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Dune Remake Could Mean 3D Sandworms

bowman9991 writes "The new Dune remake is becoming as epic as Frank Herbert's Dune series itself. Now that director Peter Berg has been ousted, new director Pierre Morel has decided to throw out Peter Berg's script entirely, starting afresh with his own ideas and vision. 'We're starting from scratch,' said Morel. 'Peter had an approach which was not mine at all, and we're starting over again.' Morel also reveals that 'It's the kind of movie that has the scope to be 3D.' He's also keen on sticking to the original material and recognizes that he must try to delete the images associated with David Lynch's 1984 version of Dune from the public's consciousness."

12 of 589 comments (clear)

  1. Hmmm... by DoofusOfDeath · · Score: 4, Insightful

    I don't thinking remaking the movie in 3D would make the plot any less confusing. (To someone who never read the books, that is.)

    1. Re:Hmmm... by MightyMartian · · Score: 5, Insightful

      The two attempts thus far have been failures to my mind. Lynch's movie had the "feel" of Dune, but as far as the script goes, it sucked really bad (which is strange, considering Herbert had substantial influence over the final product). The miniseries stuck more closely to the story, but the acting was bloody wooden. If you could have mixed Lynch's visuals and actors with the miniseries script, I think you would have had Dune down pat.

      --
      The world's burning. Moped Jesus spotted on I50. Details at 11.
    2. Re:Hmmm... by KnownIssues · · Score: 4, Insightful

      Lynch's movie had the "feel" of Dune, but as far as the script goes, it sucked really bad (which is strange, considering Herbert had substantial influence over the final product).

      Ironically, Frank Herbert seems to be one of the movie's biggest fans*. Perhaps he understood that a movie is by nature a different form of story-telling than a book and that a direct translation is not always the best solution. If you judge the 1984 version as poor as a movie, so be it. If you judge it as poor for not being a faithful adaptation of the book then you've missed the point of film.

      *Citation need? Here's one stolen from Wikipedia: Rozen, Leah. "With another best-seller and an upcoming film, Dune is busting out all over for Frank Herbert." People Weekly. (25 Jun 1984) Vol. 21 pp. 129-130.

    3. Re:Hmmm... by Romancer · · Score: 4, Insightful

      For me...

      It was by the vision of Lynch that Dune acquired greatness, the fans acquire happieness, the fans have given warning. It is by will alone they set the movie in motion.

      For those who had not read the books yet but like the genre it was awesome. My whole town full of geeks loved it, then we read the book and it was another completely different set of greatness. Like a double gift for sci-fi geeks. I didn't happen to like the series because of the horrible acting. The original book and the movie were seperate but both great.

      --


      ) Human Kind Vs Human Creation
      ) It'd be interesting to see how many humans would survive to serve us.
  2. Oh, Hubris! by mujadaddy · · Score: 5, Insightful

    "recognises that he must try to delete the images associated with David Lynch's 1984 version of Dune from the public's consciousness."

    Some of us LIKE that movie. Frankly, no Dune movie can succeed without Brad Dourif.

    --
    Populus vult decipi, ergo decipiatur...
    "Force shits upon Reason's back." - Poor Richard's Almanac
    1. Re:Oh, Hubris! by realmolo · · Score: 5, Insightful

      The Lynch version, as a movie, isn't that great. Though it's definitely worth watching once.

      But the LOOK of it is fucking awesome. It's absolutely perfect. It's going to be hard to beat, purely from a design standpoint. Lynch's vision of decaying/dirty semi-clockwork technology and culture was absolutely spot-on. "Dune" is dirty and creepy and weird (no pun intended). It has to be.

  3. Still gonna suck. by iluvcapra · · Score: 5, Insightful

    "Dune" is probably the greatest 20th-century science fiction novel. It is, for better or worse, unfilmable.

    --
    Don't blame me, I voted for Baltar.
    1. Re:Still gonna suck. by Areyoukiddingme · · Score: 5, Insightful

      Because when Hollywood adapts William Gibson, they create Johnny Mneumonic. Need I say more?

