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The Yaire exile to earth chapter-3 Chapter two
Rancher - Michaels Johnson personal perspective
“Dad, what are we looking at?” Joshua asked as he rained his horse up to mine.
“I don’t know. But if they stay out here like this, they will die of exposure.” I stated, while sliding my right foot from its stirrup. The creaking sound of shifting leather from the saddle accompanied me as I slid off my mount. Stepping to the ground, the mare nervously shifted around, her front legs pawing from left to right with tension from the unknown scenario she found herself in.
Dropping the reins. I stepped forward, showing my empty hands, trying to show I wasn’t a threat.
Calmly as I could, I tried to talk to them. “It’s cold out here. If you guys stay out here without a way to stay warm, someone’s going to die from the cold.” The words coming out in a frozen mist. No response.
Taking my heavy coat off and holding the woolen red and white plaid jacket out with both hands, I ambled up to the man and woman. “Miss, take my coat. I’ll build you guys a fire.”
The man stepped in front of his shivering counterpart, a serious look on his face. His hands balled up in a fist but they remained at his side.
“Careful dad, he looks like he wants to kick your ass,” Joshua chirp, as he watched it all unfold from atop his perch.
“No, he’s just trying to make sure I don’t mean any harm to the lady.” I replied. As I shifted my gaze downward. I avoided eye contact, trying to reduce the tension.
A few more steps, now I was with in arm’s reach of the man. Extending my arms out as far as I could, I tried to hand the coat to which even one would grab it. After a few seconds of indecision, the man finally took the coat from me and gave it to the young woman. She quickly wrapping the heavy woolen fabric around her slender frame.
“Ok, we need to build you a fire.” I told the pair. A confused look on both their faces, clearly they had no idea what I was saying. Taking a step back, I slowly turned, spying a large mound of dried brush.
“Josh, throw me your lighter.”
Josh, still sitting atop his horse, reached into his front coat pocket and upon, retrieving a small green lighter, gave it a flick tward me. Catching it with my right hand, I gave its wheel a flick ,sparks flying as the flame caught. I started walking up to the mound of grass. “Son, you better get down. I need some dead brush…” I stopped halfway through my request. I could see a purple hand with what looked like green blood dripping down the wrist, laying under some of the grass. I could hear the sound of a creaking whine of his leather saddle as he came off his horse.
“There’s somebody under there!” He shouted as he stumbled past me in a hustle. Joshua made it to the covered figure. He began to hurriedly pull the grass blanket off and away from the body underneath. I heard a heated commotion behind us. I glanced back at the standing figures the women was being restrained by the man and she was yelling at him in the exotic language. He didn’t yell back, he only had his head turned and making eye contact with me. He nodded only once, and I hen termed back to the face her.
“Shit!, there’s a few people under here,” Joshua yelled out as he finished pulling the grass away. He then shot up to his full height and ran back to his horse.
I now had a full view. Two young women and a man, all looked to be in their early 20s. Their faces were covered in burns and the man had a broken nose and cuts on his face. All were leaking the same green blood.
Joshua slid to his knees as he came to rest next to the first hurt women. He has his bedroll and the small first aid kit he kept in his saddlebags. He opened the worn out blanket so it could fully cover the three injured bodies. “Josh, I need you to ride as hard as you can back to the house, grab the farm truck and stock trailer and shit load of blankets. Bring them up here quickly. Just run over the sagebrush, the brush guard should keep the radiator from any major damage.” I told him.
“I need to call for….” I cut him off don’t you call anyone I looked him in the eyes and said as clearly as I could. “I don’t think these people are humans. Look at their color. It’s not makeup and their blood is green.” I continued, “and get that big first aid kit from the kitchen. If your granddad is there get him up here.”
“Why granddad?” Josh questioned, already picking the reins of his horse from the ground.
“He was a battlefield medic when he was your age. He’s the best shot these folks have.” I shouted
He was gone in a whirl.
This story was brought to you in large part due to
u/Fit-Capital1536. A big thank you for the collaboration and story ideas.
Previous next first To explain my background a bit, I am originally from New Zealand, and I attended medical school there after graduating from high school (it's a 6-yr undergrad in NZ, similar to the UK) for nearly two years before feeling like it was not my dream and taking a medical leave (yes, it did get very serious and I'll explain below).
At that time, I was interested in both medicine and - a completely different field - animation, but couldn't decide on either one. I used to draw a lot during my free time as a method of stress relief, and I was convinced that I could make a career out of this when I posted a work online and some people started contacting me asking if I would be interested in working with them. It was an extremely difficult decision to make during an excruciatingly long period of self-analysis and future planning for something that I have not experienced yet, and this went on until I was unable to mentally function as an average person and was granted medical leave.
Anyways, long story short, I then switched my career and came to the US after being accepted into an animation school where I thought I'd now be able to pursue my dreams, which, after some time, turned out to be something that I was not expecting and was not actually right for me.
