movies Dune Sucks

I'm a big proponent of people re examining the default wisdom of popularity. If something was popular, it was great, if it got funded, it's great, if they did it 3 times, it's great, etc.

Let's look at the actual story of Dune.

Look, that millionaires kid buttoned up his vest the right way, he must be the chosen one! "Have you ever put on a stllsuit before" "no, I just thought maybe my legs went in the leg holes" response "you are the hero of a million lifetimes, our spear bearing future people will stand beside your star cruiser and die by the millions so that your unique talent is recognized".

What about pop Atraides? OMG, you saw those people about to get killed by the sandworm, and then you picked them up in your car instead of letting them die? "You are an unusually great leader, capable of amazing feats of decency and logic, and you deserve to rule the entire universe. Never in a million years would any of us have come up with this phenomenal idea of rescuing people in mortal danger with plenty of warning, you have something to teach us all about ethics"

I think my local grocery store checkout guy would have done the same thing, if he had a fleet of helicopters at his disposal. I hate this stupid plotline about how when a super wealthy person shows basic default humanity, It's something exceptional. It's really teaching the wrong lesson. It reinforces the complete BS much of our society is based on.

How about "Desert Power"? Is this really some amazing writing here? Can you imagine a world war 2 movie, and the general walks in, and says "I figured it out, when I was in the navy, we used boats, but now that we are on paved roads, we need "Wheel Power"" and all the people in the command tent stand there in awe of this lifetime of wisdom, and promote the guy to lead everyone in the combined armed forces.

How about the Baron Harkonen, Why is a cartoon character from batman the animated series in the middle of this sprawling, self serious sci fi novel? I could easily see this character in an RL stine work.

How about the assassins' robot bullet thing that almost kills Paul? It's 10 billion years in the future, and we have intergalactic travel, but the missile guidance technology is at the level of cold war Russia? Why are you swordfighting next to that spaceship? How did you build a galactic empire without figuring out how to irrigate a row of trees? Why does a universe this advanced need 6 religions?, have people not had enough time to figure out that religion is as baseless as flat earth "science" I'm just saying, belief in the supernatural has dropped by half in the last generation alone, since the internet allowed people to research things. Is it really that brilliant to fill 10,000 pages with space travelling "Star Priests"? What about the mentats? Thousands of years after quantum computing, people with terrible haircuts overdose on drugs and solve math problems for the government? Seems Unlikely. And what about riding the worm? Did Sammy Hagar write this? Is the idea of riding on top of an animal all that futuristic? I feel like Star Trek is a much more advanced sci fi concept than Dune.

Dune is stupid. Make a neo noir movie out of "Caves of Steel"
 
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I haven't seen it jet.... looking forward to it. Chris Stuckmann thinks its good and I share 95% of its taste in movies.

I can answer some of your questions if you want

How about the assassins' robot bullet thing that almost kills Paul? It's 10 billion years in the future, and we have intergalactic travel, but the missile guidance technology is at the level of cold war Russia?

Because AI is forbidden in the world of Dune since the Butlerian Jihad

Why are you swordfighting next to that spaceship?

Because its the only way to penetrate a shield barrière....

How did you build a galactic empire without figuring out how to irrigate a row of trees?

With H2O the sand worms will starve... its there only weakens... You see this in the Godemperor of Dune

Why does a universe this advanced need 6 religions?, have people not had enough time to figure out that religion is as baseless as flat earth "science" I'm just saying, belief in the supernatural has dropped by half in the last generation alone, since the internet allowed people to research things.
And yet....we still don't know what dark matter is.....its 85% of all the stuff in the universe

What about the mentats? Thousands of years after quantum computing, people with terrible haircuts overdose on drugs and solve math problems for the government?

Quantum computing is forbidden since the Butlerian Jihad

Is the idea of riding on top of an animal all that futuristic?

Its a metaphor of living in harmony with nature. Dune is not a typical SF story, Its archetypal story.
 
