Capturing the sense of inevitability that Paul feels as his prescience leads him, one obvious next step at a time, to the killing of billions and establishment of himself as galactic despot, that's a hard thing in film.

The points you bring up are really 2nd book and beyond and I suspect trying to add that in would just confuse people who don't already know the Dune story. They would also be tough to communicate in a video format, as compared to a book, as the depth will be lost.

Regardless, I'm anxious to watch part 2 of the current Dune. The first part was great, imo. I only had minor nitpicks, but otherwise fantastic!

The end of the second act (in 3-act plays/movies) is either the nadir of the protagonist's journey, or the height of the tragic-hero's success. At least per storytelling books.

Most stories are told in 5 acts [0], and in comedies the hero/protagonist sees the darkest point in the story at the end of the 4th act. Thereby giving the hero the largest contrast possible in climbing out of the depths to their heights at the end of the story; the most cathartic path possible.

In tragedies, the protagonist/tragic-hero sees them at the height of their power/fortunes at the end of the 4th act. Thereby giving the protagonist the greatest fall possible; the most repression for the audience.

[0] The reasons for this going all the way back to Shakespeare and the odd interplay between the size of human bladders (~2.5 hours) and the burn length of the candles from the company near the Globe (~40 minutes).

The book just skips this (which works too IMO, but not suitable for movies; ya gotta show, not tell).

Been several decades since I read Messiah but it ends with Paul walking into the desert abdicating his cause in the destruction he wrought.

Yeah he sticks around for another book (or two? been a while), but the story clearly delineates after the second book IMO.

In the first part, Paul has a vision in the tent, after Harkonnens' attack. He is horrified by a yihad extending through the galaxy like an unstoppable wildfire: "it's your fault, Bene Geseriths made me a monster"... so maybe that's the intention after all.

I get it's a two part film but I do expect a given part to feel somewhat complete, but I felt like it was more of a "to be continued" ending and I was less than entertained by that point.

I do like that there's such a variety of Dune films and content (the sci-fi miniseries including children of dune being my favorites). It's fun to see a different take on things. I really have never felt any of them were "wrong" or fundamentally "bad" just different approaches.

I wish every great sci-fi content could get lots of versions / interpretations.

but after re-watching it recently, i think part 1 overall is pretty great

The first part left me quite underwhelmed, tbh. Maybe I had too high expectations given the director, but while the visuals are amazing, the characterization of some characters (like lady Jessica or Thufir Hawat) are very far from how the books depicts them, and I don't think is an interpretation thing.

I understand that Dune is too big of a masterpiece for a simple 2 part movie (it should be a 6-8 session series at least), but I think for instance that the graphic novels do a way better job of conveying the essentials.

I'll watch this anyways, I am still a Dune fan.

The books are chock full of the various character's internal dialog, and when you make the choice to leave that aspect out, there is quite a bit of richness missing.

This version went the "show, don't tell" route. Visually, its amazing, but so much additional information from the book to help you understand the characters, the groups they belong to, and their motivations was left out.

I think the Sci Fi channel Dune miniseries did the best job of putting across the full richness of the book, albeit with a made for TV budget.

While I agree it makes it difficult to understand motives, on the other hand I love that they don't over-explain stuff. So many movies ruined by not trusting the audience with half a brain.

I enjoyed Part 1 while watching it, but somehow it's just not memorable to me. It's a much more faithful book adaptation than Lynch's Dune, but Lynch's Dune is full of moments that stick with me and has an iconic soundtrack. To be fair, I first saw Lynch's Dune when I was very young so that might explain part of why I find it so memorable. I dunno. To me Villenueve's Dune just kind of seems... flat, by-the-numbers, gray and dull. Weird thing is, I love Blade Runner: 2049 and I find it to be very memorable and vivid. But then, Villeneuve had a chance to make his own story with that one, which might explain the difference.