Now thinking weighing out the pros and cons of my career pathways and what I can do vs what I wish to do over the past couple of months, I realized that I would want to pursue medicine again, but this time in the US, after living here for a while, researching, and finding out my thirst to expand my knowledge and experience in one of the countries with the best medical research programs (yes, I have seen many, many stories talking about how unreasonable the US healthcare system is, but I'm not trying to focus on this topic in this post).
Now, there are some concerns regarding studying in the US as an international student. I am aware that the US has a post-grad medical program, with having to go through undergrad in a BS first, then another four years of med school. I am also aware of the amount of financial sacrifice people usually make to earn an MD, involving them taking immense amounts of loans to cover the unrealistic costs of med schools in the US. I understand this system, as earning an MD in the US is highly rewarding, enough to take such risks - it's a high-risk, high-return system. I would have done the same if I were a US resident as well, but since I am not, I am not sure as to how I would be able to pursue such a career pathway when there are virtually no federal loans available for international students (there are some very few private loans I've looked into, but the interest rates are just too unrealistic). Regardless, I wish to pursue this dream, simply because I know that the outcome is worth enough of all the costs.
I am not financially advantaged enough to cover the entire BS > med school route straight out of my pocket, and so I am posting this to you to ask for some, or even just any information, and insights into establishing my career as a doctor in the US. My ultimate goal is the practice as a licensed physician in the US, and I have looked at some other pathways such as going back to med school in my home country (NZ), completing my degree there, applying for the ECMFG (NZ is WFME-recognized), completing the USMLE, etc., but I have seen that the rates to match into my desired program as an FMG in the US is almost half of that of US citizens/residents; I therefore want to find the best possible pathway in my current situation to become a physician in the US.
I know this is not a common case, especially because I am an international student, and although it was not for very long, I am still a medical student, and know just how much of an academically fulfilling career pathway this is; I want to pursue this with no doubt.
This is all I have found out and was able to reach at with my current abilities/knowledge, but I need more information. What do you guys think of this, and what would you guys do in this situation?
Greetings, colleagues. :)
I am a student in my fifth year - second-to-last year in my country, and I am looking for an agency to get my first USCE. I know that rotations offered by companies are not in the best centers, and I know that maybe I could get something better by sending the right set of emails... But right now, given the time I have (I'd like to take the opportunity of having February off) and the fact that I'm missing a number of documents, I think I'll only be able to get it through an agency.
AMOpportunidades and FMG Portal are where I've seen the best chances of getting a decent program. The prices don't differ much, but I'm very confused as to which one to choose. I've already contacted both of them and they both seemed very helpful, with apparently good options.
Does anyone have any positive or negative experiences to share? Any hospitals you wouldn't recommend at all? Any stories of fraud by these two companies? I looked for posts about them and saw that they're quite old, so I decided to ask again.
Preamble
I love Dune. Well, mostly. I love the first three books- and after that things start to trail off. I’ve never read the entire series -it’s large and encompasses a whole host of books written by multiple authors and most of the later ones have a… poor reputation. I’m also obviously not alone. Dune is one of the most influential Sci Fi novels, it’s a classic that appears on many ‘top X’ lists and is something that anyone who spends much time being a fan of Sci Fi is going to hear of. It’s referenced everywhere from Futurama to 2000’s top ten (UK) Fatboy Slim track,
Weapon Of Choice A lot of people also really don’t like it. I ran a post in
/scifi a while back asking people what critically acclaimed sci fi they didn’t enjoy. A lot of respondents named Dune as an example. And it’s not entirely difficult to see why.
Dune has a reputation for being weird. Both the original book series and the other most well known iteration (until recently at least)- David Lynch’s 1984 film adaptation of the first book. We’ll get into why it’s weird presently, but I think it’s that which creates the qualities that have kept the story in common circulation around sci fi communities- and puts off many of its potential readers.
Since its initial publication in 1965, Dune has been adapted for screens of various sizes three times, with a fourth project that never get off the ground. We’ll get to Jodorowsky's Dune once we’ve had a look at the original novel. The three completed projects are David Lynch’s aforementioned 1984 movie, the Sci Fi (now Syfy) channels’ 2000 TV miniseries, and most recently Denis Villeneuve’s 2021 film. I thought it would be fun to revisit the original novel and its adaptations to see how they hold up, to discuss how three different productions adapted the material- and to generally binge some Dune.
