SciFi Channel version of Dune

POSTED BY: est120
UPDATED: Sunday, June 11, 2006 20:32
VIEWED: 5487
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EST120

Monday, May 29, 2006 3:06 PM

So I finished reading Dune a couple of weeks ago (after a longer than normal hiatus in the middle, work stuff, you know how it is) and I decided to re-watch the SciFi Channel production of the book. I had seen it before and thoroughly enjoyed it but it was a while ago so I figured a re-watch was in order. Some of my observations about deviations from the book, in case anyone is interested:

1. I do not remember Irulan and Feyd having any kind of subplot between them in the book. In truth, I thought it was supposed to be the Lady Fenring, not Irulan that had a "thing" with him. Am I remembering the book wrong?

2. On the subject of Irulan, I do not remember the Emperor's character even making any kind of appearance in the book until the final battle on Arrakis.

3. One final thing about Irulan, I also do not remember her attending the dinner party that Leto Atredies has on Arrakis shortly after his arrival.

4. When Jessica and Paul are traveling through the desert (before they meet up with the Fremen), they fall down a Dune and Paul drops the backpack carrying their supplies. In the book it gets buried under a lot of sand, in the movie, he just walks over and picks it up.

Other observations:
1. What is the deal with the heroic couplets to end many of the Harkkonen dialogue? Geez, are they channeling Shakespeare?

2. The Sardukar in the novel are made out to be such ruthless, skilled warriors but in the movie, they are kind of glossed over, probably for time considerations.

3. Am I mistaken or does Rabban get killed twice? Once by Stilgar's wicked looking minigun thing and again by an angry mob after he (Rabban) gets cornered.

4. Speaking of Stilgar, I thought the actor they had playing him was a perfect choice. I was less impressed with the choice of William Hurt, who is a good actor in his own right, but I felt he was not the best choice to play Leto. The actor chosen for Paul was pretty good, as was the choice for Jessica and Baron Harkkonen.

5. I also thought some of the words had different pronunciations. I am not a linguist, so I bet my pronunciations were incorrect anyway. I thought it was Bene Gesserit with a hard G like "go" or "get" not a soft G like "gel". I also thought the characters name was Leto with a long E like L-ee-to.

Overall, a very faithful adaptation of the book. Not as good as the novel, like most adaptations, but still one of the better ones that I have seen. The included almost every scene from the book and much of the dialogue was verbatim from the text which is good.

Anyway, my worthless opinion.

MIRAMEL

Monday, May 29, 2006 4:14 PM

hello est, long-time dune fan here, just wanted to respond to some of your points. for 1-3 about irulan, your quite right, in the book she's only in the final scene. 4, again your quite right, they sorta cut that out, probably for time.
others:
1)i guess its just somethin they added. eh, w/e.
2)there are a few refrences to them being all powerful 'n such, i guess just not as much as in the book.
3)never noticed, ill have to go watch it again.
4)here here, i absolutely love most of the cast choices.
5)silly people mis-pronouncing things :rolleyes in the children of dune movie they make, they do pronounces it L-ee-to. also they're pretty inconsistant w/ the pronunciation of the chakobsa, and i think the lady j. uses the same phrase to mean three pretty mutually exclusive things :P another one that ges my fedykin <(sp) i like hte pronunciation in the movie, but there are defanitly a cuple others floating around that are "mopre official". im torn.

one last thing i noticed, and really the only thing that majorly bugged me, was that they killed of thufer early on, instead of having that sub-plot w/ the baron and feyd. ah well
over all, i agree, excellent movie, and as movies-of-books go these days, pretty damn good.

LAUGHINGMUSE

Monday, May 29, 2006 4:35 PM

The deviations from the book are a bit irritating, but since the overall story holds together well, it's not quite so disturbing.

1. I don't think you're remembering wrong. Count and Lady Fenring were kind of the emperor's spymasters - and I think that yes, it was Lady Fenring that was watching Feyd's 100th kill and "celebrated" with him afterward. (I seem to remember a comment about her having to conceal her disgust about the whole slave-ring spectacle, so that she could get to Feyd.) I think she was seeking specific information about House Harkonnen's next move, or was trying to influence them in how to move against the Atreides.

