New Dune Movie Confirmed 482
bowman9991 writes "Peter Berg will be directing a new big-budget Dune movie from Paramount. SFFMedia reports that 'although there were some doubts that they were going to get it,' the producers have secured the rights to the Dune novel from Frank Herbert's estate and are looking for writers to provide a screenplay that is true to the original text. Can't wait!"
Hope it's not like the mini series (Score:1, Interesting)
Re:Why not do another book in the series (Score:3, Interesting)
There are so many other good yarns in this story - why go to the first one a third time?
Re:Oooh, oooh! (Score:2, Interesting)
If they cast Tobey Macguire as Paul, we may all have to kill ourselves. :)
On a more serious note, I do hope they remember to cast a serious actor as Duncan Idaho... you've got to plan for sequels.
Nope (Score:4, Interesting)
What makes Dune great is it's breadth of subject matter enveloping politics, revenge, society (both tribal and "civilized"), power, religion, hierarchical hegemony and other big words. Plus, it is driven by an inner monologue from all of the main characters. How the hell do you portray inner monologue on the big screen, or any screen for that matter?
Nope, it promises to be another suckfest, a pissing on Frank Herbert's grave. And if the writer Kevin J. Anderson is involved in any way, it will be more bag-loads of awful than you can stuff into a stadium.
one book should be many movies (Score:3, Interesting)
It would give the movies more chance to cover the details of the book. Sort of like StarWars 4,5,6. Where the different movies can end on up or down notes in the overall story.
Re:Why not do another book in the series (Score:3, Interesting)
Still, as a whole, it's totally clear to me that there's room for another movie. One that's more cohesive and sticks to the original source better than the Lynch version, and with a bigger budget, and better acting and effects than the miniseries. If done well, a Dune movie could be epic.
Re:Why not do another book in the series (Score:3, Interesting)
I can imagine some of the later books made into movies, but I can't imagine actually wanting to watch them.
Epic Anime (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:Dune is rooted in Islamic Culture (Score:5, Interesting)
One of the key points of Dune is not necessarily power or oppression but political trappings. It is much more a criticism of how the powers than be (the emperor, the navigator's guild, the bene gesserit, etc.) were all interlocked and trapped by each other in a perpetual cycle of deceit and backstabbing. None of them could accomplish anything and humanity was at a standstill destined for extinction should anything slight thing (such as the sandworms dying) interrupt their routine.
It's an allegory to the dependence on oil and the globalized politics of today. How even the U.S., being the superpower that it is, is locked into binding treaties and very restricted in terms of what it can do to help itself or the world.
Re:The problem is not the director (Score:3, Interesting)
The look of Lynch's movie was what I really love about it. The quasi-Victorian/WWI look and feel to it (please don't make me say "Steampunk") seemed truer to the spirit of the book than the later mini-series and its elaborate high fashion. Here was a society that had rejected high technology (thinking machines) and so had purposefully restricted itself to the industrial age. The high quality of the actors involved (José Ferrer, Jürgen Prochnow, Dean Stockwell, etc) is also impressive.
. . .true to the original text (Score:4, Interesting)
Let's hope it's not too true to the original because, Dune aside, that means hours of characters standing around with hundreds of pages of exposition and half-baked "deep" debates on politics, religion and humanity. I'm still a fan of the series, but Herbert really shot his wad after the first two or three books. After that he was just milking a franchise.
However, if they finally let H.R. Giger do the art direction, I will definitely go see it.
Here's my $0.02, from a HARDCORE Dune fan (Score:2, Interesting)
Re:Why not do another book in the series (Score:2, Interesting)
I think people are mistaking "bad" for "nuanced"; I was trying to explain to my girlfriend, who has never read Dune but is by no means stupid, what is going on. It was completely impossible. The only thing that I could get across to her was that Paul was the semi-penultimate step in a breeding program that took thousands of years. And now he's on Desperate Housewives.
I work with a guy who was at Dune on opening night. They handed out vocabulary cards at the theater. That's not "deep and mysterious Sci-Fi", that's bad movie direction.
