I, for one, prefer Lynch's Dune to Villeneuve's. I was very hyped for the latter and left the theater disappointed.
You see, Villeneuve's Dune has a great cast, insanely great cinematography and sets, but it is also very sterile, devoid of life and has very unimaginative directing. Some scenes were direct adaptations from the book, like Gom Jabbar scene, Shadout Mapes scene, and were very confusing for people who didn't read the book. (why does that sand woman shout when Jessica says a certain word?). Paul's awakening is very bland, too. His mentats were useless. De Vries was just a sad freak who stood nearby and then died. Hawat was in three scenes where he had any lines, and in two of which he counted expenses, and offered his resignation in the third. If I didn't read the book I'd assume he's some kind of accountant.
On the other hand, Lynch's Dune also has a great cast, great music, great sets, and it also has the all-important dream-like mystic feel to it, which is completely absent in the new adaptation. Sure, it has a lot of script problems, which mostly boil down to far too short runtime, as moviegoers in 1984 weren't ready for 2 part movies, so it had to cram the second part of the book in the final 20 minutes or so. Had it been two movies, it would have been much better.
One big improvement in Villeneuve's adaptation is Momoa's Idaho, who basically saved the movie for me. Lynch's Idaho was very bland and died far too easily and non-consequentally. Other than his scenes, if I ever want to see some scene from Dune on Youtube, it'll be Lynch's (except "the Guild doesn't take your orders", if you know what I mean).
Gotta strong disagree, I love Lynch, and the costumes and setting. But the script is just bad in that film, in addition to long montages of poorly edited “combat” ruining the second half, the first half is full of random stuff.
I think my many objections are perfectly summed up by this one example. In the books, the “weirding way” is space kung fu. In the movie, it’s a random sonic weapon where for some reason if you shout Maudib at it, it fires. So, the line from the books where Paul is lamenting “my name has become a killing word” changes from a poetic lament to a _literal_ instruction to his army. Queue a ridiculous montage of people shouting over and over with lasers.
Denis’ adaptation captured the dread of the scene, the aesthetics of the fremen, and the religious furvor of it all. It feels solemn and full of portent in the way the books did, because it follows them slavishly, only making small changes to compress multiple characters or omit less important parts. I couldn’t have asked for a better adaptation as a fan of the books.
I do think there’s a major challenge in adapting Dune, which is that Paul’s arc is just starting at the end. The narrative tension doesn’t let up until three books later. If you’ve only got one movie guaranteed, morphing it into a more-traditional hero’s journey isn’t the worst way to solve that rather large problem.
I’m curious how Villeneuve’s going to deal with that.
I also agree with one of the parents that Villevenue’s was sterile, however the book itself is kind of sterile — as lots of SF of the era was. The world building is incredible, and Villevenue captures all that well in the sets, costumes, and such. However, characters and dialog are not a strength of that book in my opinion.
I love the book though, and I enjoyed Villevenue’s adaptation because it was exactly how I visualized the book when I first read it. However, having such a direct adaptation means you inherit the flaws as well — in this case some dryness and the pacing issue that you mentioned.
I do not agree that sterile sci-fi was anymore common in 1965 then any other time period. Books like George R. Stewarts earth abides came out ten years before. PKD wrote the man in the high castle, martian time slip, do androids dream of electric sheep, and the three stigmata of Palmer eldritch, Ursula k le guin wrote the left hand of darkness a couple years after, like this list goes on and on. Yes there's trash like anything a.e. van vogt wrote but there's always trash.
Also I think dune is purposefully written in a particular way because one of the themes of the book is the disposableness of life and this is what the fremen oppose.
I think DV was very clever in making Dune (2021) feel more like Leto I's story for a large portion of the film. Though we ramp into Paul's, we get a very satisfying focus on Leto. Of course, if you hadn't read the book you'd not have a clue about the bullfight motifs and probably not enjoy that arc at all.
I watched the recent movies before reading the book and I disagree. The Shadout Mapes scene had more than enough context clues to understand. Thufir Hawat is very clearly a trusted advisor, and for the purposes of the story that’s really all that matters. The “humans computer” is also there in context clues, but even if you didn’t catch it, it doesn’t detract from the movie at all. This seems like something that if you were actively _looking_ for a deep explanation of mentats, of course you would notice it’s missing… but if you didn’t know mentats were a thing, then the movie’s portrayal of Hawat is great.
Paul’s awakening is definitely different in the movie, but I think it’s because in the movie they spread it out (ie there’s a larger emphasis on Paul’s spice trip when saving the crawler). Still, having not read the book at the time I first saw the movie, I didn’t think it was “bland” at all and still made for great storytelling to me.
> dream-like mystic feel to it, which is completely absent in the new adaptation
Man, I can’t disagree harder with this. One of the best things about the new movie to me is that the entire thing has an aura of intrigue and mysticism that left me just wanting more more more.
