Dune: Part Two.

[Ignatius_S]

Yes, it does seem that hugely expensive promotion is required for people to engage with a film. 'Docile' might be a bit rough, but as someone who doesn't read reviews or watch trailers I guess I find it rather sad that people do seem to require expensive promotion to consider watching a film.

I worked at Screen Yorkshire for 8-years and budgets for promotion were wildly varying and seldomly correlated to 'success'.

In the case of Barbie, I don't think we can underestimate just how big an IP is, particularly as it's a childhood one. I'll be honest, I did when I first heard about it but when I saw the reaction it was inspiring in a lot of my friends, I started to rethink. The fact that Greta Gerwig was doing it, also played a part in that reaction - as did casting such as Margot Robbie.

However, from what I've been told by friends, there were always families in the audience and I think part of the box office is by children, who aren't the target audience, wanting to go.

Re: Oppenheimer- I have to confess that I've been surprised by the sort of business it's been doing.  That said, Nolan does some excellent box office and has a big name, but I've never really seen the appeal myself.

That's an interesting point about what you've said at Screen Yorkshire - this is one reason why I said about the right kind of promotion, resources alone won't do the job. These things aren't an exact science and there will be films that do unexpected great business due to things like word of mouth, but there is a lot to support the importance of getting the right sort of promotion.

[Inspector Norse]

Screen Yorkshire

These were the first words I saw when I opened this thread and it immediately prompted this weird vision of Timothy Chalamet and Dave Bautista chasing old women around the cobbles and meadows of the Holme Valley.

[Ignatius_S]

These were the first words I saw when I opened this thread and it immediately prompted this weird vision of Timothy Chalamet and Dave Bautista chasing old women around the cobbles and meadows of the Holme Valley.

You so need to pitch this.

[samadriel]

That could be the next Escape from York!

[Glebe]

Few bits of news... with the strikes over WB have moved the release date forward a couple of weeks to 1st March (in the US at least), plus it's also apparently getting an IMAX 70MM run. Meanwhile, the Dune: The Sisterhood series has been renamed Dune: Prophecy.

[Glebe]

You Will Never Be Able to Unsee 'Dune 2's Popcorn Bucket.

Oh dear. Open to 'misuse':





New TV spot while we're at it:

[Kankurette]

I'm reading Dune atm - did they split it into two parts for the film? IIRC Irulan doesn't appear until very late (I'm up to the two-year timeskip when Paul has kids and she hasn't shown up yet).

I wonder if Thufir Hawat will be milking a cat.

[Glebe]

I'm reading Dune atm - did they split it into two parts for the film? IIRC Irulan doesn't appear until very late (I'm up to the two-year timeskip when Paul has kids and she hasn't shown up yet).

Yep, split in two, I've actually made several attempts at the book but have only managed to make it as far as Paul and Jessica in the desert or thereabouts.

[Poobum]

I've just learnt the cat milking is a Lynch invention. Love that guy. Do hope Josh Brolin carries a pug into battle.

[MojoJojo]

I'm reading Dune atm - did they split it into two parts for the film? IIRC Irulan doesn't appear until very late (I'm up to the two-year timeskip when Paul has kids and she hasn't shown up yet).

I wonder if Thufir Hawat will be milking a cat.

About Irulan - this isn't really a spoiler, but something I only just realised

Spoiler alert

She's very clearly a parallel to Aisha in Islam - Mohammad's third wife, who recorded a lot of Mohammad's sayings in what became the haddiths

[close]

[Glebe]

First movie's on Netflix now, must give it a rewatch.

[Poobum]

In my mind Irulan

Spoiler alert

was an Anna Komnene type, but the Aisha comparison is interesting and not something I ever considered. Seems quite obvious in hindsight.

[close]

I've resisted watching Dune on netflix, I just expect it to seem so inferior compared to seeing it on the big screen.

[Mister Six]

Yep, split in two, I've actually made several attempts at the book but have only managed to make it as far as Paul and Jessica in the desert or thereabouts.

It gets a lot more fun from there on out, but also pretty choppy, like Herbert wanted to pad it out with 150 more pages of pensive musing, but his editor kept rapping him on the knuckles.

Of course, by Children and God-Emperor he had the clout to squeeze out a house brick in which nothing happens for swathes of time.

[FredNurke]

The publication history of Dune is quite interesting, in that it started life as two serials, published in Analog magazine in 1963/64 and 1965. The first one became part 1 of the book, and the second constituted parts 2 and 3; a certain amount of rewriting was involved as well. This is the sort of thing that tends to produce bittiness, of course.

