Dune

[Sigma]

And you cannot separate the book from the movie. It doesn't matter what was "established" in the movie. The movie was based on a book published over 20 years before. The movie was meant to be as faithful an adaptation of the book as possible, within the limits of available funding, then-current filmmaking technology, and David Lynch's direction. If you want to totally separate the two, the movie would not have been Dune, but a ripoff just basically stealing the name to suck people in.

That's not really true though. Film makers, when adapting a book into a movie, are at liberty to change whatever they want if it means the film will play better. Saying that an adaptation's success is based upon its accuracy to the source material is ignoring the reality that taking the story, facts, characters and mood from the source material and translating it into a new medium allows, and at times demands, that elements be changed in order to make a better product. That doesn't make it a rip-off. A ripoff would be Lynch claiming that his Dune movie is wholy original and his own, unrelated to Frank Herbert's books.

Case in point: Blade Runner. That movie bears barely the faintest resemblance to the book that inspired it, but it's a triumph of both filmmaking and science fiction, so much so that Phillip K. Dick, who saw it only a few months before he died, declared it far superior to his own book. If Ridley Scott had adapted Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep as a word for word transliteration, the end product wouldn't nearly have been as good.

On the other end of the spectrum is No Country for Old Men, where the action in the book is translated with near perfect fidelity to the screen. But both works stand totally on their own because the people who created them are masters of their craft and know how best to manipulate the strengths of their medium to get the intended effect. Reading No Country for Old Men and watching the film are two completely different experiences, even though they cover the exact same events.

[Buster's Uncle]

Much as I love a good argument, and this is merely a personal opinion, not the Man speaking, I wanna talk about the movie, and I wanna talk about the book, but I don't think talking about which is better is a very fruitful line of discussion, even though everything the movie got so very very wrong was very important to me at the time.

I'm still trying to get around to my own overview of the movie.  (Multitasking a lot these days.)  1986 me would be put out at how it isn't the trashing I used to think the movie deserved.

[Geo]

Gotta be a pretty crappy job to go find a baby worm to put in the cave...

IIRC, they form from the sand trout, which the Fremen can easily enough handle?

[Unorthodox]

Ohboy... I wish people would actually read the books before they tell those of us who have read them that we're wrong... 

Look, the spice cycle is critical to the entire Imperium. Spice has many benefits - limited prescience to the Guild Navigators, the ability to use Other Memory for the Bene Gesserit, basic longevity and vitality for the average (albeit wealthy) citizen of the Empire who can afford to use it, and it can be used as currency for Very Large transactions of a semi-legal nature.


The Guild Navigators need the spice to safely guide the spaceships, and if they couldn't guide spaceships, the Empire's economy and government would grind to a standstill. Planets would be isolated. To keep the spice cycle going, you need to keep the sandworms alive and healthy. That means not having ridiculous rainstorms like at the end of the movie.


And you cannot separate the book from the movie. It doesn't matter what was "established" in the movie. The movie was based on a book published over 20 years before. The movie was meant to be as faithful an adaptation of the book as possible, within the limits of available funding, then-current filmmaking technology, and David Lynch's direction. If you want to totally separate the two, the movie would not have been Dune, but a ripoff just basically stealing the name to suck people in.

And I could go into minutia about how badly the movie Excalibur murdered Le Morte d'Arthur as well, but I recognize that they are two separate beasts, though one is a film adaptation of the other.  You can say the book is better, and I'll believe you. 

Remember the scene where Jessica becomes a Reverend Mother? A captive worm (a really small one) is drowned in a tub of water. Its death throes result in it vomiting up a chemical substance called the Water of Life, which is poisonous in its raw form. A Reverend Mother uses her internal bodily control over chemistry (they're extremely skilled at that) to change the poisonous form of the Water into a non-lethal form. Mix the changed Water with regular water, give it to people to drink, and it's party time!

