Movies

[Stuart Galbraith]

3 minutes ago, Skywalkre said:

Finally Saw Dune Part Two and... honestly, did not care for it.

For context I've never read the books.  I thought the 80s movie was an abomination and it scarred me for life.  Turned me off of ever considering reading the books.  Then I heard great things about Dune Part One and gave it a chance when it hit streaming.  I ended up watching it a dozen times in that first month... and another dozen over the next year.  That movie is probably the best sci-fi/fantasy film to come out of Hollywood since... the OP Star Wars in '77.  It's just a remarkable piece of film.

There were just so many blatant issues with this film.

- It's remarkable to say for a 3h movie but it felt rushed.  This film really needed to be two, or maybe even three films (those familiar with the books can chime in here).  The wonderful character development of the first film was ditched for nonstop, staccato story elements that were just squeezed into too short of a timeframe.

- That rushed feeling is probably why so many of the characters just felt... off.  Stilgar was this noble, stoic leader of the Fremen in the first film who seemed to give hints that he was aware of Paul's potential.  In this one he's just a raving zealot.  It probably makes sense that eventually he would get there... but it happens too fast in this movie.

Lady Jessica's transformation kind of makes sense after she drank the worm piss... but compared to the first film I would have much preferred more development there.  The film also didn't do enough in explaining everything going on with her daughter.  I had to pause the film and google that to make sense of everything.  Contrast that with the first film where I never felt the need and everything made sense in time.

Paul's arc was... ok... but again just everything was rushed.  In just the first few sequences of the film he goes from this awkward, off-worlder tagging along with the Fremen to leading them against the Harkonnen in a guerilla fight?  That needed way more development.

The only character that felt right was Gurney, honestly.

On a different note... why does everyone love Zendaya?  Her character was... meh.  Frankly, she also looks like she's in desperate need of a meal.  It's actually uncomfortable looking at her in pics IRL (thankfully the stillsuits made it look like she had meat on her bones).

- The final duel at the end was awful.  Paul takes two serious wounds and keeps going while Feyd-Rautha takes one and keels over immediately?  How about having Paul actually win?  That fight was so anti-climatic.

- And how did all those Fremen get so close to the Harkonnen and the Emperor?  Maybe the books explain this but in a world with this much tech how are the Fremen not spotted?  The last ten minutes of the film just felt all too... convenient.

Family Atomics, in the middle of a sandstorm. No, really, it's a thing. They blow a hole in the wall, and the cockpit off the emperors spaceship with atomic bombs.

I've not seen film 2, but in the books it's clear, Paul is an experiment in breeding the perfect human being, to take mankind into a new age. The order his mother was part of had direct orders to breed sons (though she fell in love with pauls father, so paul was breaking her orders). There was much made about potentially  losing 2 bloodlines in the Dune conflict, which the order saw as a potential handicap to their goal. In the end, its the spice that tips Paul over the edge into what he becomes. He can see the outcomes of several timelines at once. In the novel, he sees a version of reality where Duncan Idaho survives. I've not read the rest of the series, but I get the idea that this parallel view of reality starts to drive him mad.

Sounds to me they needed 3 films like you say. Read the book, it's much more detailed  and intricate than all the films.

[Skywalkre]

I have a general understanding of the main Dune story and the first movie did a good job telling it.  The problem is, the second one didn't.  Most of what you're mentioning is there in the second film... it's just done poorly.

I will add that the FX, cinematography, and sound/music were remarkable.  The film had a lot going for it - all the aforementioned, great cast, great source material.  It just failed in telling the story it had in the second film to the degree it succeeded at that with the first.

[TrustMe]

59 minutes ago, Stuart Galbraith said:

Family Atomics, in the middle of a sandstorm. No, really, it's a thing. They blow a hole in the wall, and the cockpit off the emperors spaceship with atomic bombs.

I've not seen film 2, but in the books it's clear, Paul is an experiment in breeding the perfect human being, to take mankind into a new age. The order his mother was part of had direct orders to breed sons (though she fell in love with pauls father, so paul was breaking her orders). There was much made about potentially  losing 2 bloodlines in the Dune conflict, which the order saw as a potential handicap to their goal. In the end, its the spice that tips Paul over the edge into what he becomes. He can see the outcomes of several timelines at once. In the novel, he sees a version of reality where Duncan Idaho survives. I've not read the rest of the series, but I get the idea that this parallel view of reality starts to drive him mad.

