1,990 words
Frank Herbert’s original novel Dune (1965) is a brilliant synthesis of the futurism of science fiction and the archaism of fantasy literature. Denis Villeneuve’s continuing film adaptation Dune: Part Two is now in theaters. It is a bit better than the first part, but has all the same problems, and a few new ones, so I can’t recommend it. Like the first part, it is not terrible, just mediocre: dull to my eyes, grating to my ears, trying to my patience, an insult to my intelligence, and worst of all: just another Hollywood attack on white people.
Dune: Part Two is 168 minutes long. The first part was 156 minutes. That’s 324 minutes to tell a story that David Lynch told — and usually told better — in 137 minutes. With all that screen time to work with, Villeneuve could have put much more of the book on screen than Dune, and he does so to some extent: In the first part, we see Paul Atreides’ duel with Jamis. In the second part, we are treated to his funeral. We also see more events on Giedi Prime and the extraction of the “Water of Life” from a baby sandworm.
But Villeneuve also pads the running time with things that are not in the book. These inventions are in service of two agendas: political correctness (feminism and anti-whiteness) and creating a spectacle for drooling dullards.
Villeneuve has a difficult job making Herbert’s vision of the future politically correct, because Herbert was deeply reactionary. Dune depicts a world where liberal democracy failed, and the galaxy is ruled by a feudal Imperium. Space travel and colonization require vast time-horizons to travel, settle, and govern across great distances. Such planning is not characteristic of liberal democracy. But medieval social forms such as aristocratic dynasties and initiatic spiritual orders can plan and act over centuries. Thus Herbert thought they could take us to the stars.
Artificial intelligence has been destroyed as oppressive. Without computers, humanity must fall back on natural gifts, which are rare and unevenly distributed. To reproduce and refine these gifts, eugenics is practiced. Biological sex differences are also recognized as important and real.
Herbert’s vision of the future is unapologetically Eurocentric. His Imperium is based on medieval Europe, while his vision of Arrakis and its native people, the Fremen, is based on the Near East. Thus Herbert envisioned his characters as, if not European, at least as Caucasoid. The Imperium is European. The Fremen people of Arrakis believed themselves descended from Egyptians.
Thus from a Right-wing, European identitarian viewpoint, a really good movie selling Herbert’s vision to a whole new generation would have been a wonderful thing.
Three aspects of Dune lend themselves to a Leftist adaptation: the novel’s emphasis on ecology, the story’s anti-colonialist aspect, and the central role of a rare commodity (the spice). But, of course, the true Right is ecological and anti-imperialist, and the importance of the spice does not support a vulgar materialism, given that the galaxy is ruled by warriors and mystics, not merchants.
Villeneuve primarily subverts Dune by stuffing the cast with non-whites and strong women. There are no Negroes in Herbert’s Dune, but Villeneuve’s Dune swarms with them. In the first part, the Imperial Planetologist, Dr. Liet Kynes, was race- and sex-swapped by a black woman (Sharon Duncan-Brewster). Liet’s daughter Chani is played by an unattractive and uninteresting mulatto actress, Zendaya. When Paul Atreides and his mother Jessica arrive in a Fremen community, they are swarmed by African and Middle Eastern types in dirty rags jabbering unintelligibly. The effect is genuinely terrifying, like any number of street corners in Paris. Of course, now that the Fremen have been blacked up, Villeneuve’s Dune is being denounced as a “white savior” movie, which couldn’t be said of earlier adaptations.
You can buy Trevor Lynch’s Classics of Right-Wing Cinema here.
The villains, however, are largely white. Indeed, the Harkonnens are depicted as bald-headed and pasty white. Skinheads, in short. I feared the first installment of Villeneuve’s Dune would be a race war between “racist” whites and an antifa-like coalition of non-whites and white race-mixers. But the lines were blurred by a couple of non-white villains in the first part. In Part Two, however, the non-white villains are gone, and the race-war dynamic is shockingly clear. The Harkonnens even go in for Nuremberg rallies and gladiatorial matches.