  4. David Lynch movie was innaccurate but was ART by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Insightful

    The David Lynch interpretation was brilliant. It was artistic, it looked great, had excellent sets and cinematography. The literal stage play, I mean the SciFi production, was flat, dull lacking in emotion and life as it tried to accurately portray the novel. Nerds! Stop it! Movies are cinematic interpretations of a novel or another body of work, for it to work in the movie format, many things must change. The David Lynch version had a great score, had actually emotional scenes, the Baron was excellent, Sting brilliant. Yes you hate it because it wasn't accurate, fine but you don't respect excellent cinema either.

    I hope this version pisses you particular nerds off by being cinematic, beautiful and daring in the liberties it takes with Herbert's fine novel. Really now it can't be any worse than what his son has managed to accomplish.

  5. Re:ain't broke, don't fix it by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Insightful

    Sorry for being a grammer nazi when I'm far from perfect...

    You're right; you are far from perfect. To begin with, it's a (potential) spelling error, and spelling has fuck all to do with grammar. In the same breath, you also misspelled grammar. Way to go.

    Here's a tip for the future: Instead of apologizing for being a grammer nazi,

    just fucking skip the attempted nazi-ing all together. You'd look less like a jack ass, and save both of us some typing.

  6. Re:ain't broke, don't fix it by RiddleofSteel · · Score: 5, Insightful

    Every Sci-Fi geek I know liked the film, non-geeks hated it. I'm not saying we loved it, but for the time it was different and interesting. So I really don't think he's overstating the popularity for it's market base. For many people they had not even heard of Dune before the movie, and while the books are much better I never would have read them without the Lynch version.

  7. Re:that's a matter of opinion by jollyreaper · · Score: 4, Insightful

    If your books are about half imagery and half story, when the movies end up having about an hours worth of plot and the rest as battle scenes and aforementioned imagery then I guess you have done a bang-up job. But Dune is a bit of a bigger undertaking. It's like trying to create a movie around The Foundation Saga. It's just not as easy as massive battle scenes full of cut and paste soldiers.

    Gonna start a nerd holy war on that one. :) Lord of the Rings, both the movie and the book, was about more than just battles and imagery. Dune really is more of a psychological story than Lord of the Rings which was meant to be epic myth-making on an epic scale. Dune has a lot of character-driven conflict that could just as easily be played out on an empty stage. Lots of eye-candy and worldbuilding will be icing on the cake but there's nothing about the book that says the story has to remain in the book. The hard part, of course, is handling exposition in a fashion that is not an infodump but remains interesting and engaging.

    The part I'm not entirely satisfied with in Dune is Leto II's interpretation of the Golden Path and the whole transformation into the god emperor. That was the point where the story felt like it slid off the rails and the following books cemented that feeling. The whole Honored Matres thing felt tacked on.

    The other part that really bothered me was the whole other memory thing. The Dune universe is presented as materialistic and godless, at least with no more proof of God's existence or lack thereof than in our own world here and now. But there's evidence of supernatural things such as the other memories awakened within the bene gesserit by the spice. The baron's own personality lived on within Alia and consumed her. How is this so? Is there some sort of junian universal subconscious, a collective soul we're all connected to? Or is all of that memory supposed to preexist within the eggs of the female line? But then the male reverend mother they sought would have access to the male side of the memories as well so this means they're passed through sperm, too? Or is it really an external thing? And if there is such a thing, could it may as well be God for all intents and purposes? A god made manifest by the shared minds of humanity. And clones presumably only need the source DNA. But Herbert never explains it and the whole mystical side seems out of place given the otherwise hard scifi setting. I can buy superb mental conditioning and powerful developments of the human mind in the post-AI age. I can buy abilities that lie within the extremes of the physically possible. But the mystic stuff presupposes a mechanism to explain it and that raises a whole host of new questions. If I see a vampire, I now wonder if there are werewolves. If I see inexplicable psychic powers, now I wonder what else could be possible.

    --
    Kwisatz Haderach
    Sell the spice to CHOAM
    This Mahdi took Shaddam's Throne