Speaker 1: Welcome to Stuff to Blow Your Mind, a production of iHeartRadio.
Speaker 2: Hey, welcome to Weird House Cinema.
Speaker 3: This is Rob Lamb and this is Joe McCormick. And
Speaker 3: today we are back with our first ever part two
Speaker 3: of a Weird House Cinema episode. We do not think
Speaker 3: we're going to make this a regular occurrence. But there
Speaker 3: is a reason we had to split last Friday's episode
Speaker 3: in two, and it's that we were talking about the
Speaker 3: nineteen eighty four David Lynch adaptation of the novel Dune,
Speaker 3: a movie that I don't think it would be possible
Speaker 3: for us to talk about for less than three hours.
Speaker 3: In fact, if we got maximally self indulgent Robert, I
Speaker 3: think we could talk about David Lynch's doing for six hours,
Speaker 3: maybe seven. How many movie runtime lengths could we go?
Speaker 2: I mean it depends on which which version, which cut
Speaker 2: you're going, right, But yeah, we just we had to
Speaker 2: split this one in two because there's just too much weirdness,
Speaker 2: because it is a David Lynch film, and it is
Speaker 2: based on the already weird book Dune by Frank Herbert,
Speaker 2: published in nineteen sixty five. And then we just have
Speaker 2: such a rich cast that we have to at least
Speaker 2: acknowledge these various performers who really give it their all.
Speaker 2: And then, on top of all of this, Dune Part
Speaker 2: two just came out in cinemas. It is already a
Speaker 2: huge hit. Everyone's loving this film. Dune is in the
Speaker 2: air again. The spice is in the air again. And
Speaker 2: so we figured, well, if we're gonna cut a weird
Speaker 2: house cinema episode into two like this, this is the
Speaker 2: movie and this is the time to do it.
Speaker 3: So I actually have rather big news with respect to
Speaker 3: Denieville news Dune Part two. We managed to see it
Speaker 3: in theaters. This is actually the first movie that Rachel
Speaker 3: and I have managed to go out to the movie
Speaker 3: theater to see since our daughter was born. And oh man,
Speaker 3: it was worth it. We had such a great time.
Speaker 3: We were just like pumping our fists during the worm
Speaker 3: riding scenes. It was great. And I think I guess
Speaker 3: we should say at the beginning of this episode here
Speaker 3: there will be significant spoilers in this episode for the
Speaker 3: plot of Doune both. I guess I'll three the novel,
Speaker 3: the Lynch adaptation and the new adaptation. And I thought
Speaker 3: some of the differences in the choices where it diverged
Speaker 3: from the book and from the eighty four movie were
Speaker 3: quite interesting, and I think, in some ways really smart
Speaker 3: and in other ways really taking on a challenge of
Speaker 3: portraying some of the darker and less heroic aspects that
Speaker 3: emerge toward the end of the novel that you are
Speaker 3: definitely part of Herbert's idea of what the story meant,
Speaker 3: but I think are sort of left out of David
Speaker 3: Lynch's version, which embraces a more full spirit of adventure.
Speaker 2: Yeah yeah, and ultimately lands on a very heroic note.
Speaker 2: We see Paul as a savior at the end of
Speaker 2: this film, and we'll get into all this, but Venus
Speaker 2: film is a different beast. While being very true to
Speaker 2: the book, I believe that the spirit of his betrayal
Speaker 2: of Paul is very much in keeping with the book
Speaker 2: and certainly in keeping with the trajectory to come.
Speaker 3: Yeah, yeah, I think that's absolutely right. I guess we'll
Speaker 3: probably talk some more about this as we go on,
Speaker 3: But obviously, if you have not heard part one of
Speaker 3: this Weird House series, you should go back listen to
Speaker 3: part one of our talk on Dune from last Friday.
Speaker 3: First brief recap let's see, we talked about the novel
Speaker 3: Dune and Frank Herbert. We talked about David Lynch and
Speaker 3: his sort of film career and some of the common
Speaker 3: themes and characteristics of his filmmaking, some of the story
Speaker 3: behind the making of nineteen eighty four's Dune where David Lynch.
Speaker 3: This movie is largely regarded as sort of an outlier
Speaker 3: in David Lynch's filmography, and he has to some extent
Speaker 3: disowned it. He was very dissatisfied with the final product
Speaker 3: that was released, and he'd even said that working on
Speaker 3: this version of Doune, produced by Dino de Laurentis, sort
Speaker 3: of taught him that he would rather not make a
Speaker 3: movie at all than make a movie that he didn't
Speaker 3: have full creative control over. And he would go on
Speaker 3: to make many more movies in the wake of this
Speaker 3: where he did have creative control and are celebrated by
Speaker 3: many as a very strange, interesting, excellent artistic achievements. Dune
Speaker 3: was not beloved by critics at the time it came out.
Speaker 3: I think in the years since critical opinion has softened somewhat.
Speaker 3: It kind of has people look back on it now
Speaker 3: and remember it fondly. But a lot of people did
Speaker 3: not like this movie at all when it came out,
Speaker 3: and I think that you can make an argument that
Speaker 3: it is in many ways a failure to adapt the
Speaker 3: novel appropriately. I think you can argue in ways also
Speaker 3: that it is highly artistically compromised. You know, it's not
Speaker 3: what the director wanted it to be. But at the
Speaker 3: same time, I think David Lynch is done is great.
