Controlling the Spice, Part 1: Dune on Page and Screen | Hacker News Reader

Controlling the Spice, Part 1: Dune on Page and Screen

filfre.net

82 pointsdoppp44 comments

I've always held that the David Lynch version of Dune was an underrated masterpiece. Tastes vary, but the film was visually stunning and I can't think of another director from the time that would have done justice to the novel. Obviously Dune is a big deal but I'm frequently surprised at just how little attention it's gotten in pop culture beyond the odd references to Butlerean Jihads and the odd pumpkin spice joke. What I wouldn't give for an expansive HBO season-length treatment of the first book.

You neglect, of course, that David Lynch, himself, sought to distance himself from the movie, considering it something of an embarassment, and requesting an Alan Smithee [1] credit for at least one version of its release.

In some ways, we can look back on it with a sort of "so-bad-it's-good" a e s t h e t i c in mind, and when understanding David Lynch's sensibilities, you can still catch a glimpse of his creative influence shining through. But really, David Lynch is ultimately correct in his self-effacing critique. It's kitschy and campy in a lot of ways. Just watch the closing credits in isolation, if you don't agree, and try and challenge that opinion again.

To understand what I'm talking about, watch Dune, then watch Eraserhead, and then watch Dune again. Eraserhead informs us of David Lynch's purest intent realized as a feature presentation.

You can see some of Eraserhead in Kenneth McMillan's portrayal of Vladimir Harkonnen (and indeed, it's the scene that Jack Nance [3] appears in), but that's really about it. That Dune doesn't live up to the visualizations of Moebius' imaginary realms [4], and that much of the budgeting, politics and film making technology of the day stood in the way of the final theatrical release is probably what bummed David Lynch out about it.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alan_Smithee

[2] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YRzVFlZxBv4

[3] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jack_Nance

[4] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jean_Giraud

I didn't "neglect" that, I'm well aware Lynch distanced himself from the movie and that doesn't have anything to do with whether or not I enjoyed it.

I'm not convinced deconstruction is always useful but I do think it can be fun.

Exactly. After reading the whole Dune trilogy, my first thought was: wow, what an experience.

My second thought was: whoever makes a series of films of this, and stays faithful to the books, they will surely make billions of dollars.

Did you see the sci-fi mini series? It was very faithful to the books, but I don’t think it made billions.

I was glued to my tv for it. But they were still bound by early 2000s tech and budgets. Dune hasn’t seen the commercialization that the Harry Potter, Star Wars, Star Trek, nor guardians of the galaxy universes have. But it could be made into a similarly action packed film series. Though I’d argue Dune is closer kin to LOTR/hobbit/Tolkien.

My guess is that dune suffers from a dead author and it’s long passages on how societies work. Someone would need to translate the plots and central themes and ideas to the screen.

The best Dune novel, IMO, is God Emperor of Dune. And it's completely unfilmable. The primary character is conspicuously nonhuman. Much of the exposition, as well as a number of important plot developments, are only delivered through his internal narrative. An attempted film adaptation would probably try to focus on one of the human secondary characters, and would, by so doing, completely miss the point of the book.

I think they could focus on the worm/human internal struggle through actions made over the course of millennia. First movie being the plot that turns him toward the worm. Second movie being the gradual steps towards the worm and inhuman choices. Third movie being his death. (Forgive me if this is wrong somehow importantly. It’s been a while.). But you’re right on it being a big challenge.

Much of what you're describing as the first and second movie is covered in Children of Dune. God Emperor is set several thousand years later, and would correspond to your third movie. The interim period is incredibly dull -- the boredom and stagnation of total societal stability is, in fact, an important theme of the book.

Yeah. It needs a Jackson like person and the entire crew from LOTR to really pull off. People with the same depth of understanding of the books.

LOTR’s art director had done amazing works before those movies, and it was neat to see that transposed to the screen.

I bet the studios look at it and don’t want to touch it based on the past performance of the movie.