Zendaya’s Chani has a bigger role in this part. Here Villeneuve takes great liberties with the book. Hip-hop Chani is a strong, independent desert woman. She’s a warrior. She explains that the Fremen are all equal, men and women, and all work for the common good, unlike the Imperium, which is all about inequality. This is an absurd lie. The Fremen are rigidly hierarchical and “sexist” in the novel.
Villeneuve invents a friend for Ghetto Chani to bitch it up with: another strong, independent desert woman of color. In another departure from the book, the two scoff at the Fremen’s religion. We are told that in the “South” of Arrakis, people speak with a different accent and the whole area is swarming with superstitious religious “fundamentalists” ripe for enslavement by a strong man cloaked as a messiah.
You may think you hate Hollywood enough, white man, but you will never hate them as much as they hate you.
How do the actors in this Dune compare to earlier versions?
Timothée Chalamet remains good as Paul Atreides. But he is no better in the role than Lynch’s Kyle MacLachlan or the Sci-Fi Channel’s Alec Newman.
Rebecca Ferguson remains good as Paul’s mother Jessica, but again, she is not better than Francesca Annis in Lynch’s film. (The best Jessica of all is Alice Krige in the Sci-Fi Channel’s miniseries Children of Dune.)
Charlotte Rampling remains adequate as Bene Gesserit Reverend Mother Mohiam, but she is not better than Siân Phillips in Lynch’s film.
Javier Bardem’s Stilgar is okay, but he is not better than Steven Berkoff in Children of Dune.
Zendaya’s Instagram Chani is dreadful.
Stellan Skarsgård remains disappointing as Baron Vladimir Harkonnen, inferior to both Kenneth MacMillan in Lynch’s version and Ian McNeice in the two Sci-Fi adaptations. Interestingly, Villeneuve’s Baron is not depicted as a homosexual pedophile, as he is in the book. Hollywood is very protective of pedophiles these days.
Josh Brolin’s Gurney Halleck is very well-realized. I actually like him better than Patrick Stewart in Lynch’s film.
Three of the novel’s most fascinating characters — the Emperor, Feyd Rautha Harkonnen, and Paul’s sister Alia — first appear in Part Two. Princess Irulan also makes her first appearance. They are all pretty much duds.
Christopher Walken is terrible as the Emperor. He’s old, feeble, expressionless, and has no interesting lines. By far the best Emperor is José Ferrer in Lynch’s film.
Austin Butler is over the top as Feyd Rautha Harkonnen. All the Harkonnens go around cackling and killing their henchmen for fun. But you can’t really run a society that way. As if that were not enough, Villeneuve makes Feyd a matricide and a cannibal. It actually makes Lynch’s portrayal of the Harkonnens seem more credible. Butler is, however, excellent in the fight scenes. Sting’s Feyd is still the most memorable, and I also liked Matt Keeslar in the Sci-Fi miniseries.
In the novel, Paul’s sister Alia is born among the Fremen and is about three years old when she plays a role in Paul’s final showdown with the Emperor. In Villeneuve’s film, she isn’t even born, meaning that the whole storyline is scrunched into less than nine months. Paul does have a vision of Alia, however, and she is played by Anya Taylor-Joy. The best Alia is Daniela Amavia in the Children of Dune series.
Princess Irulan plays an important role in Dune Messiah and Children of Dune, but in Dune itself she is merely the narrator. As in the Sci-Fi miniseries of Dune, Villeneuve gives her a role. She is played by Florence Pugh, but I was not impressed. She seems like an earnest schoolgirl, but she lacks beauty and presence, does not convey much intellect, and has no interesting lines. Julie Cox was excellent as Irulan in the two Sci-Fi adaptations, especially Children of Dune.
Are there any improvements over Lynch? Yes, I thought the final battle was better done. I also liked both Water of Life sequences, although it might be more accurate to say that they are merely longer and more detailed.
Villeneuve makes other additions to the story, most of them dumb and tasteless.
For instance, the presence of the other great houses at the end is explained by Baron Harkonnen calling for help, which did not happen and could not have happened because of the timing. In fact, they all came with the Emperor, who treated the expedition to Arrakis like a grouse-hunt, to be followed by a big party.