Dune (1965)
As previously mentioned Dune is one of the sci fi GOATs. The plot is simple enough and I’ll recap here quickly for those unfamiliar with the story: House Harkonen is being kicked off Arrakis, the only planet on which can be found the Spice- the most valuable resource in the galaxy. The Emperor is giving the planet to House Atreides. Leto, the head of the house suspects a trap but is prepared for it. Not prepared enough sadly as pretty much everyone is in on this plot to use Arrakis as bait and trap. He is killed and his house destroyed, but his concubine and his son (Jessica and Paul) escape to live with the Fremen- the desert nomads who live out in the wastes of Arrakis. The Harkonen believing their ancient rivals the Atreides are dead, move back in with the blessing of the Emperor. Paul matures in Fremen culture and eventually becomes their leader in an insurrection against the Harkonen, in which he baits the Emperor into coming to Arrakis. Finally, he secures the seat of the Emperor through an arranged marriage to his daughter Irulan- which he forces by holding the continued existence of the Spice (on which the entire galactic economy depends) hostage.
That leaves out… almost everything. There’s this whole thing about Paul being some sort of messiah / Übermensch /prophet, there’s Fremen culture, there’s Jessica’s role in events, Chani, Stilgar, The Baron’s multilayered plan, Yeuh, Irulan, the Bene Gesserit and all their related stuff, Liet Kynes, the iconic sandworms, ornithopters, shields, melee-based combat and warfare- and a myriad of other components and details that make Dune, Dune.
Dune was primarily born at an intersection of two of Frank Herbert’s research topics- Islam and the nascent environmentalism of the 1960s. Islam provides the backbone and reference for much of the setting, especially Fremen language and customs. For a mostly western and anglosphere audience this creates a very different vision of the future. Sci fi produced in the West is generally rooted as an evolution of the culture, practices and values of our culture, so Dune sticks out strangely as it is a Western work formed from non-Western influences. I often wonder if it’s as strange to an Arabic or Islamic audience who are more familiar with the culture and worldview from which Herbert built his world. It should be emphasized I don’t think the work is directly allegorical to Islam or to Muslims, they are simply the ‘reference’ which Herbert used.
The detailed ecology and importance of living systems, as well as the whole idea of ‘planetology’ (a science in the setting), as mentioned comes from the environmentalist movements of the 60s, a growing awareness of how interconnected the planet is as a whole and how the collapse of one part of that complex system can have repercussions in other parts of the environment. It’s through understanding the life cycle of the Sandworms and their relationship to the Spice that Paul is able to make the credible threat of destroying all spice production- forever. It also provides the organizing principles and long terms goals of the Fremen as a culture- like the Martians in The Expanse, they want to terraform their planet into a garden paradise and the efforts of their civilization are all pushing towards that goal.
Transhumanism is an element of Dune that adds to the strangeness too. When we talk of transhumanism today we generally think of it through a technological lens- replacing limbs with stronger, better, prosthetics. Or brain computer interfaces, or reversal of aging, the digitization of consciousness- stuff like that. In Dune the meaning is different, tied far more to humans unlocking the full potential of the human mind and body to make them better. Mentats are a good example of this- they are living computers, fulfilling the clerical and analytical roles that we normally associate with machines. But almost every character in Dune is transhuman in at least some way. Swordsmen have precise control over their muscles down to the single tendon. The Bene Gesserit can pitch their voice in such a way as to compel anyone who hears them to obey a spoken command (and that’s just the start of their abilities). Even the Spacing Guild relies on ‘post human’ navigators to guide their ships through FTL travel. Humans in Dune are somewhat alien- both in body and mind.
A driving force behind this growth of human potential and another source of the setting’s strange feel (especially for a modern audience) is the lack of computers. Computers are outright illegal in the Dune universe, a law enforced by religious dogma. “Though shalt not make a machine in the image of a man’s mind” says the Orange Catholic bible. Instead humans have had to learn to replicate all the feats we in reality offload to computers, or create analogue/electromechanical solutions to technological problems. The suppression of technology in general is very much by design to keep the narrative focus on people and not their gear. When gear porn is employed it’s to illustrate or inform points about the society using that technology- such as the Fremen stillsuits.
Religion and its role in shaping societies is also an aspect of the book that adds even more strangeness, as while the setting is in general culturally agnostic or atheistic (bar the Fremen) the social tools and dangers of religion are used in secular forms as weapons by the social elite. The only reason Paul and Jessica can hide with the Fremen is because previous Bene Gesserit visitors to the planet planted a prophecy in their culture about a messiah that Jessica as a BG herself is able to manipulate, and thus pass off Paul as said messiah. Oddly this makes the story feel a bit like a subversion of the ‘chosen one’ plot.
In that, prophecy is yet another item Dune looks at, more in the later books but it is part of the first. Specifically, it asks the question ‘Does a Prophet see the future, or does a Prophet create the future through the process of prediction?’ When Paul sees into the future, is he skipping a few pages ahead in a book that’s already written, or did he write the page by skipping ahead? Either way if his prophecies are accurate (and they are) it raises disturbing questions about the nature of free will. Especially if (getting later into the books as we find out) it’s the latter that’s true. It’s a double edged sword- one can see the future but is then powerless to actually change it. And if the future seen was really, really bad- well in a way all that misery and suffering are now directly the prophet’s fault. Herbert even plays with this idea in the form of the text. Plot points such as Jessica’s true lineage and the identity of the traitor in the Atreides are given to the reader far earlier in the story than would usually be the case. This is called dramatic irony- when the audience is made aware of information the characters do not have. Horror movies are full of it and use it for tension (Don’t go in there! The Killer’s in there!), but Herbert uses it on a very meta level to turn the reader into something of a prophet for the story.
