaponise the Fremen into this all-powerful
personal army which reminded me of something that really stood out to me the first time
I read this book.
There seems to be a trend within like classic science fiction where the author believes
that there is one key element that makes someone the ultimate warrior that’s so much more
important than anything else.
For example in the Ender's Game series by Orson Scott Card it was pure genetics.
You don’t need any real-world experience or more than a year or two’s training, if
you’re born a genius, you’ll be an unbeatable military leader before you hit puberty.
In Herbert’s world, the key factor appears to be being toughened up by harsh living conditions.
When Leto is explaining to Paul why The Emperor’s Sardaukar were the deadliest force in the
known universe, the only thing he considered worth mentioning was that they’re recruited
from this super nasty prison planet
Then immediately afterwards, and again later in the book, the average Fremen’s ability
to kick the Sardaukar’s ass is attributed to them living on a planet with an even more
unforgiving environment.
I’m not a military expert either modern or historical so I won’t bore you with all
the reasons I think this doesn’t really make sense, I just thought it was interesting
that this seems to be a bit of a recurring trope.
Anyway tangent over.
A lot of problems arise from the decision to split this film up into two parts and tragically
I think some of them could have been fairly easily avoided.
I mean aside from being a bit more forthright about it in the marketing.
I mean I knew this was only part one because I was pretty pre-invested but I’ve spoken
to a few people who didn’t so the sudden ending was even more jarring for them.
Adaptation wise Dune actually has more potential than most for being a multi-parter because
it kind of already is.
There are technically three sub-books within this book, and part one is almost half the
novel so it’s not madness to consider a two-parter film.
It’s also just, you know, bit of a chonky book so there’s quite a lot to work with.
Unfortunately, it followed in the footsteps of the Hobbit adaptations in which they appear
to have gotten it into their heads that all great movies have to be ungodly long.
Dune could potentially provide enough story for two films but not if you are going to
make both of them 2 hours and 36 minutes.
But despite this length, the film managed to fail to include character development for
a ton of the supporting cast.
It affected a bunch of people but I think the worst sufferers were Thufir Hawat, Dr
Yueh and Piter.
Hawat is just sort of there.
He does his Mentat computation thing like once but what it means to be a Mentat was
super downplayed along with all the political schemings and counter schemings that he was
a part of.
Unless I missed it, the film doesn’t even bother confirming his fate after the Harkonnen
attack.
Again Dr. Yueh is there and he goes through the motions of betraying the Duke, but they
don’t really bring up the Imperian conditioning and so little time is spent with him the emotional
impact of his betrayal is effectively nonexistent.
Also apparently in the future, skilled doctors are going to be able to perform full checkups
just by poking their patients in key spots like they’re performing a slightly more
annoying Vulcan mind-meld.
Piter the sadistic, twisted Mentat might as well have not been in this film.
I mean he relays some messages to people and the camera cuts to him a few times but that’s
seems to be the extent of his involvement.
That is however still more than Feyd got as he literally is not in the film, speedo clad
or otherwise.
Not even an Azula style cameo at the end or a post-credits scene.
Again they had so much run time to work with and only so much story to get through, why
would they not include him?
What they had time to set up the little mouse Paul names himself after but not what is essentially
the final boss?
They’re either going to have to play catch up in the next film or I guess Rabban could
fill his role as well, I guess we’ll see.
The film starts with narration from Chani which led me to hope that perhaps this time
she was going to be more involved in the first half of the story, you know maybe have her
own thing going on while Paul’s house was busy getting wiped out which would have been
a new approach and an interesting way of expending the story but uh alas no, like most Dune adaptations
she’s more of a gloried macguffin than a person throughout most of the runtime.
So you might be wondering then how did Villeneuve stretch the run time so long if he wasn’t
interested in developing half the key players in the story.
Well, I’d say that at least 80%of it was just pure visuals.
This adaptation leans super hard into the landscape porn, first with the watery and
green Calidan then with the stark harsh beauty of the deserts.
You get a LOT of breathtaking visuals as people travel around by air and they clearly put
a ton of work into building these sets for the governor's mansion on Arrakis and the
Barron’s chambers on Giedi Prime.
Villeneuve also leaned into trying to give you a sense of the massive scale of certain
things from the book like like the titanic Navigator guild transport ships, the legions
of Sardica and of course the big old sandworms.
His notorious comment about not wanting people to stream Dune at home makes a lot more sense
to me now.
I mean nothing really measures up the big screen for experiencing a film like this that
relies so heavily on stunning visuals.
I should mention this is not encouragement from me to see this film in cinemas.
At the time of this video’s recording, the covid19 pandemic is far from being over so
please don’t feel obliged to do anything that might make you feel unsafe just to make
Denis Villeneuve happy.
Villeneuve is by his own admission something of a David Lynch fanboy and while this film
is a totally different animal from its predecessor, you can see some elements that were clearly
inspired by it.
The Barron Tinkerbell of course and the general Harkonen aesthetic of just being…
Gross.
You know, just really oily looking and gross.
I’m not going to describe it, because if you’ve not seen it, you don’t need the
nightmares, but when The Barron’s pet monster turned up on screen I actually said: “No!
N-no to this!
N-no thank you” just like you know out loud.
He also clearly borrowed a few pages from David Lynch’s be random as shit book.
There’s a very cool scene where they introduce the Imperial Sardica that is made just ever
so slightly confusing by the presence of a futuristic turtleneck wearing throat singer
in a tower.
Like I was trying to get into the scene, there was some really dark elements, some people
had just been sacrificed, some people being baptised in blood and..this guy is in the
background going (weird garbling noises).
Its just so distracting.
The final issue with the way they split the story is exactly where they chose to end it
and how utterly underwhelming it was as a result.
The fall of House Atreides and the death of Duke Leto is this massive, cinematic battle
filled with emotional scenes left right and centre.
It’s the perfect climax to a film… it’s just not the climax of this film, when its
done there's still a ton of run time left.
Ok so I mean maybe it happened a little too soon in the story to be used for the finale,
but then they were given another chance to end on a bang with the heroic deaths of Duncan
and Kynes.
A popular character goes down in a blaze of glory to save the heroes, a semi villain is
redeemed…
And yet the film just keeps on going for like 30 more minutes, dipping into part 2 of the
book and finally ending Paul’s one-sided fight with Jamis the Fremen.
After Paul wins they set off on the next step of their journey and… cut to credits.
I think they were aiming for like a Fellowship of the Rings style cut off but a teenager
shanking one old dude with anger issues is no Skirmish at Amon Hen I’m sorry.
So yeah that would be my personal little script doctor.
Kill at least the last 35 minutes and end the film on Jason Momoa being a total badass.
In case anyone was wondering, the part of the book the film was adapting ends with Paul
having a mystical vision and seeing that his mother Jessica is the Barron Harkonin’s
biological daughter.
You are the father!
Did you hear that!
Despite all this I would still say that this is by far the best Dune adaptation of the
three that have been successfully made.
Its not perfect, there’s plenty of room for improvement, and some regrettable decisions
were made, but its pretty good.
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