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2021 UPCOMING MOVIES DISCUSSION


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36 minutes ago, christopher.annino said:

I've never read the novel and am only slightly familiar with the older movie, so will I be completely baffled by this flick? The trailer seems weird as fuck and makes very little sense to me, I'm not sure if I should bother but I'm willing to be talked into it, especially after it comes out - if people like it. 

Hmm...If you watched the older movie then yes. Something tells me that this movie has been better adapted than Lynch's version and Denis Villeneuve is one of the best if not the best directors in Hollywood so I trust him.

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On 7/22/2021 at 7:20 AM, Leonidas said:

I'm not so sure yet. There's something off about it. Love Villeneuve, but the casting is just... too safe? Like of course it's Zendaya and of course it's Chalamet. Even Isaac and Brolin seem like safe but not the most exciting choices. Maybe I can be convinced before it comes out.

Who would you prefer, then?

 

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Hard to adapt Dune worse than what Lynch ended up with.  Great director, but he was a long way out from doing Twin Peaks, and that was the best example of anything close to world-building that he did. 

I re-read the first book once I heard this was coming out.  I remembered thinking 15+ years ago that it was the best sci-fi book I'd ever read.  Re-reading it I was...not impressed.  First, Herbert was TERRIBLE at writing villains.  That second chapter of the book where Harkonnen goes straight into Mustache-Twirling Exposition Mode is one of the most painful fucking things in literature.  We don't get to see much of him except him being exceptionally weird and eccentric, Rabban's worst atrocities happen in the past tense so there are essentially no real stakes to any of his actions, and the secondary villains - like the brother and sister pair who are the Emperor's assassins or whoever - are more nutty and twitchy than threatening.

Second, Paul is pretty much the 20th-century exemplar of the Mary Sue trope, and maybe I'm just too old to tolerate that shit anymore.

And finally, the dialogue throughout is far too stilted.  It would have been a far better-written book had he left out most of the little mental asides, where he laboriously - and repetitively - explains what every character is thinking when they say something, and in their place, he could have written some dialogue that had those extra layers of nuance and complexity that are there to be teased out.

These are pretty much the biggest challenges I see for adapting this.  How do you effectively get this book, which was written far too deeply in the heads of its characters, out of that place and onto the screen in a believable way?  I hope this script does it, and the bits from the trailer are promising, since it's got its share of light-hearted moments that the book was sorely lacking, and Dave Batista & Stellan Skarsgard are going to bring the goods for Beast & Harkonnen with whatever screen time they get.

Edited by Contentious C
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3 hours ago, Contentious C said:

And finally, the dialogue throughout is far too stilted.  It would have been a far better-written book had he left out most of the little mental asides, where he laboriously - and repetitively - explains what every character is thinking when they say something, and in their place, he could have written some dialogue that had those extra layers of nuance and complexity that are there to be teased out.

I give Herbert a pass on this as it is his first novel and he's trying to develop characters and build a mythology at the same time.  I didn't mind being led by the nose in Dune, but it grated on my nerves in the subsequent novels.

3 hours ago, Contentious C said:

I re-read the first book once I heard this was coming out.  I remembered thinking 15+ years ago that it was the best sci-fi book I'd ever read.  Re-reading it I was...not impressed.  First, Herbert was TERRIBLE at writing villains.  That second chapter of the book where Harkonnen goes straight into Mustache-Twirling Exposition Mode is one of the most painful fucking things in literature. 

What I find unforgivable is Baron Harkonnen's portrayal.  He mentally embodies all of the negative homophobic stereotypes you can imagine (he's a gay and a sadist and a pervert and is also incestuously attracted to his own nephew, Feyd) and is physically repulsive to match his "moral depravity."  I feel that Herbert put it there by design just like how all of Lovecraft's antagonists are evil brown people and it really disappoints me.

Batista looks pretty terrifying so the Beast Rabban may have a bigger role as the heavy and Feyd and Baron Harkkonen may be regulated to the sidelines.  We shall see.

3 hours ago, Contentious C said:

Second, Paul is pretty much the 20th-century exemplar of the Mary Sue trope, and maybe I'm just too old to tolerate that shit anymore.

Really?  Herbert is pretty harsh to Paul and Alia in subsequent novels.  Spoilerized for those who are not familiar with Dune.

Spoiler

Paul and Alia were terrible leaders and the galaxy suffers from their inability to govern.   Paul falls apart completely after Chani dies, goes blind, wanders the desert as a mad zealot, and is subsequently assassinated. 

Meanwhile, Alia eventually becomes a batshit insane despot.

Mary Sue's usually come out on top and stay there like Karen Traviss's Boba Fett or Stieg Larsson's Lisbeth Salander, but Paul? Well.....

Edited by J.T.
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There are issues with genre classics. The genres (and the world the readers live in) evolve and the classics stay the same. And new writers take influence from the old ones, so that what were once innovative ideas become tropes. And a newer book can play with or against those tropes, acknowledge them enough to surprise you when you thought you knew where they were going, but the classic simply does the trope, at it's tropiest.

