Last Movie You Watched

[bsjkki]

1 hour ago, bluebell said:

I haven't seen either so I'm wondering if not seeing the musical means you'll probably like the movie more?

Possibly. It’s probably like the book/movie thing. They screwed up royally with the movie, IMO. The whole thing doesn’t ‘feel’ right. They did not make a movie musical but a movie where they inject awkward singing. 
 

They cut 4 songs. Added two. Missed the mark with so many things. The mom is not right. The ‘family friend’ is way toned down. The musical is lighter and heavier/more emotional all at the same time.

Edited October 22, 2021 by bsjkki

[bluebell]

2 hours ago, bsjkki said:

Possibly. It’s probably like the book/movie thing. They screwed up royally with the movie, IMO. The whole thing doesn’t ‘feel’ right. They did not make a movie musical but a movie where they inject awkward singing. 
 

They cut 4 songs. Added two. Missed the mark with so many things. The mom is not right. The ‘family friend’ is way toned down. The musical is lighter and heavier/more emotional all at the same time.

I’ve heard people complaining about the age of the main character. 

[bsjkki]

3 hours ago, bluebell said:

I’ve heard people complaining about the age of the main character. 

It is a small part of the problem. Bad makeup trying to make him look younger but the story changes/overall directing issues are much more problematic.

[Amulek]

Arrakis. Dune. Desert planet. 

Wow.

Some movies were just meant to be seen in theaters. And this is one of them.

If you live anywhere near a Dolby Theater (or, if not, an IMAX will do) I would highly recommend it.

I know it's available for streaming on HBO Max, but don't do that. The visuals and audio just demand that you experience this on the big screen. 

As for the movie itself, it was great. 

Dune was one of the first sci-fi books I read back when I was a kid, and I was worried I was going to be let down.

I wasn't. In fact, my only real complaint is that we only get half the story in this installment.

Part 2 has yet to be officially greenlit by Warner Brothers, so here's to hoping it does well enough in theaters for the studio to commit to the finale.

The spice must flow!!!

 

[bluebell]

15 hours ago, Amulek said:

Arrakis. Dune. Desert planet. 

Wow.

Some movies were just meant to be seen in theaters. And this is one of them.

If you live anywhere near a Dolby Theater (or, if not, an IMAX will do) I would highly recommend it.

I know it's available for streaming on HBO Max, but don't do that. The visuals and audio just demand that you experience this on the big screen. 

As for the movie itself, it was great. 

Dune was one of the first sci-fi books I read back when I was a kid, and I was worried I was going to be let down.

I wasn't. In fact, my only real complaint is that we only get half the story in this installment.

Part 2 has yet to be officially greenlit by Warner Brothers, so here's to hoping it does well enough in theaters for the studio to commit to the finale.

The spice must flow!!!

 

Is the type of movie that will make sense if you haven't read the books?

[Amulek]

10 hours ago, bluebell said:

Is the type of movie that will make sense if you haven't read the books?

That's what Villeneuve (the director) was going for - something that would please hardcore fans / those who know Dune by heart, and also people like his mom who had never read the book.

I think he delivered.

It's certainly much more accessible than David Lynch's adaptation (1984). Most people won't have too hard a time following what's going on.

And with a rotten tomatoes score of 83% (92% audience score), I'm going to go ahead and say it's a pretty safe bet.

 

Edited October 24, 2021 by Amulek

[bluebell]

4 hours ago, Amulek said:

 

That's what Villeneuve (the director) was going for - something that would please hardcore fans / those who know Dune by heart, and also people like his mom who had never read the book.

 

I think he delivered.

It's certainly much more accessible than David Lynch's adaptation (1984). Most people won't have too hard a time following what's going on.

And with a rotten tomatoes score of 83% (92% audience score), I'm going to go ahead and say it's a pretty safe bet.

 

I remember coming across the 1984 movie when I was a child, and honestly that was one of the reasons that I never considered reading the book later.  All I remember about it was the giant sand worms, that it was slightly scary, and made no sense to me.