1(other). I actually kind of liked the Harkonnen couplet-speak. They looked at the camera and let fly, and in a strange bizarre way it worked. "Hey, we're mildly insane paranoiacs with more issues than God - bleargh!!!" Some of the scenes in the movie looked very obviously like a stage setting, with a painted-cloth backdrop - so the couplet-speak seemed to fit.

5(other). Here's another mispronounciation for you: Liet's daughter. If you compare the spelling to the other pronounciations (chaksoba, etc.), the name is supposed to be pronounced /chah-nee/. She was pronouncing it /chay-nee/. I kept waiting for her to say, "I am Chaney, daughter of Lon."

The Caravan version (Sci-Fi version) is a much more coherent, accessible storyline, and those who haven't read the book can enjoy this version pretty easily. I love David Lynch's version for the visual richness, though.

---------------------------------
Mankind makes tools; we use them to augment our hands, arms and legs.
The computer augments the brain and this makes it very unpopular with totalitarians. - Charles J.C. Lyall

CHRISTHECYNIC

Monday, May 29, 2006 4:50 PM

Quote:
Originally posted by est120:
1. I do not remember Irulan and Feyd having any kind of subplot between them in the book. In truth, I thought it was supposed to be the Lady Fenring, not Irulan that had a "thing" with him. Am I remembering the book wrong?

2. On the subject of Irulan, I do not remember the Emperor's character even making any kind of appearance in the book until the final battle on Arrakis.

The miniseries was made with a sequel in mind so they felt the need to expand the character of Irulan so she wouldn't appear to come out of nowhere in the next one. Actually this had an unfortunate side effect, some people started to think of Irulan as a much more active and important person than Paul's love which is more or less the reverse of the book.

Quote:
3. One final thing about Irulan, I also do not remember her attending the dinner party that Leto Atredies has on Arrakis shortly after his arrival.

On this one you might be wrong, if memory serves she did come to that and, in a show of random theatrics, in the book she had people release butterflies to signal her entrance.

Quote:
4. When Jessica and Paul are traveling through the desert (before they meet up with the Fremen), they fall down a Dune and Paul drops the backpack carrying their supplies. In the book it gets buried under a lot of sand, in the movie, he just walks over and picks it up.

Yeah, well not everything remains the same. One of the biggest changes from book to miniseries was what was absent in that scene: "If you walk without rhythm than you won't attract the worm."

Quote:
Other observations:
1. What is the deal with the heroic couplets to end many of the Harkkonen dialogue? Geez, are they channeling Shakespeare?

They thought it added an eccentric megalomaniac note to the Barron.

Quote:
2. The Sardukar in the novel are made out to be such ruthless, skilled warriors but in the movie, they are kind of glossed over, probably for time considerations.

Yup, time.

Quote:
3. Am I mistaken or does Rabban get killed twice? Once by Stilgar's wicked looking minigun thing and again by an angry mob after he (Rabban) gets cornered.

You are indeed mistaken. Stilgar did not kill Rabban, he killed a Sardukar who looked similar, the same one that killed Paul's son. It isn't even the same actor, they just look alike.

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4. Speaking of Stilgar, I thought the actor they had playing him was a perfect choice. I was less impressed with the choice of William Hurt, who is a good actor in his own right, but I felt he was not the best choice to play Leto. The actor chosen for Paul was pretty good, as was the choice for Jessica and Baron Harkkonen.

Hurt took a new direction to the role and played Leto as a character who was simply tragic, doomed and aware of it and thus quite gloomy. I always thought of Leto as someone who was more energetic, he saw the walls closing in and was clawing with every ounce of his being to keep his head above water (mixed metaphors are fun) while at the same time trying to appear calm.

Obviously Hurt looked at Leto another way.

Quote:
5. I also thought some of the words had different pronunciations. I am not a linguist, so I bet my pronunciations were incorrect anyway. I thought it was Bene Gesserit with a hard G like "go" or "get" not a soft G like "gel". I also thought the characters name was Leto with a long E like L-ee-to.

