If you haven't read the book, do yourself a favour and read it. I envy you, you'll be able to read it for the first time.

Movie is also great. It's just not finished. :(

Jodorowsky's version?

Of course not. That would have been horrible. Lynch's version is great: it has superb sets and production design, actors, music. One thing it lacks is screentime: first half of the book takes 80% time, while the second half is rushed in the remaining 20%. If we could have 2 (3) part movies in 1980s, it could have been extremely great.

> first half of the book takes 80% time, while the second half is rushed in the remaining 20%

Yeah, once you get to the end of the first half, it's like oh crap, we're out of time, montage montage, end battle, fight with Sting, plot plot plot, end credits. The film that's supposed to be released this year is reportedly only the first half of the book; I guess we'll see how that goes.

Villeneuve's, hopefully...

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dune_(2020_film)

I have high hopes for Villeneuve, but Lynch's dune is still one of my favourite sci-fi movies from 1980s.

[insert instant best friends meme here]

I'm really excited for the movie and the casting looks incredible so far. I wonder how the 2 movie split is going to work narratively. The book itself has kind of a perfect 3 act setup but I'm not sure breaking the story at the end of the book's part 1 (or halfway through part 2) is going to feel very satisfying.

> The book itself has kind of a perfect 3 act setup

Standard 3-act structure has a natural breakpoint at the midpoint twist of Act 2, not that my recollection of Dune is detailed enough to confirm that it maps naturally to 3-act structure in detail.

I think you could stop as a cliffhanger when Paul and Jessica escape from the worm, and are confronted by Stilgar. Then you start with a knife battle for the second movie, and who doesn't like a knife battle?

No, that would be like moving Luke vs Darth Vader fight to the beginning of episode VI.

This actually reminded me of a colossal mistake made by Hobbit pt.2 movie, when they ended the part with a dragon flying away to burn the city after the cringiest of chase scenes.

They could have easily end the part with slaying a dragon, and then show it again in part 3. All they needed was to find a different POV character!! One dragon kill, shown twice.

> How familiar with the books do you need to be to play this?

Assuming this game is like the Dune II computer game: you don't need any familiarity. For example, House Ordos (one of the three major houses in the Dune RTS games) isn't even in the books if I recall correctly. I grew up playing (and loving) Dune II (and all its sequels) long before I ever read Dune.

You don't have to be familiar at all. I've played the game first (and enjoyed the built-in animated encyclopedia, just for fun - that wasn't necessary either), watched the movie in some years and read the book in more than a decade (when I grew up).

Lynch’s screening requirements are the stuff of legend. Isn’t this also the movie whose screening notes require a +2 dB setting on the theatre amps?

I’d forgotten David Lynch’s directed... but of course can’t forget Sting’s appearance!

[Sting breathing heavily all oiled up in a speedo]

I played it at 8 years old when I didn't know almost any English other than what I could deduce from what the commands did on the screen. The first day of English in school I went to the glossary to verify many of the commands. Going back to it now after reading a few of the books is a better experience but the story is fairly bare-bones in the game and you can tell that Fremen are brown-clothed powerful infantry without knowing their lore.

As others have said the controls have aged fairly badly if you're used to all the quality-of-life improvements in modern games.

If you haven't read the books and haven't played the game and want to do both, do the game first. RTS need a lot of suspension of disbelief, all that units getting created in seconds, then barely move out of visual range from the factory before getting destroyed, it makes no sense in any fantasy world. Familiarity with the source material will only make it worse. I'd say that having faint memories of having once seen the Lynch movie is the best level of preparation for the game.

Having played the game will in no way spoil the books.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YirGc7DRJi0 alternative edition

If it's similar to the DOS original, not at all.

Not at all. The book is worth reading though. The 1984 movie is garbage and doesn't do the source material any justice.

That's kind of the case most of times. Books rule. I mean, movies from script-scripts are OK, but, you know, movies from Books is a different thing. I can't knock on the so called movie, but, yeah, the books are allright, yeah, don't watch the movie, try the books, the books, is where it's at, fellas.