Dunc: Part One (2021) Thread

Dune at least establishes that Paul has been practicing knife fighting for 'most of his life' - he's always older in the movies (20ish) than the books (15), and that he has to unlearn some of the 'slow blade penetrates the shield' stuff that doesn't work where there are no shields.  His prescience probably helps - he's seen the knife fight play out a few different ways in his visions before he encounters Jamis. Plus, he has all that Bene Gesserit training.  And maybe Jamis is underestimating him?  If he thinks Paul is trying to coast on 'fulfilling prophecies', and is a soft outworlder, he might not have expected Paul to be competent.  And Paul's victory seemed to surprise both of them.  Which doesn't make any of the white savior stuff any less BS, but you have to build on the trope before you subvert it, I guess.

Wifemate spent the first half waiting for the fireworks factory, while I thought that part was all rush rush rush and the pace wasn't right until the Harkonnens attack.

Lot of great actors in this ensemble and they just get underserved. Yueh is the most egregious but it's true of almost everybody. Except Duncan Idaho who is barely in the book. Some executive produced must've really loved Jason Momoa. Probably that sleaze Brian Herbert.

Mentats dont get explained at all. The whole plotline where everyone is suspicious of Jessica was dropped. Characters don't clumsily voiceover their thoughts like Lynch, they clumsily mumble their thoughts in the Fremen tongue. The Baron's portrayal as dark lord is really overdone.

But everything looks great. The thopters are outstanding. The knife fights are cool.

Jessica mumblewhispering through the Litany Against Fear was a waste of Herbert's best (and possibly only good) writing. Especially since it's Paul who uses it in the book during the same scene, where it makes more sense. I guess in the movie, showing his prescience was more important than demonstrating his self-possession at that point?

Have I said that they should have gone the Lawrence route for this?  4 hours, with an intermission?  This movie could have used an extra hour, easily.

Yes! I was very disappointed by the lack of both  cattle and loveplay.  To be fair, the mentat mantra was written by either Lynch or Douriff, so they probably couldn't use it for this version. Scenes of Brolin playing the balliset were filmed, but then cut, apparently.  Maybe we'll get them as DVD extras?  I'd like to see all the bloopers.

Will definitely be reading that series of essays at some point which I meant to post a while back but forgot to until now.  

This tangentially reminds me of an article about the actual Dunc: Part One (2021).  I think that issues of cultural appropriation vs. casting movies with just a bunch of white guys is often turned into mere fodder for perfunctory clickbait articles (obviously, there's some that express wholly despicable reactionary bullshit, but even the ones that I'm broadly in sympathy with are rarely particularly insightful).   That said I found this guy's critique of how Villeneuve handles the Islamic influences on Dune to be genuinely well considered (albeit I'm coming at this from the perspective of a white American atheist).  I suspect the author is probably a bit too eager to read his own interpretation of the Dune Chronicles into Herbert's intentions, but it's well worth a read, imo.  It also articulates far better than I could an aspect of my vague sense that, for all its ambition, Villeneuve's adaptation is playing it safe in a way that almost certainly avoids some of the pitfalls of Lynch's film, but also prevents it from being the film it had the potential to be.

Bene Gesserit is not pronounced with a hard g from everything I’ve seen or heard.

What does everyone think of Dunc: Part Two (2024)?

I'm seeing it again this coming Saturday. Honestly I'd see it every single Saturday until another new movie I want to see comes out, but....another new movie I want to see (Love Lies Bleeding) comes out next weekend.

I want to let MLA get her thoughts in before out of courtesy but I did a double feature on Enemy & Prisoners in advance of Dune and have thoughts on those strange films.

As I predicted. They even took care to make sure that when Rabban hears screams behind the door and then is invited in by the Baron, the figures crumpled in the corner are clearly female.

I am sympathetic to the charge that Lynch unnecessarily gave the Baron visible sores along with the book-original gay characterization while AIDS was on everyone's mind. This movie swung away from that as hard as possible.

Brief thoughts:

Outstanding visuals, obviously. Paul's first sandworm ride is one of the most arresting things I've seen in a movie.

Good score. BWAAAAMP was not overused.

I was impressed the Harkonnen fighting arena made it in to the movie. It's good characterization that isn't particularly necessary to the story, if you need to cut something. (Like they cut the more interesting state dinner in Part 1, but obvious fight scenes look cooler.) It was very cool though.

Austin Butler as Feyd was great. When has someone looked so snakelike without prosthetics? He's so menacing that I didn't even think of Anthony Carrigan lisping "Hey, Barry."

Props to Bautista for giving Rabban an appropriate mouth-open dumbness throughout.

Perhaps the filmmakers agreed with me that everyone mumbling out loud to themselves in Part 1 was dumb as hell, because the voiceover was back.

They basically cut everything that made Paul seem less than immediately expert at everything. His awkwardly asking Chani to hold his water rings; comically having to "marry" the window of Jamis; his first worm ride being successful but amateurish.

Thufir Hawat was one of the most underserved roles. His story in particular is so cool, and the idea of the Mentat is so interesting. It's a shame. Jessica was at least much better served in Part 2, really stepping in to power.

The timeline is 100% ridiculous. Paul's thopter crash lands when his mother is a month pregnant, but before Alia is born he has won the allegiance of all of the Fremen and learned everything they know. Stilgar is ready to be killed by Paul in combat because he is grown too old...as if he were significantly older than when they met. The point of making two movies should be to take advantage of the timeskip.

Paul in the book was in a coma for a month changing the water if life. The movie was too cowardly to produce the extended acid trip that action deserved. As they were too cowardly to use the word Jihad.

The final marriage to Irulan is played like the ultimate betrayal of Chani, which could not be more different. But the changes to Chani deserve their own post.