The massively shortened timeline is the biggest issue. A huge number of the flaws are because of that. In the books, so much happened that the movies just ignored, because they shrunk almost 4 years into under 9 months. The biggest setback Paul suffers is that they kill his son, who he has with Chani, and capture his sister. But by condensing the timeline, Chani doesn't have a kid, and Alia hasn't been born. Which meant that, rather than a setback, the plan just kinda goes flawlessly. Also it means you lose the incredibly poetic death of Baron Harkonnen at Alia's hands, as she stabs him with the same type of poison dagger the Bene Gesserit use when testing Paul, after calling him "grandfather".
Haven’t seen Dune 2, but that sucks! My favourite scene of any book is when Alia is slagging off the Baron and Emperor, and they’re too blinded by the childishness of this 3 year old that they don’t understand any of her veiled threats, but the reverend mother next to them is having a severe panic attack because she knows what Alia is, and that Alia can spill the beans on the Bene Gesserits treason at any moment which would destroy the Order. I know it’s a weird scene, but if you aren’t willing to embrace that level of weird then maybe you shouldn’t be adapting Dune.
What makes it even more strange is they have the perfect situation to do time skips. If you had said that each major change in setting in the movie was 2 years apart I would believe it. I see no real reason they couldn't have done this, beyond having to age up actors. But even then they can cheat. You can give some character a little more contoured makeup and spray some grey on the older actors and boom, it's been 10 years.
As a person who loves all the Dune adaptions for different reasons (Patrick Stewart will always be my Gurney Halleck because I can perfectly picture him as the troubadour warrior who would casually murder you with a song on his lips; Alex Newman is my favourite Paul because of his portrayal from the arrogant youth into the anguished and jaded Preacher who is rebelling against the Golden Path that he knows needs to come about to save mankind but is unwilling to force them into the most oppressive tyranny that will kill trillions; Jason Mamoa is my favourite Duncan because he is the charismatic, pragmatic sword-master that the Atreides and the Fremen loved and even the Sardaukar honoured after they finally defeated him and I would love to see him return as Hayt), Dune definitely is the book that can't be faithfully turned into a movie... not a one that can satisfy the book fans and newcomers anyway. Nuggets of important information are so imbedded in the pseudo political philosophical chapters that you can't just cleanly snip and cut it, you have to to butcher it and try and re-arrange it. Jessica being aggressively "Paul must become the Kwisatz Hadderach" was definitely one such change, when in the novels she was dead against it because "they (males) tried and died" and while she hoped she had produced the chosen one she wasn't *certain* so she took the early risks herself to secure Paul's position in Sietch Tabr despite knowing the dangers to herself and her unborn daughter. It was a political risk that paid off and that Paul resented. Chani was the counter-point to that, being a pragmatic supporter of whatever Paul chose to do but never being a pushover or a pusher. She was his pragmatic moral rock and compass: she saw things the way a Fremem would see them - the many outweigh the few, even when it came to their personal lives. From what I remember from watching the two movies it also wasn't really clearly explained why Vladimir Harkonnen wanted Feyd-Rautha to be the next Baron instead of Glossu "Beast" Rabban, just a very very brief dialogue after Feyd's arena fight. In that regards it probably hurt that Thufir wasn't included in Part II to drive that particular narrative, since in the novels he was the one needling Fyed to overthrow the Baron, and that eventually caused Vladimir to share with his nephew his plans to give Feyd the lion throne and become the first Emperor Harkonnen. Feyd was being set up as the Anti-Paul but it didn't really feel like it in the movie. I think Villeneuve removing the time-skip didn't help either. He condensed several years of narrative into a few months, especially regarding Aliah.
IIRC the weird sex stuff was weird on purpose. Basically, Frank Herbert was done with Dune, after he finished it with the fourth book. But then his editor and his publisher came to him and said "Hey Frank, we like money, and Dune makes us a lot of money, so make more Dune." He didn't really want to, but they kept nagging him, so he was like "Okay, but I'm gonna make it real shitty, like typical sci-fi trash, you okay with that?", and they said "Yes, more money!" So that's why the fifth and sixth books have crazy sex cults.