Ya know...it's been a LONG time since I've seen the movie, but I remember thinking (at 8, again, mind you) that we were watching a worm being BORN and they were drinking the...resultant mess.  Might say something about how healthy my mind was, eh? 

Though I don't know that understanding it was reverend mother urine instead is a better mental image....

[Buster's Uncle]

Spit.  Not urine; she processes a mouthful of the essence, a powerful poison, and spits back into the bag, into the rest, which serves as a catalyst that transforms the lot into something that at least the spice-soaked Fremen can tolerate.  Then Spice Orgy, and a good time is had by all.

The spitting was in the movie, and though they could have explained it better, explain they did.

[Unorthodox]

I just remember lots of screaming and insta-sister-god that somehow didn't rip holes in the belly through rapid expansion.  Paul drinks the raw stuff, right, or his mom's spit, or both?   

[Buster's Uncle]

Gotta be a pretty crappy job to go find a baby worm to put in the cave...

IIRC, they form from the sand trout, which the Fremen can easily enough handle?

They spawn some sort of microbial-scale thingy that grows into the sandtrout, which is what seals off water away from the surface and excretes spice - or something like that.  It takes place well underground, and carbon dioxide builds up - whether that's all sandtrout exhalation, or more likely, part of a chemical reaction, I'm not sure.  When the gas pressure builds up high enough, there's a spice blow, which spreads spice on the surface, and is somehow an essential part of the life cycle - probably, at least one of the trout just transitioned to a tiny worm.  A big worm always comes within a few hours, so you hustle when you see a spice patch, or you do without, or you die.

Fremen children lure and trap sandtrouts using a little spit.  Sandtrouts always seek out water.  (Thius is also a useful survival gamble - waste a luggy while you still can make spit, and if a sandtrout comes and you catch it, you can suck out more moisture from its body than you sacrificed as bait.)  If you pick one up it will stretch out over your hand, seeking the water it smells in your body.  Leto II (III) was so soaked with spice that he was able to permanently bond with a full-body sandtrout glove.

Valka, I'm working from memory and haven't reread any of the books for three years or so - correct me if I got any of that wrong, or left anything important out.

[Buster's Uncle]

I just remember lots of screaming and insta-sister-god that somehow didn't rip holes in the belly through rapid expansion.  Paul drinks the raw stuff, right, or his mom's spit, or both?   

Paul took a tiny drop of pure unconverted spice essence.  It nearly killed him - Kwitatz Haderach and all, but not really trained to do the reverend mother trick, and using techniques developed by women for women - and this is all chemistry, with women's body chemistry different.  He was, after a coma lasting over a week, able to convert it into the Water of Life, and live, and expand his powers.

Alia was born premature in the movie with Other Memories, but not force-grown.  I don't think the movie intended to imply otherwise.

[Unorthodox]

wierdo womb scene something about rapid developement in the voice over...don't know, foggy beyond that.  Again, long time. 

[Buster's Uncle]

Premature birth.  Very premature in the movie, IIRC, and I don't recall premature at all in the book.  Been longer since the last time I saw the movie, but I remember that part.  I thought it was confusingly done, too.

[Valka]

deleted

[Buster's Uncle]

Uno, it just hit me why you have to read Dune.  You will grok this instantly.

Years ago, a very twisted, messed-up and wrong concept popped into my head for no particular rasin.  It's called The Littlest Harkonnen, it's obviously a children's book, and you are the guy to write it.  You have to read Dune first, though. 

Harkonnens are not funny.  They are evil and they are often disgusting, but never funny.  The movie turned the most dangerous man alive into comedy relief, and you may not write up my idea until you understand the family.  Read the book, write the book, and you will win all the internets forever.  You must do this, sir.

[Buster's Uncle]

Mylochka and I just started part one of Frank Herbert's Dune -the miniseries.

Be back in about an hour 1/2.

[Geo]

Again??!! 

[Buster's Uncle]

Yeah.  I watched it online last year - I forget where I found it - did I post about that?  But it's that good.