Spoiler Chat: Dune Part Two with Philip Chase the Ultimate Nemesis
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- čas přidán 7. 09. 2024
- @PhilipChaseTheBestofFantasy and I have a spoiler-filled chat about the new Dune film adaptation (Dune Part Two) by Denis Villeneuve and discuss our thoughts on it.
Philip and I had a non-spoiler discussion about Dune: Part One over on his channel: / @philipchasethebestoff...
And the spoiler discussion of Dune: Part One is here:
• Spoiler Chat: Dune (20...
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Intro and Music by Professor Trip.
I heard the director say in an interview that he hates dialogue and that its for theatre and TV, while cinema is all about the visual and auditory experience. Im paraphrasing a little but that was honestly a little bit of a revelation for me. The way he films a scene, the audio accompanying it, the actors doing very subtle but precise emotions, small visual effects to cue the audience...i could keep going but Villeneuve is truly a master of modern cinema storystelling
There are lots of different approaches to cinema, and Villeneuve consistently pulls off compelling visual storytelling.
I like to think the final duel with Faed was Paul deciding, for the last time, if he was going to take the violent, terrible, path he had foreseen. He might have let Faed win. Or he might have allowed himself to die as the original Paul, the version without visions and new fighting skills. In rallying, and winning, he embraced his future fully.
Very intersting perspective. Thank you.
Thank you for the excellent chat, Emperor A.P.! A word of advice to your imperial majesty: don't trust the Bene Gesserit. The Spacing Guild is suspect too. Forget about those noble houses. And watch out for young upstarts!
Always harkin' on about something.
@@ACriticalDragon I’m out here baron my soul to help you out, and this is the thanks I get! 😁
Your nemesisitude apparently will not Feyd away.
@@ACriticalDragon Only because your nefarious qualities have been Raban off on me.
@@PhilipChaseTheBestofFantasy worming your way out of all personal responsibility. You are a real chest thumper at times.
I actually can't wait to be able to watch both films back to back to get the complete story in one shot. I feel they really complement each other well. I think it must have been the theater you were in when it came to the sound problem, because I felt that same vibratory effect when I saw the first one as well. It's one of the things I love about actually going to the cinema, my home viewing can't compete with the large visual and sound immersion there. I really hope this film gets the accolades it derserves. Despite the minor quibbles I have here and there, including the ones you brought up, it is a really great film that we fans of sci-fi/fantasy should treasure. Great discussion guys!
We all have quibbles because we all have different elements we remember and value, but I really enjoyed seeing a strong narrative vision being portrayed, with complexity and nuance left for the audience to engage with. I will definitely be doing a marathon viewing of both when they are both on DVD.
Was Stilgar really a laughable oaf in the first movie? There was no dignity for him as a warrior or leader in this movie. I’m a bit at uneasy that he was made a clown because he’s a fundi. Making something or someone ridiculous is one way of degreasing and a great way to stop any dialogue. It’s been almost forty years I red Dune but I find Stilgar too simplistic in this film. Javier Bardem was great but there could have been so much deeper insight of different points of view. And I really don’t like fundamental thinking and warning is needed. But this is not to way to open any discussion.
@tainakauppinen9878 but that was a major point. Within the 'Northern' Fremen culture he was made fun of by the others, but the film ends in the Jihad being launched. They become believers and launch a holy war across the stars. There is no dialogue. There is no attempt to understand or try to rationalise. The belief takes over. The turning point is Paul's speech in the Sietch. The charismatic leader 'proves' the 'zealot' right.
I thought it was very powerfully done.
Great one! This was a great watch in the big IMAX theatre. Nice to hear some of my own quips voiced by you two sages.
I loved Stilgar's quick line about the "small centipedes" holding his hands out to the size of a trophy fish. He was a great touch of comedy in this film.
That was the funniest line to me as well.
I felt weird laughing out loud, as no one else in the theatre did 🤷🏻
@@Gaverny i def "lol"d!
