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Sci-Fi Television

New Dune Prequel 'Dune: Prophecy' Premieres on HBO and Max (sfchronicle.com) 69

Posted by EditorDavid from the Game-of-Sandworms dept.
A new six-episode Dune series premiers tonight on HBO and Max — a prequel to the Denis Villeneuve-directed Dune movies set 10,000 years before the birth f Paul Atreides. The Hollywood Reporter writes that it "draws on source material from the 2012 novel Sisterhood of Dune by Brian Herbert and Kevin J. Anderson, and Frank Herbert's 1965 novel Dune, the origin of the Dune universe." Cord-cutters can stream Dune: Prophecy online without cable on Max, with subscriptions starting at $9.99 per month through both Prime Video and the Max website directly. Amazon offers a seven-day free trial to the Max channel. Those who want to watch Dune: Prophecy online without a traditional cable service can also get Max as an add-on to existing streaming services, including Hulu and DirecTV Stream.
The San Francisco Chronicle describes the series as "">all palace intrigues, agonizing deaths and magical mind games." Taking a further cue from the network's top-rated Game of Thrones, this show indulges more sex and nudity than the Dune movies allow. It could be argued that elements like this introduce a liveliness often missing from the portentous big-screen behemoths, marking an improvement. Another fun touch here: Many characters are constantly baked.

Set a millennium before Frank Herbert's novels and the films' events, and a century after humans overthrew their "thinking machine" overlords, the psychoactive "Spice" from the desert planet Arrakis is already the most valued substance in the universe. It's not only vital for spaceship navigation and to expand the mental powers of sorceressy sisterhoods like the Bene Gesserit, it's the club drug of choice for younger members of the galaxy-ruling Great Houses. As ever with "Dune" business, control of the Spice trade fuels much of the conflict and character motivations.

Of which there are just enough to keep things interesting without becoming confusing... While the show can't match the outsize visual scope of Denis Villeneuve's films, it does pleasingly approximate those vast alien landscapes, Brutalist edifices and high-ceilinged chambers on a TV budget. For those who find Villeneuve's formal gigantism oppressive, the series' more human scale might be another welcome change of pace... There may not be an original thought in this "Dune" product's Spice-soaked head, but it is one professionally put-together piece of this sort of entertainment.
"Tasked with making more material with less money and time, Prophecy cannot hope to equal Villeneuve's aesthetic accomplishments," writes Variety. "But at its best, the show does justice to the intricate politics and ethical debates that form a cornerstone of Frank Herbert's fictional universe... The primary Dune plot finds many echoes throughout Prophecy..."

On the other hand, Vulture argues the six-episode series is "stuck in prequel quicksand," even calling it "an act of cowardice and abdication of creativity" (while also noting moments where it "feels like it's stretching itself to be something other than what we expect..."
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New Dune Prequel 'Dune: Prophecy' Premieres on HBO and Max More

New Dune Prequel 'Dune: Prophecy' Premieres on HBO and Max

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  • Read the books! (Score:1, Informative)

    by Anonymous Coward
    Use your imagination! The book set was only $30 last year, now it's $60. Well, that sucks. But I think it is still worth it. It requires no subscription, and there's none of the taint that comes from most things Hollywood these days.

    • Re:Read the books! (Score:4, Insightful)

      by Mr. Dollar Ton ( 5495648 ) on Monday November 18, 2024 @01:13AM (#64953297)

      Sure, except that most of the Dune books are terrible.

      The first is passable if you're stuck on a desert island with nothing else to do, the second is borderline trash, the rest is complete garbage.

      You'll be better off buying Feynman's lectures for this money and reading that instead.

      • Re: (Score:3)

        by Sique ( 173459 )
        As I am currently reading "Chapter House", I am inclined to agree. It feels like watching the 25th season of a sitcom, where all the jokes were already made and all the conflicts were retold again and again, and all the reconciliation tears are already shed.

        • It is more or less true for any series over 4 books. Or most long projects, really, eventually you get tired and stop caring, and it shows.

        • As I am currently reading "Chapter House", I am inclined to agree. It feels like watching the 25th season of a sitcom, where all the jokes were already made and all the conflicts were retold again and again, and all the reconciliation tears are already shed.

          Chapterhouse is precisely where I stopped reading when I was a teenager. The original novel changed my young 15 year old life, opening my eyes to a whole new world. But each sequel got progressively more dry and it became a chore to get through them. I treat Dune the way I treat the Matrix and Star Wars. I love the originals and just go about my business as if the sequels didn't exist.

      • While I thoroughly enjoyed the Dune books (original 6, not the bad new ones Herbert's son tried to write), I have to agree about Feynman.

        I would suggest "Surely you're joking Mr Feynman" for those on here allergic to math, though.

        • I would suggest "Surely you're joking Mr Feynman" for those on here allergic to math, though.

          I'd also suggest Freeman Dyson's "Disturbing the Universe" to be read in parallel with Surely You're Joking-- it gives a somewhat different view of Feynman.