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This is why people say, the book is better than the movie. You try to compress 100 hours into 2, and a lot of things don't get explained well.

As far as dark matter, I'm not sure what styrofoam is either, but that's a long way from proving that I need to burn 10 ears of corn in front of a volcano to keep the volcano from becoming angry. People will figure it out, in a few thousand years.
 
Hahah. I sympathize with some of your gripes about Dune. And I don't care much for the 2021 version for reasons of my own. It's not nearly as good as Dune 1984, which is mostly awesome.

The reason for fighting with swords is because they use those force fields. In addition to Feotus' excellent explanation, there's also an urgent rule of self-preservation for why they will not use lasers or laser guns, ala most other scifi stories, and that's because in the Dune world lasers will cause a cataclysmic explosion when they come in contact with force fields. I agree it's lame, lame has hell, but that's Herbert's rule for his Dune world. So I was a bit surprised, actually, when Dune 2021 portrayed the use of a laser, which, again, if it had come in contact with a shield, according to the physical rules laid out in the books at least, would have caused calamity for all involved.

Duke Atreides behavior is juxtaposed to the Harkonens', who put profit before people, to put it mildly—not unheard of in our own world, so I think it carries plenty verisimilitude. The portrayal of this is much more satisfying in Dune 1984, by the way. Keep in mind, this is an aristocratic, feudal society, so the Duke could be in his rights to treat his vassals as expendable chattel. But he doesn't. So, we're shown he is a good lord. It's a pretty basic, and I feel, a quite satisfying way of establishing the integrity of House Atreides and demonstrating they are the relative good guys.

I can't really relate to the gripe about riding worms. It's just a cool thing the Fremen do to get around. Actually, the way Dune 2021 presents worm riding does come off as rather underwhelming. Not so in Dune 1984, in which it is much more momentous.

One of my own gripes is the insectoid aircraft. I do not for the life me recall them being in the books. I guess they must be in there though because filmmakers keep putting them in their movies. I think they're absurd, in any case.

Dune 2021's biggest leg-up on Dune 1984 is having more room to breath. But it does a fairly piss-poor job of exploiting that advantage, in my opinion. The visual technology is more advanced, of course, but I was surprised by how little they pushed that, as well.

One has to wonder what Dune 1984 might have been had Lynch had final cut. I guess we'll never know. But despite its many detractors, and its flaws, Dune 1984 is pretty awesome…and much better than Dune 2021.
 
Agreed on the miniseries being the better version. Though with the current one I do enjoy it on a different level. As a matter of time economy, I have trained my mind to enjoy watching hundreds of million dollars burn, no story required. I've watched Godzilla vs Kong, I've watched Geostorm, and many such examples of simply throwing 200 million dollars onto a bonfire, and Douglas Adams was right, you simply have to learn to enjoy the Vogon poetry. There were a lot of people that worked on the new Dune, and many of them did a great job. Just not Dennis Villanueve. To be fair to him one of my favorite directors Riddley Scott now directs in the exact same way. Soulless, sterile, perfect movies that are executed flawlessly, and haven't even the slightest hint of emotional resonance. Have you ever tried to play a sample of a guitar on a midi keyboard, that's what Dennis's directing fells like to me. So my overall response to the new dune is something along the lines of "once more, with feeling". I felt like he doesn't understand something very basic about film. You hire famous people to act interesting. It's not inherently interesting that you hired famous people. I felt like high budget actors were "paraded" in front of me, I cannot remember having any emotion about any character in any of this guys movies. Maybe the hologram girl in Blade Runner, but to be fair, Riddley wrote that part.

As far a Jodorowski's take, I watched this full documentary. I think his above comment is accurate, more so than casual viewers are imagining. These guys basically wrote their own movie using financing for Dune, and honestly, I think it would have been a magnificent trainwreck the like of which the world had never seen. I don't know if anyone else has watched all of Allejendro's films as I have, but this guy really disproves the statement that you have to know the rules before you can break them. It seems quite possible for someone with no idea how to make a film to break every rule of the artform, resulting in spectacular, if unwatchable, filmmaking.
 