They gave some great lines (and some much needed comedy relief) to Javier Bardem. His earnestness was really important for him not to be perceived as a buffoon. I think he did a great job.
He had a great performance and they gave him great material to work with for sure! @@ACriticalDragon
They needed Eye of the Tiger where Paul learns everything in a montage.
The Team America: World Police 'Montage' song is great.
Wonderful discussion, from two fine gents. It’s been a week roughly since I saw the film, and I’ve been letting it simmer somewhat to see where I sit on it after one viewing. No doubt all this will change on subsequent viewings, as it did with part 1. Sound mix wise - it’s not just you- this one was much better balanced out audio wise. Overall I thought the film was excellent, and as you state - it was clearly the result of someone making actual decisions about what this adaptation wanted to focus on (this was not made by executive committee) and so some of the bigger changes make sense in light of that. As much as I appreciate the film, and think it did so much right, it left me cold emotionally. The only moment that I felt immersed or moved was Paul’s riding of the worm, that was visceral. I think my main issue, and the reason for my disconnect elsewhere, was that Paul’s prescient visions were really weak. They were played very safe, very conventional, and so I didn’t feel the overwhelming power of them, as I would have liked to to to emphathise with Paul’s struggle in trying to find his way through them, like in the books. Likewise his awakening after the water of life was underwhelming, I believe for that same reason. I was kept at a distance from a character I wanted to be inside his head. This is no doubt deliberate, but an odd choice to me, and one that resulted in me not being as invested as I would have liked. I do think these are probably the best movie adaptations we might have hoped for, but my god, dune really is too dense for movie format. Maybe in 20 years we will see a high end long form adaptation where the minutia of details can come to the surface. Cheers AP
Lots of great points, what a great time you both were having. I found the sound the design worked like an audio equivalent to the ever-present heat I imagine life on Dune would include.
2 more things -
You mentioned the fight choreography and I had quibbles from a different perspective - I was tapped to write the official KungFuMagazine movie review and took a deep dive into the history/martial art the knife fighting was based on - brought to the film by fight coordinator Roger Yuan who played that final combatant Fahd-Rautha faced off against in his pit fight.
On adapting Dune.
I was inspired so I gave it a try… I adapted Dune into a 6 panel comic - JUST 6 PANELS. I call it Dune in 6. It was a fun challenge.
6 panels? That is some challenge.
Loved the spoiler chat, and I did indeed also enjoy the film. Paul’s inner conflict was well done, and so many of the visuals and performances were quite arresting-and I’m right with you on the immersiveness of the sound design! I was in a Regal RPX theater with souped up sound and rumbling in our chairs, and that was such a cool aspect of the experience.
Good seats in a good theatre apparently can make a big difference. Especially for an old man like me.
Great chat guys. Thorough analysis and love and respect for both the movie and the book without falling into silly biases. Really appreciated this vid
Villeneuve said he's working on Messiah to wrap up the film trilogy! And I think the success of this second installment basically guaranteed a greenlight 😊
I would certainly be there to watch his next instalment.
Seriously , glad you both liked it, we have yet to see it (watched anyway, you didn't actually spoil anything i hadn't already heard) but can't wait, the first part has been on our sci-fi station here with regularity this past while so it's fresh in our minds.
Apparently , Zimmer is already at work on the soundtrack for part three, so we have more deserty goodness ahead.
Excellent. I think Dune : Messiah will be a wonderful capstone to what Villeneuve has created.
I knew many of ‘Harkonnen’ Chase’s thoughts since I got to have a Dune Two discussion with him yesterday, but I still enjoyed listening to you two discuss the film. This movie surpassed my expectations, and I completely agree about the soundtrack, A.P.! It immersed me and perfectly complimented the excellent on-screen spectacles. I’m happy that we loved the film and had similar opinions!
I am glad that you enjoyed it. I thought Villeneuve did a really impressive job brining a cohesive vision of the narrative to the screen.