I liked Dune more than Dune part 2 when I first saw it in theatres, but after rewatching Dune part 2 like 3 more times now I absolutely love it, there is a lot of little bits that you pick up on that are really easy to miss. I LOVE a tragic "good guy becomes a villain being the good guy" story. One of my biggest issues with Dune and Dune Part 2 is that there is a lot going on, and it is one of the few cases where I think that it may have been better as a TV show, where you get 6-8 40-60 minute episodes, so that we get more time exploring the characters and actually seeing the little cracks in Paul that lead up to him believing that the only way to avenge his father, save himself, his lover and their people is to become the villain. But also everyone can like and dislike whatever they want so have your own opinion, but I'd say give it a second watch. Or don't.
So glad someone else on the internet is pointing out the flaws in Dune 2. It's a great film undoubtedly but all the character and motivation changes really brought the story down and changed the whole message
Another thing is that Dune is basically a Greek Epic set in space, and the Greeks sure loved their tragic poems. Every hero is told that if they do this one thing, a bunch of bad things will happen, multiple times, and it always ends with "well, I know if I do this thing a bunch of things I don't like will happen, but I'm gonna do it anyways. Not even going to ask how or why it does so that I can try to get a better outcome, just gonna straight-up do it, because pride or whatever."
I'm someone who is fascinated by the world Dune is based out of. The lore built up by the books and the insane things that happen that were either intelligent design, destiny, or a combination of both. For Dune 2, I just wanted to see the worm riding (get your mind out of the gutter), Paul getting his super powers from the worm jizz (again, mind out of the gutter), the rise and fall of all the Harkonens (Rabban's death, Vladmir's death, and Paul's duel with Feyd), and the final battle. I got all of those, some were cool, some underwhelming. I agree with Ben's take on how they tell you how everything will turn out, then everything goes perfectly. That deflated the conflict and the stakes everyone had going into it. It was all visually stunning and beautifully shot. That was the entire spectacle for me. I'd expect any awards to go that route along with costumes maybe, but not much for anything else.
Ben And Tom aren't the first people I've seen talking about the Paul Atreides "switch" being weird. Personally I felt it was pretty well telegraphed as the same as DrStrange finding the one way forward. It wasn't until he could see the whole picture he knew how to go forward. And I thought Chalamet potrayed it quite well that he was pained underneath when he adopted the messiah role. But I guess it could have been clearer or less ambiguous. Or maybe I'm reading more into it than there is.
This is how I felt about the first one; like it was Breathtaking but I didn’t feel much emotions, it didn’t really make me think about anything either. But Dune2 gave me all of that - I was actually into the story this time and it felt really rounded. Kept thinking it was about to end, and wishing it would continue - and then it did!
Dune (the book) is like watching the cogs and gears turning in a machine. Very fascinating, but only for certain people - Dune is an extremely niche story that if you are not into political, cultural and evolutionary philosophy, you are probably not going to like it. The original Star Wars were successful because they adhered to archetypal fairy tales and the Hero's journey. They were stories everyone understood on a subconscious level. Ironically, the prequels tried to explore politics too, and they were (and arguably still are) not popular.
After I watched Dune: Part 2 me and my brother were chatting about it, and we came to a similar conclusion... It is the best made boring movie ever... My understanding is that pretty much everything important will happen in part 3, and Part 2 was just filler between the big events of the first and third parts
The stuff they skipped out on was supposed to happen on Arakis to shape the outcome of the first book so having stuff come later seems unlikely and they’ll just make stuff up
unpopular opinion, It's the worst work Lynch has ever done and should only be watched as a lesson on why you can't adopt internal monologs from books to movies and we should always be greatful for good screewriters reworking storys from books to movies so they work in diffrent formats
I do agree with a lot of this, but I had more problems with the way the government & military was managed than anything else. Like, you're telling me that the ENTIRE galaxy depends on spice to power their interstellar travel & trade, and there's not, like, a standing armada of ships AT ALL TIMES ready to orbitally bombard whatever Fremen fortification they like? And for each spice factory, they bring, like, 10 shitty dragonfly copters that can be taken down with 1 missile whenever they drop their shield to fire? Why the fuck aren't there 200 machine gun emplacements just ON the factory? And can it not have its own shields? And why would the Emperor come down from orbit without having a literal billion footsoldiers to defend himself? The whole story just felt to me like the author wanted to have only a planetary conflict, but he simultaneously wanted galactic stakes. It's like writing a WWII AU where the allies beat Hitler by attacking the ONLY arms factory he has with a dozen soldiers, and then him marching into the middle of them with 5 soldiers and getting captured.
