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On The Dune Miniseries
Posted by
Hemos
on Mon Dec 04, 2000 11:39 AM
from the what-did-you-think? dept.
from the what-did-you-think? dept.
the_tsi writes: "Looks like Dune was pretty succesful last night. The SciFi Channel has already announced that Dune Messiah and Children of Dune will be produced. The sequels will be also written/directed by John Harrison." As well, what did everyone think of last night? I was impressed -- compared to the movie, quite a step in the right direction -- although the part with Paul acting more like a Young Luke Skywalker was irritating.
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On The Dune Miniseries
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Dune Miniseries: My Take (Day 1) (Score:5)
I have the six *real* Dune books in first edition hardcover, soft cover, Spanish, and French. I have read them each book no less than 6 times. I own and have read the Dune Encyclopedia a couple times (though don't consider it Cannon). I own the two prequels. I've read HA twice and HH once. While they were...interesting to read, they had their problems, and I don't consider them Cannon either, I feel Kevin Anderson's stink negates Brian Herbert's birthright. I consider myself a fan of the Dune universe, but I am far from an expert.
I have been excited about the Miniseries for months. While I have seen the Lynch movie a dozen or so times, I despise it. There are some that praise it, some that take it for what it is, and some that even think it was true to the book. I think that it is none of the above. My friends have been asking me for weeks what I'm going to do if it rains at the end of the Sci Fi Miniseries.
(I don't think that the people at Sci Fi want to find that out).
If you read the CNN article
(http://www.cnn.com/2000/CAREER/trends/11/30/du
The look of the series is interesting, but I have some problems with it. As I make statements here, please feel free to correct me if I make a mistake (Except spelling: give me a break I'm at work and pissed off as I write this). The Atreides uniforms are supposed to be black with red hawk crests on them. Herbert describes these over and over again. Why are they a sort of khaki? You could claim, like the US Military, there is more than one uniform, but wouldn't Paul be wearing the "dress" Atreides uniform when he went to meet Moiham? That doesn't look black folks.
And as some have posted, Alec Newman is a brat. I know he knew nothing of Dune before filming, but how could John Harrison have missed this? Paul was a boy trying to find himself, not a spoiled rich brat trying to get his way. The scene in the
beginning, with Newman in his room in the palace was a nice look. Very Renaissance, with rose petals in the finger bowls.
On to the meeting with Moiham. WTF was that? Every time Herbert writes about the BG they walk into a room in their long, flowing, BLACK abba robes. If Harrison wanted to whore them up with those big hats, more power to him, but the robes are supposed to be black. There was nothing I liked about this Moiham, which will work well at the end when I hate her so much I want her dead.
The Gom Jabbar scene was fine, except if I didn't know better I'd think that those were fish tanks and not the oceans of Caladan on the wall. One thing I'll give Lynch, he beat the water thing into us.
So we take a trip to Kaitain, where we meet Shaddam and Irulan. I would like to point out there are now two movie adaptations of Dune, and I don't like either Shaddam in the least. Could someone please read the book and capture this
character? Talk about missing the mark. Meanwhile, Irulan is doing Ballet or Prana-Bindu or something, but this scene doesn't do much for me.
And the blasted Harkonnens. This is a Baron Harkonnen I could get to love. He's fat, bipolar, scheming, and a raving homosexual. Perfect. Feyd and Rabban are also pretty well captured. This Feyd is much more believable than Sting was in
the part. The look of Geidi-Prime is magnificent...better than Lynch's. Piter though, all wrong. The Lynch movie had Piter down to a T, but this Piter sucks, and then he's dead. A shame.
The Guild Highliner - beautiful. Much better than Lynch's. CGI really does it for me here. Thufir scolds snotty Alec to not endanger the Atreides shipping privileges. The Navigator though, I'm not sure about yet. There has to be a happy medium
between an Orange Vagina and a Monarch Butterfly. Herbert describes them as being once human, with flippers where limbs once were, and this one has wings. As for the act of folding space, same scene, 16 years and more money later. Again, the
CGI did it for me here.