The Emperor looks like the brother of the Dowager Contess in Downton Abbey (Maggie Smith).😅😅
If he had ordered a White Russian and said 'The Emperor Abides' I wouldn't have been shocked.
As with the first one, this was Cinema at its finest and a natural 5 Star from me. That said, I do prefer the First Movie over this: Perhaps it is local favoritism, with Caladan shot in my native Norway (though I do love the contrast of the wet and the desert planet), perhaps I am more a fan of Oscar Isaac then Javier Bardem, but I definitely think the first movie had an incredible subtlety, warranted multiple viewings, which I do not feel the same way for this one. For example I loved the visual use of the desert mouse as a metaphor for Paul having to adapt to Arrakis in the first novel, while this one is way more expository (with a couple of exceptions I will mention). For example, the lack of Thufir Hawat and any other Mentat (!) in this movie, makes Dune’s equal criticism of the “McNamara Fallacy” of relying too much on numbers and “pure logic” (both McNamara and the Vietnam War were contemporaries when Herbert wrote “Dune”), especially when opposing fanatics, less prevalent than Herbert’s criticism of (religious) fanaticism. I definitely went to a screening that laughed of Stilgar’s interpretation of Paul’s “humbleness”: I could not help but compare the Northern Crew of Chani to the famous clip of Egyptian President Nasser and his Secular Arab Nationalists laughing at Religious Conservatives, which would later bite them in the buttocks, such as Nasser’s successor Sadat’s assassination and Modern Egypt now being the lackeys of the Conservative Golf Monarchies… I see you “Life of Brian”, Doc AP, (a very naughty boy indeed! 😆) and I raise you Verhoven’s “Starship Troopers”: I halfway expected “Do Want To Know More?” to flash over the Harkonnen Army March! 😆
Again, I do want to be clear: I fully understand that this movie chose to focus primarily on Paul’s internal struggles, the Fremen and the machinations of the Bene Gesserit (Pugh was indeed delightful as Irulan)! That said, I do agree that I would have loved more of both the Emperor and the Harkonnens: The Sietch Attack really drove in the Harkonnen Menace (Butler’s best scene, gave some real “Apocalypse Now” vibes channeling both Skarsgård’s “Marlon Brando Kurtz” accent and Robert Duvall’s General Kilgore in that scene)!
I mentioned a few subtleties I wanted to give credit: While I do miss Fayd not falling for his own poisoned blade scheme, him managing to stab Paul hints at two things: 1) The theme of “Paul the Doubter”, implying that Paul was tempted to die as to not follow the Fremen and the Galaxy on path of Holy War, and 2) his Bene Gesserit training by Jessica, and his statement earlier, when Jessica drinks the Tears of Life, that some Bene Gesserit have cultivated a poison immunity. Does that make the knife cut itself less dangerous? I doubt, but I still wanted to mention it, as perhaps one of Jessica’s techniques taught to Paul.
The final subtlety: At the ending (Dune Messiah spoiler):
Doc AP, do you agree with my understanding that Chani is pregnant at the end?
oh damn, did the editor spoil the next Edan book. I for one am looking forward to dinosaurs.
Dune finally came out here yesterday and I couldn't wait to watch it for various reasons but a large one was I wanted to hear what y'all had to say. As a massive Dune fan I couldn't be happier with what we got. Sure, I'd like a few things that were cut to be there (Alia's action at the end as the biggest bit) but wow, that was the best movie experience I've had in nearly 20 years.
I was just thinking this morning I’d like to discuss the movie with you. I guess this is a reasonable stand in for that. But Herr Professor Doktor has got to be a bit sick of discussing it by now. 😆
Too much spice in his diet I imagine.
