Good idea. I think I'll watch it again with the insights above and now having some understanding of the theme and story. Plus i like Ferguson.

ETA: Some questions as I watch again

1. Is everyone (Imperial, Atreides, Harrkones, Fremen, Bene G, etc) the same species? Or different species but humanoid? Is everyone evolved from us / humans?

2. What's the significance of the year? Is this earth years? Is it immaterial for the movie, only for the book to keep track the passage of time in the book?

3. Do they really speak Mandarin in the book? What's the significance, if any, of Yueh speaking Mandarin? Why not just speak English or whatever they are all supposed to be speaking? Why speak in a different language?

4. Why does Paul look so weak? Is that they way he's portrayed in the book - a weakly teenager? Visually, not very inspiring.

5. The barker at the beginning - a single black man out of thousands? Portrayed as such in the book? Or woke aspect?

6. The blue eyes and the garb of the fremen - a nod to persia? Or incidental? The prayers reminiscent of Islam?

7. Why do the Atreides ships emerge from the water? Why aren't they on dry land?

8. When Leto leaves Atreiders, who is left managing the planet and the rest of its people?

9. Is the Imperium good for the people, it's envious, treacherous actions toward Atreides aside? If so, why wouldn't they want Atriders to continue; why choose the barbaric Harkonnes over Atreides?

10. Why does the armed guards need armor if they have shields?

11. Why do the helicopters need mechanical means of thrust? Seems like their other craft have means of thrust that don't depend on mechanics.

12. Are the sand worms vital to the Arrakis ecology? If not, why not just hunt them down and kill them?

13. If the Imperium is going to be visibly participating in the downfall of the Atreides, why not just wipe them out on Atreides? Why send them to Arrakis first?

14. getting in this a little more.....

This message has been edited. Last edited by: konata88,

I finally watched it.

Villeneuve's love for the book couldn't be more obvious from the film.

Of course a lot of worldbuilding and exposition had to be cut, or it would be longest film in the history of cinema. Despite that, there are so many important and iconic moments from the book that are reproduced almost exactly in the movie, even when the necessary background information to understand what's happening isn't really present in the movie.

From the standpoint of someone who has read and enjoyed the book, I thought it was excellent. Without the background of having read the book, I think it would be harder to follow and some of the scenes and plot points would seem random or not make sense (although my wife, who read the book once a long time ago and doesn't remember it at all, really enjoyed the movie).

In the opening scenes of the movie, I didn't like some of the casting choices, but by the end I had come around and thought most of the casting was excellent and there were only a few roles I was so-so on.

I particularly liked Skarsgard's Baron Harkonnen. I'm not completely sold on the character design, but his physical presence and especially the way he used his voice really fit the evil, depraved nature of the character.

As always, Villeneuve absolutely nailed the sci fi architecture, equipment, and costuming. His eye for that is just flawless.

There were some complaints earlier in the thread about the score. Putting aside the question of how the audio is mixed, I really liked the score as an element of the overall film. It isn't music I'd go listen to for fun, but so much of the unique tone of the book revolves around the interaction of science and mysticism. The Bene Gesserit have their own mystical thing going on, there's the Bene Gesserit-planted prophetic propaganda on Arrakis, the Fremen's own mysticism, and Paul's hallucinatory/oracular experience with the spice. There's also the interaction of Western and Arabic cultural elements. I think the score really helps bring that tone to the film in a way that pure exposition can't given the length of the film.

2. I believe the year doesn’t correspond to our current calendar. It’s the year 10,191 AG, which means After Guild (the formation of the Spacing Guild). The time of the events in the movie corresponds to around 20,000 AD in our time.

4. Paul is a teenager in the book, but I don’t see him being weak in the movie.

6. Yes, there are Middle Eastern influences in the book.

7. Caladan is a planet of mostly oceans. I imagine the very large ships are underwater due to both a limited amount of dry land, as well as to keep them safe from attack. Also, it looks cool on screen to have the ships rising from the ocean.

9. The Empire is run by a family dynasty. They fear the rising power of House Atreides as a threat to their grip on power. It’s not a revolt against the Empire as an institution.


10. As shown in the fight in the beginning, slow projectiles like swords and knives penetrate the shields. That’s why you still need to wear armor.

12. Yes, but as a practical matter, they are incredibly massive, and rarely breach the surface of the sand, so they would be exceptionally hard to hunt down and kill. Not worth the effort.

