El Guapo wrote: ↑Fri Mar 15, 2024 11:38 am
I'm curious how Villaneuve (sp?) plans to handle Messiah. I'm not sure how you make it into a concise story in one movie that hangs together with the first two parts and which isn't a major bummer.
If he makes it into something that is NOT a bummer, then he will not be following the book. Which is OK I guess, but would be a mistake IMO since the power of the book is in its message about power, empire, control and consequences, and corruption I guess.
It's hard to see people liking the movie all that much, then. Like it's not unusual for the second part of a trilogy to be a downer (e.g., Empire Strikes Back), but as the conclusion of the trilogy?
I mean, so be it, man. It's the book, you want him to Disneyfy it? I can't think of anything more horrible both for these movies and professionally for Villenueve. I would rather he not make it than to change it to "happy ending!!!" just to satisfy the popcorn crowd (whatever that means! It just felt right in the moment )
Imagine if they had made Game of Thrones and removed the Red Wedding or "Ned's Dead, Man, Ned's Dead" because it made people unhappy? Ugh, no thanks.
Yeah, but the story doesn't end at the Red Wedding.
I don't want him to Disneyfy it - I don't really have a view on what he should do. I think it may be a tough situation though - if he does the Messiah more or less as is then it's going to be a bummer of a trilogy ending, but if he changes it then people will be annoyed about that too.
El Guapo wrote: ↑Fri Mar 15, 2024 11:38 am
I'm curious how Villaneuve (sp?) plans to handle Messiah. I'm not sure how you make it into a concise story in one movie that hangs together with the first two parts and which isn't a major bummer.
If he makes it into something that is NOT a bummer, then he will not be following the book. Which is OK I guess, but would be a mistake IMO since the power of the book is in its message about power, empire, control and consequences, and corruption I guess.
It's hard to see people liking the movie all that much, then. Like it's not unusual for the second part of a trilogy to be a downer (e.g., Empire Strikes Back), but as the conclusion of the trilogy?
I mean, so be it, man. It's the book, you want him to Disneyfy it? I can't think of anything more horrible both for these movies and professionally for Villenueve. I would rather he not make it than to change it to "happy ending!!!" just to satisfy the popcorn crowd (whatever that means! It just felt right in the moment )
Imagine if they had made Game of Thrones and removed the Red Wedding or "Ned's Dead, Man, Ned's Dead" because it made people unhappy? Ugh, no thanks.
Yeah, but the story doesn't end at the Red Wedding.
I don't want him to Disneyfy it - I don't really have a view on what he should do. I think it may be a tough situation though - if he does the Messiah more or less as is then it's going to be a bummer of a trilogy ending, but if he changes it then people will be annoyed about that too.
"There is only one basic human right, the right to do as you damn well please. And with it comes the only basic human duty, the duty to take the consequences." — P. J. O'Rourke
El Guapo wrote: ↑Fri Mar 15, 2024 11:38 am
I'm curious how Villaneuve (sp?) plans to handle Messiah. I'm not sure how you make it into a concise story in one movie that hangs together with the first two parts and which isn't a major bummer.
If he makes it into something that is NOT a bummer, then he will not be following the book. Which is OK I guess, but would be a mistake IMO since the power of the book is in its message about power, empire, control and consequences, and corruption I guess.
It's hard to see people liking the movie all that much, then. Like it's not unusual for the second part of a trilogy to be a downer (e.g., Empire Strikes Back), but as the conclusion of the trilogy?
I mean, so be it, man. It's the book, you want him to Disneyfy it? I can't think of anything more horrible both for these movies and professionally for Villenueve. I would rather he not make it than to change it to "happy ending!!!" just to satisfy the popcorn crowd (whatever that means! It just felt right in the moment )
Imagine if they had made Game of Thrones and removed the Red Wedding or "Ned's Dead, Man, Ned's Dead" because it made people unhappy? Ugh, no thanks.
Yeah, but the story doesn't end at the Red Wedding.
I don't want him to Disneyfy it - I don't really have a view on what he should do. I think it may be a tough situation though - if he does the Messiah more or less as is then it's going to be a bummer of a trilogy ending, but if he changes it then people will be annoyed about that too.
Yeah, I mean - he did a great job with Dune Part 1 and Part 2, so I trust him to execute on Messiah. It's just I'm not sure how he's going to do it.
Also, man I guess Lynch really missed the boat on "Paul is not a good guy", eh?