The problem with mentats is deeper, as they are integral in the traitor subplot, which forms the main intrigue part of the first half of the book and pays off in the second half.
In new adaptation Yueh's betrayal came out of the left field without real explanation, wasn't shown how it was motivated, suspicions of everyone vs Jessica and Leto's trust in her are all dropped, and on top of it all Yueh's death was very anticlimactic compared to the old movie.
And also, Paul's awakening was my favourite scene in Lynch's Dune, and it was a letdown in Villeneuve's.
Yueh isn’t a mentat and his betrayal is unrelated to mentats. He’s suk, but even this is not integral in understanding that he was a trusted part of House Atreides and then betrayed them. The rest really isn’t needed to further the plot.
Movie adaptations will never be able to be as detailed as books. People that first read a book and then watch the movie will almost always notice there are things that are missing, and if those missing things are something the watcher was really attached to, they will be disappointed. But for people who haven’t read the book, as long as the missing things don’t create large plot holes or confusion, it’s fine. I think Dune does a fantastic job of striking the balance of detail while still telling a cohesive and fascinating story. Stuff like mentats and suk doctors are really fascinating and it’s unfortunate that movies don’t have the time available to expand on them, but the movie is able to stand alone without it.
> Yueh isn’t a mentat and his betrayal is unrelated to mentats.
Thank you, CO! :-D
But I didn't mean that he's mentat, just that Atreides and Harkonnen mentats main activity was related to the traitor plot, which was rather faithfully done in Lynch's version, and was all but omitted in Villeneuve's. The tiny detail that the Baron personally killed Yueh, thus removing the last bit of importance from DeVries before his death, is the final offence to his character.
I personally found DeVries character to be completely unforgettable in the book and there was nothing specifically he did that couldn’t have been replaced by something else, so I suppose that’s part of why I don’t think mostly omitting him from the recent movie is that much of a detraction.
I guess you wanted to say forgettable, but just to expand on that:
I recently read the book and I couldn’t even remember the character now and had to look up who was meant. Maybe that is more a testament to how bad I am at remembering stuff I read in books than how important the character is but there you go.
The more Brad Dourif shines then. Not only he carries a vital piece of exposition, he is quite striking in his small role and leaves a lasting impression. Compare this to that poor creature who sadly dies having done absolutely nothing.
Villeneuve leans so heavily into "show, don't tell" that the movie becomes a long trailer. It has lots of visual exposition, but no character experiences an arc or development. So much rich lore is passed by on the wayside, and no work is done to connect the dots between the plot points. Elements as essential as character motivations are nowhere to be found.
I understand wanting to keep exposition to a minimal, but there's a way to craft and weave it into the rhythm and pace of a story.
The reason Yueh's betrayal doesn't sting is because no effort is put into developing him or his relationships. The fall of House Atreides is rather dull, action fluff. The Spice, the Spacing Guild, the Mentats, and the Bene Gesserit are passed over for more CG and more action scenes. The flash-forward dream sequences of Paul are sloppy and don't do the forthcoming plot ramifications justice. The Harkonnens are turned into cartoons, and their one act of supreme cruelty is handled entirely off-camera.
I dearly love the books, but you shouldn't have to read the books to appreciate the film. It should stand on its own legs, and Villeneuve totally misses on that shot. He delivered incoherent action dreck. It's visually appealing, but it's practically a GPU advertisement.
I can't entirely hate on Villeneuve, though. Blade Runner 2049 is a masterpiece.
I didn't find it to be incoherent at all, but I had read the book over a decade ago and had seen the previous adaptations. In some sense, maybe I was the ideal audience, because I knew the outline of the story going in but either didn't notice or didn't care when things were left out. Given the success of the film both financially and critically though, I have to imagine that a lot of people who hadn't read the book still understood and enjoyed it.
The reaction to Dune is similar to the reaction to Oppenheimer. I'm a huge fan of Christopher Nolan. A common criticism I see of him, which echoes what you are saying here, is that his characters lack motivation and are one-dimensional. I actually don't disagree. For me, film isn't primarily about character or plot like literature is. It's about creating a mood using pictures and sound. The best parts of Oppenheimer weren't the details of characters' personal lives or the Manhattan project or the senate hearings, they were the sweeping montages of beautiful images, music, and snippets of dialogue that came together to create a feeling of fear and awe appropriate for the subject matter. I feel the same way about Villeneuve's Dune. It might not be faithful to the intricate story of the book, but I think it nails the dark, vast, mystical quality that inhabiting the Dune universe ought to feel like.
You mention Blade Runner 2049. For my money, Villeneuve's true masterpiece is Arrival. It's not only great science fiction but also has a surprising amount of emotional depth, which sci-fi usually lacks.
It does kinda feel like a movie directed by the Director of Photography and not a story teller. But we know Denis has been scouting locations for a decade or more. Makes me wonder if his director of photography enjoyed the experience or felt like puppet with someone’s hand up his backside the entire time.
