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The main thing I learned was that Cronenberg was offered the directing job for ROTJ. Cronenberg was at one time in line to direct Totall Recall, and he wrote a

The main thing I learned was that Cronenberg was offered the directing job for ROTJ. Cronenberg was at one time in line to direct Totall Recall, and he wrote a draft of the screenplay. Totall Recall certainly includes a bit of the trademark body horror. Cronenberg made The Fly in Hollywood, and I think it's it's great, but he wasn't able to get much more than that on the go, even though he came close to landing several high profile gigs. In some alternate history timeline Cronenberg's name would have been attached to several big time Hollywood properties, and the world would be mostly the same just a little bit grosser. Of course, I'm happy with Cronenberg's mostly Canadian produced oeuvre the way it is, I just like to wonder. I also used to wonder what the world would look like if Lynch has directed ROTJ, but I came to realize it was a ridiculous premise, Lynch needed far more creative elbow room than what the 3rd instalment of an established franchise could possibly afford, and there was no chance Lynch would ever agree to such a thing. So we got Dune instead and I'm happy with that too.

jcgrillo 2y ago
> Lynch would author the look of Dune. This is so true. The recent films and the spinoff series all look like his Dune.
- colordrops 2y ago
  Lynch Dune is so underrated. The creativity on display was immense. The new Dune movies have amazing craftsmanship but feel as if they were generated by AI, almost every move and visual predictable.
  - comebyrrh 2y ago
    That’s such a great way to put it. Maybe I’ve just seen TOO many films, but there’s a modern homogeneity in big budget films that is installed as safety guardrails so that audiences aren’t too turned off. It’s visual predictable. I like that. Lynch said bollocks to that.
    - boogieknite 2y ago
      the entire sequence of scenes on Giedi Prime were far from visually predictable. Denis is a master and flexed it a number of times in Dune. i think a fair take is Dune 1 and 2 are doing more creatively than any other big budget blockbuster franchise has since Avatar 1
      - colordrops 2y ago
        Giedi Prime was the only sequence that held me transfixed during the movie. Funny, I was considering mentioning it as an exception with my first comment lest someone point it out.
      - comebyrrh 2y ago
        It was gladiator in black and white with the contrast cranked to 11. Take away the overexposure and … just like everything else the sci fi bad guys build in the last three decades of film. The Lynch Giedi Prime was terrifying. But that’s probably because I’ve been watching sci fi films for fifty years.
        duped 2y ago
        I mean I'm fairly sure it's the first/only infrared shot on imax, which is neat and gives it that unique look.
        guappa 2y ago
        If you read scifi from the 50s you'll find that there was no original idea in any scifi film.
        comebyrrh 2y ago
        Sigh. Asimov didn’t write EVERYTHING. He didn’t write about gender and politics like LeGuin He didn’t write about drug addicted Mars settlers like PKD. He didnt write about dimensional fragments and gravitation wave communication and laws of existence like Liu. Even the grandfather of it all HG Wells didn’t …. You trolled me and I fell for it. Damn.
  - zeristor 2y ago
    The lengths they went to to mate in the landing of the Duke on Arrakis. They used a football stadium in Mexico, in order to get enough distance. The mind boggles as to what they did without CG. I believe the film run aground on the special effects for the worms, it just goes to show that critics will feast on the weak points. I utterly relished the scene with the Emperor meeting the navigator; Mr PlansWithinPlans. Is there enough film to make the purported mini-series of Lynch’s Dune, I take it there was only the film.
    - palmotea 2y ago
      > The lengths they went to to mate in the landing of the Duke on Arrakis. > They used a football stadium in Mexico, in order to get enough distance. The mind boggles as to what they did without CG. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pQG_Gt6-xpE https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pQG_Gt6-xpE
      - araes 2y ago
        Ever notice how much it looks like Lucas directly took the Dune 1984 imagery of the landing on Arrakis and turned it into the Trade Federation landing on Naboo? [1] Above Documentary, 1:23: https://youtu.be/pQG_Gt6-xpE?si=KZx9K1l1pZERaJ-R&t=83 https://youtu.be/pQG_Gt6-xpE?si=KZx9K1l1pZERaJ-R&t=83 [2] Trade Federation Craft Landing, 0:25: https://youtu.be/UD8tounIou4?si=-eCg60AvEr0eo3qa&t=25 https://youtu.be/UD8tounIou4?si=-eCg60AvEr0eo3qa&t=25
  - zeristor 2y ago
    At what point with AI transformers could we generate different versions of films: I’m thinking about a Carry On version of Dune, of Star Wars, The Matrix, Fight Club. I guess at some point some AI might generate these just for fun for itself, or maybe it’ll be smart enough not to bother.
    - basch 2y ago
      First it’ll be animation upscaling. Using the current season of The Simpson, South Park, Toy Story 4 along with the first season or movie as a controlnet. Then will come applying an aesthetic like Star Wars or Mad Max to an extinct movie.
  - Barrin92 2y ago
    >The new Dune movies have amazing craftsmanship but feel as if they were generated by AI Except for Arrival which owes a lot of its humanism to Ted Chiang's source material that's something that I've noticed about Villeneuve's work. Technically well made but there's something inhuman and cold about how he writes characters and scenes, as if they're surgically made. I think it really stands out too if you watch the old and new Blade Runner back to back.
    - colordrops 2y ago
      I see the same cold and surgical nature to Christopher Nolan films. They all seem the same to me.
      - keyringlight 2y ago
        What I sense with the Nolan films that I've watched is that he packs a lot into the runtime, even accounting for how they generally are long films to start with. He has to be very efficient with how he uses the time, every shot and dialogue carries some information that is useful in some way, there's little spare space or idling. In a way I wonder if it's a bit deliberate to overwhelm the view a little on the first viewing so they can't take it all in and analyze as they go so late revelations have the impact they do, if it was spaced out as a TV series the writing would need to adjust.
