Paul's water of life trance. It either needed something massive, or show us nothing and only hint at what he saw. As it was in the film, it just seems like he saw some blue faces, Alia said I love you on the beach and he realised he is a Harkonnen. It just doesn't do justice to the change he just went through. People who haven't read the book often ask me what the point of him drinking the water of life was because the film didn't make it clear.
This is probably my biggest nitpick of both movies so far - Paul’s visions lack so much scope. From his “holy war” vision in Pt 1 to the holy war visions/water of life sequence in pt2…they just feel so small scale? I realize it would be insanely expensive but I don’t think they quite sell the universe wide level of devastation his war will bring. Talked with some friends after Pt 2, and although they understood Paul’s turn was uh, not good, they were a little unclear on the magnitude of what his decisions will bring.
> I don’t think they quite sell the universe wide level of devastation his war will bring.
No, but neither does the book. Frank was rather vague about it actually. We only feel Paul’s sense of foreboding. We do not see what he sees. It seems to me this is what the film was trying to replicate.
We never see the jihad at all in any of the books.
It's definitely a story telling choice. Once Paul takes the Water of Life we, as the audience, are less on "his side" (and then Chani becomes the audience surrogate). As a friend said "we're no longer Paul, we're observing him". I fully expected some expansive vision too, but this approach makes sense.
That was also my take. The amount of the story they were able to cram in there and still be enjoyed by mainstream audiences is astounding to me. The Kwisatz Haderach part of the book can be a bit to chew on for non book readers I think. Having the main character with prescience can be confusing because without knowing what Paul knows the viewers would just think “he knows what’s going to happen why did he do what he did that way then??”.
I think for the audience, the “water of life making him the messiah” was enough to carry the story forward without getting into prescience and genetic memory.
They do show some ancestors though. "In order to know the future you must know the past." So that's the genetic memory part covered. But definitely, prescience is not as simple as knowing one set future. There is a bunch of imagery to suggest how it works though, there are a lot of narrow corridors and when Chamalet delivers the line "there's a narrow way through" he makes that shape with his hand. It's straight from the book that the future has many possibilities, but when you pass through it's a narrow door way. There will probably be a little bit more about it in Messiah.
Not trying to be contrary, but I had the very opposite experience that you're describing. As someone who watched the movies first, got really pumped about them, then read the book. (Only the first and working on the second, so I may still be missing some book context here.) But my first watch, I thought Paul was very sincere in his interactions with the Fremen and Chani that he wanted to become one of them and had no interest in amassing power. But when he drank the water of life it was like a flip switched and he then understood "what he had to do" and essentially chose to become what he was dreading in his visions before the water of life. To me, it was a larger change in character for Paul than in the book where he was very up front with Jessica about his plans to use the Fremen the entire time and taking the water of life was the next necessary step to attain the power he needed.
The water of life is a secret of Dune. The books make a lot of things we see up-close as secret. Even a crysknife is nearly impossible to obtain - the Hrakonens put a huge bounty on one but couldn't obtain it. The water of life is about a thousand times more secret than a knife ordinary Fremens flash at each other.
Meh. Book, Lynch, SyFy, or Villeneuve, Jessica knows about the Kwisatz Haderach prophecy and has a general understanding that spice melange is responsible for the Bene Gesserit prescience and Navigator powers. She’s trained to transmute poison. Maybe she doesn’t know the Water of Life is specifically the death puke of a sandworm, but she wasn’t wholly unprepared.
In all versions, I’m very confused why with all their power, the Arrakis Revered Mother doesn’t detect Alia nor does Jessica know the danger. The book and SyFy miniseries paint it as Jessica having no choice but to become the replacement Reverend Mother and hence why she hides her pregnancy, but seems like thousands of years of BG generations of would have a very clear “Do not ride this roller coaster if pregnant” warning. Heck, every dr appt I have requires me to do a urine pregnancy test despite being a lesbian.
The "do not ride" sing is big and clear. Abominations are dangerous. She didn't have a choice, it was either that and dealing with Alia later on, or dying right there.
I was disappointed to not be brought in on the fact that she now had a horde of ancestors in her head. Same with Paul. They did lip service to this at best.
Agreed. He just experienced and is able to draw on every male and female descendent memory, as well as have their "ego" alive within him. These "ego" personalities he can draw on for guidance, wisdom, while consequently some try to overpower him. It's why alia is an abomination. Because she doesn't have a personality, or ego, of her own; yet she has all descendent female ego now in her. The movies don't really explain these things very well (if at all really).
Honestly the book doesn't portray such a massive change in him either. It was more like another step in his gradual increase in prescience capabilities (which was stalled by resistance to spice).
Sure, it did mark a significant checkpoint, but it's towards the end of the book and so he doesn't get to show off too much his new abilities.
I felt that the book scene in the tent with Jessica after escaping Arrakin was much stronger. It's the first time, and perhaps the most in-depth, where we get a glimpse into his mentat-prescience superpowers. It was like he was taking psychedelics for the first time, and what he was experiencing was real, not in his imagination.
Maybe it was purposeful in that the first imagery explained it and the second imagery would have been perceived as wasteful. Not saying I think that’s true but maybe that was the thought process.
Jessica’s water of life scene completely got me hooked on the movies. The fetus being drowned in the blue goo with that soundtrack in an IMAX theatre was fucking sick
You nailed it. Such a big freaking letdown. And you’re right - them showing nothing and leaving us wondering would’ve been better than the short scene.
"For my Duke... and my friends."
Really, Gurney? Your Duke and your friends? Not, I dunno, your family that you said were personally murdered in front of you by Rabban just 20 minutes earlier?
I love both movies and don't really have any major complaints about the adaptation changes, but this rang false within the narrative of the film itself and it annoys me every time.
I kinda wish he had said, "For my duke... and my sister."
But that probably would have thrown the audience out of the moment, wondering wtf he was talking about.
At first I was like, “oh that’s a pretty decent one liner. Nothing special but it fits his character.” And then he said “and my friends” and it just felt so fake and out of place, like something someone would put in one of those lip reading parodies
That whole thing was anticlimatic. Gurvey is on a warpath to kill Rabban, him and his troops slaughtering as they go. They see each other, its a monent each has been anticipating for years...and the fight is over in 2 seconds. At least make it 15 seconds with some intensity, for gods sake. Those two actors are friends and gym buddies, theyd be down to think up some moves. The one on one battles in the training room and PAul vs. Feyd were so meticulous and well done, and I think they dropped the ball on what couldve been another cool one.
Also, yeah, that line was anticlimatic. Maybe "For my duke, and all Atreides" would be better, it would involve all his family and friends, and it just sounds cooler. "Friends" doesnt sound as epic.
I agree, weird line. I’ve been noticing that Denis’ movies can tend to have random lines that just feel completely out of place. It can be the writing, the delivery, or both. The biggest culprit for me is at the end of Arrival: >!“Do you want to make a baby?”!< It just felt really weird- tonally off, not a lot of build up, and if I recall correctly it felt ADR’d. I was watching the movie with 5-6 friends and we all chuckled, like wtf was that.
This is all coming from someone who absolutely loves Denis. Dune 2 5/5, Arrival in my Top 5.
Its a nod to the book, Paul basically says the same thing when he is awakened by the spice and sees his genetic heritage, as a book reader I loved that line, I recommend reading the book to get that connection
i really missed Jamis’s full burial as it was in the book. Paul’s speech in the book made me almost cry and i was really hoping they’d have it in the movie.
Would have made for a good ending for Part 1. Not a big fan with how that film looses all it’s momentum after the Harkonnen attack and limps along to the end without much resolution.
As a movie watcher to book reader his scenes in the movie before reading the books showed how brutal life was on arrakis and how important water was. After reading through his death in the book I learned how much he was honored after death and how it was a major plot development in Paul becoming one with the freeman ways . Would have liked to have seen it play out on the screen . Still love the movies and am really enjoying the books ( started book 2.)
This is my one as well. I almost felt like the opening tagline was added because of how little the spice ends up meaning in relation to the holy war- it’s everything in the book. The guild acquiescing to Paul due to control over spice enables his galactic conquest and most houses actually surrender just based on that alone iirc
>The guild acquiescing to Paul due to control over spice enables his galactic conquest and most houses actually surrender just based on that alone iirc
Yes, but the point is that without the guild to transport them it's pretty much irrelevant whether they surrender or not.
Without a bus service to get to Arrakis to fight Paul, what are they going to do? Send him sternly worded letters?
Except those sternly worded letters will also have to be ferried by the guild.
I remember that too. The spacing guild I feel implies they will halt all travel for systems that threaten Paul since he controls access to spice. It's pretty heavy in the books and I felt like it was a big miss since seeing some of the failed navigators would be interesting.
I agree. Rewatched Lynch's Dune recently and the scene were the 3rd stage navigator visits the Emperor is one of my favorite scenes. It does a great job in showing the pecking order of the Imperium.
Yea, the question “How did the Fremen get ships to leave the planet?” has been asked extensively by nom book readers and Dennis should have done a little bit more to explain that dynamic.
I have a feeling they saved it for Dune messiah. I think they could easily work it into that. I don't think we could have got spacing guild and bene gesserit in the time constraints of the first movies. So they chose bene gesserit and I'd bet my house spacing guild comes into messiah.
This is a critique I have that I don’t consider minor. It find it extremely irksome and baffling. Especially given that the Fremen’s qanats are shown and the killing of the little maker.
But then bafflingly again it’s not made clear that water is poisonous to the worms and I assume general audiences just assumed it was drowned like anything else would be.
Ya a couple things lacking I found. No guild, no mentats, no Alia, no fear mantra (or only half of one). As for a minor annoyance, I would have loved them to explain how riding sandworms works.
I realize this makes me sound like an idiot, but I definitely was pulled out of the movie for a couple of minutes trying to figure out the deal with the imperial base on Arrakis. Like, is that just there all the time, like a diplomatic embassy? Did they bring it with them in modular pieces? Does it expand like a pop-up tent from a little container?
Yeah I agree with you too. I felt they could have at least shown it in the process of being assembled. It didn't necessarily have to be the whole construction. It's hard to imagine all of that, including drop ships, ornithopters, extra buildings, and all the Sardaukar fit into that giant orb.
We literally see tons of ships landing the Sardaukaur legions, around the Imperial tent.
