Comment by Apocryphon | Hacker News Reader

Comment by Apocryphon | Hacker News Reader

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I'm going to be Pollyanna and say that we might be at the cusp of a golden age of sci-fi adaptations. For decades people said that Dune was unfilmable and then Villeneuve went and done it and made it look easy, even conventional. (I actually have some additional thoughts on that- it could have been a little bit longer for greater exposition and characterization, and more weird.) So this should mean that any classic work of sci-fi should get some consideration. We're at a time in the industry where both visual effects and audiences (with the mainstreaming of nerd culture) are ready for such media.

That's not to say these adaptations will be good, but they're certainly filmable. Neuromancer gets a lot of cachet, but other IPs have been attempted already. Villeneuve successfully made a good Blade Runner sequel. Live-action Ghost in the Shell happened- it was execrable and wrapped up in controversy, but it still got made and the neon-soaked setting looked decent. They made a fourth Matrix. Stepping away from cyberpunk, Childhood's End got a miniseries. The Expanse got a full show.

So I doubt that there's anything inherently more difficult about Gibson's novels. If anything, the popularity of Cyberpunk 2077 and its Edgerunners anime has primed the public for '80s retrofuturistic cyberpunk, so they can choose to adapt this as a period piece if they wanted to, without "modernizing" its futuristic conceits. No need to add smartphones.

Call me when they start adapting John Brunner '60s new wave sci-fi. Now that would be a hard sell.

Tbh I thought David Lynchs Dune captured the oddity of the universe, the cruelty of the universe, and did it's own stuff as well. I know not everyone likes it, but I think it has it's place, especially in the context of all his other movies and tv shows.

>Tbh I thought David Lynchs Dune captured the oddity of the universe, the cruelty of the universe, and did it's own stuff as well.

Wait till you hear about Jodorowsky's Dune[1][2], the best film never made.

With Pink Floyd doing the soundtrack, H.R. Giger doing the visuals, Jean "Moebius" Geiraud creating the story board, Dan O'Bannon on VFX, and Salvador Dali agreeing to play the Emperor, you'd get a lot to say about the oddity and cruelty of that universe.

...had anyone had the guts to actually fund Jodorowsky on that one. Alas, after assembling the all-star team, doing the pre-production, securing the rights, and being ready to go, he simply didn't get the funding to implement his vision.

Giger, who hasn't been involved with film till that point, went on to make Alien with O'Bannon; and the project - despite never been made! - has influenced all subsequent space sagas.

The documentary about it[3] is fascinating.

[1]https://www.jodorowskysdune.com/

[2]https://www.openculture.com/2016/10/14-hour-epic-film-dune-t...

[3]https://www.imdb.com/title/tt1935156/

I am anti-jodorowsky because he raped a woman, talked about how it was super important to the artistic integrity of the movie, then when people started having problems with that kind of thing, said he was just saying all that stuff to get the movie noticed because hollywood hates mexican cinema. so i don't really mourn that he didn't get to make a dune movie.

>I am anti-jodorowsky because he raped a woman

That's a fact?

My understanding is that the only source for that were his own remakrs in an interview, and that he later retracted them[1].

No other person ever claimed anything of the sort about him, there's no track record of assault, and there is no indication that he would be the kind of person to do that.

In the very remakrs held against him, he said:

>When I wanted to do the rape scene, I explained to [Mara Lorenzio] that I was going to hit her and rape her. There was no emotional relationship between us, because I had put a clause in all the women's contracts stating that they would not make love with the director. We had never talked to each other. I knew nothing about her. We went to the desert with two other people: the photographer and a technician. No one else. I said, 'I'm not going to rehearse. There will be only one take because it will be impossible to repeat. Roll the cameras only when I signal you to.' Then I told her, 'Pain does not hurt. Hit me.' And she hit me. I said, 'Harder.' And she started to hit me very hard, hard enough to break a rib...I ached for a week. After she had hit me long enough and hard enough to tire her, I said, 'Now it's my turn. Roll the cameras.' And I really...I really...I really raped her. And she screamed. "

To me, that sounds like the actress was there with consent.

Finally, this is a person for whom English is not a native language, and who uses the word "rape" quite loosely.

For example, he said he "raped Frank Herbert... but with love"[2].

I would say, there really isn't enough basis to conclude that his statements about "rape" meant anything but artistic exaggeration.

[1]https://www.artforum.com/news/alejandro-jodorowsky-speaks-ou...