Great to hear your thoughts on the film A.P.! I had the pleasure to talk about the film and book with your nemesis on Saturday but it was great to get your impressions. So I guess I watched this discussion just for the dragon nemesis interaction.😄 But I agree with you about the sandworm riding scene -- the moment when Paul stands up combined with that soundtrack -- 👌🏻👏🏻
I will be listening to your talk to Philip later today. I am still busy grading essays. 😭
@@ACriticalDragon No, worries A.P.! I do remember that time of year. And it's one of the things I don't miss about that job.
Great timing! I just saw it last night. Great discussion as always.
I am glad that you enjoyed it... I am looking forward to delving into what other people thought and the points that they raise.
@@ACriticalDragon I definitely agree that Christopher Walken as the emperor was very jarring lol. But I also found Zendaya to pull me out of it a bit. Not because of her performance or anything, but because of her accent. Having her be the one Fremen with an American accent definitely felt weird. I also frequently thought about Villeneuve's comments about dialogue in films, where he said that he would make his movies be without dialogue if he could get away with it. I think that is evident both from his conversations and his non-dialogue scenes. Nobody can deny that he has an incredible eye for cinematic imagery. In that regard he is one of the greatest to ever do it. But I think that a lot of his dialogue left something to be desired (though oddly enough I never felt that way about the monologues and speeches). Not that they were bad or anything, just that they were less excellent than every other element of the film.
Great video. I always love your insights. I would love to see you do a video breaking down the new show on Hulu called Shogun. It's absolutely brilliant and I would love to hear your thoughts on it. Thanks A.P
This is one of the best reviews I’ve seen of Dune 2 yet. Great discussion!
I think that the Bene Gesserit have to be much more suspicious in this version of Dune because Villeneuve just completely wrote out the role of the Guild. In the book, they are the real pressure on the Emperor to eliminate House Atreides and stabilize spice production, for their own job security. Since there is no Guild to play the heavy, the Bene Gesserit have to take over that role. This also means that the emphasis on the BG breeding program is greater, and the role of spice is downplayed. I'm not even sure that the fact that space travel is only possible due to the effects of the spice. If the series runs past Dune Messiah, that may turn out to be a problem, no? I can understand that there's only so much narrative space in a visual medium like film, but even so, this seems like a future problem.
They mention the necessity of spice for space travel in the first one.
I don't think it will be an issue for Messiah.
I really enjoyed both movies. I definitely felt the music was lower in the mix in the second film. I still missed a few lines due to loud sound music at the time.
I am old and grumpy, I tend to watch everything with subtitles as a default, so I frequently just assume that I am the issue, not the film/TV show. 🤣
You touched on one of the many flaws in the 1984 version. They were trying to cash in on the Star Wars movie and make a space opera with a happy ending. Denny V started knowing what happens in Messiah. And if you believe he hadn't thought about making a part 3 when he started 1, I have a bridge for sale.
Regarding Geidi Prime, in an interview, he said it was his cinematographer to shoot in infra red. But if they did it there was no way to put the color black.
I don't recall if it was in the book but 'Lead them to Paradise' was a profound line.
Also, the literal cutting of the Baron's strings.
I can understand the changing of Alia as Lynch's version is just weird. While BG telepathy is apparently a thing, Alia talking to Jessica was creepy - especially since Alia has all of Jessica's memories.
One of the issues I had was the drastic transition from much too weepy mother to much too scheming Reverend Mother with all the BG compressed in one character.
But yes, without the guild, there is really no explanation for why the spice is so important.
There are a few more quibbles. Like no reference to the Butlerian J-word or no machines in IX.
And we can all pray Denny V changes his mind on an extended cut, or at least the deleted scenes like they did for the first, of way too many, LotR editions.
Do we really need to know 'why' the spice is important? We know the spice is important, we know that everyone wants it, and we know that the colonial oppressors have had the region under their boot heel to extract it... It is a resource that everyone wants and deems valuable, and there are so many real world parallels that it is fairly easy to conceptualise.