Lynch's Dune is, I think, a significantly better movie than Villeneuve's, but it is so different from the book that I'm not even sure I am willing to call it an adaptation - and that might have made Lynch's job easier. For example, Lynch's Dune fully just goes with the classical "hero's journey" approach to Paul, with no hint of the devastation that he will be responsible for. It also goes full on into mysticism, which I enjoy, but which is quite different from the book's skeptical and cynical approach to spirituality. Nonetheless, it is a better movie just as a movie. I have not seen Villenueve's Part 2 yet, but I hope that it makes up for some of the things that I find dull about Part 1.

He understood that millennia of feudalism would make for a psychically claustrophobic atmosphere, that the avoidance of the thinking machines would necessarily birth the creation of humans who might have visibly different traits ("... the lips acquire stains ...") from the strain of being human computers. He understood that voiceovers were appropriate because, to survive in such an environment, you must constantly be thinking about what other minds are thinking, to remain steps ahead.

Finally, Lynch understood that the dialogue must be larger than life. I heard a trailer for the recent one and I swear, some of the dialogue between Paul and Chiani sounded like Avengers-era quippy Whedon output.

    Lynch's Dune is, I think, a significantly better movie than Villeneuve's

Lynch's movie is kind of a mess maybe, but there is a sense of wonder there that I just don't get from Villeneuve's beautiful-but-sterile version.

So much so that I find myself wishing I had not seen it. It makes the current Dune interpretation movies look downright juvenile. Watch the current movies first, then go back and watch Sci Fi's interpretation. If you don't, you'll be extremely disappointed in the current movies.

There’s also a Children of Dune miniseries with the same cast.

Catch is when I wanted to watch it last these couldn’t be streamed anywhere legally. So I bought them on dvd from fleabay.

Difficult to learn it even existed given that an action movie franchise which used the same name pretty much crowds it out of search results

It’s another one I ended up getting on dvd.

I am a massive Dune fan as well and share this sentiment. Same for Lord of the Rings. On some level those books are simply unadaptable if the goal is to be totally true to the original text.

For myself, I am always happy to see adaptations since it will always lead someone to the books who would otherwise not have been exposed to them. And if some folks don't like the books and only enjoy the movies, that's fine too. Better to have any exposure than none. :)

Not as an adaptation, but more of an extension.

It would just be too confusing/weird for on-screen.

I'd watch it on repeat until I turned into that skeleton waiting meme.

This is how I've felt about most Villeneuve movies I've seen. The main (or at least major) characters look like they're walking knowingly, resignedly towards some destiny they can't control (Arrival at least this kind of makes sense, and Paul for parts of Dune) with an absurdly flat affect most of the time. It's like we're watching them watching themselves go through the motions of life without being able to direct or control it.

Very pretty movies, interesting soundtracks, with strangely flat acting from people who can do much better.

I get that. I felt the same was at first. But after watching it multiple times on HBOMax I have come to really appreciate the film. I think maybe my initial expectations were just too high.

But that's how it always is, because the target audience for the movie is much wider than the target audience for the book, so characters always get the "screen treatment" to make them more palatable to a wider audience.

IMO Dune a good piece of literature, but the lackluster worldbuilding makes the Universe feel small and empty. Nothing interesting happened in the prior 10k years to anybody who's not a protagonist.

(Sounds like this movie is at least three parts, for what it's worth.)

We'll see.

I don't think this is true. I agree that they are different media, and any adaptation will inherently be an adaptation. But that shouldn't lead to disappointment. You can appreciate both for their differences, as long as they each succeed in their own approach.

The last one would have been even better without the force-fed mecha segment, I think.

This is my point. The last decade has been a sci-fi wasteland.

Still, you're also probably overlooking how common sci-fi films are. Like say, Ad Astra with Brad Pitt (2019). The Martian in 2015. Blade Runner 2049. And so on.

Care to share? I can't name a single one besides 'The Expanse'.

Have heard good things about Station Eleven.