> I dearly love the books, but you shouldn't have to read the books to appreciate the film. It should stand on its own legs, and Villeneuve totally misses on that shot.
This is the part I completely disagree with. I don’t think you need to read the books at all to understand or love Villeneuaves Dune. I hadn’t read the book at the time of seeing it, and I loved it. And then after I read the book I love the movie even more.
This is the thing, the people here that complain that you need to have read the book to understand the movie are dune fans. On the other hand there are people like you and my partner who I watched the movie with, who understood and loved the movie without having read the book.
I think it's usually much harder to please fans of a book, because they all will find different parts of the book important and something will be omitted, e.g. see the discussions about Tom Bombadil in LOTR.
One thing I noticed: the movie is very careful to lay out how the betrayal of House Atreides actually works. Every other time I’ve watched a version with someone I’ve ended up needing to explain who the heck the Sardukar are.
Forget the books for a moment. The film is a brainless action film.
Most of the criticisms I made are film criticisms that could be levied against any bad or middling movie.
- The film is a vacuum for intricacy and coherence.
- The characters are one-dimensional, unchanging, and don't matter.
- The stakes might be huge, but they carry no emotional weight. Like most superhero films these days.
These are deficiencies in storytelling.
If we contrast Lynch's Dune with Villeneuve's, we might find similar analogies in contrasting "Jurassic Park" versus "Jurassic World", Peter Jackson's "Lord of the Rings" versus Peter Jackson's "The Hobbit", or "Independence Day" versus whatever the hell "Independence Day 2" was.
Each of these latter films promised more, but they turned out to be empty and soulless. More box checking than composition, more visual spectacle than substance. The same is true of Villeneuve's Dune as a film.
I don't need a film adaptation to be faithful. I just need it to be a good movie. I'd be totally fine if the film made a wild departure from its source material, so long as it used that liberty to deliver something impressive. That would honestly mean more to me than a fully "by the books" rendition.
I liked the new one fine, but I felt the same way. It was mostly just gawking at effects rather than story-intrigue for me, although I'm already familiar.
Spent more time thinking about the CGI than I did thinking about the plot, I think that might indicate something.
When I read the books I got a strong sense that Dune (the planet) was like a living entity.
This planet was the focal point for all political and economic machinations of the universe, yet it was a vast, mysterious and dangerous place. Humans were intruders.
Lynch's Dune had many wide shots that attempted to convey this, and when Paul was with the Fremen it felt as if he was truly removed from the rest of the human universe, and within the mysterious universe of the planet.
Villeneuve's Dune had amazing visuals yet too many scenes were tightly shot. To me this Dune felt claustrophobic, not vast. and when Paul was with the Fremen it didn't feel so removed from reach of the Empire.
I just rewatched the new Dune, and disagree with my previous assessment. I enjoyed the movie a lot more the second time around.
Perhaps I had preconceived notions the first time (I did watch Lynch's version immediately prior). Perhaps also as others have mentioned I didn't catch all the dialogue as it is quieter than the score in many sections, this time I had the subtitles on.
The cinematography is great, there are way more wide context shots than I remembered. I also felt the magic was there and there is a dreamlike quality during Paul's spice vision scenes. I'm honestly not sure why I didn't enjoy it the first time.
If you are like I was and ambivalent about the sequel, maybe give this movie another go. I've changed my mind and now looking forward to seeing part 2.
I got more frustrated with it on a second watch, about how shallow the characters and their relationships were, and about how the blandness and faded colour choices of a lot of the visuals seemed like a deliberate reaction against the richness and almost pantomime nature of the Lynch version.
I came away thinking they got the ornithopters right but little else.
That still rings true to me, the interpersonal relationships are lacking emotion.. It's as if all human relations and events are being told from a Bene Gesserit perspective, and perhaps this was intentional.
If intentional then it would be a good character arc for Paul to reject this in the second movie.. and then become dispassionate in his own way again in the third
I'm not entirely sure what point you're trying to make, but it seems like the kind of exaggerated intentionally-missing-the-point outrage that conservatives parody leftists for (I say that as a leftist, just to be clear).
Blade Runner has always been about how replicants are people treated as slaves. Rachel having given birth in BR2049 is a big deal not because it means she's finally a person unlike all the other replicant women, but because it means replicants have the potential to control their own destiny, instead of being reliant on humans to make more of them.
The film was extremely explicit about that, to the point of beating you over the head with it. I'm not sure how you could have possibly interpreted it in the way you did, unless you view everything through the lens of "how can I be outraged about this."
EDIT: the comment I responded to originally said something like "Blade Runner 2049? The movie where personhood for women is defined as being capable of giving birth?"
You're dismissing rich and wonderful art to clutch artificial pearls. That wasn't the point of the film at all, and if you truly feel that way, then I feel sorry for you.