They do actually explain it in the books, and it is a major part of the story that the movies just ignore, that is required for the plot to make sense. Basically, what it boils down to is, the Emperor is a figurehead for CHOAM/Spacing Guild, who both the Fremen and the independent smugglers (like who Gurney was working for when they find him) sell far more Spice to than the Harkonnens ever did. The Spacing Guild artificially increases prices, refuses to put up satellites in orbit over Dune to even survey the planet correctly, and can trivially deny any transport request they deem unreasonable. Additionally, they have limited prescience due to their massive Spice usage, and are quite able to predict the timeline of events they have been set on, and see it is as inevitable as Paul comes to discover. The only threat to the Spacing Guild is someone already on the planet, genuinely insane enough to destroy the Spice, and thus, destroy them utterly and the entire galaxy with them. To use the metaphor of "One who has the power to destroy a thing has complete control over it", basically, CHOAM controls the entire galaxy by this logic, until Paul can threaten to destroy their source of power.
@gajbooks Interesting. I did read the first book, and I don't recall most of this. I do remember the spacing guild obstructing planetary surveys, but not military presence, although I suppose the two would come hand in hand. Is it explained further in the later books?
@gajbooks and is the idea that they threw the emperor under the bus to keep Paul from destroying the spice or something? Because that was my main sticking point with the plot: how easy it was for Paul to depose him
@@Xanthanariumpretty much, despite the imperium controlling the strongest warriors in the galaxy with the sardaukar, without the guild they’d be stuck on one planet, and the guild is so dependent on melange they won’t let ANYTHING touch the planet, plus the culture of society in dune is that due to the threat nuclear war has on violence, all conflict is usually settled between small armies of assassins rather than less precise nuclear strikes that defy the societal restrictions of the butlerian jihad. So yeah the emperor is exiled because it’s less risky than allowing Paul the option of destroying ALL space travel
@EWRPVM Oookay. I suppose it's a style of writing, and not inherently better or worse than alternatives, but I would like a little more insight into the actions & motives of the Spacing guild to be shown to the reader in the first book.
David Lynch’s Dune (1984) is just a better epic sci-fi film to watch…! The key scenes and characters are just better in the 1984 single film… The soundtrack is also way more memorable (by Toto - epic)… Watch the 4K version of Dune 1984! The end credits are worth it alone… The new Dune part 2 should have emulated the 1984 credits at least a bit, missed a trick there…!
I agree, i liked the first one very much, but the second one i found a bit boring and stale. And the Emperor was ATROCIOUS, he just stood there most of the time, barely said 2-3 sentences, he just looked like an old man that didnt know what was going on, terrible miscast.
The reason I loved Dune 2 is because of everything else coming out, not Dune itself. Everything else is so trash, like being fed tasteless slop, that when someone hands me a mildly seasoned meal it's incredible.
Really seem like they missed a lot about why Paul was so conflicted and why he felt there was no way out except following the path he had foreseen and dreaded, which lead to him changing due to suffering insane levels of PTSD from experiencing so many past lives and their pain. Paul essentially looses his humanity. Paul isn´t even supposed to be seen as a "good guy", he is never presented as a hero in the books or movies, just a protagonist whos story we follow. A lot of things in these Dune movies are implied or indirectly shown without being narrated, and a lot of it is philosophical and political. Its the opposite of easy to digest popcorn marvel movies.
@@user-py3py5sx2f Calling it a popcorn movie is weird, there is a ton of subtle stuff still going on in the second movie even tho the first one had more internal conflict etc so the second one used that base to get into the thick of it. Adding a bunch of talking and internal monolgues to these movies because people don´t pay enough attention to whats on the screen would completely ruin them.
I watched it when it came out in cinema and I just remember being very bored during the first 50 mins, it does get a bit better after but I think it is very overrated. It's 33 top rated on imdb at the moment, I can't understand why its so high as Ben says I couldn't give a shite about the characters, wouldn't be a movie I would watch in a hurry unlike something like shutter island for example.
