0:08 Even the studio logo is in space. Very immersive.
0:37 EYES
You know, there are lots of ways you can subtly deliver infodumps as part of the narrative without boring your audience: Make it organic to the scene; embed it in the action; make it matter to what is happening on the screen.
Or you could be director David Lynch, and have a giant space princess's disembodied head just fucken hammer you with that shit for two minutes straight while maintaining incredibly uncomfortable eye contact. Fuck you, cinema conventions.
0:52 "A beginning is a very delicate time" -- which is presumably why I'm going to freak you out by giving you this background in the most awkward and ham-handed manner imaginable.
1:18 Oop, looks like we lost the Starz+ Premium channel there for a sec. Whew, she's back again.
1:48 "Oh yes, I forgot to tell you..." NO YOU DID NOT. Nobody believes you're ad-libbing this robotic little speech, princess. Quit straining for casualness when we can see your eyes scanning the space teleprompter.
2:26 lol, I'm reading YouTube's auto-generated captions: "The planet is Arrakis, also known as Julie."
Smash cut to the movie title:
J U L I E
3:65 Well, those were some lovely credits, featuring the entire extended De Laurentiis clan. Must be time for another infodump. At least this one has pretty space planet graphics.
4:35 We travel to the space emperor's space palace, which appears to be somewhere on the set of the original Blade Runner.
6:14 What's in space fashion in the galactic capital in the year 10,191 AD? Ah, black plastic garbage bags!
7:22 See kids, this is what happens if you overdo the spice. Turns you into a floating scrotum. Just say no to life-prolonging, mind-expanding, time-and-space-altering drugs! And to floating scrotums.
8:57 We're on infodump #3 and counting, but this one's handled ever so marginally better by having two characters at least speak to each other. Of course, one of them is a vagina-mouthed ballsack, but still.
10:32 lol again with the captions: "We must look at Paul Atreides. To Canada!" Always knew the messiah would be one of us.
Side note: the space guild dudes are all bald and wear black, the space witches are bald and wear black ... Why does everyone in the far future look like goth Hare Krishnas?
Anyway, the Spice Girls head to Waterworld, with a brief stop for infodump #4.
12:26 This looks like the setup for the funniest joke in the galaxy: "Captain Picard, Dean Stockwell cosplaying as an Indian woman and the winner of the 10,191st Annual Bushiest Eyebrows in the Galaxy walk into a bar... "
... and the punchline: "I'd know the difference!" (Cue laugh track, because it's the 80s)
13:21 Oh boy, you know you messed up bad when even Captain Picard wants to cut you.
13:32 A titanic fight breaks out between two rejected CG graphics from the original TRON movie.
17:43 Of all the changes to the original story that this movie made, "The Atreides secret weapon is screaming at things" is easily one of the most biz ... actually no, this is pretty par for the course.
19:04 Duncan Idaho! Book fans will remember him as the man who gets cloned like a billion times so he can have sex with all the Atreides descendants. Movie fans will struggle to remember who the hell this guy is.
19:25 The captain from Das Boat, looking much more chipper now.
28:02 THE PAIN. You know, if all it takes to prove you're the Superman is putting up with a nasty sunburn for 30 seconds, boy, imagine what a man who can step on a Lego without crying could be capable of.
29:28 Captions are at it again: "A man will come, the wizard Cedric."
Yes, the Canadian wizard Cedric, from the planet Julie.
30:53 It's Grima Wormtongue after he licked an electrical socket. Seriously though, the number of famous faces in this movie is phenomenal.
33:03 So this movie took out the complex politics, planetary ecology and ruminations on fate and eugenics, and instead gave us: Sting in a latex codpiece.
A fair trade, I suppose.
37:08 Pug dog.
38:01 PUG DOG. I've known of this dog's existence for less than a minute, yet I would die for it. Kill for it.
38:27 Ahhh, the Spacing Guild spacing ship has a wonderfully baroque sense of scale to it. Obi-wan: "That's no cigar, that's a space station!"
Also: Pug dog.
40:00 So the floating larva-slash-brain thing spits up a planet or two and that's how to travel across the galaxy. Wait a sec though, if that's only possible because of the spice that's found only on Julie, how did humanity ever explore the galaxy far enough to find it? Guess that's why it took 10,000 years or so.
Speaking of time, good lord it's been 40 minutes and we aren't even on Julie yet.
41:26 Fun fact: I think this woman is also a De Laurentiis. They're everywhere. They could be anyone. It could be you!
42:04 Pug dog.
43:46 I love this scene of the elite, crack squad of Atreides troopers lining up to fill their water bottles like spectators at a sports stadium. I've never empathized with background extras more in my life.
44:37 Another famous face--this time it's the bad guy from Strange Brew! I think Max von Sydow may have done some other stuff, but I hope that's the movie he'll always be remembered for. Either that or Conan the Barbarian. Max, I salute you! (Weird: I was thinking "Oh he looks much younger in this movie" then checked his bio, and my gravel-voiced man was already 55 back then.)