[bsjkki]

I loved Dune but I’ve read the book multiple times. Curious what non fans think of the movie. I want to go see it in IMAX.

Don’t watch this at home. It needs the theater.

Edited October 24, 2021 by bsjkki

[bluebell]

Hubby and I saw Dune last night at the theater.  My thoughts:

1) it was overly long (2 hours 35 minutes but with previews we were at the theater for over 3 hours) and the beginning was pretty boring (my  husband feel asleep during that part).  They need the beginning to set up the whole premise and so that people that haven't read the book aren't completely lost though so I'm not sure there was anything that could be done about it, but yeah, it was kind of slow.  And still a bit confusing even with the set up.  Especially the part with Jessica and the crazy women in black.  The movie was more than half over before I figured out some of what was going on with all of that.  

Question--was the Duke not married to Jessica?  It seems like she's his wife but then I swear at one point he says that he should have married her so I'm really confused about that.

2) Actors were great.  They take the material seriously and you can tell.  I really like that.  You like the ones you are supposed to like and don't like the ones you aren't.  You end up caring about everyone you are supposed to care about, and the destructive parts really feel like a loss.  I noticed this especially when they burned the trees.  That's good storytelling.

3) The bad guy baron is a little cartoonish but I'm sure he's probably faithful to the source material.  He just comes off a little cheesy but I'm guessing it's not the movie's fault.

4) Even though I was very ready for the movie to be over when it finally finished, I'm really hopeful they will make the sequel.  It's also the kind of movie that you think about a lot after it's over.  It stays with you and takes up space in your brain.  That's a success in my view.

5) Now I want to actually read the book (books?  Is there more than one?  The movie made it seem like there is).

6) I'm split on whether or not seeing it in the theater greatly impacted the viewing experience for me personally.  I love theaters so normally I'm all about being there.  And though I didn't find the visuals that stunning (don't get me wrong, they are really cool, just not something that I felt needed the big screen to pull off well) I did think the sounds and soundtrack were very impressive and that being able to really feel the sounds made a difference.  It was just that the movie was so long, I was tired of being there by the time it was done.  Maybe being in a more comfortable place would have made the movie seem less long to me.  I don't know.

 

[Calm]

34 minutes ago, bluebell said:

uestion--was the Duke not married to Jessica?  It seems like she's his wife but then I swear at one point he says that he should have married her so I'm really confused about that.

She was his concubine, not an official wife. 

[Calm]

He is over the top bad in the books, full degenerate. 
 

Four original books that should be read imo.
 

The rest were done by the son and maybe someone else. The world is fascinating, but they just didn’t catch my interest like the originals.  

Edited October 24, 2021 by Calm

[bluebell]

19 minutes ago, Calm said:

She was his concubine, not an official wife. 

Does the book explain that more fully?  Why didn't he marry her?

[Calm]

41 minutes ago, bluebell said:

Does the book explain that more fully?  Why didn't he marry her?

My memory says yes, it was explained. I think it is that it kept an option for political maneuvering available, he could have made an alliance with another noble house through marriage, but I may be mixing it up with other books. 
 

Her bloodline was not publicly known. No family ties outside the connection with the Bene Gesserit. I can’t remember if the BGs made a deal with Leto or they just gave her as a gift, knowing he wouldn’t be able to resist her. 
 

Did they explain the BG breeding program?  And how Jessica was to only have daughters that would then be bred to produce the male version of the Bene Gesserit, but because she loved Leto, she gave him a son? (Early plot point, so not much of a spoiler and essential to understand the plot).

Edited October 24, 2021 by Calm

[poptart]

Finally saw a stream of it, wow, can see why this movie had a 14 minute standing ovation at Cannes.  Good wholesome movie, family values and all.  It comes out here in January I think.  