In the duel between Paul and Feyd, Paul is wounded, which is just a cheap addition to milk some suspense from the scene.
He also adds a ludicrous scene of the Emperor bowing and kissing Paul’s ring at the end.
Villeneuve’s script is also frequently stupid.
Some of the stupidities are mere contradictions. For instance, in Part One, the Baron refers to Leto as his “cousin,” which is an archaic usage among aristocrats roughly meaning “peer” and not necessarily connoting any recent common ancestry. In Part Two, Paul refers to Feyd as “cousin,” and Feyd immediately interprets this as “sharing a set of grandparents.” This is true, but there’s no reason that Feyd would know that. In Part One, Reverend Mother Mohiam arranges for the protection of Paul and Jessica from the Baron. In Part Two, she claims that her plan was to kill them, which is not true of the book.
Other stupidities fall into the category of over-explaining. At the end of The Empire Strikes Back, Darth Vader returns to his command ship from the cloud city. But you don’t see that. One minute he is in the city. Next he is on the ship. It always amused me that George Lucas was so bothered by this that years later he felt he needed to add a scene showing Darth Vader ordering up a shuttle and climbing on board to return to his command ship — lest the extremely stupid think he got there by magic, I guess.
In the Dune novel, it is never explained how Paul’s Holy War is launched. Here, Villeneuve feels the need to add an explanation. He also feels the need for a pat explanation of the duel between Paul and Feyd as expiating the blood guilt of the Emperor.
Perhaps the worst stupidity is dropping Herbert’s very moving ending, in which Jessica comforts Chani about Paul’s impending marriage to Irulan, which Chani nobly accepts. Instead, in Villeneuve’s telling, TikTok Chani pitches a fit, storms out, and hitches a ride on a worm, apparently on the assumption that Paul will now drop the world—literally—to come chasing after her. This is drama only in the online sense.
As for Villeneuve’s direction: All my complaints about the first movie stand. The special effects are better than any other adaptation, but the ships, cityscapes, and interiors are uninteresting and unimaginative. I find it hard to believe that people who rule over entire planets and galaxies would live in such hideous, squalid, and often cramped quarters. There is also no grand landscape photography. This movie is just brown and ugly. The score is more tuneless electronic droning and annoying female ululations, squirted out of a hose at the Hans Zimmer workshop and mixed at ear-splitting volume.
No review will deter Herbert fans from seeing this film, although they will feel betrayed and probably a bit bored as well. Herbert deserves better, and so do you. So if you are simply a fan of science fiction and fantasy, David Lynch’s Dune remains the best version on film. But nothing beats the original novel.
35 comments
Aside from all the expected anti-White race and anti-male gender swapping, I found the casting of Chalamet as Paul Atreides too much to stomach. He lacks the young masculinity needed for the role, being too smooth, too slight and fine-boned, despite being now 28. He is also Jewish, of course.
Both Kyle MacLachlan and Alec Newman in their mid-20’s managed to combine awakening youth with a believable dose of testosterone.
There seems to be nothing of value in our culture that Hollywood can’t ruin.
I like such reviews by Mr. Lynch very much (only with CONAN I strongly disagree), even when I did not see and do not want to see some of reviewed films.
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Indeed, the Harkonnens are depicted as bald-headed and pasty white. Skinheads, in short.
Or maybe that’s Putin and Co.
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Christopher Walken is terrible as the Emperor. He’s old, feeble, expressionless, and has no interesting lines.
That’s Joe Biden.
Maybe, Harkonnen was invented by the author based on Soviet and American Finnish communists like Kuusinen and Gus Hall.
“Thus from a Right-wing, European identitarian viewpoint, a really good movie selling Herbert’s vision to a whole new generation would have been a wonderful thing.”
Where could I email you to discuss this idea further in your amazingly unique take on Frank Herbert. I don’t 100% agree with your analysis but I applaud your BRILLIANTLY argued “Hard Far Right” interpretation.
