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It's hard to squeeze Dune into a single movie. The book is a good 500 pages long, which fits better into one three movies than into one. But if you are determi
by johan_larson 10y ago
It's hard to squeeze Dune into a single movie. The book is a good 500 pages long, which fits better into one three movies than into one.
But if you are determined to fit it into a single movie, it should be possible. Here's the outline I came up with:
ACT 1 (30 min)
Start in Arrakeen, with the Atreides already in charge. Leto is the kind master, Paul his formidable young son. Their rivals are the Harkonnen, a nasty bunch (they abuse servants). Introduce Arrakis as the source of the Spice, possibly as part of Jessica's training of Paul in esoteric disciplines. The Fremen are mentioned, but as a minor impoverished rabble. Meanwhile, the Emperor, the Space Guild, and the Harkonnen meet and agree to replace the Atreides, together to maintain control of the Spice. The Harkonnen attack, Leto dies, and Paul and his mother flee to the desert. End with Paul looking back and vowing revenge.
ACT 2 (30 min)
Paul and Jessica encounter the Fremen, and are taken in by them. Paul tests himself against young Fremen fighters and is impressed; they are very good, but he is better. He accompanies them on a raid against the Harkonnen, and is again impressed. He joins the Fremen, and becomes a worm-rider. He learns the true size of the Fremen from seeing one of their secret meetings. At Jessica's urgings, he decides to lead the Fremen against the Harkonnen. Meanwhile, the Harkonnen are making a cruel mess of Arrakis.
ACT 3 (30 min)
Paul campaigns to become the Fremen war-leader; this is shown as a montage of public speaking to increasingly large gatherings and knife fighting. Harkonnen cruelties continue; the Emperor announces plans for a visit. Jessica speaks of the Voice from the Outer World prophesy. Paul, Jessica and Stilgar begin training the troops, incorporating her and Paul's esoteric training. They wait for a sandstorm, and attack in force with wormriders. Fight scenes between Fremen and Hakonnen. The fight goes to the Fremen. The Emperor flees in a ship. Paul addresses the crowds of Arrakeen from a balcony proclaiming a new day of Arrakis, with the natives in charge.
I think that could work. But some stuff did get left out: the spice as a mutagen, the nature of the Bene Gesserit and their goals, the Kwisatz Haderach, Paul's Harkonnen heritage, Paul's duel with Feyd-Rautha, and everything about Liet-Kynes.
- Tloewald 10y agoLynch in a nutshell: created on drugs; best consumed on drugs. The problem with Lynch's Dune is that it seems not to have been planned properly (at all?); i can only assume they started shooting with what they thought was a half-finished script which turned out to be a 1/10 finished script. This lines up with everything else David Lynch has done (e.g. Twin Peaks loses the plot 3/4 of the way through the first season and never recovers, Mark Frost -- his co-creator -- has said in interviews they had no plan as to how the story was going to resolve and that certainly gels with my viewing of the show and my reaction to rabid fan explanations of how it all makes sense and Fire Walk With Me is a work of genius). Dune starts out at a deliberate pace, covering stuff in the first 100 pages or so quite nicely. I love the look and design of everything, and the first fight with shield effects was awesome for the time. But then most of the running time and budget are gone and whoops, need to cram in the rest. Because the shield effect was too expensive they introduce the "weirding way" b.s. to eliminate the need for all that fancy knife-fighting, shields, etc. So the last 45 minutes is just a montage of silliness.
- krylon 10y ago> Lynch in a nutshell: created on drugs; best consumed on drugs. I am not sure if Lynch draws his inspiration from drugs; I cannot rule it out, but it feels unlikely somehow. (Although it would explain Inland Empire...) The second part is true, though. ;-) As for the pacing, I read somewhere that the first version of the movie was about four hours long, but the studio made him cut it down to two-ish hours (or maybe they did it for him).
- golergka 10y agoWhat substance in particular would you recommend?
- sleepybrett 10y agoLynch doesn't do drugs, he does transcendental meditation.
- eli_gottlieb 10y agoIMHO leaving out Liet-Kynes turns Dune into too much of an unironic hero-story, which is emphatically not what Herbert intended. Hence why he followed up with Dune Messiah.
- coredog64 10y agoSciFi network (back when it was still SciFi and not "sharknados") did a pretty good miniseries. It doesn't have big budget special effects, but I thought it did a reasonable job of expanding on the story that didn't appear in Lynch's version.
- flukus 10y agoThis is exactly had the Sc-Fi channels trilogy did it. It's a much more faithful adaption.