      • I hate it, but I'm forced to agree pretty much completely here, except that I thought the original Dune was a spectacular, immersive piece of work. But I'm the kind of person who's read The Silmarillion multiple times for fun, so maybe I'm not in line with most other people.

        After that tho, Herbert just fell off and the next two books became progressively more unreadable. And don't get me started on his son flogging his father's corpse; those are indeed complete trash.

  • Taking a further cue from the network's top-rated Game of Thrones, this show indulges more sex and nudity than the Dune movies allow. It could be argued that elements like this introduce a liveliness often missing from the portentous big-screen behemoths, marking an improvement.

    Nah, turning your show into softcore hetero porn is usually a harbinger of bad writing.

    • Re: When you're all out of ideas, it's naked time! (Score:5, Informative)

      by Kelxin ( 3417093 ) on Monday November 18, 2024 @12:07AM (#64953239)
      If you read the original books.... Much of them were far darker than game of thrones.

    • Re: (Score:3)

      by skam240 ( 789197 )

      Nah, turning your show into softcore hetero porn is usually a harbinger of bad writing.

      Is the writing in gay porn significantly better than in hetero porn? Do the pizza delivery men give Oscar worthy performances prior to banging the home owner or something?

    • Taking a further cue from the network's top-rated Game of Thrones, this show indulges more sex and nudity than the Dune movies allow. It could be argued that elements like this introduce a liveliness often missing from the portentous big-screen behemoths, marking an improvement.

      Nah, turning your show into softcore hetero porn is usually a harbinger of bad writing.

      HBO is basically selling shock value. "Hey look at us! We've got Dune, with Vaginas!".

      Herbert had sexual themes in the original novel but they were usually implied or lightly described (the mentions about the Spice Orgies, for instance). But he never got porn-y. Even the scene in Dune Messiah where Alia is exercising naked is there to make a point, culminating in a heated discussion between Stilgar and Paul about how Alia should be handled. Later on in one of the sequels he had a scene where it was implied

  • In 10,0000 years there is no difference in weapons, ships, or capabilities? Really?

    • Re:So much time and nothing changed? (Score:5, Insightful)

      by mydn ( 195771 ) on Sunday November 17, 2024 @11:07PM (#64953169)
      That's intentional. It's supposed to be the result of the Butlerian Jihad.
    • That's not an accident in the setting, no. It's as on purpose as, say, 1984's stagnation.

      • Wish it was then at least explained. 10k years is more than human civilization existed on earth.
          I find it extremely farfetched that nothing would advance at all in 10000 years.

        • There's that Graham Hancock dude who is a recurrent guest with Joe Rogan.

        • Re:So much time and nothing changed? (Score:5, Informative)

          by Tailhook ( 98486 ) on Monday November 18, 2024 @12:07AM (#64953241)

          I find it extremely farfetched that nothing would advance at all in 10000 years

          I don't. If you consider actual Chinese history, with the resources, civilization, scholarship and technology they had >3000 years ago, we should have fully populated the moon, Mars and the asteroid belts by now. But we haven't, and it's down to how people behave in response to how they're governed.

          In the Dune universe, everything is deliberately limited by culture and governance to a sort of hyper advanced steampunk, and interstellar space travel is almost entirely controlled by a monopoly.

          Everything, that is, except the Thinking Machines, that have no such self inflicted limits, and ultimately recover from the Butlerian Jihad and expand to, again, challenge humans.

          • Chinese propaganda. 3000 years ago China showed organized but primitive society - massive stamped-mud forts, for instance. Far behind contemporary Phoenician or Egyptian civilization.

        • Re:So much time and nothing changed? (Score:4, Informative)

          by cstacy ( 534252 ) on Monday November 18, 2024 @12:52AM (#64953279)

          Wish it was then at least explained. 10k years is more than human civilization existed on earth.

            I find it extremely farfetched that nothing would advance at all in 10000 years.

          Many machines on Ix.

        • No, it is not.

          Unless you have an odd definition of "civilization".

          We have cities and constructions far older than 10,000 years.

          And mankind, depending how you count, is here since 4 million years - minimum.

          As mentioned before, part of no advancement is intentional. And part is: simply wrong. There are plenty of changes they are just not super dramatical.

          And then .... there are the iX-ians

        • I find a lot of scifi authors have no concept of scale. They throw out big numbers to impress but don't seem to understand (or at least care) what those numbers would really mean.

          What usually happens is they set up something vast but then almost immediately start treating it as if it's something similar to our everyday experience. The galactic empire where every planet is about as varied as a small neighborhood in a mid-sized city, the ancient relics that look like something granddad could have built in h

          • I find a lot of scifi authors have no concept of scale. They throw out big numbers to impress but don't seem to understand (or at least care) what those numbers would really mean.

            Indeed. Too many times writers simply try to out-huge each other, with no real idea of what huge things imply or why anybody would need something so absurdly gigantic. Ian Banks, for example, has The Culture routinely fly around starships that could easily hold the entire population of the Earth (many times over), but the social structure of the interior is about as homogeneous and complex as a British tea party.

