is Dune stupid?

[bvanevery]

I ran out of "The Orville" episodes to watch this evening, so I started looking through the On Demand sci-fi catalog.  Going alphabetically, I came to the 1984 version of "Dune", which I saw in the original in the theater.  Has at least one "great" line by Sting: "I will kill him!"  Sure you will.  Love that line, have said it so often over the years and nobody knows what I'm talking about.

The Mindworms in SMAC are a sort-of Dune ripoff.  As is Psi combat.  That may seem dumb but... how dumb is the original material?  I was reminded of this in the intro to the film.  The Spice only comes from one planet?  And couldn't reverse engineer any effect of this compound?  Which we eventually learn is merely dead worms.  Pretty crappy tech tree, wouldn't you say?

Well the film can't be completely stupid, because it has a pre-STTNG Patrick Stewart trying to cut up Paul Atreides in force shield practice.  The visuals are also definitely holding up.  World building is cool, "Great House" military dudes marching around and stuff.  It'll be interesting to see what deficiencies this film has in the end, as I remember a lot of people over the years thinking it was kind of stupid.  However I only read the first 2 Dune books a few years ago, so I never had a "hard baked" idea of how this was "supposed to" be done.

[Buster's Uncle]

It was a terrible movie.

Did you see the worse David Lynch version with Virginia Madsen/Irulan at the beginning, or the less-terrible "Alan Smithee" version that begins with a little background on the Butlerian Jihad narrated over still pics?

Have you seen the two Sci Fi channel miniseries?  I'd love to be able to piece together the best parts from those and the movie...

[bvanevery]

Did you see the worse David Lynch version with Virginia Madsen/Irulan at the beginning,

This hair chick announces how stupid the Dune tech tree is, leading me to this post.

"Yeah the universe runs on worm feces."  Worthy of an Orville episode!

Have you seen the two Sci Fi channel miniseries?

I know I've seen at least 1.  Thought it was decent.  This movie I'm now watching, in the background because it's too much of a yawner to give undivided attention, is often "David Lynch weird" about stuff.  I wouldn't call that artistically invalid per se, but it can easily make a plot harder to follow.  Like thematic stuff, one starts wondering, "Why are they being weird?"
 
The visual design of this movie is really strong though.  Great stuff for contemplating world building.  Totally the opposite of the Star Wars franchise.

[Buster's Uncle]

Yeah; it's mostly costumes and sets I'd use from the movie - virtually none of the actors and absolutely none of the script.  The score has grown on me, too - there's nothing in either miniseries that sticks with you.  I hated the electric guitars at the climax in the theater, but even that's grown on me.

Both the movie and the first miniseries had the artistic courage to portray far-future people living in a very alien culture, by our standards, in silly hats.  The Battlestar Galactica remake, went in exactly the opposite direction, which I'd assert undermined the whole affair, throwing out what little was somewhat clever about the original and turning it into just a soap opera about Americans In Space, which got old in a hurry.

[bvanevery]

To be fair to BG, the orignial had plenty of "70s schlock" in it that wasn't worth a damn.  And good bits too.  This is my childhood, I say it with love.  Gotta love Daggit barking around and stuff.  The more recent "dark" series, I understand why they were interested in dumping tonalities of the older series.  The main failing of the new one, according to a friend of mine who was following it for awhile, was that they went "character driven" somewhere in the course of it.  Which was boring.  I didn't watch the whole thing, only a chunk of the final season IIRC, and it didn't leave enough of an impression on me to remember one way or the other.  I suppose I could play "catch up" on that.  I watched a little bit of "Caprica" but then my life moved onwards and I didn't have access to a TV.  "Home for the holidays" is how I end up seeing a lot of this stuff.

One of the things that bugs me about the SMAC conception of humanity's possible futures, is the degree to which they made something a "new technological breakthrough", that is already old hat even in the present day.  It's good to contemplate a lot of different possible directions for the future... but I think this Dune movie, is demonstrating what an opposite authorial approach looks like.  When "the future" is something other than us, and it looks rather different from now.

Meanwhile, this Baron character is a little over the top.  Just sayin'.

[Buster's Uncle]

The Baron in the miniseries was almost as bad --- but not quite.

[bvanevery]

Well the atrocity is over.  I'm not sure if I feel nerve stapled or nerve gassed.

I did at least get to hear Sting's great line again... and it doesn't come off as well as I've remembered it all these years.  He did have some good finger biting action in the final knife fight, didn't remember that part.  The fight itself was mostly cringeworthy.  In the intervening years I learned a fair amount of Russian style fighting, a lot of it standup grappling and anti-knife work, so the "shaky freeze poses" are particularly regrettable to watch.  Paul's finishing move where he "bends like a reed in the wind" isn't bad though, and could actually work.  As long as the other opponent is clumsy and not "live" with his knife as he's going down.  It does take training to remain "live" when being thrown, so considering that Sting is a pretty big jerk, the finish is plausible.  Feel like it could be the subject a MythBusters episode.

[Elok]

IIRC the plot of SMAC was consciously modeled after a different Frank Herbert book, called The Lazarus Effect or some such; Brian Reynolds said as much on a podcast c. 2011.  Though the vicious factionalism of Dune itself was supposedly an inspiration.

[bvanevery]

Factionalism I don't have problem with... it's not as if they went all "Renaissance Great Houses" in making the SMAC fiction.  The game that actually is a 100% Dune ripoff, is Emperor of the Fading Suns.  I've played that a fair amount over the years but have never actually finished a game.

[Vishniac]

IIRC the plot of SMAC was consciously modeled after a different Frank Herbert book, called The Lazarus Effect or some such; Brian Reynolds said as much on a podcast c. 2011.  Though the vicious factionalism of Dune itself was supposedly an inspiration.

The Jesus Incident
It has mind-worms and other aggressive native life, drones and punishment spheres.
I read it after finding its title at the end of the SMAC manual (in a time when games still had manuals)

[Buster's Uncle]

That (The Lazarus Effect effect was next in the same series and also relevant, if water-logged, then The Jesus Incident) and there was still a little Dune, and specific inspiration for Yang came from a Saberhagen(? IIRC) story I've stumbled over - and doubtless other influences...

[Syn]

RE: thread title.

Yes.

[Buster's Uncle]

Troll.

Victory, a story By Fred Saberhagen -the Berserkers and Book of Swords author- about an emissary (with a familiar name) from an interstellar government visiting a world that's had a one-sided nuclear war going for 40 years - and meets a leader with a very familiar outlook and modus operendi. This is a scan of two pages from the story, anthologized in Saberhagen: My Best.

---

I found this six years ago, but my post about it is on an old dead forum where few of you will have seen it - so I figured I'd re-post here.  -But read the two pages I attach below, and tell me this didn't have everything to do with the creation of the Hive.  The story's worth turning up and reading for any dedicated SMACer.

This pic embiggens...