  - nabla9 2y ago
    Lynch hated Dune. Lynch's name is removed from the credits of the original cut (replaced with Alan Smithee) because it's so embarrassing. It's still a Lynch movie, so it's interesting to watch. I would not call it underrated. The tempo of the movie is completely off, and no cut has been able to fix that. The characters and scenes just run trough the story. Lynch wanted Salvador Dali to design the set. Instead he had to reuses the set from the Conan the Destroyer (Richard Fleischer, 1984). He didn't even get the music he wanted and that's big part of his movies.
    - lordfrito 2y ago
      > Instead he had to reuses the set from the Conan the Destroyer My understanding is that Conan reused Dune sets, not the other way round. The Dune sets were extremely intricate and expensive, and are definitely one of the few highlights of the film. > He didn't even get the music he wanted and that's big part of his movies. Not sure how Toto ended up doing the music for that film. That film was an absolute mess.
      - reginald78 2y ago
        The Toto soundtrack is an atrocious fit, completely bizarre choice given the tone.
    - throaway89 2y ago
      Lynch hated Dune because DeLaurentis meddled with it so hard (Jodorowsky famously said they only way Lynch could have made a movie so bad, is if the producers ruined it).
    - philistine 2y ago
      You got most of your facts mixed up. Lynch's name proudly sits on top of the theatrical cut, the only cut he supervised. Alan Smithee is used for all other cuts, since he supervised none of those and refuses, as is his right, not to be credited for a cut he didn't watch himself.
  - lores 2y ago
    For me the best film of recent years is Hundreds of Beavers - not because it will revolutionise cinema or human thought, but because it was clearly made by people who love what they are doing and had nothing to lose but a tiny budget, so went absolutely hogswild on the creativity. It fills me with joy.
  - ghaff 2y ago
    There is an argument to be made that the new movies are better visually than they are as a complete package. That was certainly my reaction the first time through #1. I now am inclined to think that's not really fair and I do think they're clearly the best entries in the Dune movie list.
  - macspoofing 2y ago
    >Lynch Dune is so underrated. I don't know ... I think it's 'properly rated'. The movie is deeply flawed but it has stayed in public consciousness and is (fondly) remembered. The first half is pretty good. The second half is a total mess and makes the entire plot, characterization and pacing unsalvageable. The visual art style is generally great, but there are some glaring misses.
    - throaway89 2y ago
      It's a mess, but it feels alien, which is what you want with sci-fi and especially Dune.
  - xtiansimon 2y ago
    I’m a big fan of Lynch’s Dune. Have you seen the Spicediver fan edit? That’s quite fun, too. (It was hanging out on YT for the longest time, but the Villeneuve Dune sort of muscled it off the platform.)
- NegatioN 2y ago
  And Lynch's Dune looks like it does, probably in no small part due to Jodorowsky, Giger and Mobius. I recommend everyone interested in Dune to take a look at Jodorowsky's Dune [0], the documentary which explains how they did the preproduction of Dune, and pitched it to the studios. All the deals eventually fell through, but the pitch decks circulated all the studios for years afterwards, and inspired countless other movie makers. The best things about the new Dune installments imo is the art, but all, or most of it feels like copy pasted ideas from what came before them. CGI is a huge asset to actually get it working though. 0: https://m.imdb.com/title/tt1935156 https://m.imdb.com/title/tt1935156
  - madaxe_again 2y ago
    Mœbius probably has the greatest influence to obscurity ratio of any artist I can think of - his fingerprints are on so, so many things - and irony of ironies Jodorowsky’s Dune was probably one of the greatest catapults for further promulgating his aesthetic into the mainstream through the vessel of Giger. I doubt Giger would have been Giger without their collaboration on Dune. The unmade movie penetrates the popular psyche. I remember finding Metal Hurlant and The Incal at a vide grenier in France as a kid, well before the days of the web, and just being blown away by the visions of this guy - only years later did I realise that I wasn’t alone in that sentiment. He’s the unseen foundation on which so much has been built. A creator’s creator, if you like.
    - bazoom42 2y ago
      Also worth mentioning the comic story “A Long Tomorrow” by Moebius which was an inspiration for the visuals in Blade Runner.
    - djmips 2y ago
      I recently found out that Mœbius was a huge influence on Hayao Miyazaki that is particularly evident in his Nausicaä of the Valley of the Wind.
    - Fricken 2y ago
      The most relevant artists aren't those best regarded by popular audiences or critics, but the ones that do the most to inspire and influence other artists. Both Moebius and Lynch are huge in that regard.
deleted 2y ago
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wslh 2y ago
> but he wasn't able to get much more than that on the go, even though he came close to landing several high profile gigs. I think a History of Violence (2005) and Eastern Promises (2007) are really great, even if it's a different Cronenberg from "The Fly".
- wk_end 2y ago
  A History of Violence is phenomenal. Cronenberg might be one of those filmmakers who actually benefitted from the structure of Hollywood - even as far as “gross” Cronenberg is concerned, The Fly is probably his apex (even if Videodrome is cooler).
  - comebyrrh 2y ago
    Naked Lunch! To quote Nelson Munz: “I can think of at least two things wrong with that title.”
dlcarrier 2y ago
What if Lucas had directed Apocalypse Now? That was a possibility.
- lordfrito 2y ago
  Lucas wrote (or cowrote) Apocalypse Now. Had long planned on directing it but Star Wars got in the way. He and Coppola had a long working relationship together through American Zeotrope, both encouraging each other (and competing) in their respective projects. You can't tell the story of Lucas without talking about Coppola. A lot of this is detailed in Droidmaker. [0] [0] https://www.droidmaker.com/ https://www.droidmaker.com/
deleted 2y ago
[deleted]
iknownthing 2y ago
Cronenberg also turned down an offer to direct Top Gun believe it or not

