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VanillaGorilla
Oct 2, 2003

Folks are right that this isn't a mass market blockbuster, but it is absolutely the best film adaptation of Dune and I hope the rumors that HBO guaranteed Villeneuve that they'd let him do Part 2 are true.

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Nitrousoxide
May 30, 2011

do not buy a oneplus phone



Oscar Isaac looks EXTREMELY good with his Duke Leto beard.

Judakel
Jul 29, 2004
Probation
Can't post for 9 years!

VanillaGorilla posted:

Folks are right that this isn't a mass market blockbuster, but it is absolutely the best film adaptation of Dune and I hope the rumors that HBO guaranteed Villeneuve that they'd let him do Part 2 are true.

At this point it would be the only way to get a second part, because the HD version leaked online a couple of days ago and there's still a few days until it comes to theaters/ HBO Max. Very sad.

Dr.Radical
Apr 3, 2011
Saw it this weekend and enjoyed it. I’m kind of in a sweet spot where I read the book once like 5 years ago and enjoyed it but wouldn’t re-read it. So there were parts that might be confusing for someone who is going in completely blind but made sense if you knew some of the lore or remembered the general points from the book. If you’re a Dune super fan who has read it a bunch of times you might get upset because let’s face it, you were going to get upset anyway due to it not being exactly as you imagined it and it didn’t have every thing precisely as the book.

Outside of the story itself the design was cool, the score was good and added to the movie, and I didn’t have a problem with any of the acting. It was a fun time at the theater!

MrL_JaKiri
Sep 23, 2003

A bracing glass of carrot juice!

Judakel posted:

At this point it would be the only way to get a second part, because the HD version leaked online a couple of days ago and there's still a few days until it comes to theaters/ HBO Max. Very sad.

It's performing very well in the markets that it's opened in.

Lutha Mahtin
Oct 10, 2010

Your brokebrain sin is absolved...go and shitpost no more!

wikipedia says box office receipts have already reached about 80% of the $165 million it cost to make

Judakel
Jul 29, 2004
Probation
Can't post for 9 years!

Lutha Mahtin posted:

wikipedia says box office receipts have already reached about 80% of the $165 million it cost to make

Usually you have to double it with marketing. Let's hope for the best.

Hodgepodge
Jan 29, 2006
Probation
Can't post for 273 days!

Judakel posted:

Usually you have to double it with marketing. Let's hope for the best.

Doesn't that depend a bit if we're playing with 'Covid rules' where a poo poo box office performance is gold?

Not really sure how much of that is just saving face for PR in the first place though.

Pedro De Heredia
May 30, 2006

SidneyIsTheKiller posted:

I probably should have noted that I was indeed making an immediate initial impression from only looking at the trailer on my phone.

I don't mean to rain on anyone's parade! When I'm really into a new release and want to see it do well I'm often interested in how it's being perceived by someone who isn't really paying attention and thought I'd offer that "unwashed masses" perspective here.

The new movie and the old one are pretty different in how they're built.

You can see it easily in when things happen. Even though the new movie is just Part 1 of the story, a very important plot beat that gets the story going happens at the 1 hour 15 min mark, which is only 15 minutes later than in the 2 hr cut of the old movie and 15 minutes earlier than the 3 hour extended edition of the old movie. The new movie then spends an hour covering a part of the story that takes a half hour in the older movie.

The older movies also take between 10 and 15 minutes to get from 'exposition' to 'meeting the main character.' This one gets there in 3 minutes (and then has a brief, less than 1 minute long exposition dump).

They made a good creative decision for the new one, which is: instead of using the extra time to flesh out everybody and add as much of the book as possible, they used it to properly pace the main story.

Partial Octopus
Feb 4, 2006



I thought Timothy did kind of a lovely job as Paul. He just had this vacant, out to lunch look on this face the entire movie. Very monotone too.

FPyat
Jan 17, 2020
I hopes Kynes gets some cool things to say, he was one of the more intriguing characters in the book.

Judakel
Jul 29, 2004
Probation
Can't post for 9 years!

Hodgepodge posted:

Doesn't that depend a bit if we're playing with 'Covid rules' where a poo poo box office performance is gold?

Not really sure how much of that is just saving face for PR in the first place though.

Covid rules don't really change the budget, though.

Partial Octopus posted:

I thought Timothy did kind of a lovely job as Paul. He just had this vacant, out to lunch look on this face the entire movie. Very monotone too.

I completely agree. He cries pretty because he is pretty, but he does not do a good job of displaying much more emotion than this.

Shanty
Nov 7, 2005

I Love Dogs

FPyat posted:

I hopes Kynes gets some cool things to say, he was one of the more intriguing characters in the book.

I was surprised at how much they gave her, and how close to the book it was. The scene where she checks Paul's stillsuit was great, and the bit where they're holed up in the testing station was as close as you can get without a voice over, I thought (lax lasgun discipline aside).
Probably sort of at the cost of more Thufir/Gurney/Yueh, but that's the way it is.