Sounds to me they needed 3 films like you say. Read the book, it's much more detailed  and intricate than all the films.

 

Duncan Idaho appears in a lot of the other Dune books like "God Emperor of Dune" and "Heretics of Dune". I don't know about if he appears in the Christopher Herbert books (there all a load of crap) never read them.

Basically he's cloned and recreated hundreds of times over a period of thousands of years. 

Edited May 26, 2024 by TrustMe

[Ssnake]

1 hour ago, Skywalkre said:

Lady Jessica's transformation kind of makes sense after she drank the worm piss... but compared to the first film I would have much preferred more development there.

I suppose it's a pivotal, life-changing event to drink it and to survive it, then then have a hundred octogenarian Bene-Gesserit hags in your head. In that sense, a sudden shift actually makes sense to me.

1 hour ago, Skywalkre said:

The film also didn't do enough in explaining everything going on with her daughter.

I agree. This is even more annoying when you realize that Pauls Grand Day out in the Desert which cost about 15 minutes runtime wasn't even in the books, so they could easily have used that time budget for something worthwhile.

1 hour ago, Skywalkre said:

Paul's arc was... ok... but again just everything was rushed.

It objectively was. The insurrection took, I seem to remember, three or four years (which is still pretty darn quick, considering that it's an entire planet, considering the importance of the whole colony, and the considerable assets for power projection at the Harkonnen's disposal). In the Lynch movie, they fast-forwarded it with a single sentence voiceover (which was terrible and rushed too, but at least they said that two years had passed). Here, they tried to compress the rebellion into less than a preganncy (given that she already was pregnant, it was basically in under half a year).

I suppose they didn't want to having to deal with filming a toddler in the throne room whooping some Bene Gesserit ass, but a non-speaking child extra with nothing but telepathic communication might just as well have worked. I just don't understand Villeneuve's thinking here.

1 hour ago, Skywalkre said:

Paul's arc ...  In just the first few sequences of the film he goes from this awkward, off-worlder tagging along with the Fremen to leading them against the Harkonnen in a guerilla fight?  That needed way more development.

I agree. To their credit, we actually see some of the fights rather than being told in a single voice-over sentence that "they happened". But character development fell critically short.

1 hour ago, Skywalkre said:

why does everyone love Zendaya?

Pretty face, fan base outside of her movie appearances, I guess.

1 hour ago, Skywalkre said:

The final duel at the end was awful

I'd say it was "meh", maybe not awful. Not sure if the Lynch duel was actually much better, to be honest. But I agree, a better fight would have been possible, and should have been made. But you never know what kind of restrictions they had during the shooting because, Covid. 

[Soren Ras]

11 hours ago, TrustMe said:

I don't know about if he appears in the Christopher Herbert books (there all a load of crap) never read them.

Brian Herbert. Alas, I did plow through at least two of the prequel books: "Dune: The Butlerian Jihad" and "Dune: The Machine Crusade" that I picked up one summer for a few bucks at a used book store.  Naively, I figured that they might at least be interesting vacation read, given the premise of covering the Butlerian Jihad. 

Nope.

Complete and pure trash, like really bad fan fiction. See, there is this small band of humans who transplant their brains into large battle-mech bodies so they all become immortal. And then they conquer the galaxy. And if you can figure out what the hell that has to do with Frank Herbert's Dune universe, maybe you can mail the explanation to Brian Herbert, because he kinda never did. Like an idiot, I kept reading to see how he would resolve it all. Well, if he had done a Bobby Ewing/Dallas style "OMG, what a weird dream that was" it would be a vast improvement.

So TL:DR the rumors are true. They are crap. I assume the same for the rest of Brian's Dune material.

Anyway, Duncan Idaho does not appear in any of the prequel books, for good reason. I am told he does appear in the two sequel books Brian committed to continue the dangling threads his father left at the end of Chaperhouse Dune (the sixth and last of Frank Herbert's novels), but who knows. I will never read them. Once bitten, twice shy.

 

Soren

[TrustMe]

1 hour ago, Soren Ras said:

Brian Herbert. Alas, I did plow through at least two of the prequel books: "Dune: The Butlerian Jihad" and "Dune: The Machine Crusade" that I picked up one summer for a few bucks at a used book store.  Naively, I figured that they might at least be interesting vacation read, given the premise of covering the Butlerian Jihad. 