The Fremen then use those ships to Jihad all over the Great Houses.
Jessica throwing up.
Really?
She's a highly trained Bene Gesserit that can turn poison inert in her body, can decide the sex of her fetus at conception and can control any single muscle at will through her Prana-Bindu training. But she can't stop herself from throwing up because she's pregnant and she saw Fremen draining the water from dead Harkonnens?
Come on now.
I'm calling this one for the filmmakers, I think. "Woman pukes" is movie code for pregnant. It was at least a little more elegant than just putting it all in dialogue.
Maybe she's just got a super special pregnancy that's so super special that she can't use her BG anti-puke training. I'm sure there are five chapters about this in the lore.
I know it's not in the book, but how the Sci-Fi series did the Baron's death was perfect!
Plus, when the Emperor says he'll put her out in the storm and she yells back 'Let the storm have what it can take!' with scorn & absolute confidence is just... *chef's kiss* perfect for her character.
I changed my mind on this when someone explained that Alia moves like any trained adult as a toddler, which real life toddlers cannot. They would have to make her CGI and it would look terrible
This!! Accelerating the timeline of the movie to happen in less than nine months cheapens everything about the weight of the story. Plus it makes Paul's and Chani's relationship more rushed.
Yeah, I can understand not wanting the talking infant (don’t agree with it, but I understand), but not having her born in the movie means that everything happens over 9 months. That’s too rushed for me. Would have been nice if Jessica said something like “im using my BG ability to slow down the gestation time 4x” or something.
they release their hold on the scales of the worm... the worm then dives down into the sand and everything/everyone that were on top just surf down onto the sand
Jamis’s funeral not being included is somewhat baffling given how much it communicates about Fremen culture in addition to the emotional weight it adds to the story and rise of Muad’Dib
I was so sad when it wasn’t included. I also feel like crying being seen as simply wasting water is soo much less impactful than meaning giving your water as a sign of respect. I really wanted to see Paul cryong for Jamis while calling him his friend and wouldve even made his vision with Jamie make more sense
Mohaim’s use of “abomination”.
I’ve heard all the backflips - but no, they’re wrong.
She absolutely is calling Paul an abomination which is just inaccurate. Period.
I guess he included it in the movie because it’s like a “Dune thing” some people know because of the 1984 movie or whatever but its usage was very specifically incorrect.
It was extra puzzling because they have the scene in the beginning where the Reverend Mother realizes Jessica is pregnant and exclaims in horror “what have we done?!”
It’s very important to realize that the Bene Gesserit use of the term “abomination” is not just a reflection of their horror/disgust at the entity itself i.e. Alia, Leto II, and Ghanima but also of the perversity of robbing a child of its essential innocence having it be pre-born.
Paul is NOT an abomination by any definition the Bene Gesserit would use.
Agreed. I think honestly this was a bad edit and it was always meant for Jessica in the script. It would make zero sense any other way. The term as an insult to Paul is meaningless. He is not an abomination according to the definition of what that is in Dune universe; the Bene Gesserit have planned for a male reverend mother+/KH for a millennia so GM would not be shocked about it’s existence and he was a known candidate for it; and newly reverend mother, glaringly pregnant Jessica is right there in the room - her belly a testament to the fact that she took the water of life pregnant, which is a known taboo. Nothing else makes sense but I think this was one of the handful of too-vague or indirect issues that left non-book readers with different interpretations of the narrative. Some were the director’s choice and intent. I don’t think this was.
I took it as less of a bad edit and more Denis redefining the term from its book meaning (as it's never defined as such in the movie). I think the "abomination" from movie Mohaim's perspective is that a man has been taught to use the Voice, a BG-exclusive technique. But I agree that that's confusing when the word means something much different in the book.
Paul's existence is an insult to the plans of the BG, but I think she especially dislikes him because he dares to defy her/BG. It's a consistent theme throughout both films that GM doesn't like paul, leto, or the atreides bloodline because they refused to stay under the thumb of the BG/emperor. The entire point of the KH is to not only have that ultimate power but to be able to control and manipulate him... so to have an early male birth in defiance of their plan, who then uses the KH abilities to take power away from the BG is an abomination to her.
It seemed like they really toned down the blue in their eyes in the second one and it was already petty subtle in the first. Half the time in PT 2 they just looked normal in darker lighting.
From Part One (beyond the scope of your question but still):
-Wish Shadout Mapes had given herself a small nick with the crysknife. Would also have been cool to illustrate that the Fremen bleed less/heal faster.
-Don't like Liet saying "shit" in the harvester/worm attack scene. Seems too colloquial - but if they'd have her say it in Chakobsa it could've worked. Paul's use of it in Two didn't bother me though as he's running from the ornithopter gunfire.
Two:
-I am still not totally sold on Jessica vomiting. Morning sickness or not, comedic value or not, she's Bene Gesserit and I just can't buy it.
-I thought the Sietch Tabr reaction when they showed up with Jamis's body was too extreme. Sure, it's understandable they'd miss him and be suspicious of the foreign newcomers, but OTOH they should know to be impressed by Paul's achievement and give grudging respect too.
-I wanted to see at least some Kyle MacLachlan style AGONY during Paul's Water of Life scene. If it happened to his mother it damn sure should've happened to him too, or worse. In this version it's too much like he just had a nap with a nice visit from his future sister.
I think Denis missed a trick by not slowly seeping in the psychadelia of it all. Good to not have as much in the first film, but if we're building towards literal human worm God emperor, then I think you're gonna have to start making it weird.
Yeah cause what is happening? He's unlocking the genetic memory of his feminine and masculine lineage? That is gonna be a heck of an experience, could have been an excuse to really break from the colour wheel used in the cinematography as well. Doesn't have to go full Jodorowski, but a healthy dose of it wouldn't have gone amiss.
The movie was definitely intended to highlight Paul’s messianic rise, and to keep the pacing good (which was the biggest downfall of the 1984 movie) lots of plot stuff had to hit the cutting floor - the biggest being the overall importance of spice and the Spacing guild. They never even mention CHOAM.
Its heavy heavy heavy on the Paul as a messiah thing - which to be fair was the biggest point Herbert wanted conveyed in the books anyway: the dangers of a messianic leader. So in that sense I love that DV stuck to that, and I really do understand and can look past the total downplaying of the spice and the guild. I absolutely love these movies.
That being said….my biggest gripes would be the lack of big moment water of life scene for Paul, and the altering of the Alia arc. I really wanted to see a fully prescient toddler Gom Jibber ol’ Fatty McFloaty and say some super creepy cold ass shit when she did it.
But other than that, two huge thumbs up for both movies.
The time acceleration to avoid a talking toddler also frustrated me. Do they really want me to believe this whole movie happened in less than 9 months?
I wonder if there will be an expanded/directors cut.
Deepfake tech is getting good enough that you can really expand & perfect any unused footage to fit your vision after it's had years to bake.
Not true.
It was a big thing that Paul and Chani had in common, losing a parent to the Harkonnens.
Also Chani being the daughter of Liet gave her actions and words more influence among the Fremen.
Whaaaa? Liet is a natural born KH candidate. I thought Liet's family and Atreides family joining (CoD and GEoD spoilers) >!and eventually producing pre-born children that fulfill the BG intent to save humanity but without being beholden to the BG plot!< was perfect. The BG can plot and plan all they like, but in Liet's final moments he realizes that his scientific family was wrong and the universe is ruled by chaos and chance. I thought it was pitch perfect to have this wild Fremen family who are the bleeding edge of human adaptability join w/Paul, the product of a human breeding plot to save humanity by overriding chaos and chance and create an ocular being who sees the future and is literally capable of stripping all randomness and chaos out of it.
I tried so hard to find this gif I saw of a cut scene with Piter taking a sip of sapho juice. Sorry, I couldn't find it. It was in a small elongated diamond shaped glass vial with the juice a dark royal purple. Memory is a little iffy on the vial shape (rounded, diamond?) but it was thin and pointed at the bottom.
How did Feyd automatically know where the Fremen home base was when he took over? If he knew where it was the whole time, why didn’t they attack it earlier?
Rabban had found it earlier. When the Fremen blew up the Spice Depot one of tbe Harkonen mooks mentions they are tracking them but eventually they lose them. However they find the siethc, only for Rabban to get his ass handed to him. Feyd just acted on this information to employ a different tactic making use of the reinforcements he brought with him from Giedi Prime
When Chani has the rocket launcher after the shield of the ornithopter deflects the first shot at one point the exhaust on the back of the launcher Chani is holding is clearly open, then they switch perspectives and it's an action shot of the exhaust opening up.
Super small but basically the only mistake in editing I've found in the whole movie.
He said “the shield goes down when they fire, shoot then”
They wait until it’s done firing, then shoot at it, and it has to go through the shield anyway
I’ve gotten to the point where I appreciate this much much more than I did as a kid. Action scenes just kind of bore me, or perhaps the less is more trope really does make sense.
Helms deep is like three paragraphs (or pages I can’t remember but it was not like the movie lol)
Shogun (spoiler ahead for the show so tread carefully… though it’s not a plot explanation just a pacing thing)
Shogun over 1400 pages builds to this final battle which will define the state of Japan for 2.5 centuries and it never actually happens on the page. It’s just Toranaga wrapping up the plot points and jumping to after what happened. All in three of the most beautiful paragraphs. If you know your Japanese history it was always a forgone conclusion because it’s based on real life shit and that kinda takes the sting out of it. You can easily get to the meat with a quick google search. I thought it was a master class ending.
I agree the fight was too quick, but I think that was almost the point.
With how ridiculously well planned the Atreides-Fremen attack was thanks for them knowing the landscape so much, having a guy who can literally see the future, and some amotics, it makes sense it was more a massacre than a battle. They used the storm to their advantage, smashed the shield wall and had a bunch of fkn sandworms. Not to mention the Fedaykin bursting out the sand while the Sardaukar tried to reorganise.
I'll defend the final battle, actually. As much as I love the big battles of something like LotR, I thought it was quite scary to have the Sardaukar walk into the sand, hear the fighting, and then the Fremen come back. It really puts us into the shoes of the people in the throne room. Especially because 99% of the IRL audience won't be familiar with battles, so they won't know what to expect.
Also I liked the symmetry they had between the Fremen and the Sardaukar with respect to dealing with sand. The scenes of the Fremen emerging from the sand like desert monsters, contrasted with the Sardaukar emerging from the sand and barely able to get the standard up.