MaoistBanker
Sep 11, 2001

For Sound Financial Pranning!
Saw a screening of it last night. I’m going to buy any giant coffee table book made of the art and production because Villeneuve correctly doesn’t spend a lot of time explaining a lot of the world building, and there’s a LOT OF IT.

Atarask
Mar 8, 2008

Lord of Rigel Developer
https://kotaku.com/dune-is-the-latest-beloved-property-to-be-swallowed-by-1847887636

Well nothing is sacred. The issue of course being disgracing shai-hulud into a sock puppet Leto II.

Communist Thoughts
Jan 7, 2008

Our war against free speech cannot end until we silence this bronze beast!


Just watched it finally.

I'll have to think a bit more about what I thought of it, but my first impressions are that it wasn't as imaginative or as enjoyable as the lynch version which I saw for the first time a week ago.
I'd be hard pressed to say the lynch version is a better film though.

I do get what people mean about Chalamet, he looks the part but has no character behind the eyes, which is how I felt about a lot of the film.

Also The Shadout Mapes was a 5/10 AT BEST

Arglebargle III
Feb 21, 2006

On the other hand Paul is a weird, out- to- lunch sort of kid.

Tuxedo Catfish
Mar 17, 2007

You've got guts! Come to my village, I'll buy you lunch.
paul has to simultaneously be kind of paralyzed by his own knowledge of what's going to happen to him and how powerless he is to stop it, but also charismatic enough to bring an entire planet under his sway, which is a difficult thing to convey in a performance and i don't think any of the actors who've played the character really nailed it

DeimosRising
Oct 17, 2005

¡Hola SEA!


Tuxedo Catfish posted:

paul has to simultaneously be kind of paralyzed by his own knowledge of what's going to happen to him and how powerless he is to stop it, but also charismatic enough to bring an entire planet under his sway, which is a difficult thing to convey in a performance and i don't think any of the actors who've played the character really nailed it

The book doesn't really do anything to sell that he's so charismatic either. It just sort of assumes he is, and that "works" to an extent because we don't actually see him or anything.

flashy_mcflash
Feb 7, 2011

Arglebargle III posted:

On the other hand Paul is a weird, out- to- lunch sort of kid.

Yeah, exactly. Dead-eyed, disinterested, but pretty enough to foster a revolution? That's our Paul.

AnEdgelord
Dec 12, 2016
I listened to a podcast about Dune a little while ago, it was made before this new movie was announced but one of the guys said that Paul should be played as "an aristocrat that has gone feral" which I think I agree with

Arglebargle III
Feb 21, 2006

So a normal aristocrat.

Hodgepodge
Jan 29, 2006
Probation
Can't post for 273 days!
dude can also literally see the future, so all you really need is a kid who can give a good speech and look troubled when no one he doesn't trust is looking.

AnEdgelord
Dec 12, 2016

Arglebargle III posted:

So a normal aristocrat.

You have a much higher opinion of aristocrats than I do

mistermojo
Jul 3, 2004

great movie. there were so many amazing shots and scenes and special effects one after another. and I really like how in the last half hour after they emerge from the sandstorm it stays with Paul and his mom and doesn't cut away to anywhere else

Shanty
Nov 7, 2005

I Love Dogs
I think any big acting Chalamet did was absolutely swallowed by Chastain being there to one-up him in every scene.
Loved his pained Gom Jabbar face, though.

No Mods No Masters
Oct 3, 2004

Did you really think rebecca ferguson was jessica chastain or is that a bit. But yeah she was great, best performance in the film by a large margin

Cryomancer
Jan 22, 2005

Indeed.
Having just watched the new one.... I recommend watching it as a double-feature with Lynch's version immediately after, but stopping at roughly the same point. It's like the anime version of what you just saw.

Shanty
Nov 7, 2005

I Love Dogs

No Mods No Masters posted:

Did you really think rebecca ferguson was jessica chastain or is that a bit. But yeah she was great, best performance in the film by a large margin

Yep I got those names mixed up :doh: No idea why.

Dr.Radical
Apr 3, 2011
Has anyone seen any bad reviews yet? Everything I’ve seen has been good outside of Leslie Lee of Struggle Session podcast trashing it. He said Jessica only shows up to cry which lol were we watching the same movie?

Steve Yun
Aug 7, 2003
I'm a parasitic landlord that needs to get a job instead of stealing worker's money. Make sure to remind me when I post.
Soiled Meat
Dune was pretty good except for Aidan Gallagher as Paul Atreides I don’t think he was quite up to the role

No Mods No Masters
Oct 3, 2004

Dr.Radical posted:

Has anyone seen any bad reviews yet? Everything I’ve seen has been good outside of Leslie Lee of Struggle Session podcast trashing it. He said Jessica only shows up to cry which lol were we watching the same movie?

This still seems to be the representative strong hater review.

I have to say that I liked the movie quite a bit more than I thought I was going to, but it still kind of falls in the noble failure or maybe narrow success category to me, so I kind of see some of his points. 2049 to me is something where there is a really good core story polluted by too much extraneous crap. This feels like the opposite in a way, lots of really good ingredients not quite totally coming together into something that puts its own point or spin on the material

Rabelais D
Dec 11, 2012

ts'u nnu k'u k'o t'khye:
A demon doth defecate at thy door
I saw this at the cinema in Hong Kong yesterday and I didn't feel it.