Speaker 3: I love this movie and I have a great time
Speaker 3: watching it.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I think, especially as time has gone by, I
Speaker 2: think more and more people, I think people who have
Speaker 2: attempted to adapt it can recognize this and know more
Speaker 2: about the history of adaptation regarding this novel. But I
Speaker 2: think the more the time, the more time has passed,
Speaker 2: the more a lot of people have realized that this
Speaker 2: was still a commendable effort. It's still it's still a
Speaker 2: pretty great telling of a Dune story, even if there
Speaker 2: are some very important thematic notes and ultimately happenings that
Speaker 2: the we'll discuss that are that I don't love, But
Speaker 2: still a lot of it. Is there a lot of
Speaker 2: the look of Doune. Is there a lot of the
Speaker 2: feel of Dune? Is there lots of great performances, so,
Speaker 2: you know, and even throwing on the fact that he
Speaker 2: had to cut it down so much given all of
Speaker 2: these limitations, the finished product is a lot of fun.
Speaker 2: It has a lot of greatness in it. You know.
Speaker 3: I noticed something when watching the new movie Dune Part
Speaker 3: two that made me think differently on some stuff I
Speaker 3: said in part one of the series. So last time,
Speaker 3: we talked about how difficult doing is to adapt for
Speaker 3: multiple reasons. On one hand, it's difficult because so much
Speaker 3: of the story is contextual at stuff about the setting
Speaker 3: rather than action that happens directly within the story. So
Speaker 3: it's a lot of world building that's very interesting and
Speaker 3: sort of gives the direct plot meaning. But the other
Speaker 3: half being that a lot of the drama is internal.
Speaker 3: It's like characters internal thoughts and stuff. And we were
Speaker 3: joking about how in David Lynch's adaptation, there is often
Speaker 3: like a close up on somebody's face and they're making
Speaker 3: a thinking face while you hear their internal monologue, you know,
Speaker 3: say saying, oh, Dune racket, you know, thinking through something, uh,
Speaker 3: And it's often funny in David Lynch's adaptation. But I
Speaker 3: realized the new movie does the same thing, and for
Speaker 3: some reason, it just it just doesn't look as funny.
Speaker 3: I don't know if the actors were instructed to make
Speaker 3: different kinds of faces, but there is zooming on people's
Speaker 3: faces and hearing their internal thoughts. Yeah.
Speaker 2: So yeah, So we're going to continue to talk about
Speaker 2: these these differences, some of these choices as we roll
Speaker 2: on through here. Let's see, we got into the plot
Speaker 2: a bit in the last episode, and one key thing
Speaker 2: in case you've forgotten, or if you have, you're you're
Speaker 2: gonna ignore us and you're just gonna roll into part
Speaker 2: two without listening to part one, is that the one
Speaker 2: thing we're doing different with this differently with this weird
Speaker 2: House Cinema episode is instead of rolling through the entire
Speaker 2: cast or notable members of the cast before going into
Speaker 2: the plot, we are touching in on cast members as
Speaker 2: we go. And this was in order to try and
Speaker 2: make the split between the two episodes a little less
Speaker 2: jarny mm hmm.
Speaker 3: So the farthest we got into the plot in part
Speaker 3: one was we talked a lot about the opening narration
Speaker 3: from Virginia Madsen, where she talks for a long time
Speaker 3: about the Spacing Guild and all that, And then we
Speaker 3: talked about the scene where the Spacing Guild arrives on
Speaker 3: the Imperial home planet and a Guild navigator in his
Speaker 3: sort of in his fish tank locomotive comes into the
Speaker 3: Emperor's throne room to consult with the Padisha Emperor Shaddam
Speaker 3: the Fourth played by Jose Ferrer, and they have a
Speaker 3: talk about essentially the entire plot that's going to unfold
Speaker 3: in the first half of the movie, the plot against
Speaker 3: how Streides and how the Emperor is planning to use
Speaker 3: House Harkonen to destroy Duke Letto and his line.
Speaker 2: Yeah, and then then we had to cut for time,
Speaker 2: so we're jumping back in here with more build up
Speaker 2: to the key plot. We're on a different planet. We're
Speaker 2: on a wet planet, so let let's jump right in.
Speaker 3: Okay, So here we are at the planet Caladan. This
Speaker 3: is the home of House Atriades. It is a gray
Speaker 3: planet of rain and oceans, totally contrasted with the dryness
Speaker 3: of dune, though often comparisons are made between the waves
Speaker 3: of the sea and the dunes of the desert, and
Speaker 3: this comes up in several adaptations of the story as well.
Speaker 3: But here we get more narration. Now, last time we
Speaker 3: were joking about the amount of voiceover narration. There is
Speaker 3: to explain what's going on in this movie, and there's
Speaker 3: even more to come. So Princess Erilan continues on the soundtrack.
Speaker 3: She says, the powerful Bennie jesser At Sisterhood for ninety
Speaker 3: generations has been manipulating bloodlines to produce the Quisat's Hatarak,
Speaker 3: a super being on Caladan. Jessica, a member of the
Speaker 3: Sisterhood and the bound concubine of Duke Letto Atredees, had
Speaker 3: been ordered to bear only daughters because of her love
Speaker 3: for the Duke. She disobeyed and gave birth to a son, Paul.
Speaker 3: Paul atreades. Even all that exposition raises some questions, but like,
Speaker 3: I think it was part of the story that the
Speaker 3: Benny jestertz they have many powers that they train for.
Speaker 3: They have powers of mind, the mind that can sort
Speaker 3: of command matter in various ways, and one of them
Speaker 3: is that say, they can like control the sex of
Speaker 3: their offspring with their minds psychically and things like that.