13. The point is that Empire doesn’t want the Duke to be seen as a martyr, which could lead to an uprising by the other great houses. They are using the Harkonens to do the deed so the Emperor won’t be seen to be directly involved.

Remember, this is a movie, and it’s based on a book. Not every question is answered, even in the book, if it’s not relevant to the story.

This message has been edited. Last edited by: Dwill104,

quote:

Some questions as I watch again

4. Paul isn't bulked up, but he doesn't look weak. You can see that during the training session and as they run across the sand.

5. Who's the "barker" you're referring to? The Herald of the Change?

6. The robes of the Fremen, that they wear outside the stiech, is partly for camouflage

7. Caladan is a water planet. Their power is air and sea based

9. Jealousy. The Atrides were becoming too popular and powerful and threatened the Emperor. The Harkonnes were rich due to controlling Arrakis and also were seen as a threat to the Emperor.

By setting them against each other on Arrakis, the Atrides would be destroyed and the Harkonnes would be bankrupted...the estimate of cost was 50 years of spice production.

11. The props weren't for thrust, just for lift, glide and VTOL.

12. The Sandworms are critical to the ecology. They are also hard to kill. You have to kill each segment indiviually

13. They weren't "visibly participating"...there were no satellites overhead (scene between the baron and the Reverend Mother)

Also if the Emperor was seen attacking a House, the other houses would join together to overthrow him...fearing that they would be next.

He took advantage of existing "kanly" between two Houses

1. Everyone in the movie is human. In the books there are some groups that have mutated far enough that you could maybe not call them human anymore (Guild Navigators and Tleilaxu), but even there, they started as human.

3. Yueh is a Suk Doctor, which in the books is a whole big thing. I don't remember specifically if the Suk Doctors have their own language in the books, but in the books many Imperial houses and other groups have their own languages for communicating privately while around outsiders.

6. The Fremen definitely show a lot of Arab influences, which is true in the books, too. The blue eyes aren't natural, they are from living with constant exposure to spice.

11. The aircraft are "ornithopters," aircraft which operate by flapping their wings. There is no reason they are necessary, they're just the aircraft used on Arrakis (Dune) in the books. I suspect Frank Herbert included them just as another weird, future-y thing that seemed interesting.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ornithopter

12. SPOILER ALERT (Kind of? I don't think there's a reason you're not supposed to know yet, it just kind of isn't obvious in the movie.) The sandworms make spice (and in the books it is explicitly spelled out that in the previous thousands of years no one has been able to find a way to make synthetic spice). No sandworms, no spice, no spice, no interstellar travel.

How do they have interstellar travel if it depends on a thing from not-Earth? Well, a long time ago there were machine interstellar drives that depended on computers, but then a bunch of shit happened and there was a galaxy-wide holy war against computers (the Butlerian Jihad - "Thou shalt not make a machine in the likeness of a human mind") that is still held to thousands of years later, so now the only method of interstellar travel is Guild Navigators drugged up on Spice doing it with their minds.

Also, SPOILER ALERT, in one of the later books they kind of do kill all the sandworms, which has huge, galaxy-wide repercussions.

One of my favorite books. It’s super dense and hard to adapt. In fact, it was so dense with backstory it included a dictionary, an ecology lesson, and a brief history lesson as appendices. Your questions in order:


Everyone is Human. Some are a bit more than human. Between massive Spice intake and the Bene Gesserit breeding program (they’ve spent a thousand years selectively breeding a superhuman) and the mentats’ mental training (to replace thinking machines banned after the jihad), some folk have developed some pretty special traits. The Bene Gesserit for example have access to genetic memory (only the female side) and almost perfect control of their bodies down to a molecular level.

Don’t sweat the year. It doesn’t relate to our time. It’s since the Butlerian Jihad.

Houses have private languages they use around outsiders. Yueh is not an Atredies, he is a Suk Doctor and product of Imperial Conditioning. He should be psychologically incapable of betrayal. He is the only Suk to ever break the conditioning, due to a plot by the Baron and his mentat Piter DeVries (who doesn’t even get a name in the new film.)