 

[bluebell]

54 minutes ago, Calm said:

My memory says yes, it was explained. I think it is that it kept an option for political maneuvering available, he could have made an alliance with another noble house through marriage, but I may be mixing it up with other books. 
 

Her bloodline was not publicly known. No family ties outside the connection with the Bene Gesserit. I can’t remember if the BGs made a deal with Leto or they just gave her as a gift, knowing he wouldn’t be able to resist her. 
 

Did they explain the BG breeding program?  And how Jessica was to only have daughters that would then be bred to produce the male version of the Bene Gesserit, but because she loved Leto, she gave him a son? (Early plot point, so not much of a spoiler and essential to understand the plot).

One of the BGs accuses her of having a boy because of her ego and wanting to be the mom of the chosen one (I don’t remember what he was actually called). But otherwise they didn’t really explain it.

How does she choose what the sex of her baby is?

[bluebell]

3 hours ago, Calm said:

He is over the top bad in the books, full degenerate. 
 

He's pretty bad in the movie, but we don't see enough of him to separate him from regular bad-guy type stuff.  And since he's so fat and disgusting, can kind of fly/float (something that isn't at all explained in the movies), and hangs out in a bath of oily gooey to heal, he kind of comes across as a batman villain type of character. 

That's what I meant by cheesy.  He had a comic book feel to him.

Also, what species is everyone supposed to be.  I get the good guys are human.  Are the bad guys human but just really bad or are they not actually human?  And what is the emperor and his court?  Human or something else.  Are the sand people supposed to be humans with blue eyes or are they indigenous to the spice world place?

[bsjkki]

I hope they get to make all three movies.  It would make a nice trilogy. 

[Calm]

6 hours ago, bluebell said:

One of the BGs accuses her of having a boy because of her ego and wanting to be the mom of the chosen one (I don’t remember what he was actually called). But otherwise they didn’t really explain it.

How does she choose what the sex of her baby is?

The Bene Gesserit have massive physical, mental and emotional self control and awareness. She could make her body or the egg only accept Y sperm apparently.  They never talk about how that I remember, but I would assume it is something like altering the ph of her body, or making it hotter or whatever causes y sperm to be favored.  They would likely know something that we don’t on how to do that. 
 

The civilization is very advanced in some ways, but it is also very decadent and massively stagnant in many ways.  Relationships between political entities, planets, the Guild, etc are so complex and interdependent it is a tight rope of decisions to avoid sending mankind into a cycle of self destruction. 
 

Anything resembling a thinking machine has been banned, so various groups (usually associated with a particular planet) has established producing humans with needed skills, talents. There is one adviser who is the equivalent of a computer.  Other planets produce the ultimate soldiers, another spies and assassins, one produces forbidden technology. 
 

Spice allows access to past memories as well as being able to see future possibilities based on choices for those who are genetically enhanced (though breeding programs).  The Space Guild can only calculate paths through space by their Navigators using spice to see future paths that successfully get to the destination and to avoid pitfalls.  Because computers are banned, without the Guild and without Spice there is no long distance space travel and mankind will be limited to their own local system. This would cause a massive societal collapse since the planets are so specialized now, including those growing crops.
 

They have yet to produce synthetic Spice which is only found on Dune/Arrakis.  Thus who controls Arrakis is almost as powerful as the Emperor…though the Emperor is held in balance by the combined Great Houses who have their own massive armies and own arrangements with the Space Guild to transport them. He cannot be seen to favor or reject any Great House without upsetting others, which would then band against him. The Space Guild is balanced by those who control Spice.  The Great Houses are balanced by their own ambition, they make alliances and break them, etc.  

Edited October 25, 2021 by Calm

[Calm]

My daughter says they really toned down the Baron, so imagine him very ramped up.  He is a grotesque homosexual pedophile psychopath (the serial killer type, torture, sexual assault, murder) in the book…my daughter says there is none of that…that conveyed well how he viewed others as toys for his murderous games, his absolute sadism, so it is unfortunate that they removed that  imo.

