Dune: Part Two – Official Trailer 3 [video]
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I enjoyed the first movie, but they fucked with things they shouldn't have. Dune's technology was cleverly laid out to create a kind of scifi fantasy world of swords and wizards. The 100% effective shields could ONLY be penetrated by a skilled knife wielder, creating a scifi world of knights. The bene Gesserit served the role of mystic and wizard, which the Kwisatz Haderach could finally unify.
It offers a very in your face style combat, which sets up the Dune Fremen as the strongest force in the galaxy. However, the movie effectively stripped the value of personal shields: they are penetrated by dart guns as well as conventional explosives. This effectively nullifies the whole advantage the Fremen would give. AFAICT they did so in order to have more ships and explosions.
(There's also the original shield+lasgun=nuclear-detonation, which I always found absurd since it would be trivial to have a remote controlled lasgun demolish any target. If they had nerfed anything I would have nerfed the lasgun, not the shield)
This is specifically mentioned, and carried out, in the Dune novel.
The justification for why it isn't more common is that the resulting explosion is indistinguishable from a nuclear explosion, and the Great Convention strictly forbids the use of nuclear weapons.
It is the fact that if the found out you would have the imperial Sardukars (that were basically invincible) plus all the Landsraad houses going after you and your house would be effectively gone. What stopped was the huge risk.
This did not stopped Paul from using it in the Arrakeen attack that we will see in the second movie. If Paul and the Freemen lost then house Atreides would be gone either way so he had more incentive to use it.
The Dune universe favor war of assassins that would happen with Landsraad approval. It is established that Atreides and Harkonnens had many war of assassins between then pre dune novel.
I could be misremembering though.
They invaded Arrakeen riding sand-worms that would be impossible before, it is even said in the novel that Paul was riding the biggest sand-worm ever seen that day and the Freemen considered this some kind of sign they were going to win..
now i don't remember if they shoot their own shield or they knew the Sardukar would be using lasgun and took advantage of it..
EDIT:
Ok, it seen as i am misremembering things.. They did not used a lasgun\shield combo, they used actual nukes.. Either way consequences and effects are the same..
I thought they were relying on a bit of a loophole: they didn't kill (m)any humans, "just" a natural barrier, which is why they could get away with it.
edit: He did. [0] His shield was fully operational but the dart burrowed through the shield.
This whole scene looked cool but was really dumb tactically. A single saboteur with a pistol was able to breach the main compound and knock out all guards. Those are some crappy guards.
And I don’t think hunter seekers in the book go through shields, just that people wouldn’t have shields activated so hunter seekers would be effective.
Then there were missiles. There were no missiles in the Book, for obvious reasons.
I don't think the book mentions missiles per se, but I don't see why those wouldn't have been useful in warfare? Not every building can be covered by a shield, and shields require power sources. (This is a plot point later in the book.)
Using them in the Harkonen invasion against the shielded Atreides army flies against everything in the books. Those missiles would kill nobody and could never destroy a shielded ship.
Hunter-seeker missiles existed, but they were touted as rare or somehow difficult to operate I believe.
the problem with lasgun and shield is that the center of the explosion could be either the shield, the lasgun or anywhere in between, no way to control it.
Some people are saying it is indistinguishable from a nuke.. that is because it is a nuke, i recall some later novel describing the reaction and basically it cause atom in the air to fuse and eventually blow-up. The effect would happen all around the shield and laser and the explosion could start any place.
But this phenomenon will be used by the Freemen in their attack to Arrakeen to destroy the rock mountains that protect the city from the sand-worms. I think this is show in the trailer, the scene where you see the imperial Sardukars in the ground and then a massive sand worm come out of a sandstorm carrying Freemens, the book even say it is the biggest sand-worm ever seen.
The shield tech in dune block fast moving things, so it not only require a skilled knife fighter, but a fighter that can control their speed, move fast when attacking and then slow down then it is time to pass trough the shield for the final blow, after all it is easy to block a slow moving blow and impossible to hit trough a shield with a fast one. This is supposed be be show when Paul is training with Gurney at the start of the movie\novel but it is hard to portray.
The shield will not block the shock wave from a explosion or the heat because that is just the air moving and the shield does not block air. As for darts, as long as they are slow enough they will work, they are even the weapon of choice for assassins and Dune universe has "war of assassins" in the landsraad so it is preety much a thing.
