Dune Remake Could Mean 3D Sandworms 589
bowman9991 writes "The new Dune remake is becoming as epic as Frank Herbert's Dune series itself. Now that director Peter Berg has been ousted, new director Pierre Morel has decided to throw out Peter Berg's script entirely, starting afresh with his own ideas and vision. 'We're starting from scratch,' said Morel. 'Peter had an approach which was not mine at all, and we're starting over again.' Morel also reveals that 'It's the kind of movie that has the scope to be 3D.' He's also keen on sticking to the original material and recognizes that he must try to delete the images associated with David Lynch's 1984 version of Dune from the public's consciousness."
Re:Still gonna suck. (Score:3, Informative)
Re:ain't broke, don't fix it (Score:2, Informative)
So I wouldn't stick to any elements from the Lynch version, but I wouldn't make any efforts to wipe it out, either. Just let it be forgotten.
(BTW, you misspelled "grammar.")
Re:Hmmm... (Score:3, Informative)
Ironically, Frank Herbert seems to be one of the movie's biggest fans*.
*Citation need? Here's one stolen from Wikipedia: Rozen, Leah. "With another best-seller and an upcoming film, Dune is busting out all over for Frank Herbert." People Weekly. (25 Jun 1984) Vol. 21 pp. 129-130.
Excuse me, but I'm calling serious bullshit on that! That statement clearly implies that People Weekly thinks that Herbert was doing well with the Dune series because it's showing up everywhere!
Furthermore, contrary to popular belief, Herbert really didn't have much of a hand in writing the final script at all. A la Wikipedia [wikipedia.org]:
In a slightly later paragraph, Wikipedia notes that Herbert was "satisfied with the final release." I know that I don't consider the phrase satisfied to imply that I'm one of the biggest fans.
Re:Nice! (Score:5, Informative)
Dune was a little more complicated than that. Paul Atreides didn't "rebel" against anyone; he fought against the Harkonnens (a rival clan) and their ally, the Emperor. He never betrayed his own feudal clan, the Atreides; they were betrayed by the Emperor.
Moreover, in Avatar, there was no "holy war", only a war of self-preservation. The humans wanted to eliminate or displace the natives, the natives didn't want to move or be killed off, so they fought back. The motivations for the Fremen to ally with Paul Atreides were more complicated than that.
Re:that's a matter of opinion (Score:5, Informative)
The "memory" thing as you call it was RNA-encoded memory (it was kind of a pop-sci pseudotheory that floated around for a while in the 1960s and 1970s, Larry Niven used it for a story as well). You'll notice if you read the books that none of those ancestral individuals were there until death, basically they're identities got stuck in the RNA of a Bene Gesserit when they contributed their bit at conception. The only exception was the Duncan Idaho golah (clone) that shows up in the last two novels, who was cloned from all sorts of previous Duncan Idaho golahs, including what were obviously scrapings of Duncan Idaho's killed by Leto II (hence that Duncan Idaho did have memories of his death). The whole point of the Kwisatz Haderach was that it would be a male that could both go into the Bene Gesserit spice trance and could also access male racial memories/identities (apparently women could only see female ancestors).
As to prescience, while Herbert never really went into it, it's clear that it was a naturalistic phenomenon in his universe. It isn't magic, but what appears to be a way for a prescient individual to collapse the wave function, which is why prescience ended being so bad, even before Muad-dib came on the scene (the Guild had been using it for thousands of years since the destruction of the AIs), because it essentially locked humanity into a single future.
So while Herbert's Dune universe seems to have some supernatural aspects, that's only because, to some extent, the players treat them that way. The Bene Gesserit and the Guild, in particular, surround their powers in a thick layer of metaphysical mumbo jumbo, but underneath, those powers are rationally explainable (within the context of the universe Herbert creatd).