jcgrillo 2y ago

> Lynch would author the look of Dune. This is so true. The recent films and the spinoff series all look like his Dune.

colordrops 2y ago
Lynch Dune is so underrated. The creativity on display was immense. The new Dune movies have amazing craftsmanship but feel as if they were generated by AI, almost every move and visual predictable.
- comebyrrh 2y ago
  That’s such a great way to put it. Maybe I’ve just seen TOO many films, but there’s a modern homogeneity in big budget films that is installed as safety guardrails so that audiences aren’t too turned off. It’s visual predictable. I like that. Lynch said bollocks to that.
  - boogieknite 2y ago
    the entire sequence of scenes on Giedi Prime were far from visually predictable. Denis is a master and flexed it a number of times in Dune. i think a fair take is Dune 1 and 2 are doing more creatively than any other big budget blockbuster franchise has since Avatar 1
    - colordrops 2y ago
      Giedi Prime was the only sequence that held me transfixed during the movie. Funny, I was considering mentioning it as an exception with my first comment lest someone point it out.
    - comebyrrh 2y ago
      It was gladiator in black and white with the contrast cranked to 11. Take away the overexposure and … just like everything else the sci fi bad guys build in the last three decades of film. The Lynch Giedi Prime was terrifying. But that’s probably because I’ve been watching sci fi films for fifty years.
      - duped 2y ago
        I mean I'm fairly sure it's the first/only infrared shot on imax, which is neat and gives it that unique look.
      - guappa 2y ago
        If you read scifi from the 50s you'll find that there was no original idea in any scifi film.
        comebyrrh 2y ago
        Sigh. Asimov didn’t write EVERYTHING. He didn’t write about gender and politics like LeGuin He didn’t write about drug addicted Mars settlers like PKD. He didnt write about dimensional fragments and gravitation wave communication and laws of existence like Liu. Even the grandfather of it all HG Wells didn’t …. You trolled me and I fell for it. Damn.
- zeristor 2y ago
  The lengths they went to to mate in the landing of the Duke on Arrakis. They used a football stadium in Mexico, in order to get enough distance. The mind boggles as to what they did without CG. I believe the film run aground on the special effects for the worms, it just goes to show that critics will feast on the weak points. I utterly relished the scene with the Emperor meeting the navigator; Mr PlansWithinPlans. Is there enough film to make the purported mini-series of Lynch’s Dune, I take it there was only the film.
  - palmotea 2y ago
    > The lengths they went to to mate in the landing of the Duke on Arrakis. > They used a football stadium in Mexico, in order to get enough distance. The mind boggles as to what they did without CG. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pQG_Gt6-xpE https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pQG_Gt6-xpE
    - araes 2y ago
      Ever notice how much it looks like Lucas directly took the Dune 1984 imagery of the landing on Arrakis and turned it into the Trade Federation landing on Naboo? [1] Above Documentary, 1:23: https://youtu.be/pQG_Gt6-xpE?si=KZx9K1l1pZERaJ-R&t=83 https://youtu.be/pQG_Gt6-xpE?si=KZx9K1l1pZERaJ-R&t=83 [2] Trade Federation Craft Landing, 0:25: https://youtu.be/UD8tounIou4?si=-eCg60AvEr0eo3qa&t=25 https://youtu.be/UD8tounIou4?si=-eCg60AvEr0eo3qa&t=25
- zeristor 2y ago
  At what point with AI transformers could we generate different versions of films: I’m thinking about a Carry On version of Dune, of Star Wars, The Matrix, Fight Club. I guess at some point some AI might generate these just for fun for itself, or maybe it’ll be smart enough not to bother.
  - basch 2y ago
    First it’ll be animation upscaling. Using the current season of The Simpson, South Park, Toy Story 4 along with the first season or movie as a controlnet. Then will come applying an aesthetic like Star Wars or Mad Max to an extinct movie.
- Barrin92 2y ago
  >The new Dune movies have amazing craftsmanship but feel as if they were generated by AI Except for Arrival which owes a lot of its humanism to Ted Chiang's source material that's something that I've noticed about Villeneuve's work. Technically well made but there's something inhuman and cold about how he writes characters and scenes, as if they're surgically made. I think it really stands out too if you watch the old and new Blade Runner back to back.
  - colordrops 2y ago
    I see the same cold and surgical nature to Christopher Nolan films. They all seem the same to me.
    - keyringlight 2y ago
      What I sense with the Nolan films that I've watched is that he packs a lot into the runtime, even accounting for how they generally are long films to start with. He has to be very efficient with how he uses the time, every shot and dialogue carries some information that is useful in some way, there's little spare space or idling. In a way I wonder if it's a bit deliberate to overwhelm the view a little on the first viewing so they can't take it all in and analyze as they go so late revelations have the impact they do, if it was spaced out as a TV series the writing would need to adjust.