So we're on Caladan. I have to say, I love the look Harrison has come up with for the palace that was once Count Fenrig's. The fountain for guests to wash their hands, the grandiose appearance, I really liked the look and feel of it. Can we discuss the garden for a minute? Jessica is supposed to discover the garden, and the message from the Lady Fenrig, another BG. Don't let the garden just be there, and don't bring it up without the message. Do it right or don't do it. Also, I will give Harrison credit for making Arakkis feel livable in the cities, something Lynch failed at. People live here, work here, trade here, and Harrison got that.
So who was the wench in Paul's room when the Hunter Seeker attacked? Hi - not true to the book. Even Lynch got that right. And I can't make up my mind if I like this Stilgar. Correct me if I'm wrong, but when Stilgar spits in the book, didn't Duncan explain the custom, not Paul (like in the Lynch movie)? Why is the brat talking? SHUT UP! You know, Paul bothers me because I hate Kyle MacLachlan, so Alec has an advantage. The part is all wrong, but it's obvious that Alec is a good actor.
On to the infamous banquet. Again, Harrison has the look, and all is going well until Irulan walks in. (SO MAD RIGHT NOW...) Why is Irulan here? I challenge this miniseries to make a bigger mistake than this (oh, and not getting the character of Paul right). Paul and her don't meet before he takes her as his war bride at the end of Dune. They have nothing in common, and she ends up plotting his death in Messiah, which Harrison is already working on a screenplay for. Someone may have actually found a way to create a pithy ending without rain. I like the conversation with Gurney and Paul, makes the characters a little more real. And then the house guards get is a pissing contest with the Sauddakar before leaving. Dumb. Boo, hiss.
Now, Yuegh is a minor character, so Lynch made an effort to make him noticed, what with him being Judas and all. Funny thing, as many times as I've read and watched Dune, and I knew what was going on, I was like "Where's Yuegh" because I didn't know who was playing him. I think we saw him once for two seconds in the holo lesson. He needed a little more air time...something. The Sauddakar don't look like Chlorine breathing trash bags (yeah!!!) but the fight was missing something.
Oh well, I guess it was ok.
And Duncan didn't die in the Palace. THANK YOU! They got the sequence of events right. I hope they obligated this guy to play Duncan in all 6 miniseries =)
So, at the end of 2 hours, I guess I can give this a C+. It's a good try, and they're trying to stay true to Herbert, but where they took artistic license they messed up big. I'm trying to keep an open mind. We'll see how the rest goes.
Re:Dune Miniseries Stinks of Shai Halud (Score:3)
Television is the only medium that is dynamic enough, persistent enough and intimate enough to even take a shot at Dune. You're right about a miniseries not being adequate though: It needs to be done Straczynski style, with each book becoming a season. Only the calculus of one episode pounding into you after another can capture the sheer power of the original Herbert storyline.
Ellen
Post to be seen on /. in 12 months (Score:5)
I just saw Peter Jackson's feeble attempt at making the Fellowship of the Rings. Now, I have read the trilogy five times, and I didn't expect it to be that good, but it really sucked ass.
First of all, you can't really expect the beauty and scope of a 500 page masterpiece to translate to 2 hours of film? They shouldn't have even tried. WHY did they have to write such bad dialogue--it was not middle earth-like at all. And who decided to leave out Tom Bombadil? He was like the most important character. And It was stupid to introduce Strider after Frodo realizes about gandalf and the ring. The casting decisions were horrible--I didn't believe Sean Astin as a hobbit for a minute. The shrinking effects were horrible and not-too-compelling. The costumes were stupid--they dwarves looked like they were wearing Tevas, for goodness sake. And don't get me started on the accents--who would ever believe that Elves have an English accent, when we know that Modern English didn't come into use until at least 2000 years after all the elves sailed from the havens. I'm definitely not going to waste my time or money by seeing the rest of these marketroid potboilers!