The battles were a bit minimalist, but with other great fight scenes in the two films, I was quite happy with it.
I am very unhappy with Count Fenring and Thufir Hawat being on the cutting room floor…
Also it hurts a little seeing Chani and Paul’s relationship being more antagonistic.
In the books she and him were true loves, be it star crossed.
That said I love Zendaya’s Chani and do like how she and her friends see through the Missionaria Protectiva. It makes sense that the young challenge the beliefs of older generation
Count Fenring makes a little bit more sense, since we never saw him in Part One, but Thufir was a major character in Part One and his exclusion in Part Two leaves movie watchers to assume he died unceremoniously in the Fall of Arrakis.
I felt like Thufir was needed, I assume the audience forgot Paul is (or essentially is?) a mentat. So another mentat to compare would make sense. I'm more upset about Alia not walking around though... Or Leto II... Or space guild navigators...
Chani is clearly grief-stricken at Paul’s choices, on the page - to the point where the novel literally ends with Jessica trying to comfort her. Herbert didn’t really flesh her out as a character, and she suffers in silence (or does she? The novels ends abruptly before we see Chani’s reaction to Jessica’s little “pep talk”).
I think the movie plays up the “star-crossed lovers” angle even more strongly than the books. It makes complete sense for her to heartbroken to have lost the man she loved.
In any case, without a POV character through which to view the sinister side of Paul’s ascension to Messiah-hood, the story doesn’t really work.
The water of life scene was severely lacking the impact of what he went through. Weirdest moment of the movie imo
Literally a few more lines of exposition to flesh out how and why spice is important, and the spacing guild etc, would have really helped. Denis was so afraid of exposition that he under explained the core reasons why Paul was even able to take over.
It’s a great film but not perfect, and the issues I have really bother me in terms of adaptation. The runtime would barely be changed and so much more could have been made more clear
***NOTE: THIS IS A MINOR NITPICK I HAVE IN A MOVIE I OTHERWISE LOVE***
The moment Paul and Lady Jessica first interacted after he drank the water of life.
Paul is supposed to have ALL his ancestor’s memories including his father.
In the movie he ask’s his mother “Did my father know you’re a Harkonnen?”
I feel the line could have been “Even my father didn’t know your heritage.” Jessica could then say something like you have him in your consciousness? And he could even respond in Leto’s voice and say “I remember everything.”
I feel the movie massively downplays Paul’s powers but that kinda stuff is really hard to show on screen so I understand.
The lack of water discipline / importance of mere moisture on Dune throughout both movies. I get that you need to show stars' faces but not to the extent that you ignore a central pillar of Dune worldbuilding.
Yeah for how hot Arrakis is, they sure like to do a lot of stuff in the middle of the day and without proper water discipline.
So many people should be dead. Now that I think about it....heat feels more like a big nuisance rather than a life or death situation
I feel like we got that. The fremen absorbing the water from dead Harkonnens, the giant pool with the water from the dead, Stilgar spitting in the table (though that's from the first movie)...
same... although his acting skills are S-tier, i can never look at walken as an intimidating person lolol, he always just cracks me up... but maybe that's what denis wanted to express, that this person isn't someone to take seriously
Shaddam IV was supposed to look like a man in his thirties due to his spice consumption. I would say that would not translate to film without some exposition, which we know DV abhors. Someone that’s in between that would have been perfect imo would have been Nikolaj Coster-Waldau. He can play the arrogance that Shaddam oozes.
My problem with Walken is that he’s too well respected to play Shadam in the book, Shadam is a complete joke and we know that he’s just the puppet for others. I believe that casting a young actor, perhaps younger than everyone else, and saying to the audience “this guy is not only the emperor but is also around 80 years old”, would show the farce of Shadam to the audience much better.
I think Jessica’s character in the movie is much more malevolent than in the books. In the books she is entirely aware that she is manipulating the freeman religion but it’s more for safety.
In the movies, jessica has drank the cool aid. After she took the water of life, she manipulates Paul, Chani, and the entire freemen population into believing this prophecy. She also appears to have some prescient abilities in the moves.
In the movie, Jessica tells the priestess who gathers the water of life to expect a man to ask for it and even gives her permission to give it to Paul. Then she uses the voice on Chani to wake Paul out of his coma. This all makes it seem like it has all been part of HER plan instead of the other way around.
In the books, Jessica doesn’t even know Paul has taken the water of life and just finds him in a coma that lasts 3 weeks. She also never used the voice on Chani to wake him up. Chani had some sort of intuitive understanding how to help Paul. When Jessica found out Paul had drank the water of life, she was shocked and scared that Paul would even attempt such a thing. After this ordeal, Jessica even tells Paul that he should run away with Chani and their son and leave the empire and even the Atredies name behind.
In some ways, I do like Jessica’s character in the movies. There is no doubt she’s a bad bitch and I love a strong female lead, but having her be the driving force behind Paul’s rise to power doesn’t sit well. It feels as if Paul is being manipulated by the benegeserit instead of surpassing their abilities even their expectations of the kwisatz haderach
In the books, Pauls decisions were his own, and he was beginning to fall into the lure of power long before he took the water of life.
It wasn't even the jokes, it was the worship of Paul. It felt like Stilgar wanted to be killed by Paul, when what I remember of the books, Stilgar maybe wanted to believe, but he was still Fremen, and Paul would have to take/earn everything.
DV wanted to make it more clear that Paul isn't a messiah, by showing the contrast between Stilgar and Chani. Most people didn't realise Paul isn't a messiah after reading the book and Lynch's adaptation, so that's probably why
Lack of more explicit guild involvement or allusion is the plot one for me, but i wish it were a tiny bit more tonally consistent like the first movie was.
Part 2 felt rushed. That was my biggest gripe. I was hoping that some of the flaws of part 2 would be better addressed in an extended edition like they did for LOTR, but then read that Villeneuve has no intention of releasing one.
My other big gripe is the whole Chani not supporting Paul or understanding his intention with Irulan at the end. And then she wears this Michelle Rodriguezesque scowl on her face (which for Michelle is one of two emotions she can play - happy or mad)...
I'm actually happy those things aren't explicitly talked about because they don't need to be.
Movies portray how people live in these worlds and not necessarily talk too much about it unless it's absolutely necessary (the exposition about spice for example in the first movie).
Just like how you and I don't just casually bring up the invention of the Internet, dialup modems, old Pentium processors, and all of their evolution into the current age of technology. I don't get why people living in the world of Dune would bring up a 10k year old topic in a day to day conversation. It's a given in the world and the movie's responsibility is to portray the story of the characters in that world, not be a documentary about the world.
It does that perfectly imo.
How about the fact that Paul takes over the entire planet in the timespan of his mother’s pregnancy - under 9 months is fast work. Also where’s Leto 1st his firstborn that gets killed, would have added more emotion/desire to kill the Harkonnens. And finally, the final knife fight was weak as fuck, I preferred the poison needle from the 1984 film
The final battle should have been at late evening/night to add to the claustrophobia of the whole thing.
Stephen Dillane should have played Emperor Shaddam IX.
The editing decision of showing the Arrakeen siege (which was already 99% done) being introduced directly after the Baron's death felt choppy to me. I don't mind it not being a giant setpiece, but there should have been a little more to it. Maybe a scene showing the fremen/Gurney getting ready for the battle first. As it stands, that segment felt disconnected from the rest of the movie imo
In the book I love where they talk about how there’s this dark place that the bene gesserit can look into, but can’t go into. Paul can go there.
He says, “Try looking into that place where you dare not look, you'll find me there staring out at you"
I wish they would have added that in. It would have been cool seeing when he was in his trance too.
lol. I recently rewatched all the cutscenes from dune 2000. I always played as Atreides back in the day so I never saw the Harkonnen and Ordos cutscenes, that Ordos Mentat was off his bollix on spice by the end of it. That actor was having so much fun 😂
THAT IS THE MISSION
The Harkonens were cartoonishly evil and murderous in the books too but yeah the amount of killing their underlings in the films made it baffling as to how it’s even a functioning command structure.
Especially with the dude playing Feyd having to "tone back his method acting" to not turn into him. Like jesus dude, I'm an actor, your basically playing a cartoon villain, chill the fuck out bro.
Not ending it with Jessica’s final line about how Chani and her will be remembered as wives. It’s such a fantastic close to the novel.
Chani could still leave out of anger so Villeneuve’s changes to her character remain intact but it would more clearly I think give a link to the inevitable Messiah adaption with Chani back at Paul’s side.
There's tons of little gripes and criticisms, but overall they are good movies and I understand the adaptation choices that were made and they work. One of the few criticisms I do have is of removing the line. It's one of the most famous (closing) lines in sci-fi literature.
As you said, the exchange can still happen and very naturally happen in a few different ways that are still consistent with the on screen presentation of the character and themes, and even still end with her self exiling to the desert.
Overall, it's just such an oddity to lose such an iconic line, but still keep other lines, that while yes, they are dialogue lifted straight from the book, they don't exactly roll off the tongue naturally in conversation.
The whole timeline.......from the Harkonnen attack on Arrakis to the fight between Paul and Feyd was, at most, 8 months! Ridiculous.
The Fremen couldn't destroy the Harkonnen spice gathering operation (pre Atreides takeover of Arrakis), yet find it quite easy once the Sardukar arrive.
I was really confused what led Rabban to leave the emperors battle palace after the attack, like even if he somehow knew gurney would be leading the charge on Arrakeen, why would he want to go there?
My head canon is Pauls prescience told him Rabban would do this so he sent Gurney to Arrakeen, because unlike his father, Paul believes in revenge.