Why I would disagree? For reasons you don’t mention only: Frank Herbert work can ABSOLUTELY also be interpreted as deeply liberal hippie and progressive religious Marxian analysis. Religion in Herbert is CYNICALLY TREATED not “believed in” as a Reactionary who might have a Metaphysical Faith in a Mind preceding our Matter, deserving of Our Honor and Praise. Religion in Herbert is derisively treated as a Tool of Power and Control Alone, with the food traditions, customs and practices a Mix of Sunni Islam, Buddhism, Catholicism and Orange Protestantism. Frank Herbert was himself a Democratic Atheist at the time. So a cunning Leftist will Point that out. It’s worth conceding…..I agree with you that DESPITE ALL THIS Frank Herbert does have some ( as I think you really Intuit ) implicitly reaction ” UNDERLINING ASSUMPTIONS” about what an Advanced Civilization would be like. It would not be “Governed democratically” but “Personally.” The personal form of Government would “reappear” which IS a Reactionary dream and base assumption of responsible reality. Frank Herbert consistent depicts this both in his Distant capture of cruelty ( The Barron is Homosexual, holds incredible grudges, his bloodline and relationships includes incest and effective cuckolding and the murder of uncles and Nephew’s in his Frank Herbert sons expanded universe. All things the Right accuses the Left of today. The “subtle assumed COMPLETELY unconscious Reactionary… depictions of EVIL” in Frank Herberts are indeed TOO AMAZING for a Freudian not to notice. Despite it’s derision towards religion and Frank Herberts own atheism ( for which Tolkien hated him ) the Dune story COMPLETELY ACCIDENTLY can be seen as a parody narrative of Christianity and the late History of the Roman Catholic church. The Father creates the Son ( Paul ) and Paul is the Mahdi, the Messiah. But in Dune the FATHER is sacrificed to the Son paralleling The Hindu Triumverti where Brahman is Born from the Blossom of Vishnu and Only Vishnu incarnated for SAVE Mankind often as a Warrior, and Shiva ( The Harkonnens ) incarnate thought the centuries as an eternal bloodline fighting the bloodline of the Artedies, a house so obsessed with the POWER of its bloodline it held onto planets for centuries. This all ends in tragedies in future Dune Books with the son of Paul effectively becoming a Telepathic Telekinetic Dictator Worm Pope of the entire Universe with a Buche Blonde Aryan Army of Super Women called the Fish Speakers. There is no implicit worship of the southern hemisphere populations in Dune. Mostly only Northern Hemisphere Populations, European and Asiatic in various subtle ways, some very numerous and broad But there. ( this may not please right wingers but it’s in there ) Progressives will note the similiarity to the Middle East crises of the 60′ and 70’s. The toppling of the Shah and the power of Oil Shiekdoms and a criticism of the cruelties of empires can be seen in Herberts work. This allows him to present himself as a liberal…..while being oh so un-progressively biased. The contrast of Dunes depictions of “Good” is a parallel to very conservative Biblical language about the Values of Human life in the most Idealistic Feudal Lord. Leto Artedies the Duke, sees himself as a Father to his People and values their lives above the spice above money. Thus he is a Prince who is Loved by his People but deeply ENVIED and HATED by his enemies. This is another implicit unconscious reaction preference in Herbert. The Father Sacrifice who DIES has to be a SAINT. Even though Frank Herbert was an Atheist. His Dune parrels blow for blow the “Psychological Tale” of Christianity and could be seen as Reactionary that way. The Fact that the Son Paul Literally has to have a special Female insight bloodline through his mother who CHOOSE to GENETICALLY MAKE HIM A BOY WITH HER MIND would be seen as “privileging” MALE POWER by the modern feminist leftist which would see the very creation of Paul as a literal genetically engineered SUPER BEING as being tacitly therefore “VERY Racist.” This was not lost on me. The fact that Paul and the Barron are related by blood parallels the fact that Jesus are related by blood divided only by political power. Paul is reduced to living amongst desert tribes like an Abraham, like a Moses, like a Prophet fulfilling a Prophecy. In our Our world coming OUT OF THE DESERT like a Futuristic Galactic Conqueroring Muhammad. Paul replaces a Byzantine Emperor figure and Launches a broader holy way on the rest of the Empire until they submit to his Fremen.