Even on Apple TV+ alone there are plenty to choose from, though funnily enough the one I've been watching the most is not the critically-acclaimed For All Mankind, but climate disaster drama Extrapolations: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=39543480

Fired on Mars on MAX is a gem of an existential sci-fi dry comedy.

Paper Girls on Amazon Prime has been cancelled, but it was a good time travel romp and comic book adaptation that wasn't a superhero one from the big two (it's an Image Comics title)

It's not quite the '90s extravaganza in terms of television sci-fi, but with all of the demand for streaming content, the odds are good, even if the goods are often odd. There's been like, three different Star Trek shows now, plus a cartoon. Surely there's something to be found from that.

Couldn't get into it on the first go.

Still waiting for someone to put Daemon and Freedom(tm) on a screen of any size; that could get fun, but probably would need to be a series to avoid cutting out way too much.

I also love a good martial arts movie, and Michelle Yeoh is awesome. The fight scenes are fantastic and hilarious. And finally, the film manages a big-budget feel while it cost somewhere between 14 and 25 million to make, which is nothing compared to the average blockbuster. Avengers Endgame, for example, cost over 300 million. I have a lot of appreciation for that sort of thing.

Good thing I like those genres too.

But Villeneuve did explicitly intend this as a two-parter, and I've held on to the hope that it was all intentional and that his decisions will serve the films as a whole experience.

One part of the first movie that sticks out to me is seeing their space ships for the first time. It was such a different style of space ship that it (plus the music) really struck me in the moment and stayed with me.

NPR Fresh Air: "Storyboarding 'Dune' since he was 13, Denis Villeneuve is 'still pinching' himself"

https://www.npr.org/2024/02/28/1234472127/dune-denis-villene...

I never thought to myself they're in some desert on earth, but truly that this is some far away planet far in the future.

In a scene they supposedly point to the spice, but it's plain shimmering sand, there doesn't even seem to be any effect!

The theater where I watched it was not great, but I don't think it was that

The director literally made some of his other movies to prep for Dune.

Movies with dozens of Millions in budget were his practice for this next flick, so hey, I'm ready to give my money and be blown away!

Blade runner 2049 is an interesting film. Visually gorgeous. Ana de Armas doing one of the best stone-cold scenes I have ever seen. And the whole film having the guts to tell a small story in a big world. Commendable. But I also find myself cringing at how it took a well constructed universe and pretty much dismantled it. So I'm rather torn over what I should think of the film.

Of course, story telling wise the Dune mini-series was far above the first new film. But that didn't make the new film bad, it just made it ... different. And too packed. Dune's story is fundamentally big, sweeping and slow. Squeezing it into a film format will cripple it.

https://www.rifters.com/crawl/?p=7021

In terms of quality I want to rate it above the other two movies we're talking about, and right up there with, ahem, the original Blade Runner as a classic science fiction film. (for me that's saying something, since I dislike the visual style of Villeneuve's films)

edit: my main problem with the bomber subplot was just how heavy handed it was

You're saying BR2047 was practice? Because it was way better than DP1

That said, I think you nailed the two movies in two sentences.

Of Lynch's version I often quip that it was both good and original - however the parts that were original were not good, and the parts that were good were not original. In short - I did not like the divergences from the source material that much. It did have a soul though.

Part 1 seemed to miss or give short-shrift to beats in the book that always stood out to me. Instead of really conveying the absolutely oppressive lack of moisture on the planet, there was what felt like an interminably long monologue about the palm trees. Mentats with inner eye-lids? Leaned into the mystical side too much for my taste. Yueh's betrayal seemed like a footnote. The end of the movie from when Paul and Jessica met the Freman felt rushed. More time spent on why Jamis was so pissed off, and reflecting on the fact that this was the first man Paul killed, and less on weird alternative time-line future WTF visions would have been time better spent. Sterile and lifeless.

Add to that, did anyone else not know that it was a part one and not a complete movie when they walked in? Definitely seemed like something that they went to lengths to conceal.

That said, I'll watch it again before watching part two, and then try and form an opinion of the complete movie and not just the first half.