Speaker 3: But so yeah, she disobeys the rules of this powerful
Speaker 3: sisterhood and gives birth to Paul, who is yet you know,
Speaker 3: he's going to be some kind of terrible messiah.
Speaker 2: So Paula Trds in this film is played by Kyle
Speaker 2: McLachlin born nineteen fifty nine. Kyle would have been in
Speaker 2: his early to mid twenties here, I believe, and it's
Speaker 2: awkward and it's difficult casting, but he, you know, awkwardly
Speaker 2: feels a bit too old in the first half of
Speaker 2: this movie.
Speaker 3: I yeah, So this is not a knock on Kyle
Speaker 3: McLaughlin at all. I love Kyle McLachlin. I love his
Speaker 3: working relationship with David Lynch. He you know, they're perfect
Speaker 3: for each other in Twin Peaks and all that. And
Speaker 3: I am always happy when I see Kyle McLaughlin in
Speaker 3: a movie. He's an actor I love. But for some reason,
Speaker 3: I think I just have to admit he does not
Speaker 3: feel right in this role. Something about his approach does
Speaker 3: not fit either the great or the terrible purpose of Paul.
Speaker 3: He doesn't seem to embrace the spirit of Epicanus really. Instead,
Speaker 3: he comes off as Kyle McLaughlin like, he's kind of
Speaker 3: nerdy and funny, and he like giggles a lot. And
Speaker 3: there have been various criticisms of Kyle's coy Maclaughlin's performance
Speaker 3: in this movie, and I have to just sort of
Speaker 3: agree with them. I want to love Kyle here, but
Speaker 3: something about him is kind of uncomfortable in the role.
Speaker 3: He has this overwhelmingly wholesome innocence and doesn't really capture
Speaker 3: that boy with dangerous potential feeling. He's more of a
Speaker 3: cosmic Martin Prince in here.
Speaker 2: Yeah, he never feels like a boy. He always feels
Speaker 2: like a young man or you know, a guy in
Speaker 2: his twenties anyway, And I guess the moments where I
Speaker 2: think he is best are the sort of cold moments.
Speaker 2: Sometimes it's even a moment with the internal voice going on.
Speaker 2: And in these moments it's it's almost like Paul is
Speaker 2: more of a cipher, you know, Paul kind of seen
Speaker 2: through the lens of say, the protagonist in David Clintenberg's Scanners.
Speaker 2: You know, someone whose mental reality, whose relationship with his
Speaker 2: own thoughts and the world around him is so different
Speaker 2: from ours that he feels a little alien, you.
Speaker 3: Know, personality.
Speaker 2: Yeah, so there are moments like that that that worked
Speaker 2: for me. And yeah, for the most part, I don't
Speaker 2: think it's a bad performance, you know, We've seen plenty
Speaker 2: of movies where the central handsome lead is not a
Speaker 2: good actor and is not good in any of his scenes.
Speaker 2: So it's nothing like that. It's a totally different beast.
Speaker 2: And it is very difficult and ultimately not fair to
Speaker 2: compare him in his performance to Timothy Challomy in the
Speaker 2: New Dune movies, because in my opinion, Challo May is
Speaker 2: just absolutely perfect because for one, on one hand, he
Speaker 2: is able to capture the youthfulness of Paul in part one,
Speaker 2: he really does look like a kid that is maybe fifteen,
Speaker 2: which I believe is his age in the book. And
Speaker 2: yet he is still label and I wasn't. I was
Speaker 2: doubtful until I went into part two. He's still able
Speaker 2: to deliver that more serious awaken Paul, that dangerous Paul
Speaker 2: that we get in the second half of dv's version
Speaker 2: of Doom.
Speaker 3: I totally agree. I think Chalomey is great in his
Speaker 3: role in the new movies, and he gets both sides
Speaker 3: of it, just like you say, he's you know, he
Speaker 3: has that youthful spirit of adventure you're so on his
Speaker 3: side in the first movie, and then that awakening to
Speaker 3: the terrible purpose, the sort of art toward tyranny and
Speaker 3: the and the coldness and abuse of power. You see
Speaker 3: that come on, uh with with such convincing intensity in
Speaker 3: the second film. And he I think he does a
Speaker 3: really really commendable job. And I just want to say again,
Speaker 3: I'm I'm not generally knocking Cole McLaughlin. I love Kyle.
Speaker 3: I think he's great. I just think it's like he
Speaker 3: maybe didn't get something about this character.
Speaker 2: Yeah, you know, despite the fact that you know, I remember,
Speaker 2: I think I've read in places that he was like
Speaker 2: a real student of the book, you know, and like
Speaker 2: came in and and was was you know, done his homework,
Speaker 2: and and certainly, you know, like you said, he'd go
Speaker 2: on to have a very accomplished career. He is a
Speaker 2: two time Ammy Award winner for his work on Lynch's
Speaker 2: Twin Peaks. This was his film debut, which he followed
Speaker 2: up with with Lynch's Doom follow up, The neo noir
Speaker 2: Blue Velvet. And this is not a surprise for anyone,
Speaker 2: but because he's probably seen him in some he's a
Speaker 2: terrific comedic actor as well. Yeah, he has great comedic timing.
Speaker 2: I really enjoyed on Portlandia, for example, yes, then he
Speaker 2: played the mayor.
Speaker 3: I think, yeah he did.
Speaker 2: All right, Well, what's what's Paul doing. What's Paul up
Speaker 2: to this early in the film.
Speaker 3: Well, we meet him in a room that looks kind
Speaker 3: of like the officer's cabin in a British man O war.