Personnaly, I'm just glad that I can find joy in other's perspectives about the things I cherish, and enjoy revisiting a world that I found interesting.
didn't suck, looking fwd. to part 2 (Score:5)
Spice-addicted eyes:
Herbert describes the eyes of the serious spice addicts as blue-within-blue, no whites; some of the older Fremen eyes are even indigo. Later books mention being unable to see the pupils either.
The spice-essence and crysknives (made from sandworm teeth) are described as glowing, so maybe this is where they got the glow idea.
Neither the film nor the miniseries quite captured the "no whites" aspect of the eyes. I think they may have experimented with different eye looks but having solidly dark-blue or black eyes would look quite disturbing.
My biggest gripe with the eyes is that the UV-reactive contacts or whatever they used aren't always straight; they look crooked in some scenes. In the scene with Liet Kynes inside the ornithopter while the worm attacked the crawler, did anyone notice that one eye was glowing, one wasn't? This was distracting. I thought for a moment that maybe it was intentional, because they were trying to illustrate that he was half-Fremen ("Liet serves two masters").
Worms:
The worm definitely looked more lively and believable than the one in the Lynch film; however, the teeth were kind of large to be making into crysknives. Maybe there are smaller teeth inside.
Ornithopters:
The ornithopters are described as gaining lift from both flapping action and jet-assist. The ones in the series seem to have turbo-fans in wings that can be moved to aim the direction of lift. They don't flap, but it didn't seem too bad a compromise.
Missing Scenes/combined scenes/altered scenes:
(SPOILERS)
In the book, Princess Irulan does not meet Paul until the end of the book. Bringing her in with the Saurdaukar for the dinner party is an interesting move; it sets up a different dynamic, since he will actually know something about the woman he (SPOILER!) will marry for political reasons at the end of the story; there will be more of a three-way dynamic with him and Chani. Not necessarily a bad change, depending on how it is played out.
We've scene some of the Lady Jessica's special abilities with language, but we haven't had a scene where the Shadout Mapes tests her and gives her a crysknife, symbolizing her role in fulfilling the prophecy. Also, we haven't seen her use Bene Gesserit Voice to control the pilots, so we are still missing a sense of her special powers.
We don't know anything about the Bene Gesserit breeding program and their quest to create a Kwitsatz Haderach (super-being). It will be interesting to see whether this is played up or not in the mini-series. One of the big flaws in the movie was that Paul developed literal Godlike abilities; in the book, his only "godlike" ability is his prescient vision; he is also a master of the Bene Gesserit fighting disciplines, Voice, and has developed himself into a combination Oracle/Mentat, but he doesn't have any physical superhuman abilities.
The hunter-seeker sequence was done differently; another Fremen woman was in the room, but I think this was done so that he could explain what was going on to her, and thus, to us. This wasn't necessarily a bad change. It lets the directors avoid the excessive use of internal monologue.
The detail involving the Harkonnen water ritual (guests slopping water on the floor, natives lining up to buy the squeezings from the towels) is a good one. It helps to indicate that House Atreides is committed to ending the abuses of the Harkonnen period.
Guild Navigators
I thought the Guild navigator sequence was quite nicely done, actually. Herbert gives out almost no details about the physical characteristics of the Guild Navigators in the books, except that they float on suspensors in tanks of spice gas, and that they are altered human forms. I don't think it is accurate that no one has ever seen one. They have human attendants. (Funny hat people #3).
Mahdi
The Fremen are calling Paul Atriedes "Mahdi" in a sort of questioning way, wondering if he may be the "Voice from the Outer World" coming to fulfill their prophecy. They aren't sure yet. They aren't calling him "Muad'Dib" yet. We've only heard that vaguely, in a dream sequence.
Leto's Betrayal
The Duke's betrayal sequence was handled reasonably well; we have some understanding of Yueh's motivations. It wasn't clear that Yueh actually took care of Paul and Jessica by providing them with stillsuits and survival kits and left Paul, but this was implied because he left Paul the ducal ring.