Never read the book. I was okay with the 2021 DUNE, but I was fine with the 1984 David Lynch version, too. It covered a lot of ground in less time, so the pace seems better.

2021 DUNE is beautiful to look at. There are some very famous actors in it, soldiers running around, and battles raging, yet it's not as exciting or captivating as it should be. Denis Villenueve, seems more obsessed with the look of something, rather than what makes a scene interesting. Same with his BLADE RUNNER 2049. I like both of these movies, but they lack some "Oomph."

I was telling my wife, the movies I love always have a scene that you can point to, like the baby carriage going down the steps shootout, in THE UNTOUCHABLES, the chestburster, in ALIEN, the bar scene and hotel shootout, in NEAR DARK, just about any scene from TERMINATOR 1 or 2. Ironically, the 1984, 40 million dollar DUNE was eclipsed by the release of the 6 million dollar TERMINATOR, that year. Anyway, my point is, DUNE 2021 had some good scenes, but none that I felt were great.
 
Agreed on the miniseries being the better version. Though with the current one I do enjoy it on a different level. As a matter of time economy, I have trained my mind to enjoy watching hundreds of million dollars burn, no story required. I've watched Godzilla vs Kong, I've watched Geostorm, and many such examples of simply throwing 200 million dollars onto a bonfire, and Douglas Adams was right, you simply have to learn to enjoy the Vogon poetry. There were a lot of people that worked on the new Dune, and many of them did a great job. Just not Dennis Villanueve. To be fair to him one of my favorite directors Riddley Scott now directs in the exact same way. Soulless, sterile, perfect movies that are executed flawlessly, and haven't even the slightest hint of emotional resonance. Have you ever tried to play a sample of a guitar on a midi keyboard, that's what Dennis's directing fells like to me. So my overall response to the new dune is something along the lines of "once more, with feeling". I felt like he doesn't understand something very basic about film. You hire famous people to act interesting. It's not inherently interesting that you hired famous people. I felt like high budget actors were "paraded" in front of me, I cannot remember having any emotion about any character in any of this guys movies. Maybe the hologram girl in Blade Runner, but to be fair, Riddley wrote that part.

As far a Jodorowski's take, I watched this full documentary. I think his above comment is accurate, more so than casual viewers are imagining. These guys basically wrote their own movie using financing for Dune, and honestly, I think it would have been a magnificent trainwreck the like of which the world had never seen. I don't know if anyone else has watched all of Allejendro's films as I have, but this guy really disproves the statement that you have to know the rules before you can break them. It seems quite possible for someone with no idea how to make a film to break every rule of the artform, resulting in spectacular, if unwatchable, filmmaking.
I have seen all of the movies by Allejendro...... and have a lot of his comics. I like his movies. There unpredictable, surreal and are funny and serious at the same time. Allejendro, Quentin Dupieux, Roy Andersson, Charlie Kaufman and David Lynch are my biggest inspirations. But....there not for everyone. I have the feeling Its not for you. The Suspension of disbelief is impossible because you cant connect to anything.... I can imagine that you also are revolting at the the religious and and shamanistic imagery because of your atheist view.
 
Never read the book. I was okay with the 2021 DUNE, but I was fine with the 1984 David Lynch version, too. It covered a lot of ground in less time, so the pace seems better.

2021 DUNE is beautiful to look at. There are some very famous actors in it, soldiers running around, and battles raging, yet it's not as exciting or captivating as it should be. Denis Villenueve, seems more obsessed with the look of something, rather than what makes a scene interesting. Same with his BLADE RUNNER 2049. I like both of these movies, but they lack some "Oomph."

I was telling my wife, the movies I love always have a scene that you can point to, like the baby carriage going down the steps shootout, in THE UNTOUCHABLES, the chestburster, in ALIEN, the bar scene and hotel shootout, in NEAR DARK, just about any scene from TERMINATOR 1 or 2. Ironically, the 1984, 40 million dollar DUNE was eclipsed by the release of the 6 million dollar TERMINATOR, that year. Anyway, my point is, DUNE 2021 had some good scenes, but none that I felt were great.
I agree with all of this.
 