@ACriticalDragon Need? Perhaps not. But you don't know how important or its scale. Without it, all space travel ends, humanity enters a dark age and the BG without the water of life becomes impotent. It would also show that yes, the Emperor is essentially an old man doddering about his garden as he is just a figurehead. The jihad becomes a war of revenge cloaked in zealotry, not the Golden Path. But since he has only talked about Messiah, I am really curious how/where he would end.
But this would make the film that much longer, although I would not complain.
If we make a comparison to the Lord of the Rings films, the full extent of the power of the Ring is never known. It is never fully revealed or explained to the viewer, but we know that Sauron wants it and it is 'powerful', but what we are shown is that it can make you invisible... So we could say, "Well, why does Boromir think it can be used as a weapon against Sauron if it just makes you invisible?" But for the films, we don't need to understand that particular aspect. Sure, it would add more depth and complexity, but what was given was sufficient. Book readers will have a better understanding, but it isn't 'necessary'...
The same happens in the Dune films. Sure, book readers are aware of a much greater complexity, and depth, and importance, but for the purposes of the films and film going audience, that additional level of complexity would come at a cost of run time, focus, and would diffuse the 'story' that Villeneuve was trying to tell.
Plus, with this being the second in a potential trilogy, he could add in a lot more in the third movie to address those aspects and deepen the world at that point. And the 'Golden Path' is more Leto's story, not Paul's. So a choice is made to truncate certain aspects in order to deliver a more powerful and clear throughline that focuses on different aspects, but leaves open the possibility of picking the things up later.
Am just disappointed the spice was turned into a Macguffin like the Ring. Taking spice out, you take a lot of other stuff mentioned and do move away from Paul's story. But that stuff is just so cool. Sauron doesn't even have a finger to wear the ring.
I likely have Messiah and Children blurred into one book.
But have a year to contemplate a third read.
The importance of spice was explained in part one. “For the Fremen, spice is the sacred hallucinogen which preserves life and brings enormous health benefits. For the Imperium, spice is used by the navigators of the Spacing Guild to find safe paths between the stars. Without spice, interstellar travel is impossible, making it by far the most valuable substance in the universe.”
I loved it, but I’m a little worried about the change in Chani’s motivations at the end. I sense a drastic change in the source material going into Dune Messiah.
At some point I think we have to give the director not only the benefit of the doubt, but actual trust. Villeneuve has delivered two fantastic films, so how much more can he do to 'earn' audience trust and respect?
Chani will take the water of life, and the sandtrout. She will be God Emperor instead of Leto II. The spice is female.
The film was visually magnificent. But I have to say I didn’t understand that part of the audience who laughed every time Chani’s and Paul’s “romance” was on screen. I found it tragic in many ways.
Theatres nowadays are too loud. I did go to very old theatre to avoid two week tinnitus. Maybe I didn’t get all the good stuff but health first.
The audience in the theatre were I was didn't laugh at the romance, although we did laugh when Paul was about to say that he learned to sand walk from a book, then double takes as he realises he is speaking to someone that has done it all her life.
As good as a football team may seem, sometimes some other team that's nowhere near as good comes along and performs way better than you expected. Maybe that was Feyd Rautha. You have to learn to accept things as reality... as if they really happen. Then you can learn to just enjoy a good story.
We did enjoy it.
I'm so pleased thay so many people whose opinion I respect also loved this movie. I have famously terrible taste in movies, but I really thought this one was something special.
What we love can come down to so many different aspects, each particular to the individual, but it is nice to have a solidly positive response to a film for a change instead of the usual round of hyperbolic, sensationalist handwringing.
Could've done with being a little longer and having more room and time to breathe. The final third seemed very compressed even for non-readers of the book.
May thy Phil chip and shatter
Is it actually possible to spoil a movie made from a 50 year old book that I read 3 times and has had two adaptations already?
New people who've never read it are born every day :)
Changes are fine, but the movie lost a lot of the fiction aspect of the books. Leaving out the guild hit me personally.