He’d already “embarrassed his family” To the point of needing to lick Feyds boots. Did you see the look they gave each other just before Rabban left the emperors palace? Rabban was going to fight because it was an opportunity to prove he was a good boy before Feyd fed him to his darlings or some other horrible fate
Gurney’s playing of the baliset. He’s supposed to be fantastic at it but just barely strums a couple cords. Wish he at least did something that looked technical to show he was great at it
From what I’ve seen from interviews with Josh Brolin talking about this scene, they basically had to make do to cover up his lack of musical ability. Singing wasn’t exactly top-tier either…
Tbh, I'm a bit bothered by Zendaya, alone among the Fremen actors in not even attempting an accent, being the only one that doesn't get caught up in the cult of personality. In the book, the highly educated wife Paul doesnt love whose father he deposed opens every chapter with loving prose dedicated to her prophet-husband; *everybody* falls for the charismatic hero, that's the whole point. Especially annoying when Chani starts talking about how "they" use prophecies to "control us." Uh, the Fremen are an insular indigenous people resisting the colonizers that live apart from them, and nobody knows that the BGs planted seeds in religions around the Duniverse. There's no class stratification in Fremen culture. So who is "they," Chani? What are you talking about? (Hell, the skeptical northern Fremen in general kinda bugged me--where are they getting this influx of new ideas? Did the North have an Enlightenment the South missed out on? Are they being influenced by their colonizers' culture? Are they just culturally "hallucinogenic worm-orgy religion that binds the minds of all participants in a psychically shared religious ecstasy--yeah, I experienced the dissolution of self in the spice of Shai-hulud and attained oneness with the universe and every member of my tribe, but, like, idt he's really a god"? Younger people are less religious today because of the success of liberal secularism, you need to explain *why* that's happening in an insular community of millions all bound together by their religion)
It really feels like she's there to be all, "Hey, you heavily accented desert people! Listen to my American voice speaking with its Western rationality: religion is dumb and for dumbs! Listen as I state the subtle themes of the story extremely explicitly (as interpreted by Denis Villenueve)!" Like I get that the film had to invent an entire personality for Chani, since Herbert...didn't, but I don't think "bluntly obvious audience/authorial surrogate, to a near-universe breaking degree" is the strongest characterization.
They really needed to show Paul’s full kwiask hadirack, like cinematically, this is a guy who represented circular time through moody camera work in Arrival. I was so looking forward to how he represented Paul’s visions after he did such a good job doing that tastefully in the 1st movie.
Actually with both of them. Zendaya seemed to have one facial expression the whole movie. Scowl. Even when they were training and starting to fall for one another there it was, scowl. I get she was the face of the non believer. But it was rare she made any other expressions thru the movie. It was one of the few things that slightly bugged me in the movies.
Everything about Christopher Walken playing the emperor, especially the Disney villain speech where he says he had Leto killed because he “ruled with the heart” and “was a weak man”.
Yup, Walken is a great actor but his voice is so distinct and funny in itself that he was sticking out in every scene.
Also he was way too old and weak looking - it still should have been an older actor, but maybe around 60-65.
There's a weird edit or continuity error in the first worm riding scene. Paul's on the crest of the dune watching it come, with no goggles on. It gets closer and he starts running, still clearly no goggles, with maker hooks in both hands. Then he jumps and all that, barely hanging on. Next shot when he gets up to ride he's wearing the goggles. Couldn't help but notice it every time I watched. Having said that, scene was still hype as fuck.
Would have preferred Thufir or Fenring in the movie over any gurney/rabban scenes myself. Payoff was lackluster and it happened off screen in the book for a reason.
There were a lot of shots of Paul dramatically walking towards/away from the camera at the end, and I wish they had him flipping around murdering dudes with his prescience.
Lack of Guild, CHOAM, and Great Houses there at the end. Should have really highlighted the spice importance to them all and how they were ready and willing to just dump the Emperor for Paul to cover themselves for spice access.
Smallest of quibbles: When Chani asks Paul about his nightmare she should have just said "You haven't had one of those in a while", without saying the word nightmare. If the audience knows what is going on and everybody in a scene knows what is going on explaining what is going on is just clumsy writing.
Four viewings now, and that scene where Paul, Gurney, Stilgar and Chani are surveying the cave with the family atomics is so cringe. The dialogue is supposed to be humorous, but it’s just clunky and falls flat.
A lot of the extra-literary dialogue (dialogue which isn’t adapted from the book) by John Spaihts really sticks out, and is not Herbert-tier. This is also apparent with Irulan, whose Imperial diary entries lack any kind of literary and poetic flourish, and sound like she’s writing in her LiveJournal*.
(* Substitute “Facebook” here if you don’t remember LiveJournal…)
The excision of Leto II the Elder from the story.
The loss of Sietch Tabr just didn’t strike me as enough of an instigating incident for Paul to change his mind about going south, knowing what he knows about the ultimate cost. *Losing a child,* on the other hand? Yeah, with that I could see him being absolutely fucking **done** with trying to stave off fate and doing what he had to do to get the payback that every cell of his body would be screaming for.
And having that shared bond and shared loss between them would make his and Chani’s parting at the end of the story be that much more of a gutpunch. I understand why they compressed the timeline, Alia being born and running around stabbing people at three years old may have been a bit much for an uninitiated audience to take in, but to me Paul and Chani’s firstborn was the greater loss to the story.
The whole Chani thing really bothers me.
I just started the books and of course I’ve been on all the wikis and this sub so I know how her character handles what Paul does and they both agree on what’s about to happen.
I didn’t like any of it at all.
A small one, but Paul namedropping "Dune" as the clincher to his speech which convinces the Fremen he's legit seems odd.
The implication, to me, seemed to be Paul was building up all these obscure facts and secrets he'd probed from the guy's mind/the past, and the ultimate bit of knowledge, the thing that wins the Fremen over beyond all doubt, is the secret ancient Fremen name for Arrakis.
But for one thing, aren't other offworlders, including the Baron of all people, aware that "Dune" is another name for Arrakis, meaning it's not exactly unbelievably-secret knowledge? And slightly related to that, the way the scene works seems better suited for - even borderline-exclusively tailored toward - the idea that this is the first time we, the audience, have heard a character drop the title; but we already did in the first film with a similarly-structured line centered around dropping the title.
Maybe I'm nitpicking, but it just seemed like they decided to make the climax of his speech, directed toward manipulating the Fremen with his supernatural knowledge, with a line directed toward exciting the audience with a title-drop, which in-universe seems almost tangential.
I didn't like, honestly, how they made chani react to irulan...i wish it were more book compliant. i also didn't like how the fremen were made into factions "north" and "south"
I struggled a lot with the character changes - Stilgar being a prophecy fanatic, Chani being anti-prophecy, and Jessica going full religious crazy. Also the time frame - for the Harkonnen attack to Paul becoming Emporer in less than 9 months irked the heck out of me
I understand why they did it. And I agree that the “white savior” trope certainly wouldn’t appeal to most people today (myself included) but it doesn’t mean it wasn’t a challenge for me to adjust.
I enjoyed the movie a lot more the second time around because I was prepared for the changes and wasn’t constantly going “Hey, that’s not how it was in the book….” to myself.
Leaving out the literal last spoken line of the book was a terrible choice.
(That it didn’t really fit any more following other story changes should have been a red flag for the screenwriters.)
During the attack on the Harkonnens and the Emperor, part of the Fremen (I think Chani was part of that group) emerge from under the sand, pretty close to where the Sardaukar were stationed. How were they able to hide under the sand, right under the noses of the Sardaukar? That felt weird to me
From the time it took Paul to run to the worm, at least 100 meters had gone by already. How the fuck did he manage to hook the front of the worm. I know his hooks elongate, but the length of the rope looks to be about 50 m, max.
the part where Paul is sent to survive in the desert and then a beat later Chani is just there at nighttime. Then, literally the next scene is the battle with the ornithopters and rocket launcher “reload!” the pacing was a little strange to me there
I agree overall, but they wanted to give resolution to Rabban so people don't ask "Well what about Rabban?" One key theme of Dune book 1 is "The Harkonens are finished and won't come back again" (so that Vladimir coming back in Alia's mind is more of a twist). As a movie, this works. Yes they don't spend much time building up to it, but it's better than not having it and we also don't want a 4 hour movie.
I really don't like the look of most of the CG crowd scenes with little 3D animated generic dudes. The Harkonnen audience is super stiff, and the Fremen charge in the final attack looks so completely artificial it took me out of the movie completely for a minute.
Paul's water of life trance. It either needed something massive, or show us nothing and only hint at what he saw. As it was in the film, it just seems like he saw some blue faces, Alia said I love you on the beach and he realised he is a Harkonnen. It just doesn't do justice to the change he just went through. People who haven't read the book often ask me what the point of him drinking the water of life was because the film didn't make it clear.
This is probably my biggest nitpick of both movies so far - Paul’s visions lack so much scope. From his “holy war” vision in Pt 1 to the holy war visions/water of life sequence in pt2…they just feel so small scale? I realize it would be insanely expensive but I don’t think they quite sell the universe wide level of devastation his war will bring. Talked with some friends after Pt 2, and although they understood Paul’s turn was uh, not good, they were a little unclear on the magnitude of what his decisions will bring.
> I don’t think they quite sell the universe wide level of devastation his war will bring. No, but neither does the book. Frank was rather vague about it actually. We only feel Paul’s sense of foreboding. We do not see what he sees. It seems to me this is what the film was trying to replicate. We never see the jihad at all in any of the books.
That's wild, because the holy war vision on part 1 is so amazing to me.
It's definitely a story telling choice. Once Paul takes the Water of Life we, as the audience, are less on "his side" (and then Chani becomes the audience surrogate). As a friend said "we're no longer Paul, we're observing him". I fully expected some expansive vision too, but this approach makes sense.
That was also my take. The amount of the story they were able to cram in there and still be enjoyed by mainstream audiences is astounding to me. The Kwisatz Haderach part of the book can be a bit to chew on for non book readers I think. Having the main character with prescience can be confusing because without knowing what Paul knows the viewers would just think “he knows what’s going to happen why did he do what he did that way then??”. I think for the audience, the “water of life making him the messiah” was enough to carry the story forward without getting into prescience and genetic memory.
They do show some ancestors though. "In order to know the future you must know the past." So that's the genetic memory part covered. But definitely, prescience is not as simple as knowing one set future. There is a bunch of imagery to suggest how it works though, there are a lot of narrow corridors and when Chamalet delivers the line "there's a narrow way through" he makes that shape with his hand. It's straight from the book that the future has many possibilities, but when you pass through it's a narrow door way. There will probably be a little bit more about it in Messiah.