Iirc, he was poisoned by the BG and is super fat both because he indulges, but also because of the meds he has to take. I need to pull out my reference book to see what it says. He is so fat he can’t walk on his own, so he has an antigravity harness…the fly/float thing. 
 

There should be a repulsive charm about him, like a Batman supervillain indeed. 

My daughter says there is no real colour or glorious costuming and settings. That is a rather strange choice as it conveyed the advanced nature of the civilization, the class stratification, and the feudal society where progress has stagnated.  There is a visual story of this glorious appearance of the Empire and Great Houses contrasting the barren appearance of Arrakis…but life is hidden under the surface in the case of Arrakis while death is masked by the richness of the Empire. 

Edited October 25, 2021 by Calm

[Calm]

Everyone is human ultimately from Earth, this is thousands of millennia in the future. Since thinking machines are illegal, they had to turn to humans as their main resource, which led to various breeding programs as well as semiisolation on planets (very expensive to travel between and tightly controlled) produced all these different types.
 

Reading the books, you can see how various ideologies have survived with modifications or interesting meshing…such as Catholicism, Zen Buddhism, Islam, Judaism.  I doubt you can pick that stuff up too well. Religion is viewed by the Powers as a control mechanism, especially the Bene Gesserit.  At first it comes across as Herbert not viewing religion in a positive way, religious myths are created/seeded with the idea of manipulation of believers, but he does provide some positive examples.  Herbert started out Catholic and converted to Zen Buddhism. 
 

Spice makes the whites of one’s eyes blue, the more you take the bluer they are. 

Edited October 25, 2021 by Calm

[Calm]

Dune has a premise which sets up humanity as the ultimate resource, in the past there was a massive revolution against artificial intelligence that has gone so far as to make a religious and legal tenet “thou shalt not disfigure the soul” and “thou shalt not make a machine in the likeness of a human mind”.  
 

So nothing even like a calculator.  Humans that are capable of such calculations are very valuable as required training is specialized, very intense and extensive, called Mentats.  
 

Spice is so valuable because it can expand the human mind, it can also destroy it.  It extends life, slows aging and increases vitality, but is very addictive.  It is like oil has been for us in that transportation is limited by access to it. 
 

There is concern that too much bioengineering will result in nonhumans (who look like humans but lack a human soul in religious terms) and such are generally viewed as anathema. 
 

I also think….though it has been over a decade so I may be wrong…there was a taboo on mechanical genetic modification. One can use natural breeding to produce certain talents, I think even using artificial insemination or fertilization was forbidden.  Mixing with animal DNA…think that was taboo as well. The original books didn’t go into detail about what was happening behind the scenes on the worlds that more or less ignores the laws on modification if they could get away with it, I don’t know if the other books had the more typical sci-fi themes of technology and bioengineering producing anything one really wants as fast as one wants as opposed to painstaking natural breeding programs described in Dune. Iirc, at least one group used artificial wombs and such to create their ‘products’ (divergent human species/tools).  They were viewed as scandalous and outlawed, but of course the elites used whatever they wanted if it benefited them and therefore they are protected/tolerated. I think one of the later books dealt with the theme of discrimination through one character who was a product of such ‘unnatural’ means.
 

It is an interesting contrast as this respect for the human soul and mind has led to a disrespect of humanity in general, it has backfired by limiting progress in many ways, reversing technology available to the masses in a very advanced society, so very big caste difference, very feudal, though some like the Atreides are kind to their subjects and spend resources on making worlds comfortable to live on as well as good producers of whatever (food, arts and crafts, minerals, etc). It has turned into a contest of developing a perfect human to rule the faceless and often treated as valueless except as a mass humanity. Many of the elite only pay attention to their subjects as if they were cattle.  
 

Economy is pretty much monopolies, reference back to the British Empire and how it dominated with at times the East India Company being a defacto government or dictating to governments what they were allowed to do, taxes and such. CHOAM (Combine Honnete Ober Advancer Mercantiles) is the merchant organization/guild. (Often liken to OPEC since one of its top duties is sharing out Spice).  All the noble houses and the Emperor have shares in this company and their shares essentially determine how much power they have. 
 

