Via Geek Girl Authority comes this… I dunno what this is. Could be good. Could be bad.
Legendary has just acquired film and TV rights to Frank Herbert’s seminal science fiction novel Dune after coming to agreement with the Herbert estate. This is not the first time Dune has been brought to both the small and big screens over the novel’s 51 years since Herbert wrote his iconic book. Many filmmakers attempted but failed over the years to bring this iconic novel to life in the way that Herbert and sci-fi fans imagined.
There’s a lot of (probably justified) speculation that Legendary is looking at Dune and thinking ‘multi-movie larger universe with a bunch of interconnected properties.’ Because Marvel’s doing it, Disney is doing it – and, heck, even DC is trying to do it, so how hard can it be? …And it would be nice. If it was done properly.
If.
It “could” be good. Am I alone in not liking the Dune books that much?
I liked Dune itself a lot. The sequels… eh.
So, what would a “good” Dune film/tv show entail? Less bizarre than the Lynch film? Higher budget than the ScyFi mini-series?
I liked the Lynch film, right up to the freaking literal last seconds of it.
Yep, the storm out of no where with any explanation on the terraforming. Even in the extended version they really don’t go into the subject. But hey rain!
I thought I was one of the few who mostly liked the movie.
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Now I think that most people inclined to see such things mostly liked it, but the sheer wrath of those that hated it caused them mostly to shut up.
(Now, how come this doesn’t work with Jackson’s desecrations?)
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Eh, I was fine with there not being a scientific explanation for the storm. It was narratively appropriate, all the potential narrators would have believed it to be a miracle, and movies necessarily have a more limited third person omniscient than books do.
Because I sit down to watch the Rohirrim charge at the Pelennor Fields on a regular basis? 🙂
Except why have the rain then.
The paperback copy of “Dune” that I acquired in high school breathlessly exclaimed, “Soon to be a major motion picture!” Forty-one years on and I’m still waiting…
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OK, I jest. I doggedly followed the novels to “Dune Messiah” and the serialization of “Children of Dune” in Analog, and gave it up without reading “Second Cousins by Marriage to the God-Emperor of Dune” or whatever the series devolved to. I feel that the miniseries was truer to the spirit of the book than whatever was going on in the Lynch movie, and what I principally remember from it is that William Hurt was an awful, charismaless Duke Leto. So I’m not holding out great hopes for Legendary vs. “Dune”.
Pretty sure I’ve posted this here before, but Dune is simply too long to fit into a single 2 (or even 3) hour long movie. As I recall, the book itself is divided into three parts, so maybe a three movie adaptation like The Hobbit. Actually, they could do a lot worse than putting Peter Jackson in charge…
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Honestly, the ministeries adaptation the Sci Fi channel did mumblety years ago was actually pretty decent (aside from some weak special effects).