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SCI FI Channel To Produce Dune Sequel
Sardaukar writes: "In his first interview since completing the script for Frank Herbert's Children of Dune, Frank Herbert's Dune writer-director John Harrison revealed that the new miniseries will be adapted from both Dune Messiah and Children of Dune, the second and third books in Frank Herbert's best-selling series." I think the first miniseries is pretty impressive, which bodes well for the second.
That miniseries was absolutely painful -- I watched the whole thing just waiting for it to improve, and yet somehow the acting managed never to improve. Christ, the guy playing Paul made a certain young Jedi look like academy award material.
I think the real trouble is they tried to be *too* faithful to the book. It should be obvious that certain things work in print that just don't translate (and, actually, vice versa). I think whoever wrote the screenplay was too reverant to the whole Dune mythos to understand that someplace between that terrible movie and this terrible miniseries would lay a good screen interpretation.
I can only hope for major overhauls; I don't think I could watch another miniseries like that last one. They'll have exactly one episode to change my mind.
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Every year during my review, I just pray the words "slashdot.org" aren't mentioned.
Look, there are elements which make a great book and elements which make a great movie. Very few of these elements are in common between the two.
The best movie/book combinations are those in which the screenwriter uses the book for inspiration, then feels free to adjust the staging and the story in a way which will play well on film. Take Fight Club, for instance, or High Fidelity: same basic story, same basic themes, but the movie was a good movie because the changes needed for good translation were made.
On the other hand, think of the really close-to-the-book movies you've seen. Tend to suck, don't they? They either run really, really long or shave out a lot of the entertaining bits.
Of course, this isn't to say that all movies reinterpreted from books end up well, either: American Psycho (the movie) missed the raw, revolting, sarcastic nature or the book. The Shining (Kuberick's) was *boring*. Etc.
Still, I maintain that the only way to make these watchible is to roll the dice and take a chance to make them really entertaining on-screen instead of just lifting directly from the book.
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Every year during my review, I just pray the words "slashdot.org" aren't mentioned.
I'm frankly somewhat worried about the titles of the parts: I could sort of see the Messiah one (and it might be interesting to be trying to save someone other than yourself), but the Children of Dune one is just too much. I don't want to know how that guy ends up with children...
Well let's put it this way:
Paul turned out to be a megalomaniac who ended up (ultimately) getting himself into deeper water than he could swim in. He couldn't handle the pressure of being "The Messiah", and eventually was banished into the desert of Dune because of his inability of dealing with the very Jihad he himself created.
His son, named Leto II (not to be confused with the child that was killed off in the original book [and movie]), ended up getting covered in sand trout and he eventually took over... for about 1500 years. *That* guy turned out to be a major son of a bitch as far as controlling the universe goes.
At any rate, read the books... they are *very* interesting, but you run into the danger of getting an inferiority complex since Frank Herbert's writing tens to be condescending to begin with. Add that to the fact that all he wrote about were super-human beings who denegrated the "Regular" human race at every turn, and what you get is a rather depressing outlook on life.
There's my 2 cent version of a book review. :)
--- Journals are boring; Go to my web page instead
I don't know why EVERY single time a book is made into a movie there's a grumpy guy going "the movie sucked ass". Is this part of human nature or something? Is there a gene for this? And if there is, can we breed that out because it's frickin' annoying.
I liked the first miniseries a whole lot. Yes, I've read the books, and I know that things were changed. But big deal! What were you expecting from television? Every medium is different, and I hate to break it to you, a TV show is not a book. You can do things in books that you can't do in television. So when you say that the Dune miniseries "sucked ass" were you thinking to yourself "this Dune isn't nearly as good or artistic as 'Golden Girls'?" I can personally think of only a few things that "sucked ass" less than the Dune miniseries, such as Babylon 5. Actually, that's about the only one I can think of.
If tits were wings it'd be flying around.
There are no such things as weirding modules. Clearly you're thinking the movie (starring Sting) was canonical. Try reading the actual books instead.
You can grep all six books and the phrase "weirding module" will not appear. This was one of the three major departures (read, "made it up out of thin air") that the original Dune movie made from the books. Basically, they didn't have the time to investigate the mystical powers on-screen, so they threw in some technobabble instead.
If the TV miniseries was based on the books rather than the piece of crap movie which was based on the books, then there won't be things like weirding modules. And that's good.
You cannot apply a technological solution to a sociological problem. (Edwards' Law)
The advantage of this method is that he created a complete cycle right up-front (see next P), rather than tacking on book after book like many hack writers do. The disadvantage is that Dune Messiah is pretty obviously just a stepping stone to Children of Dune. I think the series would have been stronger if he'd left it out entirely, but we would have missed Paul's relationship with Channi, which is complex and interesting.
The first 3 are a perfect cycle, almost a tragedy in the classical sense - a man falling from a high position due to hubris (yes, I know, Aristotle defined tragedy more specifically than that, but I'm too lazy to look it up). The last 3 are much better written, with more interesting plots and characters.
I don't watch TV, so I don't know how the first mini-series went. I find it hard to believe that the work can be faithfully reproduced, however, no matter how much time and money is spent on it. This contrasts with Peter Jackson's upcoming LOTR, which actually may not suck. Tolkien was wordy, but LOTR is a fairly simple work - standard mythology. Dune (all 6) are complex commentary on politics, economics, religion, human nature, oil, water - you name it. Very deep. You can get the action to the screen, but I fear the depth being left behind.
And before Tolkien fans get out their flame-throwers, yes, I love Tolkien. I took (and aced) several graduate-level Tolkien courses in school, and have a deep and abiding appreciation for him and his work. LOTR, however, is a sitcom compared with The Silmarillion, and The Hobbit is a commercial break. No one will make a movie of The Silmarillion, anymore than you could make a movie of the entire Bible.
And yet The Silmarillion is still just a small part of Tolkien's work, and his world. Amazing.
"We all say so, so it must be true!"
This isn't as much "normalization" as it is "don't take so many drugs when you're designing tables."
If you'd been watching the telecast, they showed it at http://www.scifi.com/secret/ for a short time.
While it's true that SciFi is making this with a low budget, and it does show, I still find that their adaptation has certain elements I find far more believable than the one Frank Herbert was so deeply involved with, even though that one had far better character actors for the most part.
The SCI FI version seems to get the feel of the culture better, and what the events in the book may have been like, than one found in the original movie, even if it's not as well-crafted.
Plus, the actress who plays Chani is way hotter, and more believable, than Sean was in the same role.
--- Will in Seattle - What are you doing to fight the War?