And much, much more!
So yeah- Dune is weird inside and out, but not because it’s inscrutable, obtuse, or pretentious. It’s just looking at the sorts of themes and ideas normally found in more fantastical stories, is sci fi with little regard for technology bar as saying something about the society producing it, and is written through a lens and cultural underpinning which is (in general) exotic to a western audience. Like anything with strong style a certain percentage of the audience just isn’t going to click with it as a matter of personal taste. You might be one of them. But for those who do connect with it Dune is something of a unique gem in sci fi literature. So it’s worth a try.
Now the question is, how do you go about adapting that novel to the screen?
Jodorowsky's Dune (197X)
Some of this gets wild. Like, you couldn’t make this shit up sort of wild.
This version is a movie that never was. What we do have however is the 2013 documentary film, ‘Jodorowsky's Dune’. Broadly, it chronicles the (doomed) attempts of a business consortium to make a Dune movie, with Chilean director Alejandro Jodorowsky to direct. If you’re a fan of Dune and you’ve not seen this film it’s well worth a punt. Also if you’re into behind the scenes content or have an interest in the film business, this documentary will probably be right up your alley.
So let’s meet our director, Alejandro Jodorowsky. The best way to do that is probably to show you some of his work.
Here is a link to the trailer for
‘The Holy Mountain' (1973), Jodorowsky's most recent film at the time he started work on Dune: (Content Warning*: Gore, explicit violence, nudity, and unhealthy levels of WTF. VERY NSFW.)
* A slightly more tame version of the trailer (for the film’s 4K restoration) is
here for those who’d rather not see (hopefully fake) crucified dead dogs being paraded down a road, but would still like unhealthy levels of WTF.
Bet you thought Lynch’s Dune would the weirdest thing that’d be brought up eh? Anyway if someone’s going to capture the weirdness, it’s this guy. And if anyone’s going to make extreme ‘adaptations’, it’s also going to be this guy. As you can probably guess from the trailer he’s also a… character. And quite possibly mad.
But he is also a professional and took the job seriously, including storyboarding his version with French artist Moebius- which took over 3,000 drawings. The documentary uses these images to attempt to create some of the shots Jodorowsky envisioned for the film.
For the purposes of this piece we’re mostly interested in his adaptational changes and how he would have used the new medium to tell Dune in a different- perhaps even better- way. But we’re all geeks here and we all love trivia so here are a few juicy bits:
Salvador Dali (yes, the surrealist) was going to play Emperor Shaddam Corrino. But he wanted to become the highest paid actor in Hollywood, so to get him on board Jodorowsky agreed to an extortionate hourly rate ($100,000 per hour)- but then planned the film so that Dali would only need to be on screen for five minutes, and paid $100,000- by the minute. In the Emperor’s other scenes he would be so paranoid about assassination he would only speak to people through a robot duplicate. Dali accepted on the additional condition than the Golden Lion Throne be a toilet made up of two crossed dolphins. And the film had to have a giraffe. Among other things.
Orson Welles was going to play Vladimir Harkonnen. I think that might be the most flawless bit of casting in the history of show business. He was reluctant to join the film, but long story short, Jodorowsky bribed him with an on-set chef. I’m not sure if Welles was indulging gluttony or just getting into character.
Hollywood didn’t want the film to go over two hours. We laugh at that now but back then even two hours would have been a longer film. Jodorowsky felt the film had to be at least 10 hours. Probably closer to 14. Can you imagine this man adapting the Lord of the Rings?
H R Geiger and Dan O’Bannon were artists on the team. Geiger would provide the art inspiration for the Harkonen. They would collaborate again not long after- on Alien.
Feyd-Rautha would be played by none other than Mick Jagger. Ask a parent who he is.
Let’s get into adaptation and Jodorowsky’s vision. First the character designs dreamed up by Jodorowsky and Moebius. It helps a lot to be able to see them, so link
here. That’s not all of them, but enough to get a feel. The general aesthetic is very, VERY out there- a sort of European aristocratic court, meets the circus. Flamboyant, over designed garments in strong, warm tones. Feyd also has this sort of gender bending going on, such as in the image in the collection above where he’s elegantly femme, or
this one where he’s channelling big Dr Frank’n’Furter energy. Kynes has a great sort of desert nomad meets conquistador look going on. The design for Hawat is one I really like, capturing this feel of an older but regal and still dangerous man. The drape on his right arm gives him some elegance and class, while the short sword prominently displayed keeps him looking dangerous. Not sure what to make of the peg leg, but it does sell this is a guy who’s seen some action. I’d also like to highlight
this ship design by Chris Foss, which I love.