I have seen all of the movies by Allejendro...... and have a lot of his comics. I like his movies. There unpredictable, surreal and are funny and serious at the same time. Allejendro, Quentin Dupieux, Roy Andersson, Charlie Kaufman and David Lynch are my biggest inspirations. But....there not for everyone. I have the feeling Its not for you. The Suspension of disbelief is impossible because you cant connect to anything.... I can imagine that you also are revolting at the the religious and and shamanistic imagery because of your atheist view.
On the contrary I'm a big fan of surrealism and a surrealist myself. I do find some surrealists more lazy and pretentious than others. I could make a film where a long line of blind women carrying slightly charred plastic dolls past a row of crucified used car salesmen on their way into a capitalism store bookended by jugglers on unicycles wearing rose colored glasses. Then each blind woman enters the store, walks up to the counter, and purchases a single white pool ball, with the word "despair" written on it in cursive. It's not that difficult to pick and mix iconography, and then turn down the saturation to zero.

If I came from a wealthy legacy family with infinite funding, that would get distributed enough that a critical mass would see it. I would title it something incredibly pretentious. "Love's Collapse Within the Rays of a Dying sun" and whether or not it had any meaning or not, the RNG of a million viewers, all trying to impress each other with their cerebral interpretations of the rosarch blotch would eventually assign it all kinds of meaning. It's an allegory of Stalinism. It's a commentary on social media. It's a scathing indictment of French new wave cinema. In the 80s a rich and popular American artist would literally piss on a canvas, and people would pay him the lifetime income of a classical composer for each painting. Is it because they were the enlightened few, capable of seeing the deeper meaning in a puddle of urine, or is it because they were a pack of dunning/krueger idiots hiding their limited capacities behind a smokescreen of artistic pretense?

I've seen all the works you mentioned, and some are quite good in their way. I personally think Kaufmann is hugely overrated. As far as not being able to handle seeing religious people in movies, that's way off. I thought Spotlight was great! What I don't like is the constant reverence people show to things they don't understand, simply because they've heard other people say that those things had some special meaning. To hear half the people in the US tell it, people that lived 1000 years before the invention of toilet paper were smarter than every modern scientist combined. Why? Because of space magic. That's why in Europe you guys kept building 100 million dollar cathedrals next to the rows of the graves of children that died from malnutrition. Space magic. The damage done by idiots fawning over historical imagery is literally incalculable. I just don't think its so visionary to show a guy quoting a caveman's papyrus scroll next to a row of fusion reactors. No one can mention Herbert or Villeneuve without calling them visionary. So the question becomes, if I tell you a story about a guy riding a camel and shouting some pre civilization nonsense "For only those that sort the chaff of the field may enter into the seven halls of wisdom" will you call me a visionary? No, not until someone gives me millions of dollars, at which point, every time I take a piss on a canvas it's suddenly visionary. I'm calling BS on the entire system, and the world of art in general.

I actually like Jorodowski, because I understand how he thinks, for reasons I won't elaborate on. And if you want to know how his dune would have turned out, just read the Incal, which is basically that story with the names changed.

Roy Andersson is good at what he does, probably an underrated director.

David Lynch is good, but probably overrated.

As far a s Quentin Dupieux, I'll say that there are not enough movies made about renegade tires than ran away, or telepathic communications with dogs. A legitimately inventive nutjob.

I'm surprised Jean-Pierre Jeunet didn't make your list. His orchestration of surrealism is intelligent and effective.

As far as my atheist views, they aren't views, I just don't see things that aren't there. You seem to read a lot, so I would recommend a story called "the emperor's new clothes" it's about people pretending to see things to fit in with other people until everyone agrees that something is there, that isn't.

Stevie Wonder explains it best -

"when you believe in things you don't understand, people suffer"
 
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