I think it's impossible to say that Paul is either "good" or "bad". It's not nearly that black and white IMO, and I think that's kind of Herbert's point in writing so many pages...to show that complexity and nuance.
Carpet_pissr wrote: ↑Fri Mar 15, 2024 2:02 pm
I think it's impossible to say that Paul is either "good" or "bad". It's not nearly that black and white IMO, and I think that's kind of Herbert's point in writing so many pages...to show that complexity and nuance.
Yeah, but that ending is pretty black and white in terms of Paul being good. The especially funny part being "where once there was war, he brought peace." Like....did you read the book?
El Guapo wrote: ↑Fri Mar 15, 2024 11:38 am
I'm curious how Villaneuve (sp?) plans to handle Messiah. I'm not sure how you make it into a concise story in one movie that hangs together with the first two parts and which isn't a major bummer.
I think it can be played as heroic tragedy. After all,
Spoiler:
Paul's final choice is attempt to mitigate the worst of what's coming, and the novel ends with Alia and Duncan grieving him but in love.
Everything upends itself again in Children of Dune, of course.
Carpet_pissr wrote: ↑Fri Mar 15, 2024 2:02 pm
I think it's impossible to say that Paul is either "good" or "bad". It's not nearly that black and white IMO, and I think that's kind of Herbert's point in writing so many pages...to show that complexity and nuance.
Yeah, but that ending is pretty black and white in terms of Paul being good. The especially funny part being "where once there was war, he brought peace." Like....did you read the book?
It was a Dino De Laurentiis production. There was zero chance it was ever going to be allowed to have anything that even remotely resembled subtext. I'm just surprised they didn't force Lynch to add a loveable talking robot named "Mr. Wormy" so they could lock in toy sales.
Zarathud wrote: ↑Fri Mar 15, 2024 10:25 am
Only if you have expectations of literary greatness. I’ve enjoyed plenty of pulp sci fi which was recreational, not challenging. It is even a genre.
Dune was one of the few sci-fi books to achieve literary greatness. Most sci-fi has groan-worthy moments, but some authors attempt the plausible. When Larry Niven published Ringworld, a group of students from Yale (IIRC) proved that a ringworld would be unstable as it orbited around a star. So Niven gave them kudos, and wrote Ringworld Engineers, a story about the original protagonists rushing to repair some arcane engineering that had been keeping it stable. Remember when the Michigan Ave. bridge broke, and nobody was familiar with the 1930's engineering that built it? Kind of like that.
El Guapo wrote: ↑Fri Mar 15, 2024 2:28 pm
Yeah, but that ending is pretty black and white in terms of Paul being good. The especially funny part being "where once there was war, he brought peace." Like....did you read the book?
In Dune Messiah, there's a line that compares Paul to Hitler. It mentions the millions who died because of Hitler, then compares it to the billions who died in Paul's jihad.
Zarathud wrote: ↑Fri Mar 15, 2024 10:25 am
Only if you have expectations of literary greatness. I’ve enjoyed plenty of pulp sci fi which was recreational, not challenging. It is even a genre.
Dune was one of the few sci-fi books to achieve literary greatness.
Agree 100%
Although I guess some of CS Lewis' sci fi titles would be in there as well as Ursula Le Guin.
DUNE affected me enormously as a teen. (Probably because it featured a protagonist my age with my first name who happened to be the Messiah...)
In literary terms, though, it's kind of mediocre writing. Herbert is not at all a great stylist, and he tends to labor over the meaning of events and themes in ways that disguise essays as a novel. No one is going to compare Herbert to great literary intellectuals like Borges and Eco and Calvino (or even Gene Wolfe, who belongs in this company even though he was also doing genre SF).
Nevertheless, Herbert's writing is heady in ways that pushed 1960s/70s SF forward. He was great at dense and thoughtful world-building. I place him in the generation that (after the 1960s Heinlein/Clarke/Asimov and after the 1970s New Wave that followed them) kept SF smart and rich in ideas until it finally broke into the mainstream.
"The world is suffering more today from the good people who want to mind other men's business than it is from the bad people who are willing to let everybody look after their own individual affairs." - Clarence Darrow
Carpet_pissr wrote: ↑Sat Mar 16, 2024 9:03 am
That’s awesome!
In other Dune news, the Max prequel series Dune: Prophecy should be coming out this fall.
Was previously called Sisterhood (set 10,000 years before Paul).