- nabla9 2y ago
  Lynch hated Dune. Lynch's name is removed from the credits of the original cut (replaced with Alan Smithee) because it's so embarrassing. It's still a Lynch movie, so it's interesting to watch. I would not call it underrated. The tempo of the movie is completely off, and no cut has been able to fix that. The characters and scenes just run trough the story. Lynch wanted Salvador Dali to design the set. Instead he had to reuses the set from the Conan the Destroyer (Richard Fleischer, 1984). He didn't even get the music he wanted and that's big part of his movies.
  - lordfrito 2y ago
    > Instead he had to reuses the set from the Conan the Destroyer My understanding is that Conan reused Dune sets, not the other way round. The Dune sets were extremely intricate and expensive, and are definitely one of the few highlights of the film. > He didn't even get the music he wanted and that's big part of his movies. Not sure how Toto ended up doing the music for that film. That film was an absolute mess.
    - reginald78 2y ago
      The Toto soundtrack is an atrocious fit, completely bizarre choice given the tone.
  - throaway89 2y ago
    Lynch hated Dune because DeLaurentis meddled with it so hard (Jodorowsky famously said they only way Lynch could have made a movie so bad, is if the producers ruined it).
  - philistine 2y ago
    You got most of your facts mixed up. Lynch's name proudly sits on top of the theatrical cut, the only cut he supervised. Alan Smithee is used for all other cuts, since he supervised none of those and refuses, as is his right, not to be credited for a cut he didn't watch himself.
- lores 2y ago
  For me the best film of recent years is Hundreds of Beavers - not because it will revolutionise cinema or human thought, but because it was clearly made by people who love what they are doing and had nothing to lose but a tiny budget, so went absolutely hogswild on the creativity. It fills me with joy.
- ghaff 2y ago
  There is an argument to be made that the new movies are better visually than they are as a complete package. That was certainly my reaction the first time through #1. I now am inclined to think that's not really fair and I do think they're clearly the best entries in the Dune movie list.
- macspoofing 2y ago
  >Lynch Dune is so underrated. I don't know ... I think it's 'properly rated'. The movie is deeply flawed but it has stayed in public consciousness and is (fondly) remembered. The first half is pretty good. The second half is a total mess and makes the entire plot, characterization and pacing unsalvageable. The visual art style is generally great, but there are some glaring misses.
  - throaway89 2y ago
    It's a mess, but it feels alien, which is what you want with sci-fi and especially Dune.
- xtiansimon 2y ago
  I’m a big fan of Lynch’s Dune. Have you seen the Spicediver fan edit? That’s quite fun, too. (It was hanging out on YT for the longest time, but the Villeneuve Dune sort of muscled it off the platform.)
NegatioN 2y ago
And Lynch's Dune looks like it does, probably in no small part due to Jodorowsky, Giger and Mobius. I recommend everyone interested in Dune to take a look at Jodorowsky's Dune [0], the documentary which explains how they did the preproduction of Dune, and pitched it to the studios. All the deals eventually fell through, but the pitch decks circulated all the studios for years afterwards, and inspired countless other movie makers. The best things about the new Dune installments imo is the art, but all, or most of it feels like copy pasted ideas from what came before them. CGI is a huge asset to actually get it working though. 0: https://m.imdb.com/title/tt1935156 https://m.imdb.com/title/tt1935156
- madaxe_again 2y ago
  Mœbius probably has the greatest influence to obscurity ratio of any artist I can think of - his fingerprints are on so, so many things - and irony of ironies Jodorowsky’s Dune was probably one of the greatest catapults for further promulgating his aesthetic into the mainstream through the vessel of Giger. I doubt Giger would have been Giger without their collaboration on Dune. The unmade movie penetrates the popular psyche. I remember finding Metal Hurlant and The Incal at a vide grenier in France as a kid, well before the days of the web, and just being blown away by the visions of this guy - only years later did I realise that I wasn’t alone in that sentiment. He’s the unseen foundation on which so much has been built. A creator’s creator, if you like.
  - bazoom42 2y ago
    Also worth mentioning the comic story “A Long Tomorrow” by Moebius which was an inspiration for the visuals in Blade Runner.
  - djmips 2y ago
    I recently found out that Mœbius was a huge influence on Hayao Miyazaki that is particularly evident in his Nausicaä of the Valley of the Wind.
  - Fricken 2y ago
    The most relevant artists aren't those best regarded by popular audiences or critics, but the ones that do the most to inspire and influence other artists. Both Moebius and Lynch are huge in that regard.