Paul is a child. A highly trained, very capable, very deadly child, but a child. He comes of age on Arakis. Weak? He kills a Fremen warrior in single combat. Easily. So easily the Fremen initially get angry because they think he’s being cruel and drawing it out to play with him. Jessica passes it off as Paul not wanting to kill, but it has more to do with his reflexes being trained for shield combat. Fast in defense, slow and subtle on attack.

The Herald of the Change barely gets a mention in the book. The transfer of fief happens before the start of the novel.

Oh yes. The Fremen are VERY middle eastern inspired. It’s intentional. They aren’t Muslim if you’re wondering. Their focus of worship is a bit more...immediately present.

Caladan doesn’t have a whole lot of land. And because it looked cool. Mainly because it looked cool.


If I remember correctly, When Leto leaves, Caladan is turned over to Count Hasmir Fenring, the Emperor’s friend and one of the deadliest men in the Imperium. The count is very important in the novel (even though he’s only in it a few times) but doesn’t appear in the new film.


The Empire is overall fairly benign and hands off. The Houses rule their people as they see fit and then kick up tithes in profit and manpower to the Emperor. The Emperor rules by decree, but his power is balanced by the Great Houses, the Guild, and CHOAM (think of it as the galactic stock market and board of directors). He turns on Leto (who is actually a distant cousin he is fond of) because Leto’s popularity, legitimate (if weak) claim to the throne, and military might has made him a political threat.

“The slow blade penetrates the shield.” Plus you can’t use them around lasguns (very, very explosive reaction) or worms (drives the worms into a frenzy).

Ornithopters are very much part of the novel and are just some cool steampunk tech. This movie absolutely nails my mental image of them as well.

Oh. You want to leave the worms alone. They aren’t just important to Arakis. As to why, the Fremen know, Keynes knew, the Guild knows and Muad’dib will soon discover...

The emperor can’t be seen taking action against a Great House. If it was known, the Great Houses would all rise up and depose him. His Sardaukar are the most feared and at one time the most skilled fighters in the imperium, but there aren’t enough of them to fight EVERYONE. The only people who knew the Emperor was involved were the Emperor himself, the Baron, the Baron’s inner circle, and the troops themselves. They didn’t leave many witnesses and the Fremen don’t really talk to outsiders. Think of it as a Black Op. people might SUSPECT, but they don’t KNOW. AND THEY DONT WANT TO KNOW. If they knew, it would lead to chaos. Sometimes all you need is a little plausible deniability.

I keep returning to one of the absulute CORE premises of everything about Dune.

The ONLY way to support interstellar travel is with the spice melange and using the Spacing Guild. So even if you had spice, you still need Spacing Guild navigators. And the ONLY way and place to get it is from Arrakis/Dune, via the CHOAM Company, and having to deal with the Fremen. A universe with SO MANY absolute stovepipes and vicisouly interconnected relationships that could crap-out everything. Space Opera and politics at it's grandest.

quote:

Originally posted by konata88:
4. Why does Paul look so weak? Is that they way he's portrayed in the book - a weakly teenager? Visually, not very inspiring.

In the first couple of pages of the book, Paul is described as 15 years old and "small for his age."

Wow. Impressive. You guys seem to know the story and background as though it were real history.

Thanks for indulging in my questions. It helps to make the movie a little more enjoyable and understandable. I'm curious why the Fremen were modeled after the mid east.

Also, what do the Fremen eat. Doesn't seem like there is much to hunt. And not seeing any farms or water unless they've figured out how to cultivate underground (w/o sunlight?).

Sandworms being important to the ecology makes sense. Otherwise it seems like it would be better to just kill them off if they can eat whole whole harvesting platforms (which look huge); and then you can harvest 24x7 (or whatever their day looks like).

Imperium sounds useless, kinda like the UN. Seems like the Houses would be better off w/o the Emperor.

Hope #2 comes quickly.

There were far fewer departures from the book in the remake, which I was happy to see. While the first movie is enjoyable, the remake (not even touching the advanced effects) is far better.

Some things I was glad to see:
Paul is a teen. Duncan Idaho is not killed in the first battle in the House of Atraides. The fight between Paul and Jamis (was deleted from the original) when Paul and Jessica are taken in by the Fremen. No weirding modules (I kind of liked them, but they are not canon). When the Shadout Mapes presents Jessica with the kris knife (also deleted). The background of the Sardukar on Salusa Secundus. More that I can' recall at the moment I'm sure. One thing I was disappointed with was changing the sex of Lyet-Kines. His role as a male and Chani's father was canon.