I feel the same. I went to see Villeneuve's Dune in the theater - the first time I'd been to a movie theater since the equally underwhelming Valerian - and it was... fine, I suppose. I was really disappointed by the washed-out color schemes permeating every shot. It made Arrakis look more like Antarctica to me than the Sahara. The only thing I recall being truly wowed by were the awesome Mass Effect Reaper-like sound effects that accompanied some of the drop ships, but those were more menacing in, well, Mass Effect.
All that said, I do think the visuals of Lynch's Dune have had longer to enter the public imagination. Cryo's Dune game took a lot of visual and musical cues from that movie, and even Westwood's Dune 2 felt like it drew mostly from the Lynch version. For me as a teenager, those became the iconic representations of the Dune universe, and it's hard for me to imagine it looking any different. Perhaps in 20 years people who grow up with the Villeneuve version will feel the same way about it.
Yes, those games! Dune 1 directly uses a lot of movie imagery, down to Kyle MacLachlan's look, and it is also a very unusual hybrid of an adventure and strategy games, I struggle to name any other game that is like it.
I replayed it a few years ago, and it holds up really well.
I still think about the sunsets in that game. Simply flying through the dunes in an ornithopter felt like the most epic adventure. It's such a miss that the Villeneuve movie made everything so white, on a planet with no condensation or cloud cover, where dust storms are a major plot point. Perhaps there is some science-y reason why it could happen that a desert planet would be all white, but it's so bizarre to me that a director would voluntarily choose that washed-out palette when at least to a layperson it seems intuitive that deserts not just on Earth but Mars too tint cloudless skies in glorious technicolor.
You're right there aren't really many - if any - other games like Cryo's Dune. Perhaps the closest experience I had recently was Sable, which is an open world style game where you explore a Moebius-inspired world with several distinct and beautiful ecologies. It's mostly just a slice of life walking sim without any conflict or political intrigue, but visually and emotionally it captures some of that epicness that I look for in Dune adaptations and other Dune-like space operas.
I can't say I disagree with any of the facts of what you say (and yet, perhaps because I don't remember Lynch's dune very well, I prefer Villeneuve's)
I felt Villeneuve effectively conveyed the dread of the inexorable emperor crushing house Atreides. We go because of duty, and we make the best of it even when our predecessor left us nothing we would need to be successful
The mentats are computers because computers are banned, and while they were my favorite characters in the books (who doesn't want to be a super smart spice addict?),I felt they were conveyed fairly if dully
Finally, the cinematography, the use of light and effects, even though ornithopters were more bees than birds it all really worked for me. Perhaps more as a place to inhabit than a story, though
Regarding mentats, in Lynch's Dune, we had Brad Dourif as DeVries, who stole every scene he was in, and Hawat, with his own very memorable character arc, improved by that very disturbing heart plug subplot and a cat.
>I felt Villeneuve effectively conveyed the dread of the inexorable emperor crushing house Atreides. We go because of duty, and we make the best of it even when our predecessor left us nothing we would need to be successful
I kind of hated the battle scenes, though. I didn't like any of the sardukar fighting scenes, or how the ships exploded etc. I don't remember the book well enough to know if it matched how it was described, but for visual mediums like movies instead of books it felt very fake.
Agreed about the mentats, and the ornrithopters. The cinematography has a lot of style but I'm honestly not sure if this particular style is to the movie's benefit or not. I can imagine it having looked a lot of different ways.
Overall the pacing of the movie felt...boring.
I'll watch the sequel but I'm not hoping for award winning movies at this point.
> I didn't like any of the sardukar fighting scenes, or how the ships exploded
I thought the ship explosion effect was brilliant and realistic in terms of how it would actually work if energy shields were a thing in real life. Just like how the slow blade penetrates a personal shield, the slow missile penetrates the ship’s shield. The movie shows this effect and the consequences. Once the missile gets past the shield, it explodes and the explosion is initially contained by the shield. However, the explosion spreads internally and it takes a second to take out the shield generator, at which point the explosion is no longer contained.
Just as an energy shield contains external explosions to the outside, it would also have the same effect on the inside for the brief moment the shield generator still operates.
Btw I always felt that laser on shield == nuclear explosion idea was rather bad, as it has immense exploitable military potential which somehow wasn't utilized at all in the books. I understand that it was made to explain why they suddenly fight with knives and swords instead of projectiles and lasers, and while the explanation works for projectiles, the laser explanation fails.
>I thought the ship explosion effect was brilliant and realistic
I just thought it was boring. All of the battle scenes were boring. The most accomplished warriors in the known universe were there and their tactics were to line up and then run at each other.
Same here. Even though the "new" Dune has a lot of good VFX, I found it boring to watch, and that was only Part I. Before watching "new", I watched Lynch's to have something to compare to. I vastly prefer Lynch's Dune. It wasn't boring. He managed to cram the whole story in less than 2h30 and in (to me) coherent and understandable way. Although the movie did demand all of my attention and weaving of threads in my mind while watching. Lynch still wins, hands down, not the least because of the atmosphere.
