Merkel Posted December 23, 2016 Share Posted December 23, 2016 Well, the book did become immensly popular. There's a great deal of appeal in this story without having to dumb it down. The universe the book creates is so credible and fascinating, that alone can intrigue a wider audience 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
4815162342 Posted December 23, 2016 Share Posted December 23, 2016 Lynch certainly assembled quite an interesting cast Brad Dourif Jose Ferrer Linda Hunt Richard Jordan Kyle MacLachlan Virginia Madsen Sian Phillips Jurgen Prochnow Patrick Stewart Sting Dean Stockwell Max von Sydow Sean Young etc 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Merkel Posted December 23, 2016 Share Posted December 23, 2016 Rosamund Pike or Cate Blanchett for Lady Jessica Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
UTJeff Posted December 23, 2016 Share Posted December 23, 2016 11 hours ago, Grand Moff Tele said: Make a franchise out of DUNE alone. Use LOTR as your template. There's enough meat there to comfortably fill a trilogy: Dune 1 - House Atreides takes control of Arrakis, is betrayed, and falls to the Harkonnens. The movie ends with Jessica and Paul escaping into the desert. Dune 2 - Paul finds and becomes part of the Fremen and begins his path of growing into a leader. Dune 3 - Paul, leader of the Fremen, leads them on a rebellion against the Harkonnens and the greater Empire at large. The second one isn't even really a movie plot on its own though. Also Dune has more in common with Game of Thrones really than Star Wars. 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
UTJeff Posted December 23, 2016 Share Posted December 23, 2016 5 hours ago, Merkel said: Well, the book did become immensly popular. There's a great deal of appeal in this story without having to dumb it down. The universe the book creates is so credible and fascinating, that alone can intrigue a wider audience How though? Not to mention, the films would have to draw an even wider audiences of people who have never read the books at all. The Lynch film wasn't able to do it. It is a fascinating universe, but it is also a lot of thinking man's science fiction. And again, a lot of it is very dark and not really popcorn movie friendly. Just for example, one of the villains, Baron Harkonnen, is a noted pedophile. Also: In the first book, Paul Atreides' infant son is killed in fray of a battle. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Dementeleus Posted December 23, 2016 Share Posted December 23, 2016 14 minutes ago, UTJeff said: The second one isn't even really a movie plot on its own though. Also Dune has more in common with Game of Thrones really than Star Wars. Sure, I think you could do it. Just have the arc be Paul learning the ways of the Fremen and they learning to accept him. It's a mini-Heroes Journey. Set up a B-story involving the Harkonnens back at the city and some court intrigue involving the fallout over the whole collapse of House Atreides. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
UTJeff Posted December 23, 2016 Share Posted December 23, 2016 (edited) 1 hour ago, Grand Moff Tele said: Sure, I think you could do it. Just have the arc be Paul learning the ways of the Fremen and they learning to accept him. It's a mini-Heroes Journey. Set up a B-story involving the Harkonnens back at the city and some court intrigue involving the fallout over the whole collapse of House Atreides. OK, but how do you turn that into a standalone movie? What's the climax going to be? The Hobbit trilogy showed the flaws of trying to stretch a book shorter than all The Lord of the Rings single stories into three separate movies. Edited December 23, 2016 by UTJeff Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Dementeleus Posted December 23, 2016 Share Posted December 23, 2016 3 hours ago, UTJeff said: OK, but how do you turn that into a standalone movie? What's the climax going to be? The Hobbit trilogy showed the flaws of trying to stretch a book shorter than all The Lord of the Rings single stories into three separate movies. You're right, it would take a little effort and it wouldn't be super-easy. (I need to re-read to see if there's any specific good moment to end on). And you're right about the HOBBITs, though DUNE seems much closer to LOTR as a book, both in terms of length and complexity. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
The Stingray Posted December 23, 2016 Share Posted December 23, 2016 I dug Dune. Flawed but fascinating. Very excited about this one. 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
IronJimbo Posted December 23, 2016 Share Posted December 23, 2016 YES YES YES denis, I love this guy. Right now he is the #2 director. As for LOTR and Hobbit, I re watched The Two Towers yesterday and was super disappointed. After all these years I didn't realise that Fellowship was the best Jackson movie by far. I think you could get a correlation between quality of jackson film and amount of CGI used. Two Towers has aged like milk, some of the scenes are awful. Fellowship 9/10, two towers 7/10, return of the king 7/10, hobbit1 6/10, hobbit 2 6/10, hobbit 3 4/10. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Elessar Posted December 23, 2016 Share Posted December 23, 2016 (edited) 4 hours ago, IronJimbo said: Two Towers has aged like milk, some of the scenes are awful. TTT is a straight 10 and equal to FOTR. The build-up is gripping and the battle itself one of the finest battles in movie history. The Rohirrim are well realized and the musical theme amazing. As for Dune, it's something right up my alley. I hope the stars align... Edited December 23, 2016 by Elessar 1 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Merkel Posted December 23, 2016 Share Posted December 23, 2016 I think you could do it in two movies and slip the story when Paul and Jessica are found by the Fremen after escaping the Harkonnen 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Elessar Posted December 23, 2016 Share Posted December 23, 2016 I have barely any recolaction of the original, only that is was weird and fascinating at the same time. Recently i have looked up some of it on youtube and... yeah... weird it is. Might have not aged that well. Most of my exposure to Dune was through this videogame, the grandfather of real time strategies (rts)... 2 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Merkel Posted December 23, 2016 Share Posted December 23, 2016 You only get the tiniest glimpse of the Dune universe in Dune 2. It was fascinating enough back in the day to make me want to learn more about it, but once I read the book, my mind was blown. I entered that world totally and I've never quite left it since 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
