I guess my point is that hard sci-fi isn’t the only definition of sci-fi.
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I never suggested otherwise?
Very little sci-fi is really about the “science” when you get right down to it.
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He also spent a good deal of time pondering on future-sex
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Not sure where the complaints about the Zimmer “BWAA” are coming from. It doesn’t appear in the score at all that I can recall, nor is the score overwhelming - seems perfectly matched to the action on the screen to me. I’m no Zimmer shill, having not liked some of his stuff, but this is some of his best work. There are times when it evokes Vangelis, in the best way.
Different strokes, I guess…
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I completely despised my experience seeing the first installment. My complaints included the sound (your comments about Dune II echoed my thoughts on Dune I. The music and sound effects were ear-shatteringly loud and the bass notes caused me ear pain, yet the dialogue seemed mostly mumbled or hushed).
The most disappointing thig is the casual omission of really, really important events from the book! Maybe my expectations were too high, as I was buying the hype beforehand.
I find that the enjoyment of these most recent cinematic adaptations are inversely proportional to one’s familiarity with the source material. I don’t even plan to see this latest release, because I hated the first one so much. I think one would need 10 hours of runtime to do the story justice. Why not a 10-episode, single-season series made by someone who understands the importance of the WHOLE story, and the 6-way power play between the different factions to control the spice (Houses Atriedes and Harkonnen, CHOAM, The Emperor, The Bene Gesserit, and the Shipping Guild).
THnanks for the review, it made my decision not to see it more comfortable lol.
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Qualifying the review at the beginning with “I prefer low budget art house films” is painfully lame, even if it’s a joke.
And yeah, there’s not going to be “chill human moments”, it’s Dune for god emperor’s sake.
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This isn’t really the fault of the sound mixers, and the comparison to Inception is not accidental. Christopher Nolan was asked about the ridiculous loudness in his films after Dunkirk was released. He said:
“We made the decision a couple of films ago that we weren’t going to mix films for substandard theaters,” said Nolan in an interview with IndieWire last week. “We’re mixing for well-aligned, great theaters.”
I know Dune isn’t a Nolan film, but I would imagine Nolan isn’t the only director with this philosophy. So unless you watch the movie in the top state of the art sound system theater, it’s probably going to sound annoyingly loud.
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Oh wow, that time dilation from all that spice-based space travel is real! I’m back everybody!
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If my time dilation calculations are correct (read: if this random time dilation calculator I found on the internet is correct), @2HourHiatus was traveling at approximately:
299,792.4579 km/s
(in our reference frame)
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This is true, though in part 2 it’s even worse: the Guild is for the most part completely absent. They were a central component of Paul’s strategy or “path”, and I think it was a missed opportunity to not have a guild navigator to introduce a weird / alien yet very central player to the story.
As a huge Frank Herbert nerd, the first movie was great: the aesthetics were alien yet familiar in the right ways (e.g., BG and the Catholic Church), vast, cool. Paul’s story fit much more tightly into the intention of his arc as a would-be pawn in a larger political story.
The second movie feels like a projection of the 21st century politics onto Dune, which was about the politics of the Middle East in the 20th century.
As a consequence I think some of the big important factors are gone. The Guild? Gone. Mentats (Thufir)? Gone. CHOAM? Gone. The link between the worms and the spice (and how to destroy both)? Mostly gone.
Plus the second movie fails to be weird and alien in ways the first movie succeeded. Poorly shot desert scenes, people riding sandworms, fanaticism, Chani’s angry, hyper-fascist Harkonnens living on a comic book world, an emperor from Queens, etc
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Yeah, I went to a theater that was newly rebuilt (was Regal, shut down during the pandemic, became NCG) and the sound was fantastic. I absolutely hate when dialogue is washed out and and action sounds are over-amplified, but I didn’t get that from my viewing.
I was fairly ambivalent about the first film, although I enjoyed it. Visually it was as good as it gets, I think, but just didn’t draw one fully into the universe. But watching the second film I remembered why; it ends exactly when the most mundane, political and familial exposition was happening. The second film knocked my socks off. I was really just looking for something to do on a rare rainy Saturday without kids, but I left totally jacked up. The worm riding scene was absolutely thrilling.
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I probably should have read the thread first but…
None of this pacing is helped by the music, which Inception-style BWAAAAAs at any possible moment. A toothy worm the size of… of… something unfathomably large is naturally terrifying and awe-inspiring on its own. There’s really no need for a BWAAAAA there. Let alone every 4-8 minutes of the movie. Also, the BWAAAAAs are incredibly loud. Today’s sound mixers have spent the entirety of their working lives in headphones and should really get a second opinion from their coworkers without tinnitus before hitting the send button.
I thought the soundscape was great. As a tinnitus sufferer of an age where higher frequencies are hard to discern and thus who finds too many films these days have music and sound effects amped up too much compared to the (mumbled) speech, often rendering it inaudible, I had very few issues with Dune 2.
There’s a BB post somewhere about Dune 1 and its soundscape and YT video about it - well worth digging out and watching. (ETA Found it: https://boingboing.net/2021/11/16/the-sounds-of-denis-villeneuves-dune.html)
And Wendy Ide in The Guardian had some pithy notes:
there’s not enough lip balm in the universe to make a visit to the sandblasted wilderness planet of Arrakis look appealing
(Don’t get the wrong end of that stick - that was praise. She very much liked the film.)
And for camera buffs, re the “colour-saturated” description in the Guardian article:
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I don’t like sand. It’s coarse and rough and irritating and it gets everywhere.
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DUNE!
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This is my favorite part of the review. So spot on!
There’s really no need for a BWAAAAA there. Let alone every 4-8 minutes of the movie. Also, the BWAAAAAs are incredibly loud. Today’s sound mixers have spent the entirety of their working lives in headphones and should really get a second opinion from their coworkers without tinnitus before hitting the send button.
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Space Operas aren’t known for being particularly chill, regardless of the medium. If one contained a discussion of whether to stay home or go out, it would necessarily be epic in all respects.
Maybe they’re trying to compensate for the solid hour+ of Zendaya dream segments in the first installment.
I know the length and density of the source material has posed challenges for everyone who’s attempted to translate it for the screen, but the choice to end part 1 where they did is baffling to me.
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