….
Aside from that,
Where could an email you about a script idea I’ve long had before you wrote this on a subtle right wing retailing of Dune. Without butchering the written material ?
[email protected]
( that Jesus and Harrod are cousins in the Gospel accounts ) * parallel analogy in Herbert.
1. Haven’t seen the movie yet, but I think the rev is a little harsh on the “blacking” of Dune. It’s something that has to be there in this status quo, and I think it was achieved as tastefully as possible–in the first part–I could change on that. Question: how come Oppenheimer and the Fablemans seem to be immune to this “blacking”?
2. I have a question: is the scene from the first part where the freeman calls the sand worm destroying herself and her Harkkonnen enemies(a sublime scene!) in the book? I did read it, but don’t remember this scene. What does this particular scene allegorize?
3. Are you guys going to do an article on Aaron Bushnell?
4. I think baron harkonnen represents Frank Herbert’s self image.
I don’t think it is tasteful.
No the scene you speak of was not in the book.
No, it is not Frank Herbert’s self-image.
I have no plans to write about Bushnell, but if others wish to, they are welcome.
It’s like a suicide bomber. Sometimes when an artist interprets a work, he will add an accent to it, by way of saying “I get it.”
Baron harkonnen is vastly empowered compared to the people around him. Of enormous and beastly appetites.
Let’s enjoy the irony of a work that’s in part decrying AI likely getting positively astro-turfed bot comments on YT. Even the popular ‘anti-woke’ youtube reviewer cohort are lapping this slop up. Such unanimous retardation from all quarters justifies the need for a breeding program, I suppose.
To answer Q2 about Kynes’ death and a further exhibit in the case to prosecute Penis Villneuve, there is a well-viewed 1969 interview on YT in which Frank, his wife Bev (a silent but essential contributor to the series) and his interviewer (sci-fi academic and future author of the Dune Encyclopaedia Willis McNelly) discuss Kynes’ death and its significance.
Critical excerpt:
BH: Well it also was a significant point, the whole, a lot of the story swung around this: How the ecologist dies, I thought it was very important that the planet kills the ecologist.
WM: Even though the planet, what I mean, even though the ecologist was technically able to subdue anything within that.
BH: Well there he lay dying and understanding everything that was happening much more than if someone else died on desert floor alone, complete understanding – I think it made it more it more horrible that the fact that he completely understands,
WM: That he knew what was happening to him and understood it and was technically capable of controlling it.
BH: He knew it had gotten him [WM: yes].
FH: This of course was done deliberately for that purpose… to turn, it’s a turning point of the whole book, but, a pivot you might say, and… the very fact that Kynes… who is the Western man… in my original construction of the book… sees all of these things happening to him as mechanical things, doesn’t subtract from the fact that he is still a part of this system because it is observing him, he’s lived out of rhythm with it, and he got on the, in the trough of the wave and it tumbled on him.
Transcript here
If there is any ‘white savior’ as such in Dune then it is Kynes. It therefore makes complete sense to Le Hack Quebecois that instead we got an on-screen death of a black wah-man getting taken down by a gargantuan phallus. Male feminists and their proclivities, eh?
Ethnicity is not the point, Frank’s intention was to criticize ‘systemic thinking’.
I don’t claim expertise but there’s so much laughable misunderstanding out there. Anyone who gives even the slightest of shits (a measure known henceforth as a Sunak) about Dune will be doing themselves a disservice if they do not read Frank’s short article Dune Genesis about why the work came to be.
Hope this helps, and fingers crossed we get Morgoth’s two cents/pence before long!
This is a great interview. Thanks for the link. One of my favorite quotes:
Your review of part 1 of Villeneuve’s Dune enabled me to watch & enjoy it – forewarned & forearmed, I could filter out & not get too upset at the anti-white & anti-male elements.
But the blackening & feminism in part 2 – if I read you correctly – have gotten worse to the point I will not watch it. You have done me a service, again – thanks!
As you say, David Lynch’s version is superior. As for set & costume design, I read somewhere that Lynch’s Dune was influenced by Mexican art (which I like, mostly) – Mexico is where some or all of the filming took place.