Speaker 3: It's this big, like stately wooden room with ornate molding
Speaker 3: and flourishes, and basically what we're going to get in
Speaker 3: this scene is yet another sizable exposition dump, serving to
Speaker 3: fill in more information about the setting, characters, and politics.
Speaker 3: So at the beginning of the scene, Paul is messing
Speaker 3: around with something that looks suspiciously like a computer. I
Speaker 3: don't think they have computers in this world. They should
Speaker 3: have the what are the little like magnified scrolls or something.
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, they better not have computers. Yes, because that's
Speaker 2: of course the whole big deal in the universe that
Speaker 2: we have the Butlerian Jahad that eradicated thinking machines, and
Speaker 2: we have this strong date, you know, religious and cultural
Speaker 2: that thou shalt not make a machine in the likeness
Speaker 2: of a human mind.
Speaker 3: Right, which is why in this world they have the mentats.
Speaker 3: These are humans who are essentially trained to be computers
Speaker 3: while remaining human. Yeah, but whatever this object is he's
Speaker 3: messing with. It's displaying encyclopedic information on screen about different planets.
Speaker 3: We see information on Caladan, Benny, Tlilax, and Aracus. We
Speaker 3: learn about the mentats, the human computers with their red
Speaker 3: stained lips. We learn about how the spice milange is
Speaker 3: mined from the surface of Dune. We learn about the
Speaker 3: worms of Iracus, which attack all rhythmic vibrations, and we
Speaker 3: learn that the Harconins are the sworn enemy of Houseitreides
Speaker 3: and their home world gide Prime is close is close
Speaker 3: to Aracus.
Speaker 2: It is interesting that this film decides to go ahead
Speaker 2: and lay out stuff, you know, information concerning the Toley Laksu,
Speaker 2: who are not going to be important in this film
Speaker 2: at all, Like they were clearly thinking ahead to subsequent
Speaker 2: film elms. I mean, they're part of it, like their
Speaker 2: their work is present here, but you don't actually need
Speaker 2: to bring them up. Likewise, later we're gonna get a
Speaker 2: mention and you know, previously we had a mention of IX,
Speaker 2: and X is not evenally important to this film either.
Speaker 2: So it seems like if you wanted to like cut
Speaker 2: down on the amount of information you're hitting the viewer with.
Speaker 2: These would have would have been things you could have
Speaker 2: left on the cutting room floor.
Speaker 3: Yeah, yeah, interesting choice. We have just folded space from IX. Yes.
Speaker 2: Uh.
Speaker 3: Anyway, so Paul is approached in his state room here
Speaker 3: by three characters who are servants of House the Treades.
Speaker 3: There is Thufar hawat the mentat, and his eyebrows would
Speaker 3: function as arrowfoils. Essentially, he's got like gigantic wing like eyebrows,
Speaker 3: and he seems to be he's wearing like a fur
Speaker 3: fringed coat at the strange choice, but I like it. Yeah.
Speaker 3: We also meet in the scene Gerny Halleck, the Master,
Speaker 3: the war master who trains Paul in the Marshall Virtues.
Speaker 3: And we meet doctor Wellington Ua, the physician of House
Speaker 3: A Treades. The he's a called a Suk doctor. And
Speaker 3: the Souk school of medicine is I think like the
Speaker 3: it's like the main sort of way medicine is done
Speaker 3: in the world of Doune.
Speaker 2: All right, let's go ahead and lay out these three
Speaker 2: actors then, because they come in like next to each other,
Speaker 2: it's almost kind of comedic the way they come out,
Speaker 2: But you know, and and so, first of all, we
Speaker 2: have we have Howitt played by Freddie Jones, who lived
Speaker 2: nineteen twenty seven through twenty nineteen, British character actor who
Speaker 2: we talked about in our episode on eighty three s Kroll.
Speaker 2: He had previously been in Lynch's The Elephant Man, and
Speaker 2: he has a slew of other credits, including nineteen sixty
Speaker 2: nine's Frankenstein Must Be Destroyed, though that is generally I
Speaker 2: think one that a lot of people choose to skip
Speaker 2: in the Hammer of Frankenstein legacy. But in anyway, he's
Speaker 2: perfectly fine in this, if a bit doddering for my taste.
Speaker 2: I always picture Howitt as being a little more I
Speaker 2: don't know, he's more loof here, which is in fitting
Speaker 2: with the mintat but I tend to imagine him always
Speaker 2: as being a bit more assertive. I mean, he's the
Speaker 2: master of Spies for House of Tredes, like.
Speaker 3: Yeah, simultaneously serene but sharp, and I think Stephen McKinley
Speaker 3: Henderson gets that in Dune Part one absolutely yeah.
Speaker 2: And I do love the eyebrows like this is a
Speaker 2: film that does commit to helping the viewer out by
Speaker 2: having a lot of visual cues regarding factions, houses and
Speaker 2: different types of psychically enhanced people. And so the Mintats
Speaker 2: all have just out of control eyebrows and I'll allow it.
Speaker 3: It's gonna need okay. And he's got the red stained
Speaker 3: lips from the juice that the Mintat straight.
Speaker 2: Yes, yes, more than that in a minute.
Speaker 3: But okay. So that's through fear how the Mentat. But
Speaker 3: we also have Gurnie Halleck and doctor Ua.
Speaker 2: Yeah, Hallick is of course. Gurney here is played by
Speaker 2: Patrick Stewart born in nineteen forty. You know who Patrick
Speaker 2: Stewart is. We're talking about Captain John luc Picard. We're
Speaker 2: talking about Charles Xavier. His pre track films also include
Speaker 2: nineteen eighty five It's Life Force. He was born in
Speaker 2: nineteen forty. We talked about him briefly in our episode
Speaker 2: on Nyazaki's Nausica because he did one of the voices,
Speaker 2: so one of the key voices for that and did
Speaker 2: an excellent job. But yeah, he is our troubadour warrior
Speaker 2: in Lynch's Doom.
