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Sci-fi Channel's Children of Dune
jazdogg writes "Caught the trailer last night on the Sci-fi Channel for the new Frank Herbert's Children of Dune mini-series. I only hope this series is better than the previous one." I dunno - I liked the last Dune series, and am looking forward to this one.
Would anyone else besides me like to see Sci Fi channel concentrate more on adapting SF literature than on recent bad horror films?
I have this love-hate thing with David Lynch movies. Most of them I hate, but even in the bad ones, you can tell that Lynch is really working his ass off stylisticly.
I didn't read Dune before seeing the David Lynch version. I still thought that it was a hell of a movie, despite its many problems. (I hate Kyle Mclaughlin almost as much as I hate Ben Affleck.) Even having read Dune, the Sci-fi mini-series just left me flat up next to the sheer style of the first movie.
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After the second book, even the bogus political / religious issues took on a tiresome sameness, rather like the plotions manufactured for each episode of Star Trek. I found them frustrating. He hinted at all these worlds, each of which could easily have been as interesting as Arrakis (I wanted to see a book set on Salusa Secundis) but they all focused around the lame Bene Gesserits.
I hope the SciFi channel has enough sense to stop filming sequels after this book.
John
Wasn't Children of Dune the third book in the saga? Are they planning on incorporating it with Dune Messiah (which would be more than a little tricky, IMO), or are they simply going to skip the second book?
The over commercialization did harm to Star Trek? You must be joking. ST was designed as a purely commercial venture. It's first incarnation was a prime-time TV show designed to capitalize on the average joe's hunger for western themes. They just swapped in space as a setting after the Apollo project killed the target market's interest in the visual aspects of cowboys and indians. That said, I don't think it's possible to "commercialize" Star Trek.
I agree with your point though... the depth and character of Dune can only be poorly represented on the screen. On the other hand, I thought the same thing about the Lord of the Rings, but the Two Towers was very, very good.
I just wish they had put some of this money into another season of farscape...
-- it's ridiculous how many people misspell ridiculous... (damn, damn, damn...)
I've read this before-- the thing about how Frank Herbert had plans for a book 7-- but it seems to me that the ending of Chapterhouse is just too perfect. I prefer the saga the way it is now, ending on a cliffhanger and with that little commentary by Marty and Daniel, who many people think represented Bev and Frank Herbert talking out of character about the story itself.
It seems to fit, for me, with the interwoven theme of prescience. Paul was cursed by his prescience, and Leto's vision of the future was of humans who were immune to prescience. The end of Chapterhouse, in which Duncan and Sheeana fleeing the known universe in a no-ship, seems to symbolize Herbert's creation escaping beyond the limits of his own vision.
But what the hell do I know, anyway?
I write in my journal
Give the guys some credit,eh? The SciFi channel isn't a move production studio nor does it make the millions that Universal or whatever makes. They're at least making an effort to actually adapt decent SciFi for mass consumption. :: the casting on the SciFi miniseries was much better done and the dialogue was much better. It did miss some of the scenes that are in the book and adapted others (for example, the hunter-seeker scene in Arrakeen). The Lynch version I think touched upon the mystic of the entire thing much better than the SciFi, but the SciFi version made a better emphasis on the political nature of it all.
How many people do you know has *even* read Dune or, for that matter, Children of Dune? I've read both of them, watched both versions of Dune, and each has their strengths and weaknesses.
If we're going to nitpick, I'll say this
Neither are true to the book anyway.
Hopefully, Children of Dune (which is the destruction of Paul's dream and Aila's nightmare) will be done in the same spirit and I can understand the pitfalls of smaller studios - at the end, it's how much money do you have to burn for the production?
Cheers...
I am the Spirit within The Machine.
One of the most interesting things about the Dune series is that it's one of the only series where I don't meet with a general consensus on the quality of the various books. I've met people whose favourites were the first, third, fourth and sixth. Even rankings after favourites aren't consistent. How many novel series do you know where most people don't agree, "The first one was best and blah, blah, blah....".
Don't blindly accept the parent poster's judgement. Even if general experience suggests that sequels are often weak, Dune is a series where I have specifically noticed this odd exception.
"but it seems to me that the ending of Chapterhouse is just too perfect"
Actually. If you look at when the man died (1986) not long after finishing chapterhouse and before it's publishing (July 1986) you can kind of tell that he knew he wouldn't be writing another book as he was finishing the sixth and just kind of tied things up quickly so as to not leave anything open ended.
I get the impression that he just kind of gave up on living or at the very least knew he didn't have much time. Chapterhouse near the end starts to seem that it is being rushed. Not as much lush detail in his words as in the beginning etc. Of course, this is my opinion and there are a million of 'em.
I never thought of it that way; the destruction of Dune in the end of the 5th book always seemed to me to be a better fulfillment of Leto's plan: Humanity is now beyond prophecy because the origin of prophecy has been reduced to a molten rock. But I can definitely see your point about Chapterhouse.
:)
Still, Chapterhouse feels almost as if it is grasping at threads the entire time, and the ending does seem like it wants to be a new beginning, and it might have worked better with a 7th book, but I guess I can't fault the man for dying.
So in an imperfect world I need to choose between thinking of book 5 of 6 as the end, or book 6, which feels more like the first part of an unfinished sequel to the series. But then again, some time back I think Tim O'Reilly made a good point; the last three books basically build off of and restate the lessons that we as readers, and Paul as character should have learned from the first, so maybe after Children of Dune they're all unnecessary.
But personally God Emperor is my favorite