I’m definitely curious as to what they think in Hollywood about making a series out of it. They’re clearly out of ideas with all the reboots and sequels/prequels.

Nope! I have missed it.

The only one I've seen is the movie with "that Twin Peaks guy". Though it is a cult film and all that, I did not think it was very good to be honest. The movie was rather confusing and made more sense after having read the books.

A new film/films would be great for many reasons, including the complexity of the plot and the sheer timescale involved. For example, at the core Star Wars is a rather template-like father-son good vs. evil monomyth, with all kinds of small (interesting) details woven around it. It also has a top-tier presentation. I like Star Wars of course but the plot itself is pretty basic, perhaps that is why it appeals to so many people from small kids to grown-ups.

The Dune trilogy could offer so much more, I believe, if someone like Jackson of the LOTR fame would pick it up.

Trilogy: it's actually six books, not three. What to call it? Hexalogy?

After the original six came books by Herbert's son, but I've never read those so cannot comment.

Because it was awful - wooden acting and laughable SFX.

I came here to say exactly this. I've always loved his version of Dune and I was genuinely surprised when I got online years later and starting seeing that most people seemed to think it was bad.

I liked that movie too. Only thing I didn't like was the interpretation of 'wierding ways' as an acoustic weapon.

I always imagined it to be a super capable martial art.

That was actually one of the parts I did like. The book's portayal felt like some kind of weird mystical thing, while the weirding modules felt like actual science fiction.

That, and how it seemed like Paul made it rain in the end. He was a man playing god, not an actual weather god.

IIRC at the end of the book the fremen use their vast reserves of water to change the planet climate.

Although the film doesn't make it explict, it does show the reserves of water.

Dune, today, sounds like something M. Night Shyamalan would make into a movie.

It's a bit unfortunate, but - the original 'synthetic marijuana' that was sold here in Britain a few years back called 'Spice' (that in turn gave its name as a broad catch-all for all subsequent types of much-worse synthetics) - based its name from the magical stuff in Dune.

And yes, the movie was excellent, I thought :)

I find it interesting that after reading books so many of us want to see it visualized on the screen.

After reading Enders Game to my son, we watched the movie. The acting wasn’t great, and they condensed the story a lot, but it was still fun to see the way everything was reproduced on screen (and he loves it).

> I can't think of another director from the time that would have done justice to the novel

Alejandro Jodorowsky?

I offer Tor's contrary opinion [1] about Jodorowsky's Dune adaptation.

Another comment in this thread is correct: he was not even closely faithful to the original Herbert story.

There are good reasons that no one wants to finance a project as big as Dune for someone as mainstream controversial/unstable as Jodorowsky. His nuttiness might play well to an art house crowd, but there is no way you would ever get your money back for a mainstream film done by him, and for the lavishness of his vision of Dune, the size of the bankroll requires a mainstream audience to pencil out the numbers.

In my linked article, there was a great comment about him: the dude rolled a natural 20 on charisma. But he's off the charts weird would be the kindest characterization. There are far more malign and dark claims made about him that you can search up on him on the Net, but none substantiated enough to land him behind bars to date. Though that one screen-capped tweet in the comments alone makes him pretty odious to my sensibilities. The descriptions of him sounds like a sociopath to me personally, but I don't know the guy so I can't tell what is really going on. Other than I wouldn't bank a wooden nickel on him.

[1] https://www.tor.com/2017/05/02/jodorowskys-dune-didnt-get-ma...

Jodorowsky comes across as a borderline pervert slash self-ordained slash self-perceived genius charismatic prophet in the current zeitgeist. It's hard for people to understand that in "hippie" circles ca 1970 this was much the norm, and that such "geniuses" were a dime a dozen, each with a some following. We are wiser now, but for sure: characters that are in vogue nowadays (uncertain which) will likely be abhorred at some point in the future too.

> ...in "hippie" circles ca 1970 this was much the norm...