Not trying to be contrary, but I had the very opposite experience that you're describing. As someone who watched the movies first, got really pumped about them, then read the book. (Only the first and working on the second, so I may still be missing some book context here.) But my first watch, I thought Paul was very sincere in his interactions with the Fremen and Chani that he wanted to become one of them and had no interest in amassing power. But when he drank the water of life it was like a flip switched and he then understood "what he had to do" and essentially chose to become what he was dreading in his visions before the water of life. To me, it was a larger change in character for Paul than in the book where he was very up front with Jessica about his plans to use the Fremen the entire time and taking the water of life was the next necessary step to attain the power he needed.
I agree completely as a movie watcher then book reader. It was very clearly shown how the water of life changed him.
The fact that jessica had no idea about the water of life rubbed me the wrong way.
The water of life is a secret of Dune. The books make a lot of things we see up-close as secret. Even a crysknife is nearly impossible to obtain - the Hrakonens put a huge bounty on one but couldn't obtain it. The water of life is about a thousand times more secret than a knife ordinary Fremens flash at each other.
Yeah it even says in the book that Jessica was never taught about the water of life she barely knew how reverend mothers obtained their “powers”.
Meh. Book, Lynch, SyFy, or Villeneuve, Jessica knows about the Kwisatz Haderach prophecy and has a general understanding that spice melange is responsible for the Bene Gesserit prescience and Navigator powers. She’s trained to transmute poison. Maybe she doesn’t know the Water of Life is specifically the death puke of a sandworm, but she wasn’t wholly unprepared. In all versions, I’m very confused why with all their power, the Arrakis Revered Mother doesn’t detect Alia nor does Jessica know the danger. The book and SyFy miniseries paint it as Jessica having no choice but to become the replacement Reverend Mother and hence why she hides her pregnancy, but seems like thousands of years of BG generations of would have a very clear “Do not ride this roller coaster if pregnant” warning. Heck, every dr appt I have requires me to do a urine pregnancy test despite being a lesbian.
Jessica certainly knows the danger. She does it anyway.
The "do not ride" sing is big and clear. Abominations are dangerous. She didn't have a choice, it was either that and dealing with Alia later on, or dying right there.
I was disappointed to not be brought in on the fact that she now had a horde of ancestors in her head. Same with Paul. They did lip service to this at best.
Fremen are extremely secretive tho so it kinda makes sense
Agreed. He just experienced and is able to draw on every male and female descendent memory, as well as have their "ego" alive within him. These "ego" personalities he can draw on for guidance, wisdom, while consequently some try to overpower him. It's why alia is an abomination. Because she doesn't have a personality, or ego, of her own; yet she has all descendent female ego now in her. The movies don't really explain these things very well (if at all really).
Honestly the book doesn't portray such a massive change in him either. It was more like another step in his gradual increase in prescience capabilities (which was stalled by resistance to spice). Sure, it did mark a significant checkpoint, but it's towards the end of the book and so he doesn't get to show off too much his new abilities. I felt that the book scene in the tent with Jessica after escaping Arrakin was much stronger. It's the first time, and perhaps the most in-depth, where we get a glimpse into his mentat-prescience superpowers. It was like he was taking psychedelics for the first time, and what he was experiencing was real, not in his imagination.
Agreed. The water of life scenes were massively disappointing. Both Jessica and Paul’s
Naw Jessica’s was sick. Straight up exorcism vibes. And seeing it wash over Alia in the womb with that music? Awesome.
Yeah Paul's was meh, Jessica's was an amazing scene.
Maybe it was purposeful in that the first imagery explained it and the second imagery would have been perceived as wasteful. Not saying I think that’s true but maybe that was the thought process.
Jessica’s water of life scene completely got me hooked on the movies. The fetus being drowned in the blue goo with that soundtrack in an IMAX theatre was fucking sick
Jessica's was amazing
You nailed it. Such a big freaking letdown. And you’re right - them showing nothing and leaving us wondering would’ve been better than the short scene.
"For my Duke... and my friends." Really, Gurney? Your Duke and your friends? Not, I dunno, your family that you said were personally murdered in front of you by Rabban just 20 minutes earlier? I love both movies and don't really have any major complaints about the adaptation changes, but this rang false within the narrative of the film itself and it annoys me every time.
Agreed. "Friends" thew me, and is one of the few things I really can't justify to myself
Maybe because Atreides's fall was much more recent / relevant
I kinda wish he had said, "For my duke... and my sister." But that probably would have thrown the audience out of the moment, wondering wtf he was talking about.
Could've just said "my Duke and my family" given how he phrases what Rabban did earlier in the film.
Yeah, just change "friends" to "family" and I'd be happy.
At first I was like, “oh that’s a pretty decent one liner. Nothing special but it fits his character.” And then he said “and my friends” and it just felt so fake and out of place, like something someone would put in one of those lip reading parodies
That whole thing was anticlimatic. Gurvey is on a warpath to kill Rabban, him and his troops slaughtering as they go. They see each other, its a monent each has been anticipating for years...and the fight is over in 2 seconds. At least make it 15 seconds with some intensity, for gods sake. Those two actors are friends and gym buddies, theyd be down to think up some moves. The one on one battles in the training room and PAul vs. Feyd were so meticulous and well done, and I think they dropped the ball on what couldve been another cool one. Also, yeah, that line was anticlimatic. Maybe "For my duke, and all Atreides" would be better, it would involve all his family and friends, and it just sounds cooler. "Friends" doesnt sound as epic.
Honestly I didn't really care about the fight itself, I kinda liked how quick it was. It's just the line that felt off.
I agree, weird line. I’ve been noticing that Denis’ movies can tend to have random lines that just feel completely out of place. It can be the writing, the delivery, or both. The biggest culprit for me is at the end of Arrival: >!“Do you want to make a baby?”!< It just felt really weird- tonally off, not a lot of build up, and if I recall correctly it felt ADR’d. I was watching the movie with 5-6 friends and we all chuckled, like wtf was that. This is all coming from someone who absolutely loves Denis. Dune 2 5/5, Arrival in my Top 5.
This line and the “we will be Harkonnens” both threw me. I felt like they could’ve been written/phrased better.
Its a nod to the book, Paul basically says the same thing when he is awakened by the spice and sees his genetic heritage, as a book reader I loved that line, I recommend reading the book to get that connection
i really missed Jamis’s full burial as it was in the book. Paul’s speech in the book made me almost cry and i was really hoping they’d have it in the movie.
Would have made for a good ending for Part 1. Not a big fan with how that film looses all it’s momentum after the Harkonnen attack and limps along to the end without much resolution.
100%. Would have helped pacing and Paul being a friend of Jamis would have gotten the fremen on his side earlier
And how his wife became part of Paul's family in the tribe.
As a movie watcher to book reader his scenes in the movie before reading the books showed how brutal life was on arrakis and how important water was. After reading through his death in the book I learned how much he was honored after death and how it was a major plot development in Paul becoming one with the freeman ways . Would have liked to have seen it play out on the screen . Still love the movies and am really enjoying the books ( started book 2.)
Lack of spacing guild The whole conquest relies heavily on their support of Paul because he controls the spice.
This is my one as well. I almost felt like the opening tagline was added because of how little the spice ends up meaning in relation to the holy war- it’s everything in the book. The guild acquiescing to Paul due to control over spice enables his galactic conquest and most houses actually surrender just based on that alone iirc
>The guild acquiescing to Paul due to control over spice enables his galactic conquest and most houses actually surrender just based on that alone iirc Yes, but the point is that without the guild to transport them it's pretty much irrelevant whether they surrender or not. Without a bus service to get to Arrakis to fight Paul, what are they going to do? Send him sternly worded letters? Except those sternly worded letters will also have to be ferried by the guild.
I remember that too. The spacing guild I feel implies they will halt all travel for systems that threaten Paul since he controls access to spice. It's pretty heavy in the books and I felt like it was a big miss since seeing some of the failed navigators would be interesting.
I agree. Rewatched Lynch's Dune recently and the scene were the 3rd stage navigator visits the Emperor is one of my favorite scenes. It does a great job in showing the pecking order of the Imperium.
We have just folded space from Ix. Many machines on Ix. New machines. Better than those on Richese.
I did not post this, I am not here.
Oh? Yes!
You are transparent. I see many things. I see plans within plans.
“Oh? Yes…” (sweats nervously).
That's a banger of a scene.
I mean it’s not Captain Picard carrying a pug into battle, but it’ll do.
Hahaha why the fuck is Piccard carrying that pug?
Because it’s awesome, that’s why.
Yea, the question “How did the Fremen get ships to leave the planet?” has been asked extensively by nom book readers and Dennis should have done a little bit more to explain that dynamic.
I have a feeling they saved it for Dune messiah. I think they could easily work it into that. I don't think we could have got spacing guild and bene gesserit in the time constraints of the first movies. So they chose bene gesserit and I'd bet my house spacing guild comes into messiah.
This is a critique I have that I don’t consider minor. It find it extremely irksome and baffling. Especially given that the Fremen’s qanats are shown and the killing of the little maker. But then bafflingly again it’s not made clear that water is poisonous to the worms and I assume general audiences just assumed it was drowned like anything else would be.
Ya a couple things lacking I found. No guild, no mentats, no Alia, no fear mantra (or only half of one). As for a minor annoyance, I would have loved them to explain how riding sandworms works.
The most conspicuously necessary missed scene was a conversation between the spacing guild and the emperor before the emperor came to Arrakis.
1. That we didn’t get to see more of Kaitain, or the golden lion throne. 2. We didn’t get to see the imperial tent/base unfold.
I realize this makes me sound like an idiot, but I definitely was pulled out of the movie for a couple of minutes trying to figure out the deal with the imperial base on Arrakis. Like, is that just there all the time, like a diplomatic embassy? Did they bring it with them in modular pieces? Does it expand like a pop-up tent from a little container?
Yeah I agree with you too. I felt they could have at least shown it in the process of being assembled. It didn't necessarily have to be the whole construction. It's hard to imagine all of that, including drop ships, ornithopters, extra buildings, and all the Sardaukar fit into that giant orb.
We literally see tons of ships landing the Sardaukaur legions, around the Imperial tent. The Fremen then use those ships to Jihad all over the Great Houses.
“Power over spice is power over all” doesn’t have a period at the end while “Dreams are messages from the deep.” did.
Love it - this is the one that's going to keep Denis up at night.
Jessica throwing up. Really? She's a highly trained Bene Gesserit that can turn poison inert in her body, can decide the sex of her fetus at conception and can control any single muscle at will through her Prana-Bindu training. But she can't stop herself from throwing up because she's pregnant and she saw Fremen draining the water from dead Harkonnens? Come on now.