I've read what's available online, and I'm not really looking forward to it. It seems to buy into the Brian Herbert interpretation of Dune history that literally nothing has changed for 10,000 years of human history. The main characters are even named as (pre-evil) Harkonnens.
I know stasis/decay was one of Frank Herbert's themes, but there's nothing in his books that suggest that the same political systems (let alone the very same families) have been unchanged for millennia. If I read the books correctly, the static recurring patterns are the stultifying greed and exploitation and control that have characterized all of human history, but this doesn't require that literally the same named families have been present and in charge for thousands upon thousands of years.
If George Washington had to trace his lineage back to Pharaoh Hor-Aha, that would still be less than half as long as Dune's history since the formation of the Spacing Guild. And of course that would be ridiculous.
Holman wrote: ↑Sat Mar 16, 2024 6:24 pm
It seems to buy into the Brian Herbert interpretation of Dune history that literally nothing has changed for 10,000 years of human history.
But right now, there are other types of movies Villeneuve wants to make, including an adaptation of Stacy Schiff’s Cleopatra, currently being written by Krysty Wilson-Cairns (1917), and a version of Arthur C. Clarke’s futuristic classic Rendezvous With Rama.
Rendezvous with Rama would be exactly the sort of film Villeneuve would excel at adapting.
WorldOfReel.com wrote:Of all the projects Villeneuve has percolating next, after ‘Dune 2,’ his adaptation of Arthur C. Clarke’s “Rendezvous With Rama” is the one I’m most excited for.
“Killers of the Flower Moon” screenwriter Eric Roth is currently in the middle of writing an adaptation of Arthur C. Clarke’s “Rendezvous with Rama” for Denis Villeneuve to direct. Of all the projects Villeneuve has percolating next, after ‘Dune 2,’ this is the one I’m most excited for.
Villeneuve’s long-gestating adaptation of Clarke’s novel is one hell of an ambitious undertaking, tackling, as Roth put it, “space and time.” Villeneuve has been attached to ‘Rama’ since before another project, Cleopatra, had even been announced. I would imagine Warner Bros would gladly finance it if it means Villeneuve embarks on ‘Dune 3.’
We haven’t heard much from Villeneuve about ‘Rama,’ just that he plans to direct it. However, recently, he gave us a very short description of what his film would be like and it genuinely whets our appetite (via Empire):
It’s “Arrival” on steroids
Comparing ‘Rama’ to his 2016 mindbender “Arrival” is definitely going to get people more excited about the project. Many believe “Arrival” to be Villeneuve’s best film — I’m more prone to believe that 2010’s “Incendies” is his crowning jewel.
’Rama’ tackles a team of astronauts who are sent on a mission to explore a giant interstellar spaceship hurtling toward the sun. Since Clarke is the genius behind “2001: A Space Odyssey” then you can expect some mind-altering sci-fi to fit the proceedings.
Villeneuve does add that he’s working on three other projects: a TV series, potentially for HBO, based on Jo Nesbø’s “The Son,” with Jake Gyllenhaal, the re-telling of “Cleopatra” and “Dune: Messiah.”
"There is only one basic human right, the right to do as you damn well please. And with it comes the only basic human duty, the duty to take the consequences." — P. J. O'Rourke
hepcat wrote: ↑Mon Mar 18, 2024 3:36 pm
He deserves all the work he's getting. I love it when a truly good director gets recognized. There's too many Michael Bays out there.
Have you pitched your Paste Pot Pete movie to him yet?
Isgrimnur wrote: ↑Mon Mar 18, 2024 12:26 pm
I wonder what his Rendezvous with Ranma would look like.
Hopefully, we'll find out soon:
It wasn't a typo.
"There is only one basic human right, the right to do as you damn well please. And with it comes the only basic human duty, the duty to take the consequences." — P. J. O'Rourke
Where does this suggest that the Messiah movie will be different from the book?
I mean, I know it has to be (owing to the differences in media), but this article seems to say that Movie 3 will be very different from Movies 1&2, not that it will be significantly different from the source material.
hepcat wrote: ↑Mon Mar 18, 2024 3:36 pm
He deserves all the work he's getting. I love it when a truly good director gets recognized. There's too many Michael Bays out there.
Have you pitched your Paste Pot Pete movie to him yet?