As for the freemen, they are the best warriors in the universe because they were raised in the most inhospitable environment that is Arrakis, it has nothing to do with shields, this is made very clear in the novels, and i dont think they even use shields in the desert. They are good fighters because they are raised fighting for very limited resources, so only the best of the best would reach adulthood. One of the things that Paul has to do is unify the Freemen and he has to use the prophecies left by the bene gesserit to do it, this will cause a lot of problems later on.
The second best fighting force in the dune universe at this time (and considered the best pre-dune novel) were the imperial sardukars that were raised in the also inhospitable prison world of salusa secundus. It is made clear in the novel that no one in the landsraad can fight on par with the sardukars, but they are defeated by freemen kids at one point, this is to show how much the Freemen are better then the Sardukars.
Actually, the only reason the Harkonnens were only able to win against the Atreides in the first movie was because the emperor borrowed some Sardukars to then. The only person confirmed in the house Atreides that could win against a imperial Sardukar were Duncan Idaho and Gurney Halleck, but they alone could not win the fight and Gurney was even away at the time.
This is why after Paul became the emperor he moved the house of Corino back to salusa secundus as and geo-enginered the planet into nice world so they could no longer make new Sardukars.
The freemen became the most skilled fighter only after Paul trained then in the "modern" ways of fighting.. He even taught stuff he learned from his mother that only the bene gesserit knew at the time, so things that were not even available to the Sardukars.
Remember, the freemen before Paul were not able to drive the Harkoneen away from Arrakis, let alone beat the Sardukars.. Only after Paul taught then those techniques that they became the best fighters in the universe.
So what made Freemen the best was the harsh environment, growing up fighting for extremely limited resources that made so only the best of the best survived and then all the training that Paul gave then..
But neither the fremen nor the Atreides alone could win an all out war against the imperial forces..
It took the freemen that already were great warriors plus Paul training and special techniques to make then into the fighting force that allowed Paul take over the imperium..
I would say the Freemen pre-paul were in average almost at Sardukar level with some surpassing then, but the Sardukar had more resources available that gave then the edge over the Freemen. But Paul teaching then took then to the next level and closed the gap and then unifying the Freemen turned then into an superior army compared to the Sardukars.
I also love Villeneuve's version, the design is amazing and has very clever ideas, I enjoyed it a lot! But Lynch's Dune has a special place for me.
The author does a good job of interviewing pretty much everyone in the cast and crew and gave me a good sense of what it must have been like to make the film.
The biggest problem with Lynch version (I think of it as the De Laurentiis version, as his name eclipsed Lynch's in the promotions at the time, and Lynch hadn't yet risen in stature with Twin Peaks) is that the story is simply too vast to be told in a single film, let alone one of < 140 minutes running time.
Other than that ... the De Laurentiis version was very uneven. Parts of it were excellent. Kyle McLaughlin as Paul was excellently cast, and there were several other notable players and performances (many of whom I wouldn't appreciate until much later), and when the sandworms appeared on screen, I believed. Other effects and editing ... not so much. Critics overwhelmingly panned the film, and it performed quite poorly at the box office.
The clips I've seen of Harrison's 3-part miniseries by John Harrison, and the current Villeneuve production, look considerably stronger.
Checking, it appears that among the longest-running mainstream films of all time were Cleopatra (243 minutes, or 4h8m), Gone With the Wind (238 minutes, or 3h58m), Lawrence of Arabia (222 minutes), and Ben Hur (217 minutes).
Gandhi, which I recall being remarkable at the time and including an intermission, ran only 191 minutes, or 3h11m.
The full Lord of the Rings trilogy runs 9h17m.
<https://wegotthiscovered.com/movies/the-top-15-longest-holly...>
book series is must read if you want richer experience.
But honestly, there is so many things wrong in his review that show he does not know anything about Dune, it look like this review is only for him to mention how much he liked the Lynch movie.
Only taking a look in the first four paragraphs.
Movie take place in year 21,267 not 10,196, it is in-universe year 10,196 AG, that mean after the navigator guild was formed that was when the calendars were reset.
The name of the substance is Melange not Spice and it is not a mineral, it is basically sand-worm shit.
He miss so much about why Leto was given Arrakis and why the Harkoneens took it back and completely miss the fact that it was the plan all along, i think this probably will be more clear in the next part, although it is mentioned by Leto to Paul that he knew it was a trap.