> [Lynch] managed to cram the whole story in less than 2h30 and in (to me) coherent and understandable way.
I don't think you can make a coherent and understandable movie-Dune without using voice-over character thoughts. You need the footnotes.
It's a tricky device, because it's so easy to overuse, but Lynch mostly limits himself to where it's really needed. AND makes it play better with his trademark dreamlike mood.
Villeneuve's Dune is what you get without this -- I hope everyone read the books! Which on one hand, respect your audience. But on the other, most people haven't read the books.
PS: Wtf Lady Jessica in Villeneuve Pt I? She's got enough mettle to defy the Reverend Mother and bear a male child, but then all that strength disappears? I get it... setting up for contrast with Fremen Jessica, but hamfisted. :(
Several women have told me they thought Lady Jessica was a strong female character in Dune pt 1 after I complained that she was more abject/emotional than in the book. It felt like we had watched a different movie, but it sounds like I'm just wrong.
My wife hates when media codes feminine as weak, as in pointedly avoiding ever displaying a strong female character being upset. Her perception is that a lot of media (and usually pieces trying to be extra-feminist) communicate “women can be strong… if they get more masculine” rather than “feminine can be strong”.
That may be the kind of thing you’re seeing: not everyone may see “she privately struggles with difficult emotional experiences, and doesn’t bottle that up, but perseveres and kicks ass anyway” as weakness.
I broadly agree with that sentiment and have often struggled with that same concept in media. However in the books, Jessica not only heavily portrays lots of traits typically considered feminine, but her stoicism is one of them. Dune is a hard book to adapt; so much of the characterisation happens via internal monologues that are necessary to contextualise a lack of externalised reaction (everyone is putting on airs the whole time, basically.) But Jessica's Bene Gesserit emotional control is a clear parallel with the way women are often forced to sublimate emotion in every facet of society in order to be taken as seriously as their male counterparts. I re-read the first three books a few weeks ago and was absolutely dumbstruck by how Herbert's Bene Gesserit and Jessica as well could've been an artefact from this decade, not six decades ago. It's still a salient representation of gender roles half a century later. I liked the most recent Dune just fine, and I adore Rebecca Ferguson is just about everything, but this change to her character really bothered me for that.
"But on the other, most people haven't read the books."
People still enjoyed it, though.
I read the books after the movie and yes, there is so much more to the whole world, but apperently other people enjoyed it without further context and are eager for part 2 so apparently the movie worked for them as well.
As someone that works in, and enjoys the visual arts field, I think they both have their place. Lynch's Dune is the one I would watch on a random weekday night -- there's a warmth to it that the new one lacks. As you said, there's something sterile about the new one (though maybe it's just the lack of film grain...)
But Villeneuve's is the version I would pay to see in 70mm IMAX. It is a feast for the eyes, and not every movie has to be something deeper.
To me, they're in an odd balance between Lynch's version, and the Villeneuve version. The visuals were much better, but because it was broadcast, were mostly experienced on TV's that couldn't do them justice -- but at the same time, they also weren't good enough for cinema anymore. And in a similar vein, unlike the Lynch version, they followed the books much more closely, which to me made them lose some of that warm fuzziness charm. I also can't say that the acting was particularly memorable to me, which is to say that nothing stood out as so bad as to be memorable, but I can also barely remember who was in it.
And as far as the sequel, Children of Dune goes, that year BSG blew it out of the water for me.
Spicediver's version is the best ... if you can find it.
The steel box / director's cut is the 2nd best. Lastly is the theatrical version which is the worst for the average person but pretty good if you have read the book once or twice.
There's another version: the one that played on SciFi channel with significantly more cuts (to make room for more commercials).
That's actually my favorite version. A lot of dialogue is cut, and it ends up better for it. It's more of a "mood" than anything else, and even though it's more of a dream than a story, it makes more sense than most of Lynch's work; your mind effectively fills in the gaps, whether you've read the books or not. I haven't seen the fan edit though.
I have a version that has an Alan Smithee directorial credit with the narrated pre history. I believe it is a Japanese laserdisc bootleg version that I got. That's my personal favorite.
Lynch’s Dune is up there with Apocalypse Now as my favorite movie. It got the feel of Dune correct, even if it made weird changes, and inspired me to start reading sci fi (I think I first saw the movie on TV in the late 80s, and would watch it whenever broadcast).
As a Dune enjoyer in pretty much all it forms these two movies occupy two different categories for me.
One one hand the Lynch adaption is the campy and fun movie I like to watch with my friends with a few beers, not pay a whole lot of attention to but laugh and have a good time.
The Villeneuve version however is something I want to watch in 70mm IMAX, feel the soundtrack in my bones and be left in awe at the visuals/cinematography. I don't want to talk, just watch.