My older son is spending the semester in Japan, where Dune 2 didn't open until about a week ago. He has read the book and loved the first movie, but he pointed out a flaw that most of us probably overlooked:
Paul uses the family atomics to blow a hole in the "Shield Wall," but someone notes that the Imperial ship is "still shielded" from attack. This was very confusing to people (like some of Kid's friends) who had only seen the first movie but not read the book. "Shield" here has an ambiguity that's trivial to book readers but is otherwise confusing.
Holman wrote: ↑Fri Mar 15, 2024 8:37 pm
Nevertheless, Herbert's writing is heady in ways that pushed 1960s/70s SF forward. He was great at dense and thoughtful world-building. I place him in the generation that (after the 1960s Heinlein/Clarke/Asimov and after the 1970s New Wave that followed them) kept SF smart and rich in ideas until it finally broke into the mainstream.
At some point in his earlier days, he wrote a book called Destination: Void that I struggled to get through. It was about a colony ship run by disembodied human brains...the kicker being the brains all tended to go insane before reaching the planet they were to colonize. For many years after struggling through it, I didn't get the point until he did the sequel, The Jesus Incident. Then the book made a tremendous amount of sense.
When world-building, it can be very hard to say what needs to be said in a single book.
Holman wrote: ↑Sat Mar 23, 2024 4:02 pm
My older son is spending the semester in Japan, where Dune 2 didn't open until about a week ago. He has read the book and loved the first movie, but he pointed out a flaw that most of us probably overlooked:
Paul uses the family atomics to blow a hole in the "Shield Wall," but someone notes that the Imperial ship is "still shielded" from attack. This was very confusing to people (like some of Kid's friends) who had only seen the first movie but not read the book. "Shield" here has an ambiguity that's trivial to book readers but is otherwise confusing.
This leaves a plot hole in the movie that doesn't exist in the book.
Spoiler:
The sandstorm carries with it an electrostatic charge, which disables shields. This has been mentioned before as a known effect of sandstorms. The storm disables the shield of the emperors ship, which allows fixed gun emplacements to attack the ship and "blow off the nosecone", preventing the emperor from taking off. The movie glosses over this, there is no reason the ship could not lift off during the attack.
Holman wrote: ↑Sat Mar 23, 2024 4:02 pm
My older son is spending the semester in Japan, where Dune 2 didn't open until about a week ago. He has read the book and loved the first movie, but he pointed out a flaw that most of us probably overlooked:
Paul uses the family atomics to blow a hole in the "Shield Wall," but someone notes that the Imperial ship is "still shielded" from attack. This was very confusing to people (like some of Kid's friends) who had only seen the first movie but not read the book. "Shield" here has an ambiguity that's trivial to book readers but is otherwise confusing.
This leaves a plot hole in the movie that doesn't exist in the book.
Spoiler:
The sandstorm carries with it an electrostatic charge, which disables shields. This has been mentioned before as a known effect of sandstorms. The storm disables the shield of the emperors ship, which allows fixed gun emplacements to attack the ship and "blow off the nosecone", preventing the emperor from taking off. The movie glosses over this, there is no reason the ship could not lift off during the attack.
That's pretty easily waved away. The emperor's ship descends as a massive sphere (much larger than the one that visited Caladan), and--although if you blink you'll miss it--it actually does unfold and now sit atop a pyramidal palace structure. One can just assume that the ship can't lift off in that configuration (or not without leaving the emperor and his court behind). The emperor certainly wasn't expecting an attack, after all.
You can see it in the very first moment of this trailer:
The sphere isn't above Arrakeen but above the Imperial HQ/camp, surrounded by the ships the fremen will use for their holy war.
Here lies a toppled god
His fall was not a small one
We did but build his pedestal
A narrow and a tall one
Seems like it's official - Dune: Messiah is greenlit and Denis Villeneuve's very next film. He's not going to "wait a few years so the actors can age up" as previously stated.
But you've seen who's in heaven
Is there anyone in hell?
"Lagom you are a smooth tongued devil, and an opportunistic monster" - OOWW Game Club
--------------------------------------------
I am Dyslexic of Borg, prepare to have your ass laminated.
I guess Ray Butts has ate his last pancake. http://steamcommunity.com/id/daehawk
"Has high IQ. Refuses to apply it"
Lagom Lite wrote: ↑Sat Apr 06, 2024 12:22 pm
Seems like it's official - Dune: Messiah is greenlit and Denis Villeneuve's very next film. He's not going to "wait a few years so the actors can age up" as previously stated.
Chalamet will at least need a haircut (if his contract allows it).
)