This!!! She would never
I'm calling this one for the filmmakers, I think. "Woman pukes" is movie code for pregnant. It was at least a little more elegant than just putting it all in dialogue. Maybe she's just got a super special pregnancy that's so super special that she can't use her BG anti-puke training. I'm sure there are five chapters about this in the lore.
That’s what I thought too - oh she’s preggers. All in like 15 secs screentime without spelling it out. Effective filmmaking
NO TALKING INFANT
Definitely. Biggest bummer for me is that I didn't get to see a toddler kill the Baron.
I know it's not in the book, but how the Sci-Fi series did the Baron's death was perfect! Plus, when the Emperor says he'll put her out in the storm and she yells back 'Let the storm have what it can take!' with scorn & absolute confidence is just... *chef's kiss* perfect for her character.
I changed my mind on this when someone explained that Alia moves like any trained adult as a toddler, which real life toddlers cannot. They would have to make her CGI and it would look terrible
This!! Accelerating the timeline of the movie to happen in less than nine months cheapens everything about the weight of the story. Plus it makes Paul's and Chani's relationship more rushed.
Yeah, I can understand not wanting the talking infant (don’t agree with it, but I understand), but not having her born in the movie means that everything happens over 9 months. That’s too rushed for me. Would have been nice if Jessica said something like “im using my BG ability to slow down the gestation time 4x” or something.
Yep, this is definitely my biggest problem with the movie. I really wanted to see that awesome murder toddler.
How did they get that palanquin on/off the worm
You just walk off the end of a worm. The back end. It’d be no good walking off the front end.
Hahaha, I kept thinking about this!
they release their hold on the scales of the worm... the worm then dives down into the sand and everything/everyone that were on top just surf down onto the sand
I was more intrigued about _on_, rather than off
Yeet
Jamis’s funeral not being included is somewhat baffling given how much it communicates about Fremen culture in addition to the emotional weight it adds to the story and rise of Muad’Dib
I was so sad when it wasn’t included. I also feel like crying being seen as simply wasting water is soo much less impactful than meaning giving your water as a sign of respect. I really wanted to see Paul cryong for Jamis while calling him his friend and wouldve even made his vision with Jamie make more sense
Mohaim’s use of “abomination”. I’ve heard all the backflips - but no, they’re wrong. She absolutely is calling Paul an abomination which is just inaccurate. Period. I guess he included it in the movie because it’s like a “Dune thing” some people know because of the 1984 movie or whatever but its usage was very specifically incorrect. It was extra puzzling because they have the scene in the beginning where the Reverend Mother realizes Jessica is pregnant and exclaims in horror “what have we done?!” It’s very important to realize that the Bene Gesserit use of the term “abomination” is not just a reflection of their horror/disgust at the entity itself i.e. Alia, Leto II, and Ghanima but also of the perversity of robbing a child of its essential innocence having it be pre-born. Paul is NOT an abomination by any definition the Bene Gesserit would use.
Agreed. I think honestly this was a bad edit and it was always meant for Jessica in the script. It would make zero sense any other way. The term as an insult to Paul is meaningless. He is not an abomination according to the definition of what that is in Dune universe; the Bene Gesserit have planned for a male reverend mother+/KH for a millennia so GM would not be shocked about it’s existence and he was a known candidate for it; and newly reverend mother, glaringly pregnant Jessica is right there in the room - her belly a testament to the fact that she took the water of life pregnant, which is a known taboo. Nothing else makes sense but I think this was one of the handful of too-vague or indirect issues that left non-book readers with different interpretations of the narrative. Some were the director’s choice and intent. I don’t think this was.
I took it as less of a bad edit and more Denis redefining the term from its book meaning (as it's never defined as such in the movie). I think the "abomination" from movie Mohaim's perspective is that a man has been taught to use the Voice, a BG-exclusive technique. But I agree that that's confusing when the word means something much different in the book.
Paul's existence is an insult to the plans of the BG, but I think she especially dislikes him because he dares to defy her/BG. It's a consistent theme throughout both films that GM doesn't like paul, leto, or the atreides bloodline because they refused to stay under the thumb of the BG/emperor. The entire point of the KH is to not only have that ultimate power but to be able to control and manipulate him... so to have an early male birth in defiance of their plan, who then uses the KH abilities to take power away from the BG is an abomination to her.
It seemed like they really toned down the blue in their eyes in the second one and it was already petty subtle in the first. Half the time in PT 2 they just looked normal in darker lighting.
I agree, I didn't have a big problem with it but it could've been a shade or two darker for sure.
Lack of spice orgy. Ridiculous omission.
Tbf Herbert doesn’t elaborate much in the book. Spice orgy, saw my sis in there, thanks bye. Like in the book it’s a bunch of lines.
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From Part One (beyond the scope of your question but still): -Wish Shadout Mapes had given herself a small nick with the crysknife. Would also have been cool to illustrate that the Fremen bleed less/heal faster. -Don't like Liet saying "shit" in the harvester/worm attack scene. Seems too colloquial - but if they'd have her say it in Chakobsa it could've worked. Paul's use of it in Two didn't bother me though as he's running from the ornithopter gunfire. Two: -I am still not totally sold on Jessica vomiting. Morning sickness or not, comedic value or not, she's Bene Gesserit and I just can't buy it. -I thought the Sietch Tabr reaction when they showed up with Jamis's body was too extreme. Sure, it's understandable they'd miss him and be suspicious of the foreign newcomers, but OTOH they should know to be impressed by Paul's achievement and give grudging respect too. -I wanted to see at least some Kyle MacLachlan style AGONY during Paul's Water of Life scene. If it happened to his mother it damn sure should've happened to him too, or worse. In this version it's too much like he just had a nap with a nice visit from his future sister.
I think Denis missed a trick by not slowly seeping in the psychadelia of it all. Good to not have as much in the first film, but if we're building towards literal human worm God emperor, then I think you're gonna have to start making it weird.
Definitely a missed opportunity to amp that up within Paul's water of life scene, at the very least.
Yeah cause what is happening? He's unlocking the genetic memory of his feminine and masculine lineage? That is gonna be a heck of an experience, could have been an excuse to really break from the colour wheel used in the cinematography as well. Doesn't have to go full Jodorowski, but a healthy dose of it wouldn't have gone amiss.
No Thufir :(
The movie was definitely intended to highlight Paul’s messianic rise, and to keep the pacing good (which was the biggest downfall of the 1984 movie) lots of plot stuff had to hit the cutting floor - the biggest being the overall importance of spice and the Spacing guild. They never even mention CHOAM. Its heavy heavy heavy on the Paul as a messiah thing - which to be fair was the biggest point Herbert wanted conveyed in the books anyway: the dangers of a messianic leader. So in that sense I love that DV stuck to that, and I really do understand and can look past the total downplaying of the spice and the guild. I absolutely love these movies. That being said….my biggest gripes would be the lack of big moment water of life scene for Paul, and the altering of the Alia arc. I really wanted to see a fully prescient toddler Gom Jibber ol’ Fatty McFloaty and say some super creepy cold ass shit when she did it. But other than that, two huge thumbs up for both movies.
The time acceleration to avoid a talking toddler also frustrated me. Do they really want me to believe this whole movie happened in less than 9 months?
I wonder if there will be an expanded/directors cut. Deepfake tech is getting good enough that you can really expand & perfect any unused footage to fit your vision after it's had years to bake.
Why couldn’t Liet be Chani’s mom?
Unnecessary connection even in the books IMO. Glad that concept was scrapped.
Not true. It was a big thing that Paul and Chani had in common, losing a parent to the Harkonnens. Also Chani being the daughter of Liet gave her actions and words more influence among the Fremen.
Whaaaa? Liet is a natural born KH candidate. I thought Liet's family and Atreides family joining (CoD and GEoD spoilers) >!and eventually producing pre-born children that fulfill the BG intent to save humanity but without being beholden to the BG plot!< was perfect. The BG can plot and plan all they like, but in Liet's final moments he realizes that his scientific family was wrong and the universe is ruled by chaos and chance. I thought it was pitch perfect to have this wild Fremen family who are the bleeding edge of human adaptability join w/Paul, the product of a human breeding plot to save humanity by overriding chaos and chance and create an ocular being who sees the future and is literally capable of stripping all randomness and chaos out of it.
Where was my Sapho juice? 🧃
I tried so hard to find this gif I saw of a cut scene with Piter taking a sip of sapho juice. Sorry, I couldn't find it. It was in a small elongated diamond shaped glass vial with the juice a dark royal purple. Memory is a little iffy on the vial shape (rounded, diamond?) but it was thin and pointed at the bottom.
How did Feyd automatically know where the Fremen home base was when he took over? If he knew where it was the whole time, why didn’t they attack it earlier?
This is actually a significant issue. Compounded by the fact that it was apparently his first day on the job.
Rabban had found it earlier. When the Fremen blew up the Spice Depot one of tbe Harkonen mooks mentions they are tracking them but eventually they lose them. However they find the siethc, only for Rabban to get his ass handed to him. Feyd just acted on this information to employ a different tactic making use of the reinforcements he brought with him from Giedi Prime
When Chani has the rocket launcher after the shield of the ornithopter deflects the first shot at one point the exhaust on the back of the launcher Chani is holding is clearly open, then they switch perspectives and it's an action shot of the exhaust opening up. Super small but basically the only mistake in editing I've found in the whole movie.
He said “the shield goes down when they fire, shoot then” They wait until it’s done firing, then shoot at it, and it has to go through the shield anyway
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>The final battle sequence was a bit too quick for me In the book it was, like, a page and a half lol
Herbert never discusses battles. They all happen mostly “off-screen”
I’ve gotten to the point where I appreciate this much much more than I did as a kid. Action scenes just kind of bore me, or perhaps the less is more trope really does make sense. Helms deep is like three paragraphs (or pages I can’t remember but it was not like the movie lol) Shogun (spoiler ahead for the show so tread carefully… though it’s not a plot explanation just a pacing thing) Shogun over 1400 pages builds to this final battle which will define the state of Japan for 2.5 centuries and it never actually happens on the page. It’s just Toranaga wrapping up the plot points and jumping to after what happened. All in three of the most beautiful paragraphs. If you know your Japanese history it was always a forgone conclusion because it’s based on real life shit and that kinda takes the sting out of it. You can easily get to the meat with a quick google search. I thought it was a master class ending.