deleted 2y ago

[deleted]

wslh 2y ago

> but he wasn't able to get much more than that on the go, even though he came close to landing several high profile gigs. I think a History of Violence (2005) and Eastern Promises (2007) are really great, even if it's a different Cronenberg from "The Fly".

wk_end 2y ago
A History of Violence is phenomenal. Cronenberg might be one of those filmmakers who actually benefitted from the structure of Hollywood - even as far as “gross” Cronenberg is concerned, The Fly is probably his apex (even if Videodrome is cooler).
- comebyrrh 2y ago
  Naked Lunch! To quote Nelson Munz: “I can think of at least two things wrong with that title.”

dlcarrier 2y ago

What if Lucas had directed Apocalypse Now? That was a possibility.

lordfrito 2y ago
Lucas wrote (or cowrote) Apocalypse Now. Had long planned on directing it but Star Wars got in the way. He and Coppola had a long working relationship together through American Zeotrope, both encouraging each other (and competing) in their respective projects. You can't tell the story of Lucas without talking about Coppola. A lot of this is detailed in Droidmaker. [0] [0] https://www.droidmaker.com/ https://www.droidmaker.com/

deleted 2y ago

[deleted]

iknownthing 2y ago

Cronenberg also turned down an offer to direct Top Gun believe it or not