[Kankurette]

Well, the Fremen are basically Space Muslims. I wonder if Robert Jordan based the Aiel on them, there are similarities: 
- Super badass warrior culture
 - Living in a desert and prizing water (although the Aiel don't drain people's bodily fluids)
 - Being obsessed with honour,
 - A member of the resident mysterious group of women who plot things behind the scenes (Bene Gesserit in Dune, Aes Sedai in The Wheel of Time) being treated with reverence
 - The main character having to do a ritual to prove himself (Rand going to Rhuidean to get the Aiel history lesson, Paul riding a worm and drinking the magic water)
 - Other cultures, especially nobility, viewing them as a bunch of stupid savages
 - The main character being their chosen one (Muad'dib/the Car'a'carn)
 - An arsey man fighting the main character, though Jamis is less of a prick than Couladin
  - One of the women banging the main character and sharing him with someone else, although Aviendha gets treated a lot better than Chani

MASSIVE WOT spoiler

- The main character's mum isn't born into the group, but becomes a sort of honorary member and goes native; Tigraine becomes a Maiden of the Spear and Jessica does the spice and becomes a Reverend Mother for the Fremen

[close]

The Aiel aren't all off their tits on drugs though. And they're more like native Americans than the Bedouin, with a bit of Irish thrown in (nearly all Aiel are blonde or ginger). The Fremen don't have a habit of making women do naked rituals or hitting badly behaved women with sticks, mainly because Frank Herbert didn't have a very obvious spanking/femdom kink like Jordan. And it's kind of a sausagefest - we don't really meet any Fremen women besides Chani, Harah and that old Reverend Mother, and I don't think there are Fremen counterparts to the Aiel Maidens of the Spear or the Wise Ones.

[Blumf]

I don't think there are Fremen counterparts to the Aiel Maidens of the Spear or the Wise Ones.

The Fish Speakers? (later the Honored Matres)

[Kankurette]

I thought the Honoured Matres were more like the Black Ajah (evil Bene Gesserit)?

[Blumf]

It's suggested that they're a combination of Bene Gesserit and Fish Speakers from the Scattering. So, in comparison with WoT groups... ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

[Kankurette]

It's a shame the Dune books apparently get wankier and wankier as the series progresses, because I actually like the worldbuilding. Like the Bene Gesserit and the Butlerian Jihad and inter-house politics. And the Harkonnens are hilariously awful. The Baron is a fat bisexual paedophile and kills a guy in the book for the crime of...being rubbish at chess. And then he makes Feyd-Rautha kill all his sex slaves as a punishment and Feyd-Rautha responds like he's been asked to clean his room.

I love Gurney in the book but I think the film toned down the whole warrior poet thing he had going on, right? Like film Gurney isn't always strumming his baliset and reciting poems.

[dontpaintyourteeth]

It occurs to me that I do not remember a fucking thing about Dune, even though I've read it.

[Mister Six]

It's a shame the Dune books apparently get wankier and wankier as the series progresses, because I actually like the worldbuilding. Like the Bene Gesserit and the Butlerian Jihad and inter-house politics. And the Harkonnens are hilariously awful. The Baron is a fat bisexual paedophile and kills a guy in the book for the crime of...being rubbish at chess. And then he makes Feyd-Rautha kill all his sex slaves as a punishment and Feyd-Rautha responds like he's been asked to clean his room.

I got as far as the end of God Emperor before throwing in the towel, and I regret to say that Herbert never again comes up with any characters as interesting or entertaining as the Harkonnens.

[Kankurette]

It occurs to me that I do not remember a fucking thing about Dune, even though I've read it.

Lots of sand. Lots of people off their tits on drugs.

[FredNurke]

I remember thinking Heretics of Dune (the one after God Emperor) was a bit of an improvement, though it's years and years since I read any of them. It might just have been that it was sufficiently deranged to be entertaining.

[Kankurette]

Doesn't Leto Atreides II end up turning into a giant worm hybrid thing? Imagine if Lynch had directed THAT.

[Poobum]

I only read the first one and a couple of the later horrible ones by his son and other guy. Would like to read the Duke Leto II worm hybrid god emperor one, sounds fun and I kinda find long meandering tomes relaxing. The little I know about the Bene Tleilax is well creepy and potentially interesting as well.

[Mister Six]

Doesn't Leto Atreides II end up turning into a giant worm hybrid thing? Imagine if Lynch had directed THAT.

Villeneuve doesn't want to do anything past Dune: Messiah (which, as the shortest book, he could easily do in one film), and while I can't blame him for not wanting to waste the next two decades of his life adapting shitty books, I would love to see all the new fans' reactions when

Spoiler alert

whichever willowy twink that ends up playing LAII turns into a deranged slug-mutant on a trolley who keeps killing an endless stream of Jason Momoa clones while lusting after a concubine that he can't shag because his dick has been forever lost in the slug-body somewhere.

[close]

[Kankurette]

I hope we'll get some Irulan action. She doesn't do much in the book but she's Florence Pugh, so maybe that means more screen time.

[touchingcloth]

I reckon I'd really enjoy Dune the book, seems exactly my sort of thing, the extended ramblings aside. But does it stand alone without requiring the ever longer and ever diminishinger of return follow ups to get any sense of closure?

[Old Nehamkin]

I reckon I'd really enjoy Dune the book, seems exactly my sort of thing, the extended ramblings aside. But does it stand alone without requiring the ever longer and ever diminishinger of return follow ups to get any sense of closure?

I've only read the first book but I felt it worked just fine as a stand-alone story with its own self-contained arc. I might go on and read the second one at some point but I don't feel like I'm itching for closure or anything like that - the original novel already incorporates quite a lot of implication/premonition about events beyond the scope of the narrative that the idea of a second volume almost seemed redundant to me, but I'm sure people who've gone on and read the other ones may feel differently.

[Kankurette]

Dune is a pretty good book tbf, although it is hard to get into. It definitely works as a standalone, though I guess all the stuff with Paul and Irulan at the end is a sequel hook.