Paul never came to believe he was the messiah since he was not supposed to be, and surely not in the first movie. He will use the Bene Gesserit prophecies in his favor knowing full well the damage it will cause in the universe. But all that will take place in the second part so not sure why he is even mentioning.
The Kwisatz Haderach was not meant to be the savior of house Atreides and the Freemen like he say in the forth paragraph.
He make fun of Paul vision including Chani, first his dreams are the early signs of his prescience or his ability to see the future, so it is expected he would see her as she will play a important role in his future other then being his concubine and the mother of his children, she is the reason why Paul will rejected the Golden Path, his son will then accept it and became the god-emperor that will rule for 10,000 years. second, he dreaming of her is even in the books that is the source material although he keep forgetting it and things it is the Lynch movie.
He keep dismissing things that are in the book because they where not in the Lynch movie like this was a remake of the Lynch movie and not a completely separated and independent adaptation of the same source material.
The Lynch movie has a ton of problems as well, it had to cut many things to make the book fit into a 2h movie and it is one of the reasons it was a failure at the time, sure it achieved cult status by now, but it is not a movie without problems.
Also why Villenueve movie is so long that it had to be split in two and even with almost 6h they had to cut stuff from the books. It sure has its problems but it is way better then the Lynch movie.. hell, even the John Harrison series is better then the Lynch movie in my opinion.
i personally prefer the film making on Villenueve mostly because he has double the time and 35 years of CGI and effects available to him so there are things he can show now that Lynch could not on the other hand Lynch needed to rely much more on storytelling to give us information while Villenueve can just show things and hope we will get it..
Another thing.. Lynch movie came out in the 80s when scifi was still in its infancy, so everything was new and exciting.. By now everything has being done and re-done a bazillion of times.. In the 80s they were still learning how to do things and remembers Lynch's Dune was a failure at the time.. Sure it achieved cult status now but it had its fair share of bad criticism when it was released..
One example, it was unthinkable making a film split in two parts in the 80s while it is common now.. On the other hand having 5min of face talking doing exposition on the start of the movie like it is done in Lynch movie is unthinkable now when you have the CGI to show stuff but it was often a necessity in the 80s.. They are both products of their time and work with were available to then..
But i think that if he will go on to write an essay about the movie, first he should watch the full movie and not only half. And second he should judge the movie on its own merits and defects and not keep comparing it to the Lynch movie at every corner. He think the movie making is not good tell us why instead of saying it is bad because Lynch made it different and he like Lynch more so Villenueve is automatically bad..
like he say that in Lynch film he use voice over to show characters inner voices, and that this make it "vastly texture-enriching and deftly add a haunting dimension of subjectivity", i on the other hand always found lynch's voice over inner voices to be weird and out of place even if it add to the movie, i dislike then not because they are there but how they were done.. The problem is that how they were done is a product of the time the movie was made and resources available at that time, it would never be done the same way today even if one choose to do inner voices..
Same when he talk about the Gom Jabbar test.. Lynch movie has to show the burning hand in the box melting as if it was actually happening to his hand to show the pain that Paul is facing at that moment and has to use his inner voice for the litany of fear.. While Villenueve show us glimpses of visions of a fully carbonized hand in the desert to make it clear what Paul is felling without actually showing what is happening to his hand so we can grasp the level of pain without really knowing it and then he cut to Jessica outside in despair chanting the litany of fear that also add context to show the severity of the test and he does this just because he the time to do it.. He think the Lynch version show the pain better because it was more explicit while i think the Villenueve does a better job exactly for the opposite reason.. totally a matter of personal taste.. Neither Lynch or Villenueve movie are bad because of it, just diferent ways of portraying things each limited by the resources available.. And to go even further, neither does a good job in portraying the fear the reverend mother felt of Paul for a split second that caused her to end the test because the pain level he was enduring was so high..
So it seen unfair to compare both works to each other like he did..
If he want write about why he prefer the Lynch movie over the Villenueve movie it is totally fine, but do not call it a review for Villenueve movie.
Both are good movies and both have their fair share of defects, some will prefer one, some the other and not everyone will agree and again this is fine.. But just because you prefer one over the other first it does not make the other bad and second it is not an excuse to just bash the other because they did not make things the same way..
This is why his review sound dull and elitist to me.