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[sitnspin]

Teenagers are difficult to work with on a movie set. There are all kinds of rules and laws when it comes to working with minors that make shooting a film with them as a main character troublesome. It is also difficult to find teenage actors with the amount of experience casting directors are usually looking for. There is also the added problem, in case you are doing a franchise or series, of how fast they age.

[Tova]

Taika Waititi seems to have a knack for successfully casting young actors into his excellent films.

They could have shot both films now if they were concerned about aging actors.

On the other hand, I doubt that Timothée Chalamet gets into many pubs or bars without being challenged to show ID. So I don't think his casting is totally inappropriate.

[Akima]

Teenagers are difficult to work with on a movie set.

The Harry Potter movies demonstrate that these problems are manageable.

[hedgie]

And there are some directors who are quite able to work well with young people, and get amazing performances.  Look at the Swedish films "We Are The Best", and "Fucking Åmal", for example.

[sitnspin]

The problems are obviously not insurmountable, but given the option it is unsurprising that most productions would rather avoid them altogether when possible.

[Case]

The books was notorious for leaving out details on how people were dressed and what things looked like (maybe an offhanded comment on Paul having black hair like his fathers), but I do remember they said that house Atreides uniforms/clothes were black and their symbol was a red hawk. Looks like they got the black down. Plus some battle armor is a cool idea considering melee combat is a thing. I am also really digging these stillsuits.

I think I recall something about the Atreides being descended from Alexander the Great, and having 'olive skin'? Not sure that's in F. Herbert's books, though, could be in the sequels that his son wrote with KJA (Yes, I read some of them - sometimes I suffer insomnia and will read anything that happens to stray onto my Kindle. And yes, they're bad ...).

As to looks: The Dune Universe is set 10.000 years into our future. There's genetic studies of La Brana 1, a hunter-gatherer who lived in Spain 7000 years ago - blue-eyed, closest genetic relation apparently modern-day Scandinavians and ... dark-skinned - "African variants for the pigmentation genes" (also lactose-intolerant).

Or meet 'Cheddar Man', the 'first modern Briton':



Who knows what people in 10.000 years will look like?

[Tova]

MELAAAAANGE

[LeeC]

The books was notorious for leaving out details on how people were dressed and what things looked like (maybe an offhanded comment on Paul having black hair like his fathers), but I do remember they said that house Atreides uniforms/clothes were black and their symbol was a red hawk. Looks like they got the black down. Plus some battle armor is a cool idea considering melee combat is a thing. I am also really digging these stillsuits.

I think I recall something about the Atreides being descended from Alexander the Great, and having 'olive skin'?

Agamemnon actually and I think they do mention it in the Dune book either in the story itself early on or somewhere in the back with the extra content.

[Farideh]

I'm interested in this, so I'll chime in for now by saying that I've read the first Dune book only.

Ditto.


I once tried watching the movie, and my father almost physically blocked me off from the screen while yelling: "No, it's a terrible movie! You'll hate it!"

[Tova]

Do you know, I've never seen it.

Perversely, the negative reviews that previously discouraged me from seeing it now make me want to watch it.

[JoeCovenant]

Hi... I'm Joe and I'm a Dune non-hater....

Is it as good as the books? Not remotely.
But is it, for it's time, a decent enough crack at opening the saga? I thought so.
For one of those "Unfilmable books" I thought it did okay.
BUT, I've always been a little sad that the version with Giger's set concepts was never brought to fruition.

All that said, if ever a film needed remaking with modern tech, and "we don't much care how long it runs" mentality... Dune is it.

[Case]

I'm interested in this, so I'll chime in for now by saying that I've read the first Dune book only.

Ditto.
I once tried watching the movie, and my father almost physically blocked me off from the screen while yelling: "No, it's a terrible movie! You'll hate it!"

I see what he means - I guess anybody who has been through both the book and the movie would - though that seems a bit extreme to me.