Mind you, there were great moments in it too, and my ideal Dune movie would take things from both movies (and also from that [0] Dune 1 game!), but overall Lynch's direction was better for me.

[0]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dune_(video_game)

Good one!

Yeah, I have to concur with that take. When I read Dune, I just didn't find it that interesting.

It rarely felt like the characters had agency--a lot of plot tokens were collected and redeemed to move the story forward (whoops, story needs to move--time for a new, previously unmentioned superpower). And quite often the characters were just cartoonishly dumb or smart or good or evil.

As you said, it's certainly not for everyone. I suspect it's more a "product of its time".

Slow and incomprehensible for me.

P.S. I have not read the book.

[0] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=39555931

Interesting take. I remember thinking, when I first saw it, in one of the movie's last fight scenes, 'hmm, we must be at the halfway point'

However I think Blade Runner 2049 was better. [1]

I'm excited to see "part two".

[1] Stephen A Smith Hot Take: I actually think BR:2049 was better than the original - and I am a true devotee of the original.

I watched Part II on the 25th. Really really good. Having read the book now there's some things I missed or thought could be better but it still just blew me away.

Also, I do not think a mega-promoted mega-budget Hollywood blockbuster needs more marketing here. "Esquire says" - so what?

Did you even watch the movie?

If I wanted a TV show, I would watch Netflix.

Would have been safe to say "of the last ten years" no?

Quibbling with that sort of misses the point, no?

Given that nothing serious been announced yet, it’s a pretty safe bet.

"Best Sci-Fi of the decade"??

They're both some of the dullest sci-fi movies I've ever seen, especially compared to the Lynch one.

Disgracefully I imagine that few people saw the extended two-parts version of the Lynch movie, and were burned by the insanely shortened ending and the other cuts of the theatrical one. I recommend checking the extended version out, it will probably change a lot your idea of the movie. I was probably influenced by seeing it before the (criminal) theatrical version.

Lynch's Dune was visionary, at times disturbing and with Kyle McLachlan. Can you really beat a Kyle McLachlan movie? No, I don't think so. xD

In Villeneuve's version I was e.g. shocked by how watered down the Baron Harkonnens is; the movies are just bland and Hollywood-y.

The music is as banal and badly employed as any average Hollywood blockbuster; the actor chosen for Paul Atreides is as much insipid as Kyle McLachlan was eclectic; Zendaya is incomparable to Sean Young; a couple parts are plain stupid (Gurney's entrance...)

Despite not having the length problems that Lynch had, they managed to compress the ending again; they gave too much time to unimportant parts while compressing the ending and other important passages (the final battle lasts what, five minutes? Does he actually cross the desert??).

Some actor choices seem good (Florence Pugh, Rebecca Ferguson...), but yes not some of the most important.

And I did like a lot Blade Runner 2049, I think I liked Denis Villeneuve, but these movies made me change idea.

To be clear, it's not the worst movie I ever saw; it's simply bland, and I think it's bewildering that this version gets praise while Lynch's one is considered junk.

I should say that I never managed to read the books, though, that might play a role in these opinions.

I'm still annoyed at how much was cut out of part 1 despite it being as long as it was. I get going for ambience but the whole banquet scene was missing. None of Duncan suspecting Lady Jessica. Duke Leto is barely developed as a character at all.

Honestly, I hated the Lynch movie. It has its many positives, but for me, all of it was negated and the movie completely fell flat on its face as soon as Weirding Modules came out. Totally ruined the movie for me. I’ve watched it several times, and each time I see the weirding modules I cringe.

I still don’t understand what the problem with “Kung Fu in Space” was.

Dune is far and away my favorite story.

The movie was absolute shit. I felt like I was watching a sterilized series of previews stitched together and called a “movie”.

I have never been so let down by a movie in memory.

Definitely the best Sci-Fi movie of the decade, unless they drop Dune part 3 that is somehow better than this masterpiece.