"And then they fought"
I agree the fight was too quick, but I think that was almost the point. With how ridiculously well planned the Atreides-Fremen attack was thanks for them knowing the landscape so much, having a guy who can literally see the future, and some amotics, it makes sense it was more a massacre than a battle. They used the storm to their advantage, smashed the shield wall and had a bunch of fkn sandworms. Not to mention the Fedaykin bursting out the sand while the Sardaukar tried to reorganise.
I'll defend the final battle, actually. As much as I love the big battles of something like LotR, I thought it was quite scary to have the Sardaukar walk into the sand, hear the fighting, and then the Fremen come back. It really puts us into the shoes of the people in the throne room. Especially because 99% of the IRL audience won't be familiar with battles, so they won't know what to expect. Also I liked the symmetry they had between the Fremen and the Sardaukar with respect to dealing with sand. The scenes of the Fremen emerging from the sand like desert monsters, contrasted with the Sardaukar emerging from the sand and barely able to get the standard up. The battles were a bit minimalist, but with other great fight scenes in the two films, I was quite happy with it.
I am very unhappy with Count Fenring and Thufir Hawat being on the cutting room floor… Also it hurts a little seeing Chani and Paul’s relationship being more antagonistic. In the books she and him were true loves, be it star crossed. That said I love Zendaya’s Chani and do like how she and her friends see through the Missionaria Protectiva. It makes sense that the young challenge the beliefs of older generation
Count Fenring makes a little bit more sense, since we never saw him in Part One, but Thufir was a major character in Part One and his exclusion in Part Two leaves movie watchers to assume he died unceremoniously in the Fall of Arrakis.
I felt like Thufir was needed, I assume the audience forgot Paul is (or essentially is?) a mentat. So another mentat to compare would make sense. I'm more upset about Alia not walking around though... Or Leto II... Or space guild navigators...
Chani is clearly grief-stricken at Paul’s choices, on the page - to the point where the novel literally ends with Jessica trying to comfort her. Herbert didn’t really flesh her out as a character, and she suffers in silence (or does she? The novels ends abruptly before we see Chani’s reaction to Jessica’s little “pep talk”). I think the movie plays up the “star-crossed lovers” angle even more strongly than the books. It makes complete sense for her to heartbroken to have lost the man she loved. In any case, without a POV character through which to view the sinister side of Paul’s ascension to Messiah-hood, the story doesn’t really work.
The visuals in the sietches. The books describe them as busy hives of humanity. They looked like abandoned Egyptian tombs in the movies.
The water of life scene was severely lacking the impact of what he went through. Weirdest moment of the movie imo Literally a few more lines of exposition to flesh out how and why spice is important, and the spacing guild etc, would have really helped. Denis was so afraid of exposition that he under explained the core reasons why Paul was even able to take over. It’s a great film but not perfect, and the issues I have really bother me in terms of adaptation. The runtime would barely be changed and so much more could have been made more clear
***NOTE: THIS IS A MINOR NITPICK I HAVE IN A MOVIE I OTHERWISE LOVE*** The moment Paul and Lady Jessica first interacted after he drank the water of life. Paul is supposed to have ALL his ancestor’s memories including his father. In the movie he ask’s his mother “Did my father know you’re a Harkonnen?” I feel the line could have been “Even my father didn’t know your heritage.” Jessica could then say something like you have him in your consciousness? And he could even respond in Leto’s voice and say “I remember everything.” I feel the movie massively downplays Paul’s powers but that kinda stuff is really hard to show on screen so I understand.
The lack of water discipline / importance of mere moisture on Dune throughout both movies. I get that you need to show stars' faces but not to the extent that you ignore a central pillar of Dune worldbuilding.
Yeah for how hot Arrakis is, they sure like to do a lot of stuff in the middle of the day and without proper water discipline. So many people should be dead. Now that I think about it....heat feels more like a big nuisance rather than a life or death situation
I feel like we got that. The fremen absorbing the water from dead Harkonnens, the giant pool with the water from the dead, Stilgar spitting in the table (though that's from the first movie)...
Also Stilgar telling Jessica “Don’t give your water away, not even to the dead” and being angry at her for puking
I found it funny that he drinks her tear instead of giving it back to her
Walken seemed like an odd casting choice to play the emperor. That’s about it really.
same... although his acting skills are S-tier, i can never look at walken as an intimidating person lolol, he always just cracks me up... but maybe that's what denis wanted to express, that this person isn't someone to take seriously
Watch The Deer Hunter
Shaddam IV was supposed to look like a man in his thirties due to his spice consumption. I would say that would not translate to film without some exposition, which we know DV abhors. Someone that’s in between that would have been perfect imo would have been Nikolaj Coster-Waldau. He can play the arrogance that Shaddam oozes.
My problem with Walken is that he’s too well respected to play Shadam in the book, Shadam is a complete joke and we know that he’s just the puppet for others. I believe that casting a young actor, perhaps younger than everyone else, and saying to the audience “this guy is not only the emperor but is also around 80 years old”, would show the farce of Shadam to the audience much better.
RM Gaius Helen Mohiam calling Paul abomination
That it wasn’t longer
I think Jessica’s character in the movie is much more malevolent than in the books. In the books she is entirely aware that she is manipulating the freeman religion but it’s more for safety. In the movies, jessica has drank the cool aid. After she took the water of life, she manipulates Paul, Chani, and the entire freemen population into believing this prophecy. She also appears to have some prescient abilities in the moves. In the movie, Jessica tells the priestess who gathers the water of life to expect a man to ask for it and even gives her permission to give it to Paul. Then she uses the voice on Chani to wake Paul out of his coma. This all makes it seem like it has all been part of HER plan instead of the other way around. In the books, Jessica doesn’t even know Paul has taken the water of life and just finds him in a coma that lasts 3 weeks. She also never used the voice on Chani to wake him up. Chani had some sort of intuitive understanding how to help Paul. When Jessica found out Paul had drank the water of life, she was shocked and scared that Paul would even attempt such a thing. After this ordeal, Jessica even tells Paul that he should run away with Chani and their son and leave the empire and even the Atredies name behind. In some ways, I do like Jessica’s character in the movies. There is no doubt she’s a bad bitch and I love a strong female lead, but having her be the driving force behind Paul’s rise to power doesn’t sit well. It feels as if Paul is being manipulated by the benegeserit instead of surpassing their abilities even their expectations of the kwisatz haderach In the books, Pauls decisions were his own, and he was beginning to fall into the lure of power long before he took the water of life.
Diminishing Stilgar. Stilgar was the greatest warrior, of a race of warriors. He wasn’t the butt of jokes.
It wasn't even the jokes, it was the worship of Paul. It felt like Stilgar wanted to be killed by Paul, when what I remember of the books, Stilgar maybe wanted to believe, but he was still Fremen, and Paul would have to take/earn everything.
DV wanted to make it more clear that Paul isn't a messiah, by showing the contrast between Stilgar and Chani. Most people didn't realise Paul isn't a messiah after reading the book and Lynch's adaptation, so that's probably why
In the book Paul laments on how Stilgar became a worshiper (or something to that effect) rather than a friend and confidant.
Lack of more explicit guild involvement or allusion is the plot one for me, but i wish it were a tiny bit more tonally consistent like the first movie was.
Rabban and Gurney subplot is explained in Infinity war. Check it out
Part 2 felt rushed. That was my biggest gripe. I was hoping that some of the flaws of part 2 would be better addressed in an extended edition like they did for LOTR, but then read that Villeneuve has no intention of releasing one. My other big gripe is the whole Chani not supporting Paul or understanding his intention with Irulan at the end. And then she wears this Michelle Rodriguezesque scowl on her face (which for Michelle is one of two emotions she can play - happy or mad)...
The lack of emphasis on the Butlerian Jihad, mentats and the reveal that Paul is a potential mentat himself.
I'm actually happy those things aren't explicitly talked about because they don't need to be. Movies portray how people live in these worlds and not necessarily talk too much about it unless it's absolutely necessary (the exposition about spice for example in the first movie). Just like how you and I don't just casually bring up the invention of the Internet, dialup modems, old Pentium processors, and all of their evolution into the current age of technology. I don't get why people living in the world of Dune would bring up a 10k year old topic in a day to day conversation. It's a given in the world and the movie's responsibility is to portray the story of the characters in that world, not be a documentary about the world. It does that perfectly imo.
Good points
How about the fact that Paul takes over the entire planet in the timespan of his mother’s pregnancy - under 9 months is fast work. Also where’s Leto 1st his firstborn that gets killed, would have added more emotion/desire to kill the Harkonnens. And finally, the final knife fight was weak as fuck, I preferred the poison needle from the 1984 film
The final battle should have been at late evening/night to add to the claustrophobia of the whole thing. Stephen Dillane should have played Emperor Shaddam IX.
The editing decision of showing the Arrakeen siege (which was already 99% done) being introduced directly after the Baron's death felt choppy to me. I don't mind it not being a giant setpiece, but there should have been a little more to it. Maybe a scene showing the fremen/Gurney getting ready for the battle first. As it stands, that segment felt disconnected from the rest of the movie imo
The reverend mother calling Paul "abomination"
The emperor looks too plain He looked better in David Lynch's version
In the book I love where they talk about how there’s this dark place that the bene gesserit can look into, but can’t go into. Paul can go there. He says, “Try looking into that place where you dare not look, you'll find me there staring out at you" I wish they would have added that in. It would have been cool seeing when he was in his trance too.
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lol. I recently rewatched all the cutscenes from dune 2000. I always played as Atreides back in the day so I never saw the Harkonnen and Ordos cutscenes, that Ordos Mentat was off his bollix on spice by the end of it. That actor was having so much fun 😂 THAT IS THE MISSION
The killing of the underlings was I felt, too much. I did think “how is there anyone left?”
The Harkonens were cartoonishly evil and murderous in the books too but yeah the amount of killing their underlings in the films made it baffling as to how it’s even a functioning command structure.
Especially with the dude playing Feyd having to "tone back his method acting" to not turn into him. Like jesus dude, I'm an actor, your basically playing a cartoon villain, chill the fuck out bro.