It's not as good as the book. It deviates from the book in weird, awkward ways. Sometimes weird, awkward and reallyreally bad ways. The closing scene is beyond terrible. It doesn't even try to do justice to many of the myriad philosophical themes Herbert crammed into that one monster of a book (*).

But the visual aesthetics, the feel of Arrakis, are brilliant (... except, yknow, when they're not... ) . And he does a good job transporting the sheer weirdness of the Dune-Universe to the screen, the audacity of a vision so different from everything else. It's a pretty mixed bag, IMO - the things Lynch gets right are glorious, those he gets wrong are pretty horrible.

I think it's better to watch the movie before you (re-)read the book, otherwise the 'modifications' that Lynch made are probably pretty jarring, and likely to ruin your enjoyment of the things he does get right.

And I think that while the movie isn't strictly speaking a part of the Dune canon, it does have its place in the Dune experience.

(*) Though I guess one could argue that Herbert didn't always succeed in bringing his vision to paper, either - I've been through Dune four times,, but I don't feel I ever really 'got' his vision of how clairvoyance in the Dune verse works, or all the implications he was trying so hard to convey. I guess some things were much clearer in his mind than they are on paper. Or maybe it's just me?

[Farideh]

I'm terrible when it comes to 'watching movies based on books that I've already read'. I'm such a stickler for the details, to the point that I just walk away so I don't ruin the movie for my husband. He doesn't really like it when I keep a running commentary of how a certain scene isn't in the book, or is in the book and should've been included in the movie, or that they took such massive liberties with the story line (looking at you, 'Ready, Player One')

[Tova]

I'm actually the opposite. I do not in general think it is to the benefit of a film to try to stuff in every detail of the book being adapted. It's the filmmaker's job to ask how each detail in a book either progresses the plot or characterisation, and ask themselves whether there is a more concise and cinematic way of achieving the same goal. The language of cinema is very different to that of a novel, and the only way that a film can be "as good as" the book is to adopt that language and play to the medium's strengths.

[Farideh]

Good point, I explained myself badly.

Yes, it's impossible to put every little book detail into a movie. Even smaller books would turn into 12 hour movies at that rate, and let's not even talk about LotR. What mostly annoys me is when the movie storyline differs wildly from the one in the book, to the point where the biggest similarities are the names of the main characters. I've seen some very good movie adaptations, like 'The Hunger Games', or 'Rosemary's Baby'.

Then again, I sometimes take offense at movies for depicting things differently than the way I imagined it. That's my problem, not the movie's

[Case]

I'm similar, especially as regards the running commentary - what is it with people who don't like a running commentary? - though maybe a little less put off by deviations, judging by how you describe your experience.

I don't know anyone who'd prefer the movie to the book, so watching it is not a must. For me, having seen the movie before reading the book strongly enhanced the experience, but I still consider the book(s) the real deal. I see it rather as an 'addon' to the books. The visual anesthetics are (mostly) very, very good - there's a reason why parts of the imagery from that flick have become so iconic, and still persist in peoples' minds today, even after the (better, and more faithful) adaptation into a miniseries

I'd say give it a try - but don't watch it with your husband (especially not if he hasn't been through either book or movie). Get yourself a glass of  good wine, and see if you can make it through all the way. At worst, you'll just find it horrible, but that won't ruin the book for you. At best, your mind's eye will have some pretty good setpieces and imagary at hand the next time you read the book. .
 (If, ototh, you don't plan to re-read Dune again at some point, I don't think you'll gain that much from watching the movie.)

As far as adaptations go, It's not in the same league as Paul Jackson's LOTR - not even in the same solar system, tbh - but it does try, and sometimes, it succeeds.

[Farideh]

I might give that a go At worst, I 'waste' a bit of time

[Case]

Sorry, didn't mean to patronize you - I do get carried away sometimes, I'm afraid. 

[Farideh]

Rest assured that I did not feel patronized. Any suggestion that amounts to 'watch a movie and drink some wine' sits well with me