I found the Dune mini series to be closer to the book than Lynch's Dune. But, do keep in mind that it was not an expensive (meaning in the millions) budget movie. But if you can get over that issue I think you will enjoy the movie. It is much more accurate to the mythology of Paul as the Kwisatch Haderach. Make sure you get the unedited version (it's a 3 disc set). It was the european version which is longer. There are a few key scenes that gives the movie more depth.
Children of Dune is two books. Dune Messiah/Children of Dune. But it's just as good as the first mini series.
The mini-series tells the story better but a. it was obviously cheap and b. they had appalling taste in costuming, and some of the casting/acting isn't quyite what it could be. Children of Dune was actually better but the original Dune story is the stronger one to film.
Lynch's film is stylistically gorgeous, captured the atmosphere much better and actually expanded the idea of what sci-fi could look like. Trouble is that it was a total confusing mess. Shame, really.
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I would suggest that if you really want Dune just go ahead and read the series. Well, same can be said for LOTR and the Harry Potter books but you know...you get better story telling rather than visuals.
Children of Dune wasn't so bad but I do agree they could have put more effort on the costumes....then, again, there we go with the visuals rather than actual story.
Lynch's certainly took some liberties with the story for his film. But it wasn't really harming...Although...I would have much prefer if he had thrown in more quotes from the OCB (Orange Catholic Bible)
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I have read the first book. But I also recognize that the Lynch film has some serious gaps. As the moderator says, it doesn't do much to lessen the confusion. In fact, after seeing the film, I had to read the book to understand what the hell was going on.
How far into the sequels does the mini-series explore?
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Look.. obviosly me and Ush have a different opinion about the two mini series.. but combined price at amazon is 20.00 dollars. for 9 hours of Dune. Buy it, watch it, and create your own opinion. Then go and buy the Director's cut of Lynch's Dune. Then wait for the new version of the Dune movie to come out.
There's an Alan Smithee cut done for tv, but my opinion is that it is decidedly worse. It has a hugely leaden intro, an irrelevant voice over, and in returning some cut scenes manages some absurdities- for example, some of the 'voice in the head' lines we get from characters in the original version were taken from those cut scenes. But when they returned the scenes they kept those same voices-in-the-head lines in, so as an example right near the start we get the Emperor thinking a line, and then about 30 srconds later saying the exact same line in the exact same way out loud, as that cut line was originally turned into the thought he had. Such a basic and glaring error gives an idea about how bad the cut was done. About the only way it could have tried to improve things was to make the ending less... odd. But it left that exactly as is, despite the fact there was some footage cut from that ending that would have really helped.
It also re-arranges some scenes- badly- so it can fit a two part set-up, as it was designed to be shown on two different nights. All in all, a bit of a cock-up.
David Lynch was also slightly a victim of the times, I feel. For example, he completely cut out the martial arts 'Weirding Way' of the books and turned it into a sound-based weapon instead, a significant change to the mythology (which he then extended into a plot point of the power of the Atreides army, changing storyline even more). His excuse, apparently, was that he thought it would be rubbish to have kung-fu on sand dunes.
In these post Crouching Tiger days, that logic doesn't look quite so sound (no pun intended...). Oddly enough, though, the whole sound weapon thing has almost been accepted into the mythology; in particular the computer games all used it.
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Last edited by Ushgarak on Sep 26th, 2008 at 11:00 PM
The internal dialouge in the Lynch film is terribly distracting and redundant. I'm unfamiliar with the specifics of the making of and people responsible, but it does nothing but patronize the viewer.
Now i have read all the books and loved them. i'm looking forward to seeing the mini-series now, as i did find that the film, although they did do a good job, couldn't delve into the history in as much detail that i hope the mini-series does...
i'm going to order them and will let you know whati think in a couple weeks!
There's a lot wrong with Dune in a narrative sense, to be honest. It also builds up an interesting sci fi backdrop of differing political interests and intrigue and then basically pisses all over it in the end by giving Paul two unbeatable trump cards- his own virtually infallible status and a completely unbeatable Fremen army- which then promptly, with no drama or question at all, thrashes everyone else involved despite the fact these were much cleverer, wilier and in the end more interesting people.
Dune Messiah is then a quite interesting look at where that all goes wrong for Paul, but really from that point on the whole universe has become much less interesting with the God Emperor running the place, all that Golden path stuff was a bit meh and Herbert's obsession with ecology was almost as bad as Tolkien's obsession with songs; large tracts of text are close to being wastes of time (and totally unfilmable).
Which should have made the Prelude novels interesting but they were just rubbish instead.
However, problems with the narrative (as opposed to the setting) are also the big problems with the Lord of the Rings novels. Peter Jackson messed around with that enough to make good films (well, two good fioms and one ok film), so it should be possible with Dune too.
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Last edited by Ushgarak on Oct 1st, 2008 at 09:12 AM
Suprisingly, in this we agree, too. Tolkein and Herbert both waste a lot of the reader's time. I don't mind an author being a stikler for detail, but not at the expense of the story. Filling in details and closing the loops in a story or even answering unanswered questions can be a good thing sometimes.
I never even finished a single LotR book. My first year of college, after High School, I would go to the comic book shop and there would be hippy after hippy sitting there reading LotR books in the back of the store. When I would talk to one around town and the subject came up, they'd tell me they were reading the 2nd book for the 10th time, that they loved it so much. I get that, I'm the same way with the original Star Wars mythology, but I think they were really more fascinated that it was so complex that they had to read it 10 times to digest it all. When you read any of the books, from The Two Towers to The Silmarillion, you can tell almost instantly that the guy who wrote it chose to do for a living exactly what Tolkein did for a living.
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So do you guys think that is the reason why dune hasn't been looked at as the next series of sci fi/fantasy films? just far too much material and narative issues? the same would have been said about lotr a decade ago but with a bit of tweaking, a very successful (and i mean narative wise - not financially) set of films was made. i mean a 7 parter would be a mammoth undertaking, but they're doing it with harry potter!
I just hope an ambitious film maker and visionary producer come together and decide to take it on, because i personally was enthralled by the books, and read all 7 in about 8 weeks!