The Futurist Posted December 23, 2016 Share Posted December 23, 2016 (edited) 16 hours ago, Grand Moff Tele said: There's a reason people have called it "unfilmable" for decades. Then again, they said the same thing about LOTR. But the "unfilmable" reputation of LOTR came from the scope of it & the visual effects technologies needed to create such a rich fantasy world, not the tone I think. Edited December 23, 2016 by The Futurist Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Dementeleus Posted December 23, 2016 Share Posted December 23, 2016 5 minutes ago, The Futurist said: But the "unfilmable" reputation of LOTR came from the scope of it & the visual effects technologies needed to create such a rich fantasy world, not the tone I think. And the detailed universe. There's nothing really in the tone of DUNE that makes it unfilmable. I mean, it's not GRAVITY'S RAINBOW or anything. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
The Futurist Posted December 23, 2016 Share Posted December 23, 2016 2 minutes ago, Grand Moff Tele said: And the detailed universe. There's nothing really in the tone of DUNE that makes it unfilmable. I mean, it's not GRAVITY'S RAINBOW or anything. Not sure a film with the tone of the Lynch version would be a B$ franchise in the making though. There gonna be a middle ground I guess. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
UTJeff Posted December 23, 2016 Share Posted December 23, 2016 (edited) 7 hours ago, Grand Moff Tele said: You're right, it would take a little effort and it wouldn't be super-easy. (I need to re-read to see if there's any specific good moment to end on). And you're right about the HOBBITs, though DUNE seems much closer to LOTR as a book, both in terms of length and complexity. My issue though is that at the end of the day Lord of the Rings has clear heroes and clear villains. Even the heroes who are tempted by the dark side or make mistakes are given opportunities to redeem themselves. There's one clear big bad, and there's a battle for freedom to keep Middle-Earth free from Sauron's rule. In Dune, it's a bit different. Even if you have the Harkonnens as the clear villains, after the first novel, things get a lot murkier. If you truly want to adapt those novels, it will be difficult to film them and make them not just understandable to a general audience but digestible. The novels don't really have a traditional narrative structure. A lot of weird things happen. In Dune, the so called good guys are not really all that good and they perform a lot of questionable acts, especially Paul. On a visual level, yes Dune is very possible to pull off at this point in terms of visuals, technology, production design, etc. At the same time, pulling off Dune will not be cheap. So it's tough for me to imagine how the studio will be willing to invest the books' visual ambitions and not want to make changes to dumb it down and make it more audience friendly. Edited December 23, 2016 by UTJeff 2 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Dementeleus Posted December 23, 2016 Share Posted December 23, 2016 Just now, UTJeff said: My issue though is that at the end of the day Lord of the Rings has clear heroes and clear villains. Even the heroes who are tempted by the dark side or make mistakes are given opportunities to redeem themselves. There's one clear big bad, and there's a battle for freedom to keep Middle-Earth free from Sauron's rule. In Dune, it's a bit different. Even if you have the Harkonnens as the clear villains, after the first novel, things get a lot murkier. If you truly want to adapt those novels, it will be difficult to film them and make them not just understandable to a general audience but digestible. The novels don't really have a traditional narrative structure. A lot of weird things happen. In Dune, the so called good guys are not really all that good and they perform a lot of questionable acts, especially Paul. I agree with you. My point of comparison wasn't any ethical/moral clarity, but that both books contain a ton of characters and occasionally labyrinthian cultural/historical references that could be overwhelming to a viewer. I felt Peter Jackson did a great job of suggesting and hinting at a rich, detailed, lived-in universe filled with history, but only hit key points that pertained to the actual story unfolding. I feel like that approach could work for DUNE as well. At this point, I think audiences are well-prepared to accept occasional moral ambiguity from their protagonists. And I think -- at least in terms of the first novel -- that the DUNE story unfolds in a relatively clear way. If we start getting into GOD EMPEROR OF DUNE, then yeah, I have a hard time seeing how that could work. 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Elessar Posted December 23, 2016 Share Posted December 23, 2016 Interesting trivia i just found out. De Laurentis first went to Ridley Scott for Dune. He worked for 7 months on the movie before dropping out. 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...