Nope.

Complete and pure trash, like really bad fan fiction. See, there is this small band of humans who transplant their brains into large battle-mech bodies so they all become immortal. And then they conquer the galaxy. And if you can figure out what the hell that has to do with Frank Herbert's Dune universe, maybe you can mail the explanation to Brian Herbert, because he kinda never did. Like an idiot, I kept reading to see how he would resolve it all. Well, if he had done a Bobby Ewing/Dallas style "OMG, what a weird dream that was" it would be a vast improvement.

So TL:DR the rumors are true. They are crap. I assume the same for the rest of Brian's Dune material.

Anyway, Duncan Idaho does not appear in any of the prequel books, for good reason. I am told he does appear in the two sequel books Brian committed to continue the dangling threads his father left at the end of Chaperhouse Dune (the sixth and last of Frank Herbert's novels), but who knows. I will never read them. Once bitten, twice shy.

 

Soren

LOL, sorry, I don't know were I got the name Christopher from  

Yeah, all the Prequels are bad. And there are at least a dozen of them. It reminds me of how Christopher Tolken created various Lord of the Ring books after his father died. There all a load of crap as well.

[Stuart Galbraith]

I notice John Le Carre's son is doing a prequal to the Karla trilogy. Well, hopefully lightning strikes twice in the same place, but im not counting on it.

[Soren Ras]

1 minute ago, TrustMe said:

It reminds me of how Christopher Tolken created various Lord of the Ring books after his father died. There all a load of crap as well.

There I disagree with you. For one thing, Christopher Tolkien did not attempt to write his own stories. The 12-volume History of Middle Earth that he put together is basically an annotated presentation of the scraps and notes that Tolkien made along the way, including multiple different versions of the same stories, in order to show the evolution of the world building and the degree to which Tolkien was wrestling with his creation.

When Christopher published the Silmarillion in 1977 (four years after his father's passing), he was at that time making editorial decisions on which versions of the various tales to include.  That also meant some bits were left out or specific decisions on genealogy were made by Christopher (with implications for the overall narrative) in areas where his father was still undecided.  There remained a very large portion of unpublished manuscripts covering not only the very earliest conception of Middle Earth, but also the making of the Lord of the Rings and a lot of the never settled stories of the Silmarillion that were the focus of Tolkien's last years.

Obviously, none of the 12 volumes are anything like a separate cohesive narrative, so if you are looking for that you are out of luck. If - like me - you enjoy the glimpse behind the curtain, and especially some of hitherto unseen essays where Tolkien is trying to explain the reasoning behind the world building, then it is fascinating. 

Your mileage may vary, of course. I don't find the 4000+ lines of the tale of Beren and Luthien in rhyming iambic tetrameter particular interesting (from the Lays of Beleriand), but I was fascinated to delve into essays of discussions between various characters, more background info on the various peoples and even the different discussions where Tolkien retroactively tried to explain inconsistencies between what had already been published vs decisions he had made subsequently.

But aside from the footnotes, editorial comments and some of the introductory explanations, the writing is from J.R.R. Tolkien, not from his son.

 

--

Soren

 

[TrustMe]

2 hours ago, Soren Ras said:

There I disagree with you. For one thing, Christopher Tolkien did not attempt to write his own stories. The 12-volume History of Middle Earth that he put together is basically an annotated presentation of the scraps and notes that Tolkien made along the way, including multiple different versions of the same stories, in order to show the evolution of the world building and the degree to which Tolkien was wrestling with his creation.

...When Christopher published the Silmarillion in 1977 (four years after his father's passing), he was at that time making editorial decisions on which versions of the various tales to include.  That also meant some bits were left out or specific decisions on genealogy were made by Christopher (with implications for the overall narrative) in areas where his father was still undecided.  There remained a very large portion of unpublished manuscripts covering not only the very earliest conception of Middle Earth, but also the making of the Lord of the Rings and a lot of the never settled stories of the Silmarillion that were the focus of Tolkien's last years.

Obviously, none of the 12 volumes are anything like a separate cohesive narrative, so if you are looking for that you are out of luck. If - like me - you enjoy the glimpse behind the curtain, and especially some of hitherto unseen essays where Tolkien is trying to explain the reasoning behind the world building, then it is fascinating. 

