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Dune Movie

It takes a lot more liberties with the book than the first part did. Didn't hate it and maybe they had no choice, because even at 3 hours they had to drop a lot and alter other things to make the story work. A bit like "Fear & Loathing in Las Vegas" (only not as much so), where the first part stays very close to the book and then they're like "shit, we've still got a lot more ground to cover." It's doing very well on RottenTomatoes with both critics and viewers so I may be a little hard on it. It was visually beautiful and hit the main points of the story. I definitely need to reread the book again--and maybe even find a copy of the David Lynch version. Whatever its faults, he didn't shy away from some things from the book (although maybe he should've).
 
I enjoyed it a lot. Stunning cinematography and sound design. Some really well put together setpieces when the Fremen were raiding spice harvesters and such. Acting was good all round with no real weak links (Christopher Walken didn't really get much though.) Didn't feel like it dragged at all even at over two and a half hours, so it's hard to see where they could have fit in some of the missing scenes from the book. And having just re-read the book I was certainly aware of how much was moved around, changed or just outright omitted. The movie keeps its focus on telling the story of Paul trying to avoid his destiny, and, as much as this is internalised in the book, it makes a lot of sense to have Chani and Jessica personifying the two sides of this. Zendaya does a very good "this jihad shit is a bit much!" face and Chani certainly has a ton more to do here in the book and I think that's for the best. And Rebecca Ferguson is excellent as this version of Jessica, possibly the best performance in the movie. I did think maybe they went too far with her at the end when she looks so excited about the holy war beginning though?

Austin Butler (or was it MATT SMITH?) was a lot of fun as Feyd, a worthy successor to Sting. I loved how Geidi Prime looked and the weird fireworks and everything. Javier Bardem was so good at playing all sides of Stilgar and has the funniest moments.

There are definitely moments, lines ("Tell me again of the waters of your homeworld, Usul"; "She gives water to the dead!"; "Try looking into that place where you dare not look! You'll find me there, staring out at you!" and characters (actual born murder toddler Alia! But I did appreciate the ten seoncds of Anya Taylor-joy) I miss from the book but I can understand why they were left out and I'm not going to argue the movie would have been better with them. I DO think it would have improved the stuff with the Emperor somewhat if they'd included the Spacing Guild. It wouldn't have taken much time and would have helped explain how Paul is able to take control and how the Fremen are able to carry out their holy war (can Fremen even fly spaceships? I guess so, here!)

But yeah it's good I like watching worms kill people.
 
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I did like Feyd a lot better in the film than I did in the trailer. It wasn't clear from the trailer that he is only clown white because of the sun on Giedi Prime. I don't know if this counts as spoilers, but I'm about to talk about the big flaw of Part 2, imo:

You've got to have Alia. Otherwise the timeline doesn't work. Jessica is pregnant the entire story. That means the entire story takes less than 9 months (at least from the death of the Duke). 9 months for the Harkonnens to get re-installed, for Paul to get established with the Fremen, for Gurney to do everything he exposits in this film, and for the guerilla war to hurt things enough that Rabban has to be ousted in favor of Feyd. It lessens the impact on the attack on Sietch Tabr too. Stilgar gets beat up a bit, one character not from the book gets killed, a bunch of people get displaced/killed. Yeah, it sucks. But not as impactful as Alia getting captured and Leto II being killed. But in this version Paul and Chani don't have time to have kids. They also have to make a whole bunch of other shortcuts then to make the story work (I'll skip over them to avoid spoilers for now).

I think I once looked at how you could break the book up into 3 movies. Maybe they tried for that and couldn't get the green light so they had to figure out how to fit it into 2. But if that's the case, I think you have to do the montage to pass time. They kind of do that anyway, showing all the raids. Do it, only over years instead of months. Or do the "3 years later..." title card and get everyone back up to speed with some exposition and/or a diary entry from Irulan. I know it's not ideal, but hell, MCU used it for the end of the Infinity Gauntlet storyline and that made a pile of money.
 
Oh, I forgot to say that it's funny, how we change without knowing it. Back in "Star Wars," you got a movie every 3 years--1977, 1980, 1983--and I was OK with that. I could pick up where it left off. Since we've gone to the model of releasing a sequel a year (or a new movie every month or so with Infinity War) all of a sudden I'm annoyed that it's been too long and I've forgotten things like the secret sign language that they developed so nicely in the first movie. They use it in this movie and I'm going "where did this come from? They can't just spring this on us out of the blue." They're not. It was featured pretty heavily in the previous film.
 
I was wondering if the decision not to have Alia was a result of not doing the time jump, or if it was the other way around: Villeneuve disliked the idea of murder toddler Alia so much that he changed the whole timeline so she wouldn't have time to be born.
 
They could've still had Alia and kept the Baron's fate the way they did it. It would've weakened the Alia charachter a bit, but that might have actually helped, what with time constraints. If you don't have time to develop the whole Abomination aspect of Alia and she's more of just a precocious toddler then that scene would be harder for the audience understand. They did that a lot; simplified a scene for time and clarity at the cost of weakening the motivation. Jessica doesn't choose to be Reverend Mother. Jessica urges Paul to drink the Water of Life. Needing Chani to do a magic to save Paul (I'd have to reread the book but I don't recall the tears scene happening). It all makes a stronger story (again, IMO) if they stick with the original timeline instead of trying to pack everything into 3/4 of a year.

(On an unrelated note, I want to see what Google pulls up for "Murder Toddler," but then I think about what Google will much more likely pull up for that phrase. :( )
 
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