So the designs are generally outlandish, but not I would argue not excessively so. It captures the conspicuous wealth of nobility while also conveying suitable information about the characters. But as mentioned they are outlandish and a design that works well on a page might not hold up on film, but we can only discuss what we have and these designs work for me even if they look nothing like anything I ever pictured in my head.
So how about story and writing changes? Again, all we have are fragments, as far as I know the script was never released to the public- so the changes we have to go on are what’s reported in the documentary. And there are… differences. The ending for example. That’s certainly… different. Also Paul’s conception. You see in this telling the Duke Leto was castrated in a bullfight so can’t have children. So, Lady Jessica takes a drop of his blood and uses her Bene Gesserit transformation powers to turn it into a drop of semen, which she then uses to… err, make Paul in the usual way- shot by shot, up the vagina, down the fallopian tube and into an egg.
I’m not sure what the hell this is supposed to add. Maybe to introduce the whole Bene Gesserit chemical control earlier on? Is it some sort of metaphor? I’m not against it- conceptually (hah), but it does seem to be there just to add more WTF to a story that’s already loaded with WTF. Well I suppose if you’re going to go weird, you might as well go full Gary Busey. It starts to cast an assumption about the ten hour run time though- is this ten hours because that’s how long it takes to tell this story on the screen, or is ten hours because Jodorowsky is filling it up with extra bits like this? To be clear that’s not inherently a bad thing but it hugely impacts what the movie would have been. And Jodorowsky was talking about making a film that simulated the effects of LSD. Not just weird visuals but something that would actually adjust your state of consciousness.
The ending is mostly the same up to Paul and Feyd’s final duel. In the original Paul kills Feyd and there’s this whole thing about him not able to see the outcome of the fight to create tension, but ultimately he wins and so overcomes the last major obstacle on the road to victory and his ascension to the throne.
In this telling Feyd kills Paul but then Paul possesses/becomes everyone, then Arrakis becomes a garden paradise (and also conscious), and then flies away out of the galaxy in search of other planets to enlighten. As I said- different. Honestly I have no words. Which is something of a first for me.
Just… why? And I don’t even mean in a technical sense of how does this improve the story or adapt it to the big screen- you can usually see why poor or strange decisions were made. But this? Without knowing the full story and the other changes Jodorowsky wanted to make it’s not really fair to judge the quality of the ending as a piece of storytelling. What context and other changes would be needed for this ending to even make sense though boggles my mind.
Still with changes like Paul’s conception I’m fairly sure this adaptation would have all the fidelity of a Las Vegas stag party. And be as wild of a ride too. After ten hours in a cinema seat- you’ll end up with a ‘personal’ rash as well. Jodorowsky himself summed it up best:
“I changed the ending of the book, evidently! In the book it’s a continuation. The planet never changed. Is not awake, with a cosmic consciousness. It’s not a Messiah, the planet. I did that. It’s different. It was my Dune. When you make a picture, you must not respect the novel. It’s like you get married, no? You go with the wife, white, the woman is white you take the woman, if you respect the woman you will never have child. You need to [imitates ripping fabric] open the costume and to… to rape the bride! And then you will have your picture. I was raping Frank Herbert, raping, like this! But with love, with love.”
Dune (1984)
While Jodorowsky’s Dune never got made the idea of a Dune movie continued to float around Hollywood, and in 1984 we get David Lynch’s Dune. This one’s generally regarded as bad, but it’s also a cult classic. While it struggles to tell its story cleanly it’s backed by strong cinematography and some classic bits of character design which would serve as the visual basis for subsequent Dune RTS videogames. It’s also got that Lynchian ephemeral, dream like quality. Consequently despite its faults the film avoids being the worst thing a piece of entertainment can be- boring.
Adaptationally it’s a movie of two halves. The first half of the story up until Paul and Jessica join the Fremen is decently done. Little additions like the meeting between the Emperor and the Spacing Guild quickly add more context to events and thus preserve some of the richness (worldbuilding and context) of the original plot, which would otherwise be lost in the process of cutting down the story get the film run time to a sane level. The amount of voice over used though is horrible.
Voice overs are kind of frowned on. The reasoning is that you’re telling a story through visuals and an audience should be able to see what’s happening without someone needing to explain it to them. This is far from universally true. All three of the completed adaptations we’re going to look at start with some sort of voice over. Many films do- it’s a quick and efficient way to dump a load of information onto the audience that they need to understand the story you’re about to tell. It’s a different (possibly better in my opinion) way of doing the Star Wars text crawl. But after a while it just becomes tedious.