It is supposed a monarchy, but the Emperor is just as controlled as anyone else by the restrictions.  His family is in power as the one that has the most shared in CHOAM, so while there is a military presence, it is really a business driven society.  The military protects business interests.

Ecology becomes a major issue as they are capable of terraforming, but this can have a cost that rulers don’t want to pay as well as ramifications for the whole system…not as easy as just abandoning a planet when no longer useful. 
 

The Fremen provide a view of a cooperative society that has adapted to their environment rather than forced the environment to adapt to it in contrast to the competitions among the Great Houses, Guild, Emperor, Bene Gesserits, and all the other ‘schisms’.

There was quite a bit of the “noble savage” theme in Dune, but Herbert seems to be pointing out the problem with giving honor more or solely to the extremes, the novelties, the heroes while ignoring the individuals in the masses.  It can be confusing because he raises up a hero that decides heroes are detrimental to the evolution of humanity. Humanity needs freedom to progress as humans and can only do so by functioning as both individuals and as a community (humanity spreads out and through isolation and competition has specialized developments, but then humanity constricts to bring back the improvements to fold into the mass so that all humanity advances/evolves).

Edited October 25, 2021 by Calm

[Amulek]

23 hours ago, bluebell said:

1) it was overly long (2 hours 35 minutes but with previews we were at the theater for over 3 hours) and the beginning was pretty boring (my  husband feel asleep during that part).  They need the beginning to set up the whole premise and so that people that haven't read the book aren't completely lost though so I'm not sure there was anything that could be done about it, but yeah, it was kind of slow.  And still a bit confusing even with the set up.  Especially the part with Jessica and the crazy women in black.  The movie was more than half over before I figured out some of what was going on with all of that.  

Yeah, this is something a lot of science fiction adaptations have to deal with. How do go about explaining how everything in this completely imagined world operates without a bunch of exposition. If you're operating in a long format medium, like what we see in the Expanse, then you've got some time to spread that out and let people puzzle the world together as you go along. But in a film you've kind of got to jump right in and make sure the people who don't know the story already have at least got a fighting chance of making sense of it - otherwise, they're just going to be confused the whole time and not enjoy it.

That being said, I think it would have been possible for them to end the film shortly after the cinematic climax. Personally, I'm glad they pushed on a bit further, but at a point I was starting to try and guess where they really were going to stop.

 

[bluebell]

4 minutes ago, Amulek said:

Yeah, this is something a lot of science fiction adaptations have to deal with. How do go about explaining how everything in this completely imagined world operates without a bunch of exposition. If you're operating in a long format medium, like what we see in the Expanse, then you've got some time to spread that out and let people puzzle the world together as you go along. But in a film you've kind of got to jump right in and make sure the people who don't know the story already have at least got a fighting chance of making sense of it - otherwise, they're just going to be confused the whole time and not enjoy it.

That being said, I think it would have been possible for them to end the film shortly after the cinematic climax. Personally, I'm glad they pushed on a bit further, but at a point I was starting to try and guess where they really were going to stop.

 

I thought it made sense where they stopped but I also thought that the last few scenes were some of the most important, but that by the time they happened they had lost a lot of their weight just because I was ready for it to be done.  It was watching that last fight with a 'whatever happens get on with it so we can go' perspective even though it felt like that whole sequence should have had more significance than I was giving it.

[bluebell]

Looks like Dune Part 2 (which I just realized will actually be the second half of Book 1) is a go.  So yay.

[bsjkki]

Finally watched Midnight Mass. Suspence with horror elements. Enjoyed it. Liked the themes. Liked the free will and agency/choices elements. Interesting story telling. Will never hear/sing Nearer to God and not think of this show. My husband loved the music and use of hymns. Not sure how I would feel about it if I was Catholic.