Speaker 3: There's something about the way this character is realized in
Speaker 3: the movie that makes him less exciting than he could
Speaker 3: have been. Patrick Stewart in the role of Gurney Halleck.
Speaker 3: Sign me up. That sounds amazing. A lot of his
Speaker 3: scenes are kind of underwhelming, and it feels like it's
Speaker 3: not necessarily Patrick Stewart's fault. It something about the way
Speaker 3: it's that they're written and edited together. Like he's very
Speaker 3: abrupt when he starts that we're about to get into
Speaker 3: this like sparring fight training scene. It's just like very abrupt,
Speaker 3: and he has not given a lot of room to
Speaker 3: express the character, it seems to me.
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, Well, Meanwhile, in the recent Dune films, Josh
Speaker 2: Brolin has really had had more of an opportunity, I think,
Speaker 2: to inhabit this role and ultimately is just tremendous in it.
Speaker 2: So Josh Brolin easily my favorite journey that we've seen
Speaker 2: on film.
Speaker 3: However, Patrick Stewart does serve as the human vehicle for
Speaker 3: my favorite character in this whole movie, which is Pug Atraodes.
Speaker 3: We'll get to that a little bit.
Speaker 2: Yeah, anytime he's on camera bravely defending the atrides strategic
Speaker 2: stockpile of pugs, he's a joy, all right. And then
Speaker 2: we have yeah, we have doctor Wellington Ua played by
Speaker 2: Dean Stockwell. Who've lived nineteen thirty six through twenty twenty one,
Speaker 2: a wonderful American actor that we discussed in depth for
Speaker 2: our episode on the Dunwich Horror in which he starred
Speaker 2: as the warlock Wilburt Wetley. Definitely go back and listen
Speaker 2: to that episode if you want to hear us talk
Speaker 2: more about Dean Stockwell. But I think he does a
Speaker 2: fine job here and makes for a very sympathetic Ua.
Speaker 2: Chan Chin is also great in the two thou twenty
Speaker 2: one adaptation.
Speaker 3: I agree. I feel like doctor Yue is one of
Speaker 3: those characters that is hard to realize on screen because
Speaker 3: so much of his drama is internal. Like we like
Speaker 3: we were talking about that, you know, like he has
Speaker 3: sort of the the reader in the book is given
Speaker 3: access to some of his internal thoughts that give a
Speaker 3: lot of meaning to his activity, to his his sort
Speaker 3: of tragic character arc.
Speaker 2: Yeah. Yeah, but if you're going into it cold, you
Speaker 2: really only you're still only encountering him for a short
Speaker 2: amount of time, So there's a lot of emotion and
Speaker 2: turmoil to pack into that performance in a very short time.
Speaker 2: I think both of these two gentlemen do a great
Speaker 2: job with it. In their own way, and clearly this
Speaker 2: is something we'll touch on later, but clearly they shot
Speaker 2: more scenes with Dean Stockwell, because at times they'll just
Speaker 2: like they'll like zoom zoo, they'll like fade into a
Speaker 2: scene where he's having like a really emotional moment about
Speaker 2: what he's about to do, and then we we fade
Speaker 2: back out of that. This was a longer scene that
Speaker 2: was going to be in the intended longer cut.
Speaker 3: Yeah, yeah, and I can imagine that being a particular
Speaker 3: sore spot if like the producers were saying, we got
Speaker 3: to cut all this doctor Ue stuff from the first
Speaker 3: third of the movie. Anyway, So these three men have
Speaker 3: all sort of been involved in training Paul to become
Speaker 3: a superhuman of sorts. He for example, when they walk
Speaker 3: into the room, he grins very pleased with himself and
Speaker 3: claims that he could tell who was approaching him from
Speaker 3: behind without looking. You know, he seems almost giddy with
Speaker 3: how powerful his ears are, and Gurney engages. Gurney comes
Speaker 3: up and he's like, okay, time to knife fight Paul.
Speaker 3: So they're gonna have a knife sparring match. Paul is
Speaker 3: trained to fight with the blade using energy shields and
Speaker 3: at first Paul says, you know, we already did our
Speaker 3: knife training this morning. I'm not in the mood for more,
Speaker 3: and Garney Hallick says, moods a thing for cattle and
Speaker 3: love play, not fight. So that's a pretty good moment
Speaker 3: for Patrick Stewart. But anyway, so they go into this fight,
Speaker 3: and the way the energy shields are represented in this
Speaker 3: movie kind of makes it so you can't really see
Speaker 3: the actors anymore. They're represented as these animated prisms that
Speaker 3: extend over the body from a device on the belt,
Speaker 3: and they make the characters look like sort of blocky
Speaker 3: early CGI characters like in the Money for Nothing video.
Speaker 2: Yeah, this was disappointing for me rewatching the movie because
Speaker 2: these effects were much better in my memory. I like
Speaker 2: the concept of the shield technology being you know, kind
Speaker 2: of blocky. I like the idea of being this kind
Speaker 2: of like brownish color. The color schemes good. And interestingly enough,
Speaker 2: i'd recently watched an extra about the excellent low Ki
Speaker 2: series mini series that came out. Well, I guess it's
Speaker 2: more than many series went two seasons, but they were
Speaker 2: inspired by these effects to create their portal doors, which
Speaker 2: are important to the plot of low Key, so clearly
Speaker 2: it resonated with other people, but yeah, rewatching it, they
Speaker 2: just end up hiding almost all of the action. The
Speaker 2: new films do a much better job not only just
Speaker 2: effects wise, but also creating a complex shield tech on
Speaker 2: the screen that makes instant visual sense because there are
Speaker 2: a lot of ins and outs to the way they work,
Speaker 2: and it's pivotal for understanding various things about combat and
Speaker 2: the Donning universe.