It kind of works for getting in that dream like David Lynch feel- but it doesn’t work so well for making the story engaging. Lots of things are just stated with little visual reinforcement. Often a character will stare just off camera as their thoughts are spoken in whispery soft tones. And you can’t just have your characters announce how they feel, that makes me feel angry. This movie is as lousy as it is brilliant! I’m not just saying that to double up on the Futurama reference either- I think stuff like the voice overs are part of the cult appeal and do help capture the weirdness of Dune.
The weirding way is the close combat style of the Bene Gesserit Sisterhood, its main plot significance in the original story is that Jessica agrees to teach the style to the Fremen as part of how she secures her and Paul’s place in Stilgar’s tribe. In the Lynch version it’s a piece of technology called a weirding module that turns words into powerful blasts of energy developed by the Atreides- and the reason the Emperor has become fearful of the House. In the original telling the Emperor’s fear comes from the Duke’s political popularity, and the fact he’s training his armed forces to be almost as good as the Emperor’s elite Sardukar. I don’t like this change. The theme of words having literal powerful works, but the plot device’s nature as a technological advancement undermines the original work’s identity as sci fi exploring the progression of humanity, and not just the technology we build. This is the only significant change that I picked up on, not including dull to be expected stuff like cut subplots and scenes. Speaking of…
In the second half of the story things start to get a lot more rushed. I don’t think it’s any coincidence that this is the point where the latest version of Dune ends its first movie. This part of the book is chiefly about Paul and Jessica integrating into Fremen society with a lot of world building about the Fremen, their culture, how they live, why they are the way they are, and what common ideals they share as a society. In the Lynch version this is all cut down hugely. Key plot relevant moments are kept in but they are run through as fast as possible, as if the movie’s trying to knock all the important bits quickly to leave enough time for the finale. Stilgar is barely a character. And Chani was there also. At the time of writing I watched this film 2 days ago and I legitimately can’t even remember if they included the scene of Jessica becoming a full reverend mother. Yes it is there- and lasts about a minute. They spend about as much time establishing that the Harkonen have Hawat in their custody and he needs to milk a cat to get the antidote to a slow poison he’s been given (the slow poison is in the original text though the cat is not)- only for Hawat to vanish from the movie anyway. Like if you’re not going to give this a payoff, why bother with any sort of set up especially if you’re hurting for time? Just leave him out of the story after the betrayal of the Atreides and we can assume he died there. Dune 2000 does exactly this.
Visually the film is a mix of good designs across a range of styles. The guild are presented with very alien fashion and customs while the Atreides channel a more military nobility sort of look, pushed to the extreme by the Emperor. The still suits look pretty solid, a convincing representation of what they are supposed to be. The worm as seen in the spice harvester rescue sequence looks good and conveys a decent sense of size (for the most part- the explosion makes it feel more like a model), but later worms shown more clear of sand look and move like scale models. The Sardukar look like they’re going to save the enemy some trouble by wearing body bags. So various effects can be ropey and there are some very sketchily composited shots, but for an early eighties film it could have looked a lot worse.
I never know quite what to make of the Baron in this adaptation. In the original the Baron’s weight is a result of his decadence. He eats far too much and doesn’t even bother carrying his own weight so takes virtually no exercise. For the Baron his station is a means to indulge his every pleasure and desire. For Duke Leto and later Paul, their stations are a matter of responsibility. So fat Baron makes sense as an item of plot and as an item of theming. But pestilent Baron? What is gained by adding this detail? He’s already repugnant in his actions and outlook, is this just the visuals echoing the characterization? Is he supposed to be riddled with venereal diseases that he keeps as trophies? It just confuses me.
All in all I wouldn’t recommend this one. If you’re into cult movies and cult sci-fi you’ve probably already seen this or were at least aware of it. If you want to watch a strange looking, trippy movie then you can do worse (Or watch Zardoz), but I don’t think this is a particularly good adaptation of Dune. Nevertheless it has a fanbase and I can see where they’re coming from, and good or bad it left a more lasting cultural impact than our next item.
Frank Herbert’s Dune (2000)
This was my first Dune. I saw this before I read the book and before I saw the David Lynch movie. I have memories of it being awesome. It stuck in my mind like Star Wars. I had a Syfy Dune theme for my windows 98 PC. This. Was. The. Shit.
Now though? It’s good. Kind of good. Kind of. Overall this is one of the most faithful and complete adaptations of Dune, but it suffers a little from its budget and circumstances which results in effects and production methods that have not aged well at all- although it does not want for ambition and artistic merit. This series was produced in 2000 by the sci fi channel and ran for three, one and a half hour episodes. So it was made for TV by a team using TV equipment and production techniques, which shows. Oh, and the budget was 30 million dollars to produce what amounts to a four and a half hour movie, so in a dollar per minute sort of way the budget wasn’t great either.