I'm being a sarcastic ass here, but love, love, love the visual style and design work on this movie. The H R Giger gimp suits are just wild. It's going to be interesting to see how the Villeneuve movie is going to establish its own look, since this is just so original and iconic and whoah.
46:12 "Urine and feces are recycled in the thigh pads" and now I'm just thinking about the galactic superman drinking his own pee, thanks.
56:52 When the edible kicks in.
59:07 It's so cool they were able to turn the weird little gadget woman from The Incredibles into a real human being.
1:04:53 Did the murder-doctor really just stick a new tooth in that man's mouth using only his bare, unwashed hands? Oh, he really is evil. Somehow, being bugged about not flossing doesn't seem so bad now.
1:05:34 Oh no, the palace is being bombarded. No, not puggsly! RUN, PUG, RUN!
1:06:32 BattlePug to the rescue! Oh, it's all over for you bitches now.
1:09:07 I think the guard Piter is talking to is supposed to be deaf (to stop Jessica using her Jedi mind tricks on him) which means he's using an incredibly efficient sign language in which *touch ear lobe* means "take them to the desert so the bodies won't be found."
Hyper-efficiency in communication is all well and good, but could lead to all kinds of miscommunication:
Piter: *sneezes*
Guard: Detonate the atomic bombs? Very good sir.
1:15:34 The Peter Pan remake is wild.
1:24:35 It's the mark of a strong mother-son bond that you can take the time to discuss things. Such as the aroma produced by a 500 ton homicidal earthworm trying to battering ram its way into your hideout.
1:25:05 I know it's 1984, but the effects for Paul "falling" are just embarrassing. Flail your arms out a bit, Kyle. Thanks, fantastic. This will look great.
1:27:31 Jessica captures the Fremen leader Stilgar using the "Weirding Way." Part of her "Bizarro Training" by the "Looney Tune Sisters" on the planet "Shit's Whack Yo".
1:30:44 Sean Young then shows up, confirming my theory that Dune is set in the Blade Runner CU.
1:32:29 And there it is. The most famous crossover codpiece in music-cinema history since David Bowie jumped into a pair of tights.
Serious comment time: We're about 2/3 of the way through this movie and we've only just finished Act I. While I'm tempted to blame Lynch for the idiosyncratic pacing and front-loading all the worldbuilding into the first 10 minutes, I think this is also the challenge of Dune as a work of filmic entertainment: All the tension comes at the beginning. Once Paul becomes an omniscient superman leading an army of invincible desert savages there really isn't much drama.
1:36:22 Milking a cat and then you drink the milk? It's like someone read a cat owner's manual back to front.
1:36:57 Ah, Paul in love with a woman he met 7 minutes ago. See, this is the problem with pacing.
"He who can destroy a thing controls it" is rather a dark philosophy isn't it.
1:41:39 Ah but now, this is a cool shot and I can see why they put it on the posters: Paul walking down a dune, a line of Fremen watching silently behind. No joke there. It's just cool.
1:47:04 Montage with Voice Over: "And then the other 66% of the story happened."
1:47:57 While we're all happy to see Picard again, WHERE IS THE PUG? WHAT HAVE YOU DONE WITH THE PUG TELL ME IT WAS OKAY
1:50:15 "I have to drink the water or I'm dead!" Very true, Paul. Absolutely. Stay hydrated.
1:55:05 "The sleeper has awakened!" he shouts but I'm not buying it. This is supposed to be a climactic character moment before the final showdown, but what does Paul achieve? What did drinking the water actually do or change, why was it necessary? Right now it looks like he had a nice drink and a nap, had a weird dream and then declared everything was different. But he was already the messiah, already had an entire planet of fanatic soldiers under his control. So. What gives?
2:05:49 Climactic battle somewhat undercut by never having the opposing forces in the same effects shot.
The sound weapon thing is odd, too. I think they invented it to avoid having to explain Herbert's idea that the elite forces of history have often been bred through severe environmental conditions (though I'm not convinced... the Greek phalanx, the Roman legions, the Mongols, the British redcoat all owed more to tactical innovation and training than to be raised on the rough). But the net result is a very detached and uninvolving battle, capped by a bizarre death for the big bad baron.
2:09:29 The final showdown is a duel with Sting's Feyd-Rautha, but without the background provided by the book (Feyd is also a potential Kwisatz Haderach) it's hard to see how the guy has any chance, or why he should be the final boss when he hasn't really done anything evil all movie.
Unconvincing fight choreography too. Very stilted, awkward. They're supposed to be doing the "slowly edging the knife closer" trope, but Kyle's got his arm in the wrong place and you can see Sting should be able to easily knife him in a second.
And the climax: FOR HE IS THE WIZARD CEDRIC!
Hm. Visual design impressive, iconic, original, all that great stuff, but pacing is just awful, very drawn out intro and rushed ending, plus lots of weirdness thrown in to avoid explaining any of the finer points of the book. Like I say, I think the challenge for Villeneuve will be to make the second half interesting--how do you make a story about an all-seeing messiah engaging? In the book, it's most about Paul's internal struggle to chart a path that won't be TOO monstrous, but I wonder how they'll put that on screen.
6/10 though 5 of those points go directly to the pug
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