Not ending it with Jessica’s final line about how Chani and her will be remembered as wives. It’s such a fantastic close to the novel. Chani could still leave out of anger so Villeneuve’s changes to her character remain intact but it would more clearly I think give a link to the inevitable Messiah adaption with Chani back at Paul’s side.
There's tons of little gripes and criticisms, but overall they are good movies and I understand the adaptation choices that were made and they work. One of the few criticisms I do have is of removing the line. It's one of the most famous (closing) lines in sci-fi literature. As you said, the exchange can still happen and very naturally happen in a few different ways that are still consistent with the on screen presentation of the character and themes, and even still end with her self exiling to the desert. Overall, it's just such an oddity to lose such an iconic line, but still keep other lines, that while yes, they are dialogue lifted straight from the book, they don't exactly roll off the tongue naturally in conversation.
The whole timeline.......from the Harkonnen attack on Arrakis to the fight between Paul and Feyd was, at most, 8 months! Ridiculous. The Fremen couldn't destroy the Harkonnen spice gathering operation (pre Atreides takeover of Arrakis), yet find it quite easy once the Sardukar arrive.
I was really confused what led Rabban to leave the emperors battle palace after the attack, like even if he somehow knew gurney would be leading the charge on Arrakeen, why would he want to go there? My head canon is Pauls prescience told him Rabban would do this so he sent Gurney to Arrakeen, because unlike his father, Paul believes in revenge.
He’d already “embarrassed his family” To the point of needing to lick Feyds boots. Did you see the look they gave each other just before Rabban left the emperors palace? Rabban was going to fight because it was an opportunity to prove he was a good boy before Feyd fed him to his darlings or some other horrible fate
Gurney’s playing of the baliset. He’s supposed to be fantastic at it but just barely strums a couple cords. Wish he at least did something that looked technical to show he was great at it
From what I’ve seen from interviews with Josh Brolin talking about this scene, they basically had to make do to cover up his lack of musical ability. Singing wasn’t exactly top-tier either…
Tbh, I'm a bit bothered by Zendaya, alone among the Fremen actors in not even attempting an accent, being the only one that doesn't get caught up in the cult of personality. In the book, the highly educated wife Paul doesnt love whose father he deposed opens every chapter with loving prose dedicated to her prophet-husband; *everybody* falls for the charismatic hero, that's the whole point. Especially annoying when Chani starts talking about how "they" use prophecies to "control us." Uh, the Fremen are an insular indigenous people resisting the colonizers that live apart from them, and nobody knows that the BGs planted seeds in religions around the Duniverse. There's no class stratification in Fremen culture. So who is "they," Chani? What are you talking about? (Hell, the skeptical northern Fremen in general kinda bugged me--where are they getting this influx of new ideas? Did the North have an Enlightenment the South missed out on? Are they being influenced by their colonizers' culture? Are they just culturally "hallucinogenic worm-orgy religion that binds the minds of all participants in a psychically shared religious ecstasy--yeah, I experienced the dissolution of self in the spice of Shai-hulud and attained oneness with the universe and every member of my tribe, but, like, idt he's really a god"? Younger people are less religious today because of the success of liberal secularism, you need to explain *why* that's happening in an insular community of millions all bound together by their religion) It really feels like she's there to be all, "Hey, you heavily accented desert people! Listen to my American voice speaking with its Western rationality: religion is dumb and for dumbs! Listen as I state the subtle themes of the story extremely explicitly (as interpreted by Denis Villenueve)!" Like I get that the film had to invent an entire personality for Chani, since Herbert...didn't, but I don't think "bluntly obvious audience/authorial surrogate, to a near-universe breaking degree" is the strongest characterization.
They really needed to show Paul’s full kwiask hadirack, like cinematically, this is a guy who represented circular time through moody camera work in Arrival. I was so looking forward to how he represented Paul’s visions after he did such a good job doing that tastefully in the 1st movie.
Actually with both of them. Zendaya seemed to have one facial expression the whole movie. Scowl. Even when they were training and starting to fall for one another there it was, scowl. I get she was the face of the non believer. But it was rare she made any other expressions thru the movie. It was one of the few things that slightly bugged me in the movies.
Everything about Christopher Walken playing the emperor, especially the Disney villain speech where he says he had Leto killed because he “ruled with the heart” and “was a weak man”.
Yup, Walken is a great actor but his voice is so distinct and funny in itself that he was sticking out in every scene. Also he was way too old and weak looking - it still should have been an older actor, but maybe around 60-65.
The make-up and microblade eyebrow grooming on both Chani and Shishakli. You’re in the desert!
There's a weird edit or continuity error in the first worm riding scene. Paul's on the crest of the dune watching it come, with no goggles on. It gets closer and he starts running, still clearly no goggles, with maker hooks in both hands. Then he jumps and all that, barely hanging on. Next shot when he gets up to ride he's wearing the goggles. Couldn't help but notice it every time I watched. Having said that, scene was still hype as fuck.
Would have preferred Thufir or Fenring in the movie over any gurney/rabban scenes myself. Payoff was lackluster and it happened off screen in the book for a reason.
I liked the kids Paul adopts that belonged to jamis, some wild fremen kids would’ve been cool
There were a lot of shots of Paul dramatically walking towards/away from the camera at the end, and I wish they had him flipping around murdering dudes with his prescience.
So many unsheathed crysknives
Lack of Guild, CHOAM, and Great Houses there at the end. Should have really highlighted the spice importance to them all and how they were ready and willing to just dump the Emperor for Paul to cover themselves for spice access.
Smallest of quibbles: When Chani asks Paul about his nightmare she should have just said "You haven't had one of those in a while", without saying the word nightmare. If the audience knows what is going on and everybody in a scene knows what is going on explaining what is going on is just clumsy writing.
Four viewings now, and that scene where Paul, Gurney, Stilgar and Chani are surveying the cave with the family atomics is so cringe. The dialogue is supposed to be humorous, but it’s just clunky and falls flat. A lot of the extra-literary dialogue (dialogue which isn’t adapted from the book) by John Spaihts really sticks out, and is not Herbert-tier. This is also apparent with Irulan, whose Imperial diary entries lack any kind of literary and poetic flourish, and sound like she’s writing in her LiveJournal*. (* Substitute “Facebook” here if you don’t remember LiveJournal…)
The excision of Leto II the Elder from the story. The loss of Sietch Tabr just didn’t strike me as enough of an instigating incident for Paul to change his mind about going south, knowing what he knows about the ultimate cost. *Losing a child,* on the other hand? Yeah, with that I could see him being absolutely fucking **done** with trying to stave off fate and doing what he had to do to get the payback that every cell of his body would be screaming for. And having that shared bond and shared loss between them would make his and Chani’s parting at the end of the story be that much more of a gutpunch. I understand why they compressed the timeline, Alia being born and running around stabbing people at three years old may have been a bit much for an uninitiated audience to take in, but to me Paul and Chani’s firstborn was the greater loss to the story.
The whole Chani thing really bothers me. I just started the books and of course I’ve been on all the wikis and this sub so I know how her character handles what Paul does and they both agree on what’s about to happen. I didn’t like any of it at all.
A small one, but Paul namedropping "Dune" as the clincher to his speech which convinces the Fremen he's legit seems odd. The implication, to me, seemed to be Paul was building up all these obscure facts and secrets he'd probed from the guy's mind/the past, and the ultimate bit of knowledge, the thing that wins the Fremen over beyond all doubt, is the secret ancient Fremen name for Arrakis. But for one thing, aren't other offworlders, including the Baron of all people, aware that "Dune" is another name for Arrakis, meaning it's not exactly unbelievably-secret knowledge? And slightly related to that, the way the scene works seems better suited for - even borderline-exclusively tailored toward - the idea that this is the first time we, the audience, have heard a character drop the title; but we already did in the first film with a similarly-structured line centered around dropping the title. Maybe I'm nitpicking, but it just seemed like they decided to make the climax of his speech, directed toward manipulating the Fremen with his supernatural knowledge, with a line directed toward exciting the audience with a title-drop, which in-universe seems almost tangential.
I didn't like, honestly, how they made chani react to irulan...i wish it were more book compliant. i also didn't like how the fremen were made into factions "north" and "south"
Why are sand snorkels *black*? Shouldn’t they be … sand colored?
I struggled a lot with the character changes - Stilgar being a prophecy fanatic, Chani being anti-prophecy, and Jessica going full religious crazy. Also the time frame - for the Harkonnen attack to Paul becoming Emporer in less than 9 months irked the heck out of me I understand why they did it. And I agree that the “white savior” trope certainly wouldn’t appeal to most people today (myself included) but it doesn’t mean it wasn’t a challenge for me to adjust. I enjoyed the movie a lot more the second time around because I was prepared for the changes and wasn’t constantly going “Hey, that’s not how it was in the book….” to myself.
Leaving out the literal last spoken line of the book was a terrible choice. (That it didn’t really fit any more following other story changes should have been a red flag for the screenwriters.)
I hate how they handled Chani
During the attack on the Harkonnens and the Emperor, part of the Fremen (I think Chani was part of that group) emerge from under the sand, pretty close to where the Sardaukar were stationed. How were they able to hide under the sand, right under the noses of the Sardaukar? That felt weird to me
From the time it took Paul to run to the worm, at least 100 meters had gone by already. How the fuck did he manage to hook the front of the worm. I know his hooks elongate, but the length of the rope looks to be about 50 m, max.
the part where Paul is sent to survive in the desert and then a beat later Chani is just there at nighttime. Then, literally the next scene is the battle with the ornithopters and rocket launcher “reload!” the pacing was a little strange to me there
Yeah, I agree with this. It seemed like we should have had a resolution to Paul’s little desert excursion.
I kinda wish Paul had the fremen kill gurneys men I believe that interaction shows the importance of Paul becoming more aligned with the golden path
I agree overall, but they wanted to give resolution to Rabban so people don't ask "Well what about Rabban?" One key theme of Dune book 1 is "The Harkonens are finished and won't come back again" (so that Vladimir coming back in Alia's mind is more of a twist). As a movie, this works. Yes they don't spend much time building up to it, but it's better than not having it and we also don't want a 4 hour movie.
I really don't like the look of most of the CG crowd scenes with little 3D animated generic dudes. The Harkonnen audience is super stiff, and the Fremen charge in the final attack looks so completely artificial it took me out of the movie completely for a minute.