I was talking to the D&D YouTuber about Elric, and she couldn't believe how stereotypically Edgelord his backstory and character were. Only in the early 1960s (when Moorcock wrote the first Elric stories) edginess like that didn't really exist in the fantasy genre. Even anti-heroes were rare. Decades later, it's a different story. And a lot of things that are Elric ripoffs are third or fourth generation copies, created by people who don't even know who Elric is.

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1 hour ago, AxB said:

I was talking to the D&D YouTuber about Elric, and she couldn't believe how stereotypically Edgelord his backstory and character were. Only in the early 1960s (when Moorcock wrote the first Elric stories) edginess like that didn't really exist in the fantasy genre. Even anti-heroes were rare. Decades later, it's a different story. And a lot of things that are Elric ripoffs are third or fourth generation copies, created by people who don't even know who Elric is.

Conan and Elric were extremely unique characters for the time they were written.  I hate it when things are discussed with no regard to context or the zeitgeist at the time that they were created.

On 7/24/2021 at 9:24 AM, EVA said:

Feyd is not even in the movie, apparently. Saving him for the sequel.

As much as I trust Denis to do a good job, that sounds kinda dumb.  The "villains" of the subsequent Dune novels are the Atredes themselves, not the Harkonnen.

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10 hours ago, J.T. said:

Conan and Elric were extremely unique characters for the time they were written.  I hate it when things are discussed with no regard to context or the zeitgeist at the time that they were created.

As much as I trust Denis to do a good job, that sounds kinda dumb.  The "villains" of the subsequent Dune novels are the Atredes themselves, not the Harkonnen.

Pretty sure the first book is being split in two.

I didn’t like the other books on the trilogy, but got back into it like five or six books in when it gets ducking weird and there’s sex magic.

 

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32 minutes ago, Control said:

Pretty sure the first book is being split in two.

I didn’t like the other books on the trilogy, but got back into it like five or six books in when it gets ducking weird and there’s sex magic.

 

Should we call the spice "blood sugar", then?

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13 hours ago, Control said:

Pretty sure the first book is being split in two.

Yeah, I watched an interview with Denis on HBO Max where he confirmed that the novel is being broken up into two films.

I also didn't really care for the subsequent novels.  I got the whole "power can corrupt even the incorruptible" moral to the story, but then the misery and misfortune that Herbert heaped on the Atredes family just got ridiculous.

Edited by J.T.
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14 hours ago, Control said:

Pretty sure the first book is being split in two.

I didn’t like the other books on the trilogy, but got back into it like five or six books in when it gets ducking weird and there’s sex magic.

 

Yup. Zendaya said she only shot for 4 days.

 

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Jesus, if you thought The Force Awakens had too many callbacks/nostalgia setpieces...  

Nice to see that WalMart is paying for the whole thing though. 

I guess the only thing that gets me going is the final line.  But otherwise...  I just don't know man.  

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1 hour ago, EVA said:

“What if Ghostbusters wasn’t funny?” is definitley a take.

To be fair taking Ghostbusters way, way too seriously is pretty funny in itself, but I don't think that's what they're going for.

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The reaction on Twitter has been funny, as you have people re-ejudicating the 2016 movie.

Either "why is this serious movie okay but the funny 2016 one wasnt" vs "washing the bad taste of the 2016 movie from our memory." 

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I was excited for the 2016 movie until I saw it and hated it for how unfunny it was.

This gets me excited in a different way. The best way I could put it is that there's not much left of my childhood that revisits me now, someone who is 40, that brings me joy and is something I could share with my kid (soon to be kids). Afterlife scratches that itch. I'm totally fine with fan service if the movie itself is enjoyable. I'm a sap, but I got teary eyed watching the trailer because it felt like Ghostbusters. I'm having something of a hard time wrapping my brain around kids fighting Ivo Shandor or whatever doombringer he's summoned, and I'm especially worried that CGI Ghost Egon will wind up saving the day for the kids (this is just something I'm worried could happen because I could see it happening), but other than that I think this looks pretty good. I've been burned before though.

As for Lamb, I think I can only say that I love the weirdness of A24 movies and this looks like the weirdest one yet. I'm in.

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I have a feeling GB will have plenty of comedy, but they are hiding it right now. 

I mean, they released pictures of the toys today, so I don't think it will be totally grim dark. 

It also looks like the POV is a girl, so hopefully that dilutes some of the enmity on both sides. 

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Yeah, my big take from this thing was "youthful exhilaration." Force Awakens was "let's do A New Hope again almost beat by beat and remind you why you loved it," while this comes off more like "Here's a movie about metatextually loving Ghostbusters."

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I was a few weeks from turning 10 years old when Ghostbusters was released and loved it because it was FUNNY!!!! Is the nostalgia I see from so many people towards Ghostbusters from the cartoon and toy line more than the movie? I was 12 and aging out of those things when the cartoon first hit tv so it’s not in my nostalgia wheelhouse. 

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