The author was very interested in linguistics, a lot of Fremen terms come out of Arabic in ways would expect a far future dialect to for example. As such he probably wrote down how the words should be pronounced somewhere. Unfortunately I do not know where that would be, or even if it would be released.

Leto is supposedly a descendant of the Greek hero Agamemnon of the house of Atreus (Atreides being a corruption of Atreus, like I said the guy liked linguistics) so it might be that a Greek pronunciation would be correct, but that is a big might, name pro

CHRISTHECYNIC

Monday, May 29, 2006 5:02 PM

Quote:
Originally posted by LaughingMuse:
I love David Lynch's version for the visual richness, though.

For a long time I thought that was Dune, I had no idea there was a novel, much less six of them. Imagine my disappointment when I found out that Frank Herbert died before he finished the series.

Still, his kid found his notes, and is a competent, though far from brilliant, writer so maybe I'll finally get an decent ending.

The thing I really don't understand about the Lynch version, beyond all else that confuses me, is the weirding modules. Where did they come from? There was nothing at all like them in the book.

On the other hand I really did like the fact that they kept Paul's private name. "Tell me of the waters of your homeworld Muadib," just isn't the same as, "Tell me of the waters of your homeworld Usul."

I like both the David Lynch movie and the Sci-Fi miniseries.

BLUEFOOT

Monday, May 29, 2006 5:05 PM

Quote:
On this one you might be wrong, if memory serves she did come to that and, in a show of random theatrics, in the book she had people release butterflies to signal her entrance.

Actually, no, she's definitely not there. I've been rereading the book and just read that part a few days ago. There is some random chick sent to try and seduce Paul, but that's about it.

She does, however, play a pretty big role in the book for the simple reason that nearly all of the quotations at the beginnings of the chapters are by her. And, by extension, the Emperor's character actually does make appearances in the book prior to his arrival on Arrakis because Irulan talks about him in some of her pre-chapter blurbs.

CHRISTHECYNIC

Monday, May 29, 2006 5:12 PM

Quote:
Originally posted by Bluefoot:
Quote:
On this one you might be wrong, if memory serves she did come to that and, in a show of random theatrics, in the book she had people release butterflies to signal her entrance.

Actually, no, she's definitely not there. I've been rereading the book and just read that part a few days ago. There is some random chick sent to try and seduce Paul, but that's about it.

She does, however, play a pretty big role in the book for the simple reason that nearly all of the quotations at the beginnings of the chapters are by her. And, by extension, the Emperor's character actually does make appearances in the book prior to his arrival on Arrakis because Irulan talks about him in some of her pre-chapter blurbs.

Ok, in that case when does she preform the butterfly stunt? I now remember why I thought she did. Part of her outfit has butterflies on it spesifically because at one point in the book she made an entrance with live butterflies and they were unable to do that.

LAUGHINGMUSE

Monday, May 29, 2006 5:26 PM

Quote:
Originally posted by christhecynic:
Ok, in that case when does she preform the butterfly stunt? I now remember why I thought she did. Part of her outfit has butterflies on it spesifically because at one point in the book she made an entrance with live butterflies and they were unable to do that.

I wondered what was up with that hat Irulan wore... I guess that it was a visual shout-out to the butterflies? (Never mind me, I'm still on my first cup of coffee.)

---------------------------------
Mankind makes tools; we use them to augment our hands, arms and legs.
The computer augments the brain and this makes it very unpopular with totalitarians. - Charles J.C. Lyall

CHRISTHECYNIC

Monday, May 29, 2006 5:33 PM

Quote:
Originally posted by LaughingMuse:
I wondered what was up with that hat Irulan wore... I guess that it was a visual shout-out to the butterflies? (Never mind me, I'm still on my first cup of coffee.)

It was indeed, but if she didn't have the butterflies there in the book when did she have the butterflies in the books?

It's been too long since I've read them last for me to remember.

J6NGO1977

Monday, May 29, 2006 5:34 PM

You gotta remember Dune, the book, is 6 million pages long and then you got Dune Messiah, Son of Dune and Dune wears big baggy pants. So for a film (I enjoyed the film) or TV series to take that story on and get it completely right is far from their budget

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