For me, it didn't just loose parts of the book, it lost the wierd feel, and the depth of the world. It re drew the characters until they barely resembled the characters I have loved for the best part of my life. I honestly took these films for what they were and even ignoring the lack of Dune, they are pretty bloated underdeveloped movies, with a chronic lack of charcter development almost across the board. I can't understand why anyone likes these films. They are full of unfulfilled promises, redundant scenes and plot holes you can fly a deathstar through. Not to mention the continuity issues in costume and character and so much more. In Blade Runner 2049, Coco played by David Dastmalchian is a minor character, who is fleshed out, who has agency and a role within the film. It is a small but nuanced performace you can't help but remember. Swith to Dune, the same actor playing someone who is a major character for the first half of the book, and one of the most memorable; Piter De Vries. And he is basically set furniture until his death. They way Villeneuve Treats these characters in comparison between the films, plays out across both movies on the scale of those movies. Blade Runner 2049 is a masterpiece, but instead of leaning into that mature, adult approach for Dune, he went all Nolan on us.He sold out man, and he missed an oppertunity to make the greatest Movie of at least my lifetime. What he made, meh.
Bladerunner 2049 was written for the screen, it wasn't an adaptation. So it is a very different process. The characters and story were conceived with the filmic medium in mind. Dune was an adaptation in which the characters, scenes, and story were created with no consideration of the filmic medium in mind. So I don't think it is either fair or reasonable to expect the same approach.
Villeneuve made lots of big changes, but for me it was a great adaptation.
@@ACriticalDragon yeah, you have a point... but I still feel the approach he took lost all the flavour of Dune. He over boiled it!
We all have different things we want from an adaptation, especially of a book we are passionate about. And I can't think of any adaptation of a significant work (especially one on the scale of Dune) that can completely translate everything that the book encompasses to the screen. I really enjoyed this adaptation, and, for me, it communicated some really important themes from Dune that are often misunderstood or overlooked by some readers.
When I want the full Dune experience, I reread the book.
@@ACriticalDragonI can appreciate that, but if I am to compare the other great adaptation of our time, LOTR. I feel like despite all that was changed, added or removed, the quality and feel of that universe, and more imoprtantly the characters, was still intact. Not so much with this adaptation of Dune. It's like if Jackson had removed the elves from LOTR. Yeah you could work your way around that, but at somepoint it stops being LOTR, so why would you? I don't agree that he had to choose theme over content. I think a man of his talent could have done both, and better than he has. Or at least more aligned with the book than he has done. And with, as I've said, more of the flavour of Dune, it's plot and it's characters, as they are.
I don't think he 'had' to, I think he chose to. And I respect his choice.
Were I asked to adapt Dune, I would have made very different choices, but that is because I see Dune differently to Villeneuve, but all readers have a different perception of the source text. Was I disappointed that we didn't get more Pieter and Thufir? Of course. Was I disappointed we didn't get the dinner sequence? Yup. Was I disappointed that we didn't get the spice orgy? Not so much. I don't think it would have worked well on screen for a general audience and it would have been uncomfortable viewing for a lot of people and therefore not worked to get the audience invested in the narrative.
I don't view it as sacrificing story for theme, I see it as concentrating on themes that support the story he was telling from the source material.
LotR changed so many things and some of them I was deeply dissatisfied with Faramir especially, the scene of Gandalf and Saruman force battling was also one I intensely disliked, the removal of the Scouring of the Shire, the changing of the tone and theme of the books into a more action oriented fantasy romp in comparison to the books... elements that were really important to me as a reader, and because of those and others Jackson's adaptation wasn't as powerful for me personally, but I try to step outside my personal desires to evaluate what Jackson did.
I think the bald Harkonnen look is something akim the dictatorship nature of House Harkonnen, because the Baron is bald everybody must be bald, like the official haircuts of North Korea copying the great leader haircut.😄
That is a great rationale. I hadn't thought of that. 😂