My money's on more woke shit. Not that I'll ever see it.
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That's my initial reaction, that this is going to be an attempt at the Bene Gesserit tour de force miniseries with girlboss shit cranked up to 11.

I am a Mark Strong fan, so I'm curious about it, a little bit.
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I dumped HBO or Max or whatever it's called now a long time ago, and I certainly won't add another paid subscription for this bullshit.
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It's gonna be Sisterhood of Dune.

Which is a Brian Herbert/Kevin Anderson book and those are pretty much all terrible.

So it's gonna be bad. I mean even the sequel books those guys did were bad. The Prequels worse.

But I'll watch it because...reasons.
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After watching every penguin episode within an hour of dropping.. I lost interest within 30 minutes and went to bed. It was late, and I’ll give it another shot today. But I’m keeping my expectations low
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What is so woke about Dune? Its a movie series about a book written sixty years ago
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Yeah, if only I had precisely outlined all the reasons why this movie sucks woke microdick in this very thread. Oh wait.... :-)
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Are the sand worms trans?
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Having Chani go full Girlboss fundamentally alters the entire Dune universe and making Paul your typical toxic male warmonger fully buries it.

Dune 1 didn't do any of that. It really did a nice job as a faithful adaptation. But Dune 2 split Paul's internal torment out of the character altogether, put it in Chani and really screwed the whole dynamic up. Especially when, again, the she ditches with his arranged marriage to Irulan (which would've been COMPLETELY acceptable to the Fremen).

It's not hard to see the issues if you're at all familiar with the Dune universe.

Now the answer could be a simple one - inner monologue is difficult if not impossible to translate to a movie from a book. I get that - I could even accept it. But why not put that in Gurney, someone who was always a mentor to Paul and could've provided that foil significantly better. Villeneuve, in a quest for a relatable audience proxy, picked the wrong one.

This idea that a Fremen female, from a deeply religious warrior clan, would simply turn full GirlBoss and hate war or rebel against a political marriage is just silly. And unnecessary. Then again, they gender swapped Liet Kynes as well for some strange reason and suddenly Chani's tie to Liet (and the Fremen ethos writ large) was tenuous and bizarre at best.

Villeneuve wrote Dune 2 for a 'modern' audience and in so doing, undermined the story.
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The biggest sin was making it two movies and totally skipping the middle of the book, which included some of the very best parts. Should have been a trilogy.
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Expound.

It's been a bit since I read Dune - I don't recall them taking much of the story out. Maybe the bit where they eventually locate Gurney? I dunno, if that's it, it always felt largely tangential to the story as a whole.

They could've provided more of Yueh's story but really, I don't feel like there was any real need to make him as sympathetic a character as he appeared to be in the books.

I didn't feel like there was much missing that was critical to taking the story forward. They cut a few corners and fast forwarded a bit w/r/t Paul and Jessica being accepted into the Fremen culture. That would've just really hurt the pacing of the movies, though.

I think the biggest loss was no real discussion of the smugglers out in the desert and finding Gurney, but there's a lot to have fit into these movies - it's an excusable omission, IMO.
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Here's something else that bothered me a bit -- they undersold the importance of Spice. Again, I think, to simplify Paul's motivations and character.

Because "Paul is a religious zealot who's bought into his own bullshit" is a LOT easier than "Spice is the material that makes interstellar travel possible and makes Arrakis the most important economic zone in the known universe..."

Suddenly Paul doing what he did is far more defensible - The best defense is a good offense when EVERYONE would gladly conquer your planet and strip mine the whole damn thing.

But again, if you're going to make Chani a noble heroin and Paul a savage zealot, you can't introduce that aspect of it. You can't so much as whisper about the Spacing Guild and their influence on events. Because that would make Paul's actions even more defensible and Villeneuve's general disdain for religious fervor couldn't be hammered home as readily.
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The book itself skipped over Paul's ascension over the Fremen. Dune (the book) was a three part story - the first part ends with the defeat of the Atreides forces; the second part ends with Paul killing Jamis, he and Jessica being accepted by the tribe, and Jessica drinking the water of life and exposing the unborn Alia to the Bene Gesserit past lives. At the beginning of part three, two years (roughly) have passed, and the events of that period are only vaguely alluded to in passing. Alia was actually born and would have been at least a year and a half old. It was during this time that Paul rose up the ranks into Fremen leadership. It DID NOT happen quickly, or for that matter, nearly instantly. There was no "oh hi, foreign guy from the House that just got wiped out, we're going to put you in charge, but your sullen, bitchy girlfriend won't like it" bullshit.

And I used to think one of the worst aspects of the '84 movie was the Fremen accepting Paul so easily and quickly - at least until Denis said "hold my beer." :-)
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The Chani turn was annoying. But it is what it is.

In regarding how quickly everything happened I think Villenueve had to make a decision. Alia running around as an adult 4 year old was going to be weird for book readers. Let alone non book readers… that’s just my take who only got into the books after first Dune came out. They are damn close to being 2 perfect movies in my eyes.

I still haven’t made it through Prophecy.. has anyone here?
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Agreed.

And then having to explain toddler Alia going out there doing grownup shit was just going to really send people cross-eyed.

But you couldn't very well have her out there doing toddler shit either. So they moved up the timeline to simply avoid the cognitive dissonance.

It's not terribly unlike GOT just aging up the characters in the series vs. the books. Because for viewers, seeing these people run shit at 13 yrs old just wouldn't make sense to them.

And like you, I have to remind myself that when I tried to watch Dune BEFORE I read the books, I was bored and ultimately a bit lost. So if they're going to appeal to the folks that haven't read the books, they had to change a few things up. It's a little difficult for me to think "okay, how would the uninitiated absorb any of this" when I've read 10 of these books when you include the prequels.

I just don't think the Chani thing was the right way to go about doing it.
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