Comment Re:Nope. (Score 1) 201
Dune is full on doable, but you have to make the politics, and the story gaps easy to understand. Dune is a political thriller about Afghanistan caught between the Russians and the US with spice instead of heroin, set in a dystopian anti-technology future. The Afghani. err. Fremen (ahem) get ahold of nukes, which is everyone's worst fear, and hold EVERYONE hostage.
Sounds like a pretty easy story to tell, but, the Fremen are the heroes. So how do you make them relatable in a movie? That was the problem with Lynch's movie, (beside the wooden acting, the white-savior complex, and the Weirding Modules). Somehow you have to afflict the hero with terrible purpose, AND make people still remember that he is a hero, while making believable the idea that the native people would follow Lawrence of Arabi. errrr. Dances with. err. Paul Muad'Dib.
Or go full on anti-hero. Its hard to relate to someone who does what he has to and agonizes and hand wrings about it, while then committing atrocities. The atrocities weren't even visible in the Lynch version. Somehow the new one has to tell a tale that's relatable, and then does the Ten Years Later sequence from Spongebob, and that somehow be adequate to explain the transformation of Paul to Muad'Dib, a being of terrible purpose who is willing to destroy the entire universe for his vision. Just give him some infinity stones and a huge purple chin and we have a deplorable and utterly relatable character. Or embrace the suck, and sell it. But its impossible to enjoy the fall from grace on film. Why does everyone hate the Star Wars Prequels (other than Jar Jar?) Precisely for this reason. Muad'Dib is an utterly human, ruthless bastard who goes from a likeable kid to a vicious killer, and we are watching the fall from grace. Its a great read, but its hard to watch and empathize with. Hope they can pull it off in this adaptation, but I suspect it will remain difficult to manage without some significant character development that is just too hard to do in a 2 hour film.