I'm looking forward to part 2, especially the fight scenes between the Sardaukar and Fremen, which we got a taste of in the "vision" scene. The final battle scene should be epic if the first release is any indicator.

quote:

Originally posted by konata88:
You guys seem to know the story and background as though it were real history.

It's just knowing the cannon

quote:

I'm curious why the Fremen were modeled after the mid east.

The Fremen are modeled after the Bedouin and Kalahari Bushmen. Their religion is based on Zen Buddhism and Islamic mysticism. Dune was inspired by the sand dunes in Oregon

quote:

Also, what do the Fremen eat. Doesn't seem like there is much to hunt. And not seeing any farms or water unless they've figured out how to cultivate underground (w/o sunlight?).

It's explained in Part 2

quote:

Imperium sounds useless, kinda like the UN. Seems like the Houses would be better off w/o the Emperor.

It is based on a feudal society. Without an Emperor, they'd just be warring warlords.

Their system was setup by the Guild to maintain order in trade

quote:

Originally posted by konata88:
Wow. Impressive. You guys seem to know the story and background as though it were real history.

That's why Dune is such a great work of fiction. It's a little slow in the beginning because it sets up this framework. The later novels go into further details and how everything falls apart because Lady Jessica decided to have a son instead of a daughter.

The other thing not mentioned about the first Dune novel is that it's really about 450 pages long. The rest of the book is an encylopedia and short history of the universe. It's a lot like "Fatherland" by Robert Harris. The first part is a little slow because Harris is setting up a Germany where Hitler won WWII (using Hitler's notes), but then turns into a page turning murder mystery.

It's really worth reading the book along with Dune Messiah and Children of Dune. The rest are... "optional..."\

I'm of the opinion that the heighliner isn't an actual carrier but a mobile space bridge. In the scene where the Reverend Mother visits Caladan, her ship passes through the heighliner and there's a planet visible through the ship that isn't visible above the dorsal part.

^^^^^^^
I can't remember if travel by The Guild was referred to as "folding space" in the book. That's what it was referred as in the original movie. I remember in the Prologue in the movie, it was the spice that gave The Guild the ability to "fold space". Anyone?

Well, from what I've read, travel is done through folding space; however, the heighliners are described as cargo/passenger vessels. To me that means you load up a heighliner and then it jumps from one planet to another. But in this new movie, it looks as though the heighliner allows you to travel from one planet by passing down the center of it and when you come out the other side you're at a new planet.

On #6... they are basically followers of Zensunni. That's what it sounds like, a future blend of Zen Buddhism and Sunni Islam.

quote:

Originally posted by Orguss:
I'm of the opinion that the heighliner isn't an actual carrier but a mobile space bridge. In the scene where the Reverend Mother visits Caladan, her ship passes through the heighliner and there's a planet visible through the ship that isn't visible above the dorsal part.

From chapter 6:

"We'll be riding a Heighliner because it’s a long trip. A Heighliner is truly big. Its hold will tuck all our frigates and transports into a little corner—we’ll be just a small part of the ship’s manifest.”

quote:

Originally posted by erj_pilot:
^^^^^^^
I can't remember if travel by The Guild was referred to as "folding space" in the book. That's what it was referred as in the original movie. I remember in the Prologue in the movie, it was the spice that gave The Guild the ability to "fold space". Anyone?

I don't think it is really specified in the first book, there are just statements like Guild Navigators "use the spice drug of Arrakis to produce the limited prescience necessary for guiding spaceships through the void" (Appendix III), but in later books it is made explicit that the Navigators fold space.

E.g., from Heretics of Dune (Book 5): "the only ones who could thread a ship through the folds of space—in this galaxy one instant, in a faraway galaxy the very next heartbeat" (chapter 7).

(Yay ebook text search.)

quote:

Also, what do the Fremen eat. Doesn't seem like there is much to hunt. And not seeing any farms or water unless they've figured out how to cultivate underground (w/o sunlight?).

Hope #2 comes quickly.

Well. The human body IS up to 60% water. Don't need it if you're dead...

As for food? They scavenge what they can, the desert has small animals for bits of meat, and the Fremen are masters of preserving and utilizing whatever water is available and grow crops in hidden places. And there is water available on Arrakis. It's just not openly available.

Plus the Fremen have arrangements with smugglers.