The world building is actively worse than the Lynch Dune, because there are no navigators, no emperor, Geidi Prime isn't memorable at all.

It's strange that it gives the story more time to breathe and yet we get what feels like less Gurney and less Yueh. In Dune 1984 isn't there a great scene where Gurney is just jamming out on some sitar-like instrument?

Almost all the sets are blandly minimalist, it feels like future IKEA, not the opulent craziness of the 1984 production design. The Hans Zimmer score is also blandly generic, unfortunately.

The casting was good, but Chani is a non character in this film, by necessity, which just makes the ending even more abrupt after all those visions of her turning to look at the camera.

This all sounds really negative but it wasn't a bad film at all, it just doesn't feel as daring or imaginative as the Lynch version. This sort of makes you wonder what the point of this version even is, because if it's just to be more faithful to the source material, I don't know if that justifies the effort.

Pedro De Heredia
May 30, 2006

Rabelais D posted:

It's strange that it gives the story more time to breathe and yet we get what feels like less Gurney and less Yueh. In Dune 1984 isn't there a great scene where Gurney is just jamming out on some sitar-like instrument?

Dune 1984 is a narrative disaster and it is precisely because of trying to have more of everything.

Rabelais D posted:

Almost all the sets are blandly minimalist, it feels like future IKEA, not the opulent craziness of the 1984 production design.

That fits the story pretty well. It's set in a brutal future. The bulk of the story takes place in an inhospitable desert planet. The groups of people we meet are: an honorable and noble imperial family; the inhabitants of the inhospitable desert planet; a secretive order of space nuns; a bunch of soldiers trained in another inhospitable desert planet; an evil noble family that lives in a "harsh, industrial volcanic wasteland." "Opulent craziness" does not fit with the vast majority of this.

Pedro De Heredia fucked around with this message at 07:56 on Oct 19, 2021

Rabelais D
Dec 11, 2012

ts'u nnu k'u k'o t'khye:
A demon doth defecate at thy door
That's fair enough, narratively DUNC is much more successful than 1984 Dune. And while you can definitely argue that brutal minimalism fits the setting of Arrakis better, I think it's much less interesting for the wider universe as whole, even the matte paintings for Caladan and Geidi Prime were more characterful than what we got here, for example.

Hodgepodge
Jan 29, 2006
Probation
Can't post for 273 days!
If we're willing to admit "me trying to figure out the logic behind the decision on the basis of gently caress and all," one explanation might be that they're saving the opulent and decadent and weird side of things for the second film. It would be a good way to distinguish the two films, and would have some thematic logic behind it. The first movie can show the stark and spartan Atreidies and Fremen, then really bust out just how weird this universe actually is in the second. The important thing would be to balance the decadence with the genuinely strange and beautiful so you can see both the corruption and why Paul would hesitate to burn it all down.

JockstrapManthrust
Apr 30, 2013
Watched this yesterday and was not impressed. It seemed terrified of its predecessor so it achieved utter blandness, aimed for portentous and hit pretentious at times, and some of the FX made it look like a TV movie. What a waste of a perfectly good Villeneuve, and Timmah would be better taking that performance to a Josh Trank movie.

DeafNote
Jun 4, 2014

Only Happy When It Rains
Meanwhile I am disagreeing with the notion that Zimmers music is bland and generic.
I'd call it more weird and aggressive myself.

Communist Thoughts
Jan 7, 2008

Our war against free speech cannot end until we silence this bronze beast!


I think ridiculous opulence is exactly what the non-arrakis parts should look like, apart from selusa secundus.
A big theme of the story is that the rest of the empire has "civilised" to the extent that the rough fremen can just roll over everyone like the mongols or vikings.
It's the whole "silk slippers coming down the stairs to the sound of boots coming up them" thing from history.

The whole plot is kicked off by the atreides making an army that can actually fight, which is almost unheard of in the universe other than the sardukar and such a threat the Emperor has them destroyed.

Other than being told that's the case it doesn't really come across at all in this movie's action, all the forces are equally matched dark armoured sword fighters apart from our main characters who dispatch half a dozen enemy power rangers every time theyr on screen.

I do think they ran out of cgi budget at some point, especially lame was Paul describing "a holy war burning across the universe like a fire with my father's banner" instead of us getting to see that.

E I also do agree that, like the lynch film, they turned Jessica from the most cool and collected of characters to the weepiest in the film. Its a good performance but my gf was like "oh she's crying again huh"

Also also when I heard Jason momoa was in this I was like "oh man he's a perfect gurney hallack that's good casting!" lol

Communist Thoughts fucked around with this message at 12:13 on Oct 19, 2021

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Nitrousoxide
May 30, 2011

do not buy a oneplus phone



I did see two really galaxy brained moves in combat in the 2021 movie.

1: using lasers to try and down the shielded ornithopter as Duncan escaped from the attack on Dune by the Harkonnen.

2: using lasers to cut through the weather station door when there could be shielded people behind

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