Denis Villeneuve's Dune

prometheus110 said:
Jóhann Jóhannsson made a version of it before he died. A more conventional style would be impossible, though, yeah.


As for which niche sci fi book series will be adapted next, I can definitely say it won't be the Night's Dawn Trilogy. I don't think many directors have the skill or guts to make a space opera series where the superpowered ghost of Al Capone is a threat to human civilization. I expect it's more likely to be an adaptation of Ian McDonald's Luna series (though I think his Chaga series would be a much cooler set of books to adapt).
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They should do Age of Scorpio it'd be so funny
 
Zap Rowsdower said:
IIRC the reason she got recruited and none of the other lucky people did was that she wasn't lucky, her hypothetical-at-the-time descendants were, and what was lucky for them wasn't particularly lucky for her or for anybody else. It's the whole point of the "lucky people" plot point, that playing with luck like that is a double edged sword that won't necessarily work out the way you think it will, particularly when it's propagated by Darwinian reproductive pressures rather than ethically controlled lab conditions.
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That's still kinda really gross tho.

I always find it gross when an author writes a person has having no agency and treat that state as being fine.
 
Chloe Sullivan said:
That's still kinda really gross tho.

I always find it gross when an author writes a person has having no agency and treat that state as being fine.
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Zap Rowsdower said:
Can't argue with you there, lol. Writing women was not Niven's strong suit. *looks pointedly at the kzin*
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It should also be noted that the theory is *wrong*, because in the first sequel, it turns out Teela has eaten the roots of the Tree of Life and become a Human/Pak Protector, and having no descendants of her own (nearby to imprint on) to protect, has adopted all the inhabitants of the Ringworld, which makes her antagonistic to the protagonists because her plan to save the ringworld from destruction would kill 5% of the inhabitants, so she needs to trick Wu into doing it for her, and forces him to kill her before she can stop him.

Which isn't better, I suppose but eh.
Also, gets retconned back and forth throughout the series.
 
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Aside from an adaptation of at least some of the Culture series, my pick for "weird/depressing sci-fi I'd like to see adapted that won't be" is the duology of The Sparrow/Children of God.
 
Honestly whoever suggested Hyperion I think is spot on, that feels like the most likely Classic Weird Sci Fi book to get adapted next.
 
Alright just came back from seeing it again in IMAX. Wow. It was an unexpectedly physical experience.

Being able to actually feel all the Big Audio moments really made the movie more enjoyable than my first viewing.
 
One thought I had leaving this movie is it gives some perspective on what happened to change Willy Wonka into the Gene Wilder version.
 
Tomsawyer18 said:
Alright just came back from seeing it again in IMAX. Wow. It was an unexpectedly physical experience.

Being able to actually feel all the Big Audio moments really made the movie more enjoyable than my first viewing.
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A rewatch in the theater always helps me focus on the soundtrack and how it complements the scene. The first time the Harkonnen arena theme seemed overpowered but on the rewatch it blended perfectly.
 
TellTaleTypist said:
IIRC Herbert always viewed Paul, and by extension Leto II more as anti-heroes than outright villains, whose methods were terrible but ultimately necessary. Paul's tragic crime, narratively speaking, isn't the galaxy-wide genocide he unleashes, but his failure to commit fully to the golden path.

Dune is a strange series, and definitely not as anti-authoritarian as it's given credit for.
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Just saw the movie (10/10 worms, good worms) and am catching up in the discussion. I think the most generous reading of the Golden Path is that
once precognition has been invented the Golden Path is the only way to keep humanity alive while also forcing them to find a way around it. By the end the null tech means precognition is suddenly an obsolete (or at least not all powerful) technology. And Herbert does ultimately make it out that having omniscience is bad and it needs to be eliminated... but by that point you're telling a story about how to get rid of a made up threat and you're not really talking about real-world politics anymore.
 
Leto II's part in the Path can be fairly well summarized as "make myself so great a tyrant that humanity will never allow another individual to rule us so again." Force humanity to break the power of precognition by genetic mutation and technological innovation, instill a genetic/cultural aversion to "stagnation" and so on. I guess, if anything, it's a bizarre form of accelerationism, but it's not really authoritarian.
 
Chloe Sullivan said:
I don't think this is true? We use alien invasions and Zombie Apocalypses as metaphors for politicized real life issues all the time.
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I'm saying You can be generous and abstract the idea enough that you're mostly talking about the clairvoyance problem. If you're not the metaphorical interpretation is Herbert's not very good politics.
 
Appreciating Shishakli (Chani's pal and the other vocal Lisansceptic among the Fedaykin) a lot on rewatch. It helps to sell Paul's quick acceptance that it comes from someone besides Stilgar (who's constantly checking his prophecy notes and ticking them off) and Chani (who, while more sceptical of Paul at the start, seems drawn to him).

Also I just like that Paul takes Mua'dib partly to own the mouse joke she cracks about him.
 
So there was some practical work going on in this scene which I didn't suspect at all:

View: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7E6AcXUKSVA
But thinking of the sense of violence and physicality, it makes heaps of sense. Also it's just interesting to me to hear Villeneuve talking about the changes he felt were necessary in translating a book he plainly adores to a different medium.
 
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