Speaker 3: Yeah, it's a difficult thing to represent, but they do
Speaker 3: a good job in the new movie. So the idea
Speaker 3: is that these personal energy shields deflect fast moving incoming objects.
Speaker 3: So if you try to stab somebody or shoot them,
Speaker 3: the shield will deflect that. So the way to harm
Speaker 3: someone with wearing one of these shields is quote the
Speaker 3: slow blade. You have to slowly move the knife through
Speaker 3: the shield. So it's counterintuitive to normal you know, fighting instincts,
Speaker 3: and the way it's represented in the new movies is
Speaker 3: that something that comes in fast and is deflected by
Speaker 3: the shield, the shield glows blue, but when something slowly
Speaker 3: is able to move through the shield, it turns red.
Speaker 2: Yeah, which is a great visual system for the viewer.
Speaker 2: You know, let us understand what's happening on the screen
Speaker 2: in the same way that mentats have giant eyebrows in
Speaker 2: this movie.
Speaker 3: Right, So, after the fight, Paul and doctor Ua trade
Speaker 3: information about Irakus. Paul is extremely interested in the worms,
Speaker 3: and we also learned about the people called the Fremen
Speaker 3: who live on dune and have extreme blue eyes from
Speaker 3: their use of the spice millange. Also in this scene,
Speaker 3: Paul reveals that he suspects the Emperor is supporting the
Speaker 3: Harconins against them, again revealing a lot right at the beginning.
Speaker 3: So not only does the Emperor explain his whole plot
Speaker 3: at the beginning of this movie, Paul says, like, I've
Speaker 3: just figured it out. I know it before it happens.
Speaker 3: So the a trainees like, no, Aracus is a trap,
Speaker 3: but they're going to go anyway, yep.
Speaker 2: And you know that alone, that statement alone is perhaps
Speaker 2: not completely out of keeping, Like there are people in
Speaker 2: House of Tredes that realize that this is this is
Speaker 2: a trap. But key is that they think it is
Speaker 2: a trap that they can turn to their advantage.
Speaker 3: Right. Oh, and then we get even more fight training
Speaker 3: this one. This one is a real upgrade I think
Speaker 3: from the the energy shield scene. Now we're going to
Speaker 3: get the weirding module with the stabbing robot. So they say,
Speaker 3: doctor Ua put the weirding module on him, rob How
Speaker 3: would you describe what the weirding module is and what
Speaker 3: it does.
Speaker 2: I mean, it looks like an underwater camera housing is
Speaker 2: what it looks like. And I guess this is not
Speaker 2: in the book, but it is supposedly some sort of
Speaker 2: thing that turns your voice into a weapon. The weirding
Speaker 2: way is a movement technique martial arts that the benjesterate
Speaker 2: that is in the books. But if memory serves the
Speaker 2: filmmakers here, and I think maybe Lynch in particular wanted
Speaker 2: to avoid putting martial arts in their film. I think
Speaker 2: there's something about like Lynch didn't want to see karate
Speaker 2: on the dunes of Iracus. Or this might also be
Speaker 2: classified as something you could consider like the fear of
Speaker 2: looking silly and cinematic adaptations of Dune, which is something
Speaker 2: you see, and at least this and the more recent adaptations,
Speaker 2: there seem to be some choices that were made where
Speaker 2: they're like, okay, we can't do that. That might look
Speaker 2: too silly, or at least that's the way I read
Speaker 2: into some of those changes, so, you know, fair enough,
Speaker 2: but the device and the concept here are kind of clunky,
Speaker 2: and it forces us to have to figure out another
Speaker 2: strange technology after just having experienced the shields.
Speaker 3: That's right. But the weirding module is silly. I'm so.
Speaker 3: I mean, I like it. I wouldn't want it removed
Speaker 3: from the movie. But it's funny because, as you said,
Speaker 3: it translate like sounds or voices into lethal energy attacks.
Speaker 3: So it's like a blaster that you operate by saying.
Speaker 2: Zap, yeah, zap, zong, et cetera. You can use it,
Speaker 2: et cetera, can be a killing.
Speaker 3: Word, that's right. I think I read somewhere that, as
Speaker 3: you said, you know, so, the Weirding module is original
Speaker 3: to Lynch's movie. It's not in the book. And I
Speaker 3: read somewhere that this might be like a strange literalization
Speaker 3: of a line in the novel about the name of
Speaker 3: maudieb the name later taken by Paul when he joins
Speaker 3: the Fremen, that name being a quote killing word, which
Speaker 3: I think may have been a metaphor in the original context,
Speaker 3: but then literalized into it. This piece of sci fi
Speaker 3: technology m.
Speaker 2: H and so they run with it. It is it's
Speaker 2: it's weird. It's fun, but it is clunky, and it's
Speaker 2: it's not something I'm super attached too.
Speaker 3: Yeah. So he fights the stabbing robot and Paul is
Speaker 3: shown to be very powerful at the weirding way.
Speaker 2: Yeah.