Good review, I really didn't care for the new Dune, or even Villeneuve's Blade Runner film and I'm not sure why exactly cause both are universally praised it seems. I don't know if I'm just being an old fogey or what but both films are competently made with top notch special effects but missing the souls of their source material.
Sterile and devoid of life would be probably where I'd start like you do but I'm waiting for someone with a better understanding of the art form to really dig into why these films don't really work despite having insane production values and great mise en scene.
I liked Blade Runner 2047. It too feels sterile, but in that movie it works because it is true to the lore: all natural life has died out and the few remaining species are extreme luxuries that only the most wealthy people can afford. An owl in original movie is artificial, and it too is very pricey.
> It too feels sterile, but in that movie it works because it is true to the lore: all natural life has died out and the few remaining species are extreme luxuries that only the most wealthy people can afford.
As opposed to Arrakis, a place so dry where shedding tears because someone died is considered as incredibly unusual and highly esteemed, if wasteful.
I didn't like Arrival, but loved the original Blade Runner (and Dune). I was afraid to have my love for BR destroyed, so I only watched 2049 to see if I I could trust him with Dune, as well.
I actually thought it was quite good, FAR better than I anticipated. Whereas Dune 1 was fine (not amazing), and could have used some of 2049's balance of brutal inhumanity with a little... verve I guess you could say.
But it's also fundamentally about humanity and what it means to be human. Rachel or Batty's arc in the original compared to K's arc is much more compelling and alive for illustration. K's journey is about solving a puzzlebox really.
Idk it just was pretty and had good plotting, but left me with nothing after it ended.
>I'm not sure why exactly cause both are universally praised it seems
because Villeneuve was basically one of the front runners of the "intangible sludge"[1] aesthetic as someone dubbed it. Everything he makes has the same cold, color-drained feel to it (looking at the trailer for the next part, literally), and it's a style that a majority of film and TV makers has bought into now. What stood out about Lynch's version was just how psychedelic it was, which the book was too, and it's completely lost in the new adaption. I'd even go farther than 'sterile', Villeneuve's movies are straight up inhuman. With the exception of Arrival, which I think owes most of its core to Ted Chiang's story, none of the movies Villeneuve has made evoke any kind of connection, between characters or to the audience.
I just recently rewatched the new Dune and it has it's own special vibe. Certainly knowing the book helps to understand many things and this is true that the power of mentats was clearly not explained at all and this is unfortunate, but a director has to choose on what to focus. To be honest, he doesn't really focus on guild too - Lunch has a really fine scene that demonstrates the power of the guild and Villeneuve is completely missing something like this.
Still I love the new Dune and I love Lynch Dune too, especially the fan made extended cuts that are extremely brilliant.
Lunch's Dune has too much theater and fairy-tale vibe for my taste.
The scene with rain really tells it all. "And Paul was proclaimed Kwisatz Haderach, summoned the rain, and they lived happily ever after". That's not sci-fi...
It's a drug-fueled, vision or dream which to me makes it great. Neither movie has any qualities I like in scifi. Neither plays through interesting what-if scenarios and their impact on society. Blade Runner, Ex Machina or Primer are great examples of that.
Same here, it felt very dull and bland. I'm not sure why people get excited over the big latest movies like that, just because it's a new version of Dune. In 10 years nobody will remember it.
I also wish Kyle McLaughlin could have played Leto Atreides. Maybe because I don't like Oscar Isaac, he always looks like a thug to me, but I'd have loved that connection to the previous movie.
Funny I agree with you on everything but the Momoa part. With the exception of Game of Thrones, he always plays himself. He basically always comes off as a marvel character. I thought he and Chalamet were miscast.
Momoa was in a different movie entirely. They could have pulled it off - had there been any character that was a tonal middle-ground between him and EVERYONE ELSE it would have gone a long way to making the movie feel more dynamic and alive, less as a series of rote set-pieces.
On the other hand in the books Idaho appeared as so much of an outlier to every other person that "in a different movie entirely" seems weirdly fitting. You could even put Momoa in the Lynch version and it would seem accurate to the point of parody. The actual Idaho of the Lynch movie on the other hand, so unmemorable Lynch might have just written out the character entirely. The explanation given in the article (deliberately toned down to make the ghola version even bigger in part two) is an interesting excuse.
I'll defend Momoa as a choice, I think he fits the role perfectly and the exception of Game of Thrones shows he could have done something different with it.
Chalamet I agree was miscast, but I would go further because I thought Zendaya's performance was unfortunately terrible.
> On the other hand, Lynch's Dune also has a great cast, great music, great sets, and it also has the all-important dream-like mystic feel to it, which is completely absent in the new adaptation.
Im glad someone else is happy to say it out loud: Lynch's Dune is art. I love the book and know some people are beyond sore at how Lynch's Dune isn't "faithful" to the letter of the text. The real faith is paid to the spirit of the work and I really appreciate we have it.
Villeneuve's is the best since, and there have been other attempts between.