I've read that justification for him and hearing that, I can't shake the sense that just makes him an art fossil that never paid attention to the evolving cultural norms around him. So he just plows ahead and makes art for a world that passed into history; that's uncharitable for someone who is hailed by art cognoscenti. I jokingly maintain he must possess an RDF that rivals or even outshines Jobs', he has access to awesome drugs, and has an unique ability to remember his trips in great detail.

(RDF? Resident Drug Friend?)

Reality Distortion Field: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reality_distortion_field

Jodoroski dune was crazy and not in the dune way, his ideas were interesting in an artsy way but it wasn't dune, I think he didn't even read the book

It would not have been a faithful adaptation of Dune. It might not have even bore a passing resemblance to the novel! But it would have been one hell of a film.

I hope someone eventually reworks their massive storyboard into a Dune movie. They literally did all of the work already.

Storyboards are just the beginning. There is a lot of work between even the most polished storyboards and the final product.

Go find one of the Marvel films, skip to the credits, and watch them all the way through; pretty much everyone in that list would have been hired after the boards were done, and worked for a year or three. Don't fast-forward. Don't get up and pee. Don't get distracted by Deadpool popping up and making a fart joke. Just let the amount of work that goes into modern effects-heavy movies sink in.

Didn't that storyboard work out to something like twenty hours of screen time?

The guy who described his vision as "raping Dune"?

Fair.

Dune is visually great but the script and performances are terrible. So much of the novel is concerned with the inner motives of the characters and the wheels within wheels of plots and counterplots.

Lynch tried to capture this with ridiculous voiceovers that slow down each scene and don't really help anyone who hasn't read the book anyway.

I don't make films so what do I know, but I have always thought that the only way to film Dune is to ignore all the background and make a rip-roaring adventure film with giant worms and wizzing ornithopters.

The Lord of the Rings films were successful in keeping the general tone and most of the plot of the source material while jettisoning elements that grind what Lynch made to a halt.

It still has the single best movie soundtrack I've ever heard (and yet the article didn't even mention it, or if it did, not prominently enough for me to notice). I'm a musician (albeit an amateur one); a good sountrack makes or breaks a film, and that definitely made Dune for me. The main theme in particular is unforgettable.

Part Two is about the games spawned from the Dune universe. The author (or someone else) could write an article about the audio in the Dune movie/mini series, as well as the music inspired by the Dune universe.

Many other famous actors such as Virginia Madsen, Brad Dourif, and Juergen Prochnow (also famous of Das Boot) were not mentioned either.

I agree, I thought it was good too. It drifted from the book, but sometimes in a good way. I liked the scenes with the navigator in the tank. The Voice amplifiers were kind of corny.

I'm hopeful about the news that a new Dune adaption is currently in the works.

https://www.theverge.com/2017/2/1/14471312/dune-movie-adapta...

Does anyone have other news about this? (Anticipated release date?) Googling around, the bits of news seem to indicate it will be a movie that covers only the first half of the Dune book.

In the meantime I'll need to check out the documentary "Jodorowsky's Dune", which appears to have been well received.

As an aside, the Dune audiobooks are excellent. They are the voice acting sort and are done very well. I recommend them to anyone looking for commute/travel material.

I recently listened to them and I agree. Also the Butlerian Jihad series would probably make a better movie by today's standards and become a gateway to a dune TV series.

Terrific read, can't wait for the sequel.

Having read the book once, and having seen the Lynch movie, and the miniseries (as well as Children of Dune) various times, I don't hold my breath to see a remake of Dune. At some point there's this thing where there's a certain fatigue of familiarity which is hard to impress.

I believe I'd gain more from reading the sequels. For my child however (who never read/seen Dune, and is too young for it now), I'd wish a remake for her, yes. However, the same is true for Neal Stephenson's "Snow Crash" and "The Diamond Age" the latter of which reminds me somewhat about Dune.

To anyone else who would enjoy reading more about the creation of Dune (the original novel) I would recommend The Road to Dune.

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