[2]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BKjpH2qO8XY

That's really terrible. Now I'm wondering what '70s director would have been a good fit to replace him, while preserving the all-star cast of Welles, Jagger, Dali, etc. The comedy option would be if George Lucas tried psychedelics and took the gig instead of making Star Wars.

See my other comment.

TL;DR: we have as much basis to believe he raped anyone as we have to believe thart he literally raped Frank Herbert:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BKjpH2qO8XY

That's to say, nothing aside from some words he said to promote his film, and later retracted.

> Tbh I thought David Lynchs Dune captured the oddity of the universe

What I liked about Lynch's version is hold old everything felt. The Empire was around for a long time and so had become mostly ossified and decadent (which the Golden Path was/is meant to rectify), and you could tell that by the clothes people wore and many of the sets (e.g., the room where the Navigator and Emperor meet).

The Sci-Fi miniseries hewed closer to the story, but everything felt too 'shiny' (no doubt due to budget constraints).

Villeneuve wasn't as old looking as Lynch, but not as shiny as Sci-fi, but somewhere in the middle. The costumes were also pretty good.

I also appreciated Zimmer's 'alien sounding' musical score, and the way it blended in with the sound design many times (the teams ended up working together a lot instead of being strictly siloed like often happens).

I strongly agree with you. Dune is weird, insular, looped back on itself, and has had thousands of years to do so. They've switched from one "sin" (making a machine in the likeness of the human mind) to another (thou shalt not deform the soul, by the creation of ultraspecialized humans such as Mentats). It's a nasty, paranoid place (the voice-overs helped with that), wherein you constantly had to think about how others would think, and on.

The Weirding Way is essentially something that cannot be filmed (you would have to invent a martial art that looked unique, spectacular on screen, and was somehow wildly effective), and so it became the Weirding Modules, and that worked, too. Herbert like the "third stage" Guild Navigator idea so much he incorporated it into his later works.

This later effort left me cold.

The thing the new movie did was capture the cruelty of the haves and havenots and the cheapness of life in Dune. Dune is a universe where a tiny select group of people matter and everyone else exists in their servitude. Not even as people, but as currency. The scene where they murder people to take their blood so that the Sardukur have war paint in the new movie perfectly captures this. They don't even dwell on what they are doing, it's just there in the background. This is a major theme in the book and what the Freemen fight against and live a life that recognizes each life as sacred. They do this by essentially subjecting themselves to a desert environment that actively tries to kill them every second. This visceral experience makes each life precious.

I found the new Dune to be solid but somewhat slavishly faithful, which prevented it from interesting innovations. And the visuals themselves, with the austere grey granite cyclopean edifices, were interesting but nothing we haven't seen before- Ridley Scott's questionable Prometheus really pioneered that art direction for sci-fi. It really could've used a better visual palette and color editing. Also now they're starting to stick Mongolian throat singing everywhere (it shows up a bit in Wakanda Forever) so we only have Dune to blame if it becomes overused.

The new Dune does what villeneuve does in all his films. Like go watch Arrival or Bladerunner 2049, they all have this big sweeping shots, every frame is a painting. Villeneuve sees films as a way to capture the visual feeling of something being bigger then you. All his films do this. In Bladerunner 2049 Villeneuve literally has the hologram girl as a giant hologram that Ryan Gosling's character encounters when he is deciding whether he exists as a person or not. She stands there demonstrating that the world has digitized and moved away from humanity so far that whatever humanness is left is whatever you decide for yourself. The best part of this movie I thought was that then this relationship between Ryan Gosling and the hologram girl becomes the most human relationship in the film. Because they chose it to be that way. Even though neither one is actually human.

Oh, I totally agree. (The austere grandeur also reminds me of Christopher Nolan's work, too). I just think in Dune he's reusing a good amount of his past visual language. Some of the ships look a lot like the Heptapod vessels from Arrival. The part when Arrakeen is on fire reminded me of the fighting in Sicario after the Juarez mob boss is arrested. Wish he had invented more novel elements, and again, more varied use of color.

Your points about the giant Joi hologram in 2049 are valid. I wish he had done just a bit more of that. (That scene, with its neon blues and purples, was also distinct from the usually grey Prometheus palette that Dune dipped into too much imo.) Personally I felt a lot of the desert scenes looked a little artificial, maybe it was the color grading or lack of scale. The best desert scene imo is the second sandworm encounter where the rock mouse establishes the scale.

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