Dune'84 is a piece of shit. I never would have read the book had I seen the movie first because it was clearly directed by a raving lunatic. The only saving grace is that the Evil Guys were genuinely evil and brilliant actors. GG Sting.
Also, they threw away Duncan's first life without ever explaining why he was even important.
"KWIK, TO THE WEIRD FLYING THING!"
"Duncan dyed, LOL!"
Sci-Fi's version was much more watchable. Sci-Fi's Children of Dune was fantastic (in no small part thanks to Brian Tyler's soundtrack).
I'm not saying they have to explain everything in the movie, but Dune: Sting Edition lost all credibility with me when the Navigator first shows up. He reminds me too much of Mer-Man, Skeletor's fishy sidekick.
Re:Why not do another book in the series (Score:5, Interesting)
1.) Semitic-looking Fremen speaking perfect Arabic with English subtitles. Remember, the Sayyadinas reconstructed the "Language of the Book" by imbibing the Water of Life and consulting with Ancestral Memory.
2.) Weirding Way of Battle = Sufi Mysticism and Kung Fu. Not stupid sonic guns that can be sold in toy stores.
3.) Vladimir Harkonnen as the evil bastard he truly was, without the flying crap. Those suspensors were attached to him so that he could move around under his flab.
4.) DIRECTED BY DAVID CRONENBERG. Boo. Yah. It would make this Dune a very adult and very brutal movie, but dammit, the books were written for adults, not for the moms little kids who wanted another Star Wars to take their kids to. See A History Of Violence or Eastern Promises to see what Cronenberg is capable of now.
5.) Guild Steersmen who look like mutant humans, not sandworms.
6.) Ornithopters with elegant, sweeping wings that flap and glide like birds of prey.
7.) Viggo Mortensen as Duke Leto. Awesome.
Re:Wish they'd tackle Ringworld instead (Score:2, Interesting)
Re:multiple sequels usually don't work too well (Score:2, Interesting)
Re:multiple sequels usually don't work too well (Score:5, Interesting)
So, how would ya'll cast Ringworld, the Movie?
Re:Why not do another book in the series (Score:3, Interesting)
Watching it made me fall asleep. The first 3 times. However, my brain was so fried by it that I bought the book just to work out what the hell I was watching.
The book is incredible. The film is awful. The miniseries is better, but at conveying the story. In my opinion it is the overwhelming complexity of the Universe portrayed that makes Dune special, but that can't really be conveyed well in a film.
Plus, I like the way Dune's science works. It essentially can be reduced to 3 non-standard princples:
1) Memory is stored in DNA. This leads to Gholas regaining memory, the Other Memory of Reverand Mothers and the Kwisatz Haderach, etc.
2) The "Holtzmann" field, which is a controllable anti-gravity field. Give it a little power and it will make things float. Give it a little more and it will repel things (shields). Give it even more and it can 'fold' space through higher dimensions to make a journey's destination arrive at the departure point. Finally, cranking up the juice fully will fold space completely around something and thus make it drop out of reality (a No Field).
3) Spice can elevate one's mind to a higher dimension. This allows someone to see the entirety of everything over all time (analogous to looking at Flatland from the third dimension, but including time). Of course this destroys one's mind through information overload if it doesn't have certain abilities (passed on through genes).
Aside from that everything else just seems plausible with our current scientific understanding if we had thousands of years to advance and a vast number of life-supporting planets to explore.
Comparing this to, eg. Star Trek, where the problem of the week can be overcome thanks to some new invention of Mr Spock (or whoever) which relies on some vague scientific dictionary mashup of terms, this gives a more convincing story (issues seem more insurmountable when Mr Spock isn't around to discover something which will save the day) and situation (having few new concepts means that they can be explored more completely and crop up in more places. With too many new ideas there can be a shallow feel to the Universe portrayed, for example if the reader/viewer can think of a novel use for some technology that isn't shown then surely trillions of people thinking over thousands of years would come up with it?)
Re:Does anyone know of a literary criticism of Dun (Score:3, Interesting)