The visual design is actually not bad and I’d argue
in some respects superior to the Villeneuve version. But on a more technical level? Camera work is alright but the whole thing feels like it was shot on sound stages. You can practically sense the wires and cables, or the edge of the greenscreen hiding just out of shot. It’s a similar story in the scenery, props and costuming- there is a strong element of design there but the way it all ends up looking on screen has a kind of transparent fakeness to it, almost like you’re watching a recording of a theatre production. Oh and there’s lots of bad greenscreen. Early CGI is used to create shots that are conceptually impressive but sadly the CGI just doesn’t hold up well today. A bit like Lexx, it often has that Westwood Studios FMV sequence feel. Ironically.
So how well does it bring the characters to the screen? Designs have the same problem as the visuals in general- the designs themselves are good, but the technical way they are captured makes them feel fake. The style is a more restrained take on Jodorowsky’s version, drawing from the influences of aristocracy but keeping the designs a little more grounded.
This Sardukar is a good example I think. The costume looks weird but still has a martial sense about it thanks to the armour and oversized beret. This
concept art for that final design pushes the aesthetic harder with the armour plates being more prominent and coloured. The Bene Gesserit also have a good look to them, I like the
butterfly headwear- it’s got that courtly aesthetic while still kind of recalling a wimple, or for the lower ranked sisters a Quaker’s hat. The still suits suck though. Look like baggy overalls with greebles glued to them. The worms on the other hand? Bad CGI aside these are my favourite of the worm designs thus far. Yeah Villeneuve’s look more realistic but I think these are better designed. Something about the pointed shovelhead and layers of skin makes it feel real and (somehow) more intimidating. Freudians make of that what you will.
I don’t think it’s entirely reasonable to call the technical execution bad, much as I’ve commented on it. While it’s always possible for good production teams to stretch their budgets such groups are the exception rather than the norm. And Dune 2000 is the norm for the time- probably a little above it to be fair. Other projects looked worse and didn’t have the excuse Dune had of trying to adapt really bizarre material. But all in all it’s just not a very pretty series to watch in motion these days, some stuff ages well but this has not. Obviously this sort of thing is even more subject to personal taste than usual, so if you like turn of the millennium TV sci fi’s look (or at least don’t mind it) the strong character and set designs can carry this into the realms of ‘good’. Cult fans will have no problem with it.
In terms of the writing, this is straight Dune. Out of all the adaptations we’ll look at, this is the most pure and complete. Most (certainly not all) of what’s in the books is present in the film, and there are no major changes to the plot or characters. Irulan is an exception, the show gives her a bit more to do in the form of a subplot where she’s attempting to learn the truth about the destruction of the Atreides on Arrakis. Some of this is fine, some of it isn’t so great. All in all though I like the new subplot and appreciate they decided to give Irulan agency, character and power through having her play a game of intrigue and espionage (true to her characterization in the sequel), rather than just deciding to re write her as a Sardukar trained spec ops ninja.
All in all the story is told at a nice, even pace in three acts. The betrayal of the Atreides is episode one, Paul’s rise through the Fremen is episode 2, with the build up to, and, the final battle being episode 3. It never feels rushed or like its lagging. Some of the acting is better then the rest, some of the script writing is likewise on or ahead of par, with other bits that can be bad. Paul’s first personal conversation with Irulan (one of the additions) just didn’t feel right to me. Everything from the way characters behaved to how they spoke felt incongruous. But one bad scene written as part of the new Irulan subplot doesn’t trash the series. Ian McNeice as Barok Harkonen is one of the show’s high points in terms of acting and worth a note. His portrayal of the Baron is more restrained than other versions (except 2021) which makes him feel more real and a result kind of more menacing.
If your overriding concern with an adaptation is faithfulness then this is probably the version you want to watch. If you’re already a fan of Dune it’s worth checking to see if this is on any of your subscribed streaming services (in the UK it’s on Amazon Prime) and if so giving it a shot- if you can look past the way the series has aged. For general Sci Fi fans though there’s stuff out there you’ll probably want to watch first- but if you’re in the mood for something a bit different you could do a lot worse. But what if you’re new to Dune and don’t want to read the book? Well then we have…
Dune (2021)
So we come to our messiah’s latest word, the gospel according to Villeneuve. And it’s pretty good. Okay it’s
very good- but I do have some notes. At the time of writing we only have the first part of his two part adaptation of Dune, which covers the start of the story up to Paul and Jessica being accepted by Stilgar’s tribe.
Visually the movie is… sort of a bizzarro version of the Dune 2000 in which the technical aspects of the visuals are excellent, but for my money the visual design of characters and sets is a bit underwhelming- but I’ll expand on that as we go, as its part of a somewhat circular bit of reasoning around how this adaptation works.