There’s a new version of the Shogun mini-series being advertised. I enjoyed the one with Richard Chamberlain, but the NYT is celebrating the new version for centering the Japanese characters (probably OK), & especially the females (probably not OK ). The trailer shows Japanese Amazons ritualistically humiliating the main white character, Blackthorne.
But maybe there won’t be any angry black women.
I knew it was going to be a trainwreck from the trailers with Girl Boss Chani taking up so much of the screen time. I am no more convinced that Zendaya is attractive and a great actress than I am that Ketanji Onyika Brown Jackson is qualified to be a Supreme Court Justice. I’ll still watch it when a decent copy hits bittorrent but my self-imposed exile from spending even a nickel on Hollywood (or Sportsball) remains in place.
I watched it on a long flight, not worth the 3 hours (I could have gotten some needed sleep). Then point is, just like you said, I won’t spend a penny on any Hollywood product. I have not done that in over 2 decades.
I do not know anything about “Dune”, both novel and films, so I am virginally unbiased and unprejudiced.
But I really think that Bene Gesserit sound absolutely Semitic, just like B’nai B’rith.
And Vladimir Harkonnen has Russian name and Finnish surname, so he could be inspired by the Soviet Finnish spies and Comintern agents, like Kuusinen, or Reino Häyhänen, or Karlo Tuomi. Häyhänen was famous in the US in the 60’s after so-called “Trial of Colonel Abel”. So when it is now portrayed someway like Putin, it can be explained because Putin (original one, not some of his Doppelgaengers) is a Veps, Tver Karelian, by origin, i.e. Russificated Eastern Finn.
The Bene Gesserit were inspired by the Jesuit order and the Irish Catholic nuns and crones Herbert knew when he was growing up.
The Bene Tleilax are Sufis.
The Fremen are based on the Arabs of Lawrence’s Seven Pillars of Wisdom but also on the Chechen guerillas of the 19th century.
Chechen guerillas of the 19th century
Aha, Murid Wars of the Imamat, I see. However, the fighters were not only Chechens, but also another Caucasian peoples, in first line, in Dagestan, like mostly Avars, lesser Dargins, Qumyqs, and others. Imam Shamil was Avar, Hadji Murad was Avar too.
I understand that the language is based on Circassian. I’d imagine that their appearance would be vaguely Armenian.
I just now came to think that the word Dune sounds someway like Dünya, which means World in Türkish. Maybe it is not just a coincidence in this case.
Bene Gesserit (Latin) – She will have carried well/honorably/properly.
I never got around to reading Dune, although it is on my to-read list. To be candid I enjoyed science fiction lit more when I was a younger man (Heinlein, Asimov, etc.) than I do now in middle age. I hope it’s better than the Lynch film, which I tried to watch twice and just couldn’t make it through (it’s the only Lynch movie I was unable to get through). These new ones I haven’t seen, nor do I plan to. If a true Dune fan like “Trevor Lynch” won’t recommend them, I’m pretty sure they’re not for me.
Herbert’s hobby was cultivating mushrooms and his own experiences with the “magic” variety (psilocybin) was one inspiration for the novel’s spice. As Dune was published in 1965, it would have resonated with the burgeoning psychedelic subculture.
Alfred Korzybski’s General Semantics was another influence on Frank Herbert; as it was on Heinlein, A. E. van Vogt, L. Ron Hubbard, Alan Watts, and Robert Anton Wilson. Perhaps one of counter-currents’ stable of writers could pen an article about the Count’s ideas . . ?
Great idea!
Frenchman Hervé Ryssen in his article Cinéma sans frontières describes very good all this racial mixing and perversion in Western films.
Thank you. I have read other works by Rysseen. Will investigate.
The article is a little obsolete (written in 2010, I think), and mostly French-oriented, but still interesting.
Greg’s Part One review nailed it when he compared Villneuve’s ambitions of becoming a Nolan but whose abilities go no further than a Snyder.
So none of us have to be as prescient as Paul, nor be a ballistics expert to guess the trajectory of, or the liberties that they would take with part 2.
