Dune trailer

[Secular Sanity]

One night later, now we've seen it (chain reaction has started). Initially seemed hard to believe they squeezed all that into two and half hours, but perhaps not in retrospect.

Precognition like Paul's gets mundane after the tsunami of non-linear apprehension of time with respect to items like Doctor Manhatten (Watchmen), Arrival, etc.

Glad COVID didn't kill the plans for Part 2. Not sure it quite broke even with the promotional costs and so-forth tacked on to the original budget, but it was enough to get the green light for the sequel.

The director kept insisting that it was made to be seen and heard in theaters. My only complaint was the sound mix. At times, I couldn’t hear Jessica over the background noise or music. Did you have any problems with the sound?

[C C]

One night later, now we've seen it (chain reaction has started). Initially seemed hard to believe they squeezed all that into two and half hours, but perhaps not in retrospect.

Precognition like Paul's gets mundane after the tsunami of non-linear apprehension of time with respect to items like Doctor Manhatten (Watchmen), Arrival, etc.

Glad COVID didn't kill the plans for Part 2. Not sure it quite broke even with the promotional costs and so-forth tacked on to the original budget, but it was enough to get the green light for the sequel.

The director kept insisting that it was made to be seen and heard in theaters. My only complaint was the sound mix. At times, I couldn’t hear Jessica over the background noise or music. Did you have any problems with the sound?

A bit, though it might actually stem from my overall sense of a mild vagueness, fewer details, and slightly less character development than the SyFy mini-series of over 20 years ago. Despite the latter being vastly inferior in terms of acting, realism, costumes, CGI and FX -- any rookie viewers it had got well-informed with respect to what was going on. That production even barraged the audience too much with respect to that, but it probably had to, or its cheapo status would have been more blatant.

[Secular Sanity]

Precognition like Paul's gets mundane after the tsunami of non-linear apprehension of time with respect to items like Doctor Manhatten (Watchmen), Arrival, etc.

Yeah, there's that but it's hard to leave out with any Messiah type character.

"I’d almost forgotten the excitement of not knowing the delights of uncertainty."-Doctor Manhatten

That's one way to think of it. Most people don't really want to know their future. Not me. I'd want to know.

[C C]

Precognition like Paul's gets mundane after the tsunami of non-linear apprehension of time with respect to items like Doctor Manhatten (Watchmen), Arrival, etc.

Yeah, there's that but it's hard to leave out with any Messiah type character.

"I’d almost forgotten the excitement of not knowing the delights of uncertainty."-Doctor Manhatten

That's one way to think of it. Most people don't really want to know their future. Not me. I'd want to know.

Would be nice at times.

As a fluctuating slash tentative eternalist or spacetime realist, I'm all for it as a speculative fiction device. But got to wondering if I should have put that in a spoiler.

Haven't read the novel since I was a tween (one of my brother's books that was lying around), so that's become a gray-box memory wise. Don't recall Paul having "events" being emphasized in the first installment of the mini-series (though that has some recollection wear-and-tear, too, even though I watched it years after the original run).

[C C]

[...] It will be interesting to compare it to David Lynch's 80's version, which unlike most I really liked.

Finally watched that after all these years (or the first half, anyway). While probably not intentional (though who can say, since "surreal" and "farce" often hold hands), it looked like a parody of "Dune" to me. From the acting to the make-up to several cheap-looking FX scenes.

Which is to say, if not for Paul's '80s hairstyle and knowing it was by David Lynch, I would otherwise have thought that film to be the adaptation of some French or Italian director back in 1968.

Guess I should've read the book.

From the 1984 one to the 2000 TV-mini-series, to the current 2021 version -- a lot of the same stuff is repeated. I guess Jodorowsky’s Dune would have been the product that departed some extent from the familiar template: "Jodorowsky said in 1985 that he found the Dune story mythical and had intended to recreate it rather than adapt the novel; though he had an "enthusiastic admiration" for Herbert, Jodorowsky said he had done everything possible to distance the author and his input from the project. "

[Yazata]

It will be interesting to compare it to David Lynch's 80's version, which unlike most I really liked.

I'm another weirdo who liked the David Lynch version.

Lynch's navigators will always be the definitive version to me. Just supremely weird.

That Bene Gesserit sister was good too.

The Harkonens were too over-the-top for my taste. They seemed like caricatures and could have been done better.

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Which is to say, if not for Paul's '80s hairstyle and knowing it was by David Lynch, I would otherwise have thought that film to be the adaptation of some French or Italian director back in 1968.

Maybe that's why I liked it. I'm a lifelong Fellini fan.

[Syne]

Finally saw Dune Part One. Not terribly impressed, compared to the Lynch version (which is what got me interested in the books). There was a lot of scenery chewing and silence, often seemingly at the expense of character development and iconic lines from the book. Like I heard someone else say, I won't really know if I like it until I see the other half, as there were no completed story arcs. Not too sure it was very accessible to anyone who hasn't read the book or seen a previous version either. I also didn't care for the sound mixing, that often drowned out the speech. I also thought it was obvious that Rebecca Ferguson, as she admitted, didn't read the book, as she played Jessica way more emotional and volatile than her Bene Gesserit training would have allowed. Francesca Annis, in Lynch's, did a much better job.

Overall, it's a wait and see how part two turns out. I did love the best depiction of ornithopters and voice, the overall cinematography, and most of the casting. But it seems their effort to avoid exposition dumps had some collateral damage. Didn't care for the didgeridoo/wailing soundtrack, nor using different languages or the exaggerated hand signals.

I really wanted to love this version a lot more, even though I don't entirely hate it. It certainly compares favorably to the SciFi miniseries. But then, in retrospect, I also think the first Suicide Squad was better than the second.