It’s not a very colourful movie. A lot of the visuals are kind of monochrome- not literally black and white but blocks of ‘colour’ are more differentiated by brightness than actual colour. When colours are used they tend to appropriately lean towards neutral desaturated, browns, reds and oranges. There’s very little of the exuberance of design you see in the Moebius/Jodorowsky designs (and to a lesser extent Dune 2000), clothing for most characters is far more grounded and more in line with the militaristic style of Dune 1984. However the Guild and the Imperial court bring back some of this ostentation which reinforces they are both the social elite, and somewhat separate from our more plainly garbed antagonists.
So to clarify I don’t actively dislike the designs Villeneuve went with. I just think some aspects like the design of armour or character’s formal clothes being a bit more weird wouldn’t have hurt the movie and could have added to the sense of mystery and otherness. He did this somewhat with the Bene Gesserit. But by keeping the designs more grounded in general Villeneuve is able to more effectively communicate things about the characters and their social relationship. Leaning away from colour isn’t a bad choice either- it’s clearly a stylistic decision and one the director applied with thought and care to create beautiful images even with a minimum of colour. And we’ll get to that in more detail in a moment- it’s important for how the film approached adaptation. We’re getting ready to close that circle of how this version works.
The writing has been adapted by cutting the original story down to the bone- but no deeper. A lot of details such as the cruel, multilayered nature of the Baron’s plan have been left next to Tom Bombadil on the cutting room floor. But the core spine of the plot has thus far been left intact. I can respect this change even if I don’t entirely like it. When you make Dune into a movie you either go the Jodorowsky route and make something so long it may never get released, or you have to start trimming to tell the story in a reasonable timeframe. What Villeneuve cut was mostly worldbuilding and flavour- things that enhance plot rather than build it- the richness of the story. The end result is a narrative that works and has all the usual twists, turns, moments and big set pieces we expect- but left in that state would feel a bit dry and lifeless. You’ve probably watched movies (or more likely TV/streaming) like that- where everything makes sense, but you don’t have investment or immersion in the story.
Villeneuve solves that with the visual styles we’ve already discussed. He reintroduces the weird flavour of Dune through general visual stylisation, rather than the designs of specific characters, objects and places. How the movie is shot, lit, framed, colour graded etc introduces more strangeness and disquiet than what is literally shown happening on the screen. A lot of its cinematic language is Horror like. The result is a brilliant sense of style that marries well with a setting that’s going to be more familiar to history and fantasy enthusiasts than sci fi fans. In a sense the strange cinematography is sort of welcoming, as if it’s patting you on the back and saying ‘no it’s not just you- this world is kind of weird’. Even if a lot of the actual weird content has been cut, or isn’t due to appear until part 2. But by then you’ll be prepared for it. It goes without saying the visuals capture the grand scale of the Dune universe perfectly, working people into huge wide shots so the audience can tell just how massive what they are looking at is.
Gurney is a sad casualty of this cut to the bone approach with the writing. While the Baron’s role was hugely reduced a combination of that stylized cinematography we’ve discussed and Stellan Skarsgård’s acting preserve his essence- scheming, hateful, menacing. Gurney however has been reduced to angry fighter man. He isn’t
vital to the core Jessica/Paul plot, so his deeper characterization is reduced to an easter egg (A balliset next to his bunk). Gurney is an example of that richness which had to be trimmed out to make this adaptation work.
So I have something of a tension (ironically another theme of Dune 1965) in how I feel about this film. I genuinely love what we got. But I oh so miss what we had to sacrifice to get here.
On the plus side we FINALLY GET ACTUAL ORNITHOPTERS. It took over half a century and three (and a half) shots at it, but we have them baby- and they’re awesome!
Dune 2021 is a great adaptation of Dune. It’s not the one I exactly want, but I’m still very glad to have it and am waiting eagerly for part 2. For those looking to get into Dune who don’t want to read the book, and especially those who tried it and just found it an unrewarding read- this would be my recommended alternative. Assuming you don’t want to listen to the (full cast reading) audiobook.
In closing.
Not much to say about the 1984 film. I’d seen it before, I watched it again- I felt pretty much the same as I felt the first time; it’s got some style to it but in general it’s just not very good- either as a movie or as an adaptation. Cult fans will rightly disagree. And should also
watch Lexx.
Revisiting the Sci Fi Channel miniseries was an example of how stuff you thought was great as a child can turn out to be… not so good when you come back to it as an adult. That said I did genuinely enjoy the styles and designs they were going for, and they are honestly more what I see in my head when I read Dune- but as I mentioned the 2000 miniseries was my first experience of Dune so that’s somewhat to be expected. Still, this one’s good if you can get past the age gap.
I don’t think anyone managed to tell the story better than the original text, but I did get an appreciation for how Villeneuve approached making the world and story more generally accessible while still preserving the weirdness that is such an important part of Dune’s identity. It’s going to be interesting to see what he does in part 2 when that weirdness starts to become vital to the plot. It’ll be a trip.
Literally.
Ya hya chouhada!