If I do eventually see the movie it will be courtesy of my peers!
Steve Martin wrote in his memoir as a touring standup about nuggets being a “ketchup delivery system”. This adaptation then is the fried junk that is delivering The Agenda.
If you want something to cleanse the palate here is an excellent but shamefully algo-obscured youtube channel run by a Classics expert from Northern Ireland.
He serialized the entirety of his dune PhD on the channel, “Evolution, Ecology and the Messianic Hero in Frank Herbert’s Dune Series”.
He also meticulously parses and unpacks Frank’s writing, almost sentence by sentence, in an ongoing weekly book club working sequentially through the Dune series (he is currently on Messiah), 1 weekly episode per chapter, REALLY thoroughly and his classical scholarship has been super illuminating, unlocking countless aspects of the the universe that Frank hid from the casual reader.
If you curious about the origin of the name Atreides and want to dig a little deeper, he also produced an excellent series on the Pelopids relationship to Dune.
His thesis unveiled the critical link between Dune and Samuel Butler‘s Erewhon from which comes the AI/technological rebellion aspect that Dune and everything in its wake ran with. Dune can be seen as it’s sequel, to a degree. Pay attention Morgoth (bless you) and leave his son’s work in the bargain bins where it belongs 😉 How Frank could have benefited from a son as loyal as Tolkien’s when it came to legacy protection!
The unfeasible economics of big-budget cinema vs its returns, atomized audiences, anecdotes of near-empty theaters, the COMPETENCE crisis, and the Academy diversity rules points to this most probably being the last big screen adaptation to be made. So maybe we should start a GoFundMe for David Lynch’s meditation charity to coax him back into an edit suite and blow the dust off the Steenbeck. Money better spent than on a ticket to part 2.
Everybody, repeat the Litany Against Denis, “G F Y“.
Excellent comment. Doc Sloan’s Dune lecture series are a treasure trove.
One thing I notice about the new dune is that he shows the harkonnen very little and they are not humanized at all. He treats them sort of like the shark in jaws—an object without characterization to maximize fear. It works as cinema, but this approach jettisons a large dimension of the book of course. I’m uneasy about that decision.
The film was remarkably bad in many ways. It was loud, stupid, empty and full of pathos. With the exception of couple of scenes it was also uninviting and boring visually. How this is possible with such a big budget is amazing. The film makers didn´t seem to have anything to say, and instead of beauty and contemplation they filled the movie with empty action. The real Dune movie remains yet unmade, although I would vote as the best candidate the documentary film about the making of Jodorowsky´s Dune (which never was filmed).
Saw it. Thought it was brilliant. Villineuve gets dune.
It gave me inspiration. We should have secret white nationalist names.
It would be good when one of the next films reviewed by the author would be POOR THINGS.
Oh man, that film was excruciatingly awful (like The Lobster; I did like The Favourite, however), other than a few nude shots of the cute (but hardly beautiful) Emma Stone. Well shot and ‘set’ (costumes, set design, etc), but incredibly stupid plot filled with boring, meaningless characters. I wonder if the award-winning novel on which it’s based is any better?
Well, the Negro couple were there interestingly portrayed as both perverts and leftists.
Villeneuve has typically placed filmcraft first, but I imagine with this size budget his producers do not want ticket sales and licensing fees to suffer if the usual sources start complaining there are too many white grains of sand on Dune… Of course, it seems at least of half generation of art has been seriously compromised by demanding that diversity the first and artistic worth at best in the middle of priorities.
Maybe comedy and sarcasm will come to the rescue. How about some AI assisted scripts taking leftist sacred cows and then whitening them up some?
Guess Who’s Coming To Dinner in 2024. A black trans poly family had an adoptive white daughter there are trying to raise ‘correct’, as in very woke. But they she comes home from college with her partner, who they figured would have a bunch of BLM and rainbow pins, only to learn that he’s ruler straight and a conservative Christian.
Future entries might be Reds (1981) redone as “Whites”, Roger & Me becomes Roger Stone and Me, and The Act of Killing redone as The Act of Killing White Folks: Murder Stats in the West.
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