I would have loved to see what Jodorowsky would have done because he was also a "spiritual" film maker. Both his likely approach and Lynch's do a great job at, judging from what I understand of the later books, bringing out the mystical aspect of the work that envelops everything but is hidden at the same time. The event to event happens in Dune can be explained in mundane ways: issues amongst the royal houses, trade disputes, natives, resource extraction -- Lynch's Dune uses what's practical to amplify the role of the supernatural.
I'd be just as interested in a spiritually skeptic Dune, where the mysticism is downplayed or revealed as all smoke and mirrors.
> You see, Villeneuve's Dune has a great cast, insanely great cinematography and sets, but it is also very sterile, devoid of life and has very unimaginative directing
The problem with Villeneuve's adaptation is that it does not tell a story. If you haven't read the book, you have a hard time understanding what this is all about.
After Villeneuve had repeatedly blown my expectations out of the water. He turned my favorite short story that I thought was unfilmable into the fabulous Arrival created a worthy sequel to the groundbreaking Blade Runner. So I was extremely excited about him making a new version of Dunrle given that Lynch's Dune is one of my favorites movies. Yet, I somehow didn't feel it. I thought it was that I didn't like the actors nearly as much and that I was so used to the music from the Lynch's version. I think you hit the nail on the head though by calling out the lack of dreamlike qualities. To me that was always what I loved about the movie (and other Lynch movies). I can see that others might prefer it without that, but to me that's what made the movie. Without it it's just yet another space opera which I think of as a derogatory term.
What i'd really want is a tv series that looks like Villeneuve's Dune, with ornithopters, ships and all, and has a soul of Lynch's Dune, and is 10 episodes for the first book.
I recently rewatched Villeneuve's Dune in addition to reading the books for the first time (after being a long-time fan of Lynch's take) and I kept thinking a TV series is what it needs. It's hard to imagine it following on from Villeneuve's film given they've dropped so much from the books although I think it can be done. What would be incredible is a Rings of Power-style big budget TV adaptation which would make room for adapting the more fantastical stuff from the sequels as well.
I think sterile is a good description. I couldn't place it but that is exactly it: beautiful, expensive, but empty and with no life outside of the actors faces.
I agree. Lynch's Dune is a really, really rough cut gem, but it is a gem. The last half-hour is obviously rushed without the ability to make it a longer film. Honestly it needed at least another hour or more.
Villeneuve's adaptation so far has been really good, but it's a piece of keenly honed metal compared to Lynch's. Better engineered, but sterile, and missing the kind of messy beauty that I find in Lynch's adaptation.
The Dune books are really, really weird, and the social order they depict has all the ugliness of the historical precedents it apes. Lynch's weirdness captures that, and the "mystical" feel you talked about in a way that Villeneuve doesn't.
Incidentally I agree that Mamoa's Idaho is one of the highlights.
EDIT: On that tentative connection I finished with. I do also worry that in this era of film, Villeneuve's Dune will become somewhat Marvelised. But we'll just have to see.
It does disappoint me a little that at the end of the day, Villeneuve will be the canon adaptation. Just good enough, but unless something radically changes, not nearly so weird as it should be. But we'll see. First movie could just be the first stage of boiling frogs, who knows.
This is just kind of par for the course with Villeneuve; his Bladerunner was much the same. Absolutely stunning aesthetics, but the story kind of takes the back seat.
That said, while I agree with much of your points I still think it is an outstanding movie. I just don't think the movie form works for Dune, really, which is really based a lot on inner dialogue and philosophical meanderings.
as someone who struggled to get through the book as a kid and never saw Lynch's version, I really liked the new Dune as a spectacle, and I filled in some of the more confusing parts from plot summaries after i came home, but ultimately it did place Dune back on my "to read" list :) (and Lynch's Dune on my "to watch" after i read the book)
I'm totally with you. Watching the Villeneuve version and the hunter seeker scene, there was almost zero tension in the Villeneuve because you don't know what the probe can only see motion and you don't know it's slippery so the entire scene makes no sense.
Agree on the Gom Jabbar scene too. The Lynch one I got the torture. The Villeneuve one not so much.
Also, Yueh, he's just a random betrayer in the Villeneuve version where as he's supposed to be incorruptible, something that's never covered.
Certainly, the Villeneuve version benefits from CGI. It's nice, I've watched it 3~4 times, it's growing on me, and I'm looking forward to the 2nd half.
But I have a soft place in my heart for the Lynch version
I found both disappointing. They kind of had opposite prolems though.
Imo, the new movie was much better execution, but also is super generic removing much of what makes dune actually interesting. The lynch movie is in theory interesting but execution was poor, making it a drag.
Interesting that you'd find Villeneuve's Dune "devoid of life" ; I feel the opposite way. I don't even normally like Villeneuve's work ; found Arrival and Blade Runner a bit empty. But I found that with Dune, he finally hit the mark.