Speaker 3: Nice to track during this. I like it. Oh that's right,
Speaker 3: yeah with the percussion. So later we see Paul meeting
Speaker 3: other characters. He meets Duncan Idaho, who must go ahead
Speaker 3: of them to Aracus. He is the sword master of
Speaker 3: House A Treades, and I think he's going to go
Speaker 3: ahead to sort of meet with the Fremen and try
Speaker 3: to interface with them. Yeah.
Speaker 2: Played here by Richard Jordan, who lived nineteen thirty seven
Speaker 2: through nineteen ninety three, Emmy nominated actor whose credits include
Speaker 2: seventy six is Logan's Run nineteen ninety is The Hunt
Speaker 2: for Red October in nineteen ninety three is Gettysburg. Not
Speaker 2: much really to say about him here, though, because he
Speaker 2: has almost no screen time and he's just quickly forgotten.
Speaker 2: He's an important character in the novel Dune and moving
Speaker 2: forward in the Dune series, but he's treated like a
Speaker 2: red shirt here. At least in this cut. The twenty
Speaker 2: twenty one film with Jason Momoa in the role, is
Speaker 2: I think the best version of the character we've seen
Speaker 2: so far in an adaptation. And we'll just see where
Speaker 2: it goes from there in the future. Ah.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I didn't put it together yet. We may get
Speaker 3: a Jason Momoa.
Speaker 2: Gola a mamola if you will.
Speaker 3: So we also meet here Duke Leto, the head of
Speaker 3: house Atredes, who meets with his son Paul, and we
Speaker 3: learned Duke Letto is very proud of his son. Duke
Speaker 3: Leto is shown to be, within the context of the story,
Speaker 3: a very a very kind, fair and you know, stern,
Speaker 3: but just kind of ruler. And he, you know, he
Speaker 3: encourages his son Paul and tells him he's proud of him.
Speaker 3: He says, without change, something sleeps inside us and seldom awakens.
Speaker 3: The sleeper must awaken.
Speaker 2: Yeah, this is a great bit, recurring bit in this film.
Speaker 3: I like it.
Speaker 2: The Duke here is played by German actor Jurgen Procnow
Speaker 2: born nineteen forty one. His big breakout role was, of course,
Speaker 2: playing the captain in nineteen eighty one's The Boat or
Speaker 2: Doss Boat or doss Boot if you will see previous
Speaker 2: discussions on the title for this film. But actor with
Speaker 2: a tremendous face and a great presence for playing stern, serious, distant,
Speaker 2: and sometimes threatening characters. His filmography is all over the place,
Speaker 2: but a few notable points include Michael Mann's The Keep
Speaker 2: from eighty three, Twin Peaks Firewalk with Me in ninety two,
Speaker 2: kind of continuing this trend of Lynch often bringing back
Speaker 2: actors that he worked with on Doune for other projects.
Speaker 2: He of course plays the author Sutter Kane and John
Speaker 2: Carpenter's In the Mouth of Madness. He has a role
Speaker 2: in the Judge Dread film from ninety five, and he
Speaker 2: pops up in The English Patient in ninety six, but
Speaker 2: lots of other credits. I think he even plays an
Speaker 2: older Arnold Schwarzenegger in a TV bio movie about Arnold Schwarzenegger.
Speaker 3: What.
Speaker 2: Yeah, it was like an A A and E movie
Speaker 2: or something. I remember it looked did not look.
Speaker 3: Good, like a movie about an existing actor projecting that
Speaker 3: ac actor into the future.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I don't know, but at any rate, you know,
Speaker 2: it ends up being a more distant feeling duke here,
Speaker 2: And I think I think it works, you know, concerning
Speaker 2: his relationship with Paul, and there are these moments of
Speaker 2: warmth like the Sleeper Awaken speech. But I would say
Speaker 2: he's my third favorite Duke Leedo, the first behind Oscar
Speaker 2: Isaac and William Hurt.
Speaker 3: I also really like Oscar Isaac's performance in the new film.
Speaker 3: So so yeah, that's Paul's father. We also meet Paul's mother,
Speaker 3: Lady Jessica, whom we meet walking through the rain in
Speaker 3: the courtyard of the palace, hidden under this voluminous hood.
Speaker 3: And she seems very interesting and mysterious when we first
Speaker 3: meet her, because we hear her inner voice worrying about
Speaker 3: Paul and saying that he must face the box. No
Speaker 3: man has ever faced it before, and tonight she may
Speaker 3: lose her son. So when we meet her, she's already
Speaker 3: worrying that she may have committed her son to a
Speaker 3: lethal challenge.
Speaker 2: Yeah, and she was played here by Francesca and Niece
Speaker 2: born nineteen forty five, English actor who also played the
Speaker 2: Witch of the Web in nineteen eighty three Skroll. So
Speaker 2: another Kroll connection. Extensive stage, screen and TV credits. She
Speaker 2: played Lady Macbeth in that excellent nineteen seventy two film adaptation.
Speaker 3: I like her in this role, and she plays it
Speaker 3: with this interesting mix of deference and defiance. These two
Speaker 3: elements come out in different moments. She's like a character
Speaker 3: pulled back and forth between duty to authority and following
Speaker 3: her own heart and her love for her family. And
Speaker 3: so I really like her in this role. I feel
Speaker 3: like she kind of gets her character gets downplayed in
Speaker 3: the second half of the story here in the eighty
Speaker 3: four adaptation, and I like more. I think what is
Speaker 3: done with Rebecca Ferguson's role in the newer adaptations?
Speaker 2: Agreed, Yeah, I think Rebecca Ferguson just gets more to
Speaker 2: do with the character. We get a strong portrayal of
Speaker 2: Lady Jessica both before and after the initial fall of
Speaker 2: House Atreades.