Baron Harkonnen
Well done; he is very fat and carries his weight on suspensors, but he doesn't fly maniacally around the rooms as in the Lynch film. He doesn't have horrifying acne. We hint at his interest in tender young boys without resorting to the weird "heart plug" stuff where he kills them and smears himself with their blood; that was pure Lynch over-the-top psychotic.
Language/characterization
Gurney does not threaten to castrate him in the book. He winds up with his knife poised to kill him and says ("we'd have joined each other in death.") "singing soprano" just sets the wrong tone as far as I'm concerned. It's a bit too flippant. In this scene in the book, Paul is genuinely frightened by the viciousness in which Gurney attacks him, testing his training to its limit. He may be a snotty adolescent but he still has some respect for his arms-master and sword-master. Which leads me to...
Paul's Character:
I'm a big unsure of Paul's snotty, depressed character. In the book, he's very confident of his abilities, and troubled by his prescient dreams and by the move. I'm reserving judgment until I see how they develop his character. Remember, he is supposed to display such amazing charisma, loyalty, and judgement that the Fremen would willingly die for him. Some serious changes have to take place to make this believable!
Re:On Voice-overs... (Score:3)
Warning: the first HOUR is mostly comprised of narrative and various zooms and pans on matte paintings. And most of that is not from the book dune but probably on notes and later books written by Herbert.
The mini-series. (Score:4)
Well, the inevitable comparisons to the movie might as well start now.
I found that they took alot of the ideas from the movie and did them with less style and in a cheesier manner than the movie did it. I thought the effects were distracting because they looked so computery, and what the hell was the idea with that guild navigator, it looked like some kind of retarded squid with huge earlobes. I also thought the acting wasn't as good as the movie, although the movie's nothing special in that department either.
However, I still ain't hating it. Mostly because I like the story and they have the luxury of taking their time with it so things develop alot more realistically.
Very disappointing, IMO (Score:5)
The reality? Disappointing.
From the lack of the "voice overs" to a dismaying "modernization" of the language and outright re-writing of many scenes and plot devices, the mini-series is quite different and lacking in both atmosphere and execution.
Problems:
Lack of voice-overs: the "inner voices" were used with good effect to show the internal emotions and motivations of the characters in both the book and the movie. In the mini-series, many of the scenes are just stupid and confusing (for someone who hasn't read the novel several times like me
Modernization of the language: part of the impact of the movie was created through the wonderfully archaic turn of phrase used by the characters. Not in the mini-series. We have Baron Harkonnen babbling things like "Kinda like firing your boss, eh?", and Paul as a petulant rich boy without an ounce of his destiny showing through. Duncan Idaho has a gratuitous Scottish accent, too.
Costumes: One word: stupid.
Rewriting: Duncan Idaho is killed by a missile instead of a slow-stunner pellet (in fact very little is made of the shields, other than a scene with Gurney and Paul fighting where Gurney is made out to be an overweight, out-of-shape old man), and Paul and Jessica are somehow magically transported to the desert and found by Fremen (with Duncan and Thufir!) during the Harkonnen attack (instead of overcoming their captors with the Voice and crashing in the desert). Huge chunks of the Harkonnen attack and the days before the Atreides leave Caladan are just plain missing.
Characterization: shallow. I don't think I could tell you from pictures which characters were which among Pieter, Thufir, Duncan, or Doctor Uweh.
Sets: somewhat nicely done, although you can tell that most of the film was shot on a soundstage. Much of the baroque feel of the movie is gone, unfortunately, and while I wasn't looking for a clone, I feel that the atmosphere of the mini-series just doesn't do the novel justice like the movie did (light globes with wings, ornate controls on space ships, rain pouring down on Caladan, etc).
Music: there was music? Nearly unnoticed, unlike the movie, which had a theme that has stuck with me since the first time I watched it.