    • No different from Star Wars in that respect.

  • Brian Herbert (Score:5, Funny)

    by crobarcro ( 6247454 ) on Sunday November 17, 2024 @11:06PM (#64953167)
    Anything created by Brian Herbert (or rather his shadow writer) is absolute crap. So bad, in fact that I think he may have hated his father.

  • prequel = obvious cash grab (Score:3, Interesting)

    by Big Hairy Gorilla ( 9839972 ) on Monday November 18, 2024 @12:21AM (#64953257)
    WaPo article said it mirrors modern themes... I get it. Take something popular and "reflect" modern liberal themes like Disney.
    No thanks.
    Like Frank Zappa's album: We're only in it for the Money.

    • Re: prequel = obvious cash grab (Score:5, Insightful)

      by reanjr ( 588767 ) on Monday November 18, 2024 @06:45AM (#64953607) Homepage

      There is nothing liberal about Dune or Dune: Prophecy. They are explorations of fascism and other authoritarian forms of government. There aren't even any liberal characters as far as I can tell.

      • There's that one line in the Children of Dune miniseries (can't recall if it's in the book version of Dune Messiah) where Alia says "Atreides power must never be marginalized by the chaos of democracy!" And you're left wondering if you're rooting for the right people.

        • Re: (Score:3)

          by kalpol ( 714519 )
          >And you're left wondering if you're rooting for the right people Which is kind the point. Each group that takes power in the series turns out to be actually pretty evil for the most part.

      • "They are explorations of fascism and other authoritarian forms of government."

        Yes, they are. They are also searing indictments of those forms, at least in Frank Herbert's original books.

        Hint: Paul Atreides isn't a hero.

      • Surely you've seen how trashy, boring, and politically correct, i.e. slavishly "diverse", all the new-ish productions from Disney, Amazon, and whoever wants to capitalize on the science fiction cohort?

        Last thing I watched was Altered Carbon. Season 1 was brilliant. Season 2 got woke, diverse, relationship oriented... put the main characters in bed together, that sort of thing. Thats what I mean. You know "reflecting contemporary values". The producers figure this brings in the audience? I don't know, I'm no

        • Last thing I watched was Altered Carbon. Season 1 was brilliant. Season 2 got woke, diverse, relationship oriented... put the main characters in bed together, that sort of thing. Thats what I mean. You know "reflecting contemporary values". The producers figure this brings in the audience? I don't know, I'm no longer the audience.

          You're one of those dudes that would retroactively call Fifth Element woke but you haven't seen it because you were five when it came out.
          How far off the mark am I? You're not even that old are you.

          Kind of tired of these bullshit definitions of woke that sound like thinly disguised bigotry because nothing you complain about is new and it sounds like you're talking about something that isn't exactly what you're talking about because saying that would make you sound like a bigot. I'm waiting for Idiocracy to

          • > How far off the mark am I? You're not even that old are you.

            ha ha ! Completely off the mark and wrong on all accounts. Multiple repressed fantasies? Project much?

            I loved the Fifth Element... we don't need details here, but I was into middle age when I saw it/when it came out.
            I also loved Dune (book)... however, If you ask me and you are, Frank Herbert blew his load on that one book. The rest of the trilogy was just reworking the original ideas. The next three books boring unreadable. I also understand

      • There is nothing liberal about Dune or Dune: Prophecy. They are explorations of fascism and other authoritarian forms of government.

        Not really. Dune was a Hero's Journey story that had some cynical edges to it. That's why it was so popular. A lot of young men saw themselves in Paul, his jarring move from boyhood to manhood and reaching the potential implied early in the novel. The next few sequels drowned in philosophical debates over things like government and power, and they were increasingly dry reads as a result. A lot of views of the Dune universe are skewed by all of the built-up cruft of the sequels. Go back and look at the origi

        • I've read Dune multiple times. No need to go back with fresh eyes. Methinks you just never got past the kid's interpretation. The Bene Gesserit use things like the hero's journey to tell stories to manipulate society. What you're reading as a hero's journey isn't the novel itself, but a story being told within the novel.

  • Won't have to buy or start a free trial then have to cancel.
  • Like Eric Hoffer observed [Movements] start as an innovation then become a business and then eventually degenerate into a racket. Dune has now reached Stage 3 but the Hollywood corps will continue to beat this dead horse as long as there is even $1 left to be made.
  • Not gonna be burnt again on fake franchises.

  • I was surprised to see the images of Salusa Secundus in the show as being full of greenery & water, basically beautiful and lush.
    So, show me you didn't read any of the books...

    (It's supposed to a "barren, harsh" world "similar to Arrakis", so unwelcoming that it's speculated that's why the Sarduakar are such formidable soldiers.)

  • It's hardly true to the books but it was a good realtime strategy game back in the day, and paved the way for games like Command & Conquer. Dune II for the Amiga is getting remastered by one of the original programmers from Westwood: https://www.indieretronews.com... [indieretronews.com]

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