Speaker 3: Oh, but all of this is leading up to the
Speaker 3: return of a character we've already met. We talked about
Speaker 3: in the last episode, the Reverend Mother gaias Helen Moheim,
Speaker 3: and we met her with the Emperor because she is
Speaker 3: the Emperor's truth sayer. You know, she was supposed to
Speaker 3: try to listen in on the meeting between the Emperor
Speaker 3: and the Guild Navigator, and as she learns from that
Speaker 3: meeting that there is some significance to Paula Trades, the
Speaker 3: young heir of House Atreades, and that she and the
Speaker 3: Benny Jester at Sisters must learn more about Paul to
Speaker 3: find out what his significance is. So here she is yeah.
Speaker 2: So, and this is where we get our goamja bar scene,
Speaker 2: which is I think pretty effective here. I like it
Speaker 2: in both this adaptation and the recent adaptation. You know,
Speaker 2: it's one of the most famous scenes in the whole novel,
Speaker 2: and it's also one of the first big scene in
Speaker 2: the novel. As I think we've discussed before, Like it
Speaker 2: happens almost immediately in your reading of.
Speaker 3: The book, that's right. So the premise of the scene
Speaker 3: is that the Reverend Mother arrives, she speaks with Lady Jessica,
Speaker 3: and Paul sort of awakes and overhears them speaking a
Speaker 3: little bit about something about his purpose and that he
Speaker 3: must be tested. So Paul is woken in the night
Speaker 3: and taken before the Reverend Mother. We do get some
Speaker 3: chewing out of Lady Jessica by the Reverend Mother because
Speaker 3: of her hubris, disobeying orders and having a son trying
Speaker 3: you know, she's like you're trying to create the queens
Speaker 3: Out's hatterak. You're not supposed to do that. That is
Speaker 3: the super being of the universe. That's violation of orders.
Speaker 3: So forth. Now, somewhere before we actually get the hand
Speaker 3: in the Box, there's a moment here where we see
Speaker 3: Duke Leto alone in his office, apparently maybe aware of
Speaker 3: what's going on, but not intervening. I don't recall if
Speaker 3: in the book he was aware or not, but anyway,
Speaker 3: we see him sitting alone in his office. And this
Speaker 3: is the first time we see the House of Trade pug.
Speaker 3: Can we set off a pug alarm pug alert sidebar
Speaker 3: on the pug, So we're gonna see this pug pop
Speaker 3: up a number of times, like when they arrive on
Speaker 3: the planet, they've got the pug with them. And then
Speaker 3: also later when the Harconins attack the House of Tredes,
Speaker 3: we see Gurnie Halleck Patrick Stewart running into battle with
Speaker 3: like this science fiction rifle, clutching the pug to his chest.
Speaker 3: I have always loved this detail. It seems so characteristically Lynchian.
Speaker 3: The warriors of this feudal house have toy breed dogs
Speaker 3: that they carry around with them from planet to planet,
Speaker 3: even taking them into battle as if they are tokens
Speaker 3: of good fortune or provide magical protection. There is. It's
Speaker 3: like a lot of images in David Lynch movies, and
Speaker 3: I think part of what makes him a really great
Speaker 3: filmmaker and artist is he puts in these weird images
Speaker 3: that on one hand feel kind of off, but on
Speaker 3: the other hand you think about them and they just
Speaker 3: feel right. Something about the pug works. I don't know
Speaker 3: what it means, but it feels like, yeah, they would
Speaker 3: have a pug like this.
Speaker 2: Yeah, well, we saw the Emperor had his own dog
Speaker 2: breeds running around, so it's weird, but it feels it's
Speaker 2: also kind of fitting that a great house would have
Speaker 2: its signature dog breed. The pug is also the closest
Speaker 2: thing that we get to a chair dog, which we
Speaker 2: get much later in the book series.
Speaker 3: I think the pug is not mistreated. We see the
Speaker 3: pug treated very lovingly and respectfully.
Speaker 2: Well, cheer dogs are not mistreated either. They just do
Speaker 2: they have a function you sit on them, and that
Speaker 2: you're not mistreating a chair dog to sit on a
Speaker 2: chair dog.
Speaker 3: Surely, Oh okay, I misunderstood the.
Speaker 2: Cheer dog doesn't have a face or presumably a butt.
Speaker 2: I guess it's I don't know. There's probably some inherent
Speaker 2: cruelty in the creation of a chair dog, but it's
Speaker 2: never really explored.
Speaker 3: Not to get too dark. I guess you could say
Speaker 3: some cruelty in the creation of a pug as well,
Speaker 3: but that's they don't have to go. But these, these
Speaker 3: pugs are treated. These are beloved pugs. The atrendees love
Speaker 3: their pugs.
Speaker 2: Pugs are cuties, no doubt about it. We have made
Speaker 2: a dog in the semblance of a human baby.
Speaker 3: We were told we shall not, but you just can't
Speaker 3: follow those rules. Okay, so sorry. We coming back to
Speaker 3: the Gomjabar scene. So this is where the reverend Mother
Speaker 3: confronts Paul alone in the study in the house on
Speaker 3: Kaladan here and she starts to command him using the voice.
Speaker 3: This is one of the many Beni Jesert arts having
Speaker 3: a way of manipulating their voice so as to sort
Speaker 3: of hypnotize and command people, even against their will. The
Speaker 3: Reverend Mother tries to use the voice to command Paul,
Speaker 3: but he's somewhat resistant at first. When she talks. In
Speaker 3: this movie, it's kind of