Direction: fairly good, but the pacing is off in several areas. As mentioned previously, Paul and Jessica appear in the desert (after a commercial break
All in all, worth watching if you are a Dune fan just so you can rag on the series. You're better off renting the movie (or watching one of the three versions you have on video tape
Regards,
-scott
Ick: It stank. (*nearly spoiler free*) (Score:5)
I personally thought it stank. The pacing was way too slow. At one hour in, it felt like 1.5. With 6 hours to work with, one should be able to include most everything and have it make sense. Yet the acting was so soporific that there wasn't any time to do so.
I was watching with a friend who hadn't read the book in a long time, and the friend was royally confused by it. I knew what was going on, but would have much rather had things better referenced and explained. Or at least properly introduce the characters. The secondary characters (Gurney, Duncan, Hawat, Yeoh) are almost indistinguisable and nonexistant. Jessica seems a background figure, an "Also starring" type.
And Paul and the Duke were so horribly miscast. Paul is intelligent, a born leader, a near Mentat, Benne Gesserit trained, even before getting to Arrakis. Yet this Paul seems like an even-more-annoying Luke, some whining, half asleep blond kid who hates where he is. And the Duke, he wants to come off as somewhat royal and impressive, he comes off as asleep.
Finally, there were changes that were just pointless. Why bring Irulan into the plot at all? She is something of a ghostly narrator until the very end. Why bring Chani into the plot as a servent (or I at least think that is Chani, if not, who is she and why bother)? Why change things in needless ways. You need to cut things (although cutting the Bull's head was annoying to me, it said a lot about the Atrades) when adapting such a large novel, but you shouldn't need to add random junk.
Nicholas C Weaver
nweaver@cs.berkeley.edu
Dawsons Creek has spaceships! (Score:5)
I hear they spent three whole months on the post-production and it shows!
The WB has never seen anything like this before. Take that, 7th Heaven!
www.ridiculopathy.com [ridiculopathy.com]
Re:Enjoyable and well done, with some flaws (Score:3)
Quick Comparison (Score:4)
However I will say this about what I have seen so far:
Enjoyable and well done, with some flaws (Score:5)
Good points:
The bad:
Overall? I'm taping it and watching it (heck, I got off-LINE to watch it). Not perfect, but a damn sight better than a lot of stuff out there. I hope it encourges more risk-taking and miniseries (instead of over-extended series).
Re:Is Fantasy becoming a problem? (Score:3)
What about cartoons? Do you limit certain cartoons that aren't based on reality?
Being a parent myself, I believe it's important to encourage children to explore their imaginations. How dry every piece of literature would be if one's mind were not allowed to wander into the unknown. We would have no Jabberwocky or Grinch. No Aladdin or Little Mermaid.
--
Good and Bad (on both acting and writing) (Score:5)
Now, let me start with the down points (a littl more refined a list than I put in yesterday's story):
- Casting was ok to horrible. Hurt is a good actor, but should never have been made to play Leto. The guy playing Paul was good (see below), but the Barron was just not imposing enough.
- Paul was written all wrong. Read the book and pay attention to the turmoil that Paul's going through. He senses his destiny, but can't put his finger on it. He's moody, but he's also a brilliant leader by nature. Not much of this comes through in the character in this miniseries.
There are some thing I would liked to have seen, but most of it is secondary to those points.On the good side I point to everything that I liked about the book. The fremen are still a mystery at this point in the story, but I love the whole guild idea and the machinations between house Attradies and the rest of the empire. Jessica is weakened slightly in this telling, but I still love her character.
Feyd is well done, here. A real mad wolf the way he comes across in the book. Can't wait to see how they handle the final fight.
Some odd choices were made. Paul voicing lines that were his father's in the book (about how to deal with the smugglers). The princess showing up early and playing nice with Paul. Some of it, I'm sure, was because he felt that the audience couldn't keep up with the story, given how much he had to cut out, but I'm not sure I like the changes.
There's still some questions that I have. Without doing the David Lynch style voice-overs, how do they intend to handle the water of life? For that matter, what about the confrontation with the emperor at the end where about 50% of what's going on is in Paul's head? That could be handled very badly, but we'll see.
So far so good. I'm actually excited to see what this guy does with the rest of the series.