I've watched Blade Runner 2049 multiple times, mostly for the effects and some of the neat ideas. I still don't get it. The original makes some sense to me. 4 artificial "slaves" want more life than then 4 years their creators gave them. But what is the point of 2049? It just seems a bunch of random ideas to me. What's the Wallace Corp trying to do. Are the president and his henchperson on the same page? What is K's arc? Why does it matter about the daughter? Isn't he putting her in danger at the end? IIRC nothing happens to the Wallace Corp so she's still being hunted. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
My gf and I both left Villeneuve's Dune early in theaters because it was so boring.
I watched it again later on streaming with it playing in the background and had a much better time. It was good towards the end. I think Part 2 will be much better.
> why does that sand woman shout when Jessica says a certain word?
This kind of thing is a “how much do you trust the audience?” thing. How literate are they in following a narrative? How much cultural or genre context are you relying on them to have? Sometimes phrased in certain circles as “respecting the audience”.
Specifically why might not be attainable, but there are conversations in a couple of scenes before that one, and some dialog after, that let one fill in the gaps on that reaction well enough.
You see, that particular scene of Mapes job interview is very important one in the book and I happened to remember it very well when whatching the movie. The book has a lot of Jessica's inner monologue, and then she makes a wild guess that happened to provoke a very strong reaction from Mapes.
The movie translated this scene verbatim, word for word, but omitting all the inner monologue. The chain of thought we were presented in the book is just dropped. No amount of attention to the narrative by the audience will help because the narrative is absent.
That's why I called the direction unimaginative: when you are adapting book material to movie form you are supposed to find ways to convey such literature elements like internal monologue using cinema language. Even voiceover is sometimes better than nothing.
> ome scenes were direct adaptations from the book, like Gom Jabbar scene, Shadout Mapes scene, and were very confusing for people who didn't read the book
Particularly if you can't hear the dialogue. During several scenes in the cinema, I had to tell my teenagers what they were saying. Subsequently downloaded and played an illegal copy on my PC so the girls could hear what was going on.
Finally someone mentions the unintelligible dialogue. I saw it with my sister and cousin in the theater, we couldn't understand maybe 40% of the dialogue. And yes, we're native American English speakers. Such a shame.
I watched the original Dune at the cinema at around eleven years old, was a fan of Star Wars, and I didn't understand anything coherent about the movie. Probably because I was a young child (or have comprehension issues, though). I remember it was boring, Sting there was weird. That is my memory. The new Dune enlightened me. Have not read the books myself.
If the latter books ever get made, which I highly doubt at this point, casting Momoa as one of the touchstone characters was not a bad idea, at least audience wise. Budget wise, might be a different story.
If memory serves he shows up again in book 3, not 2. They are thinner books. Could they pull off 1 movie for Children and Messiah?
I agree, how I was able to tell that Lynch’s is better was that, I could watch it without falling asleep. I tried multiple times to watch the new one but something about it kept me falling asleep
> I, for one, prefer Lynch's Dune to Villeneuve's. I was very hyped for the latter and left the theater disappointed.
I prefer neither. Lynch's is odd and silly while villeneuve's is just eye candy. Dune should be read. A movie simply isn't going to capture all the emotions, inner dialogues, intrigue, history, etc. I think it's impossible to make a good movie out of Dune without completely reimagining and rewriting it. Dune isn't like a detective story or a horror story where the ending or jump scares are the the payoff. Dune is the culmination of the entire journey. It's greatness lies in the details.
Try it. Read Dune and then watch Dune. Something is off. Something is missing. It's like the difference between a grape drink and a grape flavored juice. The latter is a poor imitation of the former.
You see, Villeneuve's Dune has a great cast, insanely great cinematography and sets, but it is also very sterile, devoid of life and has very unimaginative directing. Some scenes were direct adaptations from the book, like Gom Jabbar scene, Shadout Mapes scene, and were very confusing for people who didn't read the book. (why does that sand woman shout when Jessica says a certain word?). Paul's awakening is very bland, too. His mentats were useless. De Vries was just a sad freak who stood nearby and then died. Hawat was in three scenes where he had any lines, and in two of which he counted expenses, and offered his resignation in the third. If I didn't read the book I'd assume he's some kind of accountant.
On the other hand, Lynch's Dune also has a great cast, great music, great sets, and it also has the all-important dream-like mystic feel to it, which is completely absent in the new adaptation. Sure, it has a lot of script problems, which mostly boil down to far too short runtime, as moviegoers in 1984 weren't ready for 2 part movies, so it had to cram the second part of the book in the final 20 minutes or so. Had it been two movies, it would have been much better.
One big improvement in Villeneuve's adaptation is Momoa's Idaho, who basically saved the movie for me. Lynch's Idaho was very bland and died far too easily and non-consequentally. Other than his scenes, if I ever want to see some scene from Dune on Youtube, it'll be Lynch's (except "the Guild doesn't take your orders", if you know what I mean).