Your mileage may vary, of course. I don't find the 4000+ lines of the tale of Beren and Luthien in rhyming iambic tetrameter particular interesting (from the Lays of Beleriand), but I was fascinated to delve into essays of discussions between various characters, more background info on the various peoples and even the different discussions where Tolkien retroactively tried to explain inconsistencies between what had already been published vs decisions he had made subsequently.

But aside from the footnotes, editorial comments and some of the introductory explanations, the writing is from J.R.R. Tolkien, not from his son.

 

--

Soren

 

 

I've tried to read his other works including the Silmarillion and the Luthien??? something one but i never completed reading either of them. Whilist I love the Hobbit and LOTR I just couldn't read the others and I started to page hop more and more until I realised I wasn't reading half the book. I guess it just wasn't for me.

Edited May 27, 2024 by TrustMe

[sunday]

1 minute ago, TrustMe said:

 

I've tried to read his other works including the Silmarillion and the Luthien??? something one but i never completed reading either of them. Whilist I love the Hobbit and LOTR I just couldn#t read the others and I started to page hop more and more until I realised I wasn't reading half the book. I guess it just wasn't for me.

The beginning of Silmarillion is very hard. It is a easier read further on.

[TrustMe]

9 minutes ago, sunday said:

The beginning of Silmarillion is very hard. It is a easier read further on.

I'll give it a go again. I have a friend who has a copy, i'll ask him to lend it to me.

[sunday]

19 minutes ago, TrustMe said:

I'll give it a go again. I have a friend who has a copy, i'll ask him to lend it to me.

You could even skip The Music of the Ainur part, the initial part.

[TrustMe]

Ok.

[Stuart Galbraith]

Remembering my time with Lord of the rings, the first 2 books were not too bad (other than what I seem to remember being the almost incomprehensible passage when Gandalf passes into shadow). But the beginning of the 3rd book was hard, very hard. I sometimes wonder how the hell 14 year old me stuck with it.

A very remarkable author, but fuck me, it it was like boot came as far as reading comprehension was concerned.

[Skywalkre]

You did better than me, though I was a bit younger.  Was 9 or 10 when we read the Hobbit in school.  It's honestly a children's book so nothing special there.  Then a lot of us in class started reading the LotR trilogy.  I made it halfway through Two Towers before giving it up.  Only a handful of kids in my class actually finished the entire trilogy and they had the utmost respect from the rest of us for doing so.  🤣

[TrustMe]

I read LOTR when I was 12 using my sisters copy. It was one of the first books I ever read. The first was the Hitchikers Guide to the Galaxy series.

[Rick]

Hhmmm... never favored science fiction for reading. Nothing against it, just did not and does not now seem interesting. Except for Louis L'Amour, have always preferred non-fiction.

[Stuart Galbraith]

1 hour ago, TrustMe said:

I read LOTR when I was 12 using my sisters copy. It was one of the first books I ever read. The first was the Hitchikers Guide to the Galaxy series.

If you haven't read them, read the Dirk Gentleys. In some ways they were even better ( and not disrespecting hhgttg saying that).

[Stargrunt6]

On 5/26/2024 at 1:55 PM, Stuart Galbraith said:

Family Atomics, in the middle of a sandstorm. No, really, it's a thing. They blow a hole in the wall, and the cockpit off the emperors spaceship with atomic bombs.

Akshully, they shot the front of his ship off with regular artillery cannons.  Earlier, Paul planned to bring back the "old weapons." 
They accused Paul of breaking the Great Convention with his use of atomics.  He noted that he used it on terrain features and not people, so he's cleared. 

*takes off Dune nerd glasses*

[Stuart Galbraith]

Hmm, it's been a good 5 years since I read it, but I don't doubt you are right.

Speaking of novels made into films, finally saw the girl with the Dragon tattoo. Very good, perhaps a little too fast paced for its own good, but very good. Rooney mara was excellent.

I'm also the last man in Europe to read the novels, but Jesus, what a writer.

[lucklucky]

Cult Classics in Youtube

 

https://www.youtube.com/@CultCinemaClassics/videos

 

[Ivanhoe]

[Ivanhoe]

[Ivanhoe]

[Stargrunt6]

16 hours ago, Ivanhoe said:

Too damn funny