Needs more pugs.
Lovely desert, though.
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Re: Campbell
Still the best explainer of the mythological structure of the journey of the archetypal hero found in world myths I have come across so far.
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Is that him on the roof of the Barbican?
I would’ve preferred it tumbling out of the void, like LOST.
Not only that, but “crusade” has lost a lot of it’s positive connotation. So this change gets closer to the ambiguity. Jihad is no longer merely an exotic word, so there is no point in keeping it.
But, as I said above, given the source material the two movies could be bookended as “Crusade” and “Jihad”.
The first half of the book the incoming “crusade” to destroy the Atreides and retake the planet and subjugate the newly discovered Fremen threat, and the second half, the “Jihad” as the organized Fremen strike with Paul as leader, and retake the planet and even beyond to the empire itself.
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Rotating the letters slightly and overlapping them is also an option
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Damn it. I really had hoped to be in the timeline where Jodorowsky’s Dune got made and released. This bleak what-if-this-didn’t-happen-in-the-past-world blows. Unsubscribe.
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Well. There are now three incarnations of Dune on film. There was the David Lynch directed Dune, there was the SyFy channels mini series Dune, and now this one. It’s not about assigning blame or some negative stigma by identifying which version is being referenced.
It’s quite normal to identify a movie by who directed it, regardless of whether the director likes the final outcome or not. It’s not about what is fair or unfair. It needs to be qualified somehow.
Lynch’s Dune has inner monologues. Syfy’s didn’t. I am hoping this version does. Seems like a simple enough statement and shouldn’t really be all that controversial unless people just want to argue for arguments sake.
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I hope they don’t use Pink Floyd covers in the actual film.
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They said they were spoiled by the original cast. For people who really liked the original movie, I can see finding Timothee Chalamet as Paul an odd casting choice. Not so much because of his age (Maclachlan was 25 when the original Dune was released, Chalamet is 24), but because Machlachlan has the more typical tall, dark, and handsome rugged Hollywood good looks and Chalamet, as you said, looks like a teenager. But you’re right, Chalamet looks closer to the novel’s Paul.
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I think the casting looks pretty promising. SyFy had overweight Uwe Ochsenknecht as Stilgar in the first season and while he is a great actor I like that was really the wrong choice for a Fremen leader.
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In the book, Herbert uses the term kanly which is the source of the blood feud, or vendetta…
… between Houses Atriedes and Harkonnen.
As an English major and as a hopelessly devoted fangirl, I argue there is a distinction between vendetta and crusade, which has overt religious connotations.
Since the book is written in English, we can simply compare Herbert’s own text in Paul’s dialog scenes with the same or similar ostensible scenes where Villeneuve’s film has Paul saying “crusade”–compare apples to apples. (I have Zoom meetings for most of today but maybe I can skim-read the book during lunch to see where Herbert uses the word.)
This Verge article touches on my dark inklings that this could be made to serve extremely toxic narratives:
Dieter: So, uh, how do you think the movie is going to address some of the cultural insensitivities (to put it mildly) present in the novel? I see the trailer used the word “crusade” instead of “jihad” — both of which are very loaded terms! The treatment of the Fremen people and how the film navigates othering (or not) them is going to be tricky.
Chaim : I have a sneaking suspicion that they’re simply going to try to sidestep the issues as much as possible. The Freman war isn’t until the second half of the book, and the actual “jihad” is more Paul’s vision at the close of the novel than events portrayed in the book. Add in the various comments from actors like Oscar Isaac about how the events of the film are going to be about “exploited” cultures rising up and I think they’re looking to flip the narrative around.
James: If we’re talking about “issues” in Dune then I think the whole eugenics-y subtext is another one to add to the pile. When I re-read the first book fairly recently, I remember being struck by just how much people bang on about things like innate genetic superiority and the importance of bloodlines. Now, obviously, that stuff is not being presented completely uncritically, but if Villeneuve really wants to capture some of the grand scope of the series he’ll have to address it somehow. I’m curious how he’s going to pull it off…
… Russell: I actually think Dune is more woke than we’re giving it credit for. There’s definitely a bit of White Savior stuff happening with Paul, but the broader story is an anti-colonial one about how native populations get exploited for resource extraction, and how occupiers misunderstand the ecosystems they exploit. The “intergalactic jihad” stuff doesn’t really kick in until Dune Messiah , potentially the third entry in a Villeneuve / Dune trilogy — but that might be getting ahead of ourselves.
See also:
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That is where I was coming from.
I think the voice-over will be not about interhouse kanly, but about the Emperor, Saudukar, the Harkonnen, and pretty much everyone else suddenly getting a vested interest in squashing the Fremen to keep hold of Arrakis and the spice.
That goes beyond kanly, and mirrors the real, thinly-veiled economic motivation of Crusades, and of course oil in the present day.
I think it will be an explainer moment, as it were, using a word that might resonate with the audience.
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A whole lot of Fremen culture – and the origin of a lot of the Arabic/Muslim terms – was nicked from The Sabers of Paradise, a book about Trans-Caucasus Islamic tribes in Imperial Russia. It’s kind of a ponderous tome, but a fascinating bit of history I’d known nothing about.
Pretty sure this came up here on BoingBoing a few years back.
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I am sure that Kevin J. Anderson got bored after the House and Butlerian books and just slogged through the rest. As did you & I.
I love a good anti-hero, so I read all of them as they were issued. I refuse to re-read it because it’s so depressing. The adventure is subsumed by whining and selfishness.
Hey, those are the people that made me go to the theatre to see this! And got bored at the bar afterwards when I tried to explain things. Apparently, I’m Sheldon or Abed about movies, so I’m told. 
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