Re:Hmmm... (Score:5, Informative)
MOD PARENT DOWN (Score:5, Informative)
He's referring to the sequels that were written by someone who clearly hasn't read the originals. In Children of Dune, Frank Herbert writes about the attitude of dependency being destructive not the machines themselves. In God Emperor, he writes that humanity has evolved to the point where it is no longer likely to suffer this problem. The dialogs between the Reverend Mother and the God Emperor indicate that fear of computers is irrelevant for modern humans. In Chapter House, he reintroduces this theme, showing that the Archivists lose some of their humanity when they start to think like computers and are, ultimately, a dead end.
In the prequel and sequel series, there is an evil AI with completely inexplicable motives who tortures humans for no obvious reason and is later somehow a threat to humanity.
Re:ain't broke, don't fix it (Score:2, Informative)
**it's recognizes, with a z, unless the guy's in britian but i don't see a .uk domain. Sorry for being a grammer nazi when I'm far from perfect, but it's kinda a pain to quote the article and have Chrome tell me I'm misspelling words I didn't write.
That's grammar not "grammer", and Britain not "britian". I don't know about "grammer nazi", but if you want to be a spelling nazi it'd help if you could spell. As for whether the guy's in Britain or not: I'm in Britain but you'll very rarely, if ever, see a .uk domain connected with my online writings. A .com, .org or .net domain does not necessarily mean the writer thereof is in the USA. And British English is considered correct in a lot more places than is American English.
Re:Hmmm... (Score:4, Informative)
The point of Wikipedia is the exact opposite: no one is trustworthy (apart from people you know personally), so you have to be able to judge information on its merits, not its source. This is not limited to Wikipedia.
Citations don't add credibility, they add context.
Re:ain't broke, don't fix it (Score:2, Informative)
And yet it was the lush velvety narcotic cinematography that is the hallmark of any of Lynchs color films with the unexplainable depth of a strange dream, as are any of his films. Whoever put Lynch on Dune had to know what they were getting into from the time the blotter hit their tongue.
If you can forget Lynch imagery, you weren't in the theatre for the movie.
Let me fix that... (Score:5, Informative)
Let me fix that:
Rampaging cult overthrows galactic government with the help of hallucinogenic drug everyone eats with breakfast .
There, much better.
Re:Hmmm... (Score:5, Informative)
Excuse me, but I'm calling serious bullshit on that!
You call bullshit? Alright, I'll raise one interview with Frank Herbert & David Lynch. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7Zw10o48NoE [youtube.com]
Give it a good listen. Fascinating stuff.
Re:ain't broke, don't fix it (Score:3, Informative)
Butlerian Jihad in Dune Encyclopedia (Score:2, Informative)
I always preferred the explanation put forward in the Dune Encyclopedia which, although not "canon", still rings more true to the spirit of Dune:
AIs were used to control in vitro fertilization systems. The AIs started to breed more controllable humans, and IIRC even killed off offspring that were likely to be a threat to the AIs.
This quite nicely explains two Dune taboos in one go: AIs and IVF.
Re:Hmmm... (Score:3, Informative)
That's the article's TITLE, not Herbert's quote! The point of a citation is to tell you how to find the reference, not to reproduce the reference itself. But, so that you might easily see it with your own two eyes, here is the link to the full article: http://www.people.com/people/archive/article/0,,20088153,00.html [people.com]
And in case you're too lazy to do that, the actual quote:
It's rare to find an author who feels that a director hasn't massacred his work, but after seeing a rough cut of Dune, Herbert is pleased. "They've got it. It begins as Dune does. And I hear my dialogue all the way through. There are some interpretations and liberties, but you're gonna come out knowing you've seen Dune." His reaction to the rock singer Sting, who plays the villainous Feyd-Raucha, "Ah, he can act!" As for those infamous sandworms, created by John (Star Wars) Dykstra and Carlo (E.T.) Rambaldi, Herbert was impressed: "They're realistic and scary. These are no Japanese monsters rising out from the deep to eat Kyoto."
There you go, Herbert's words, in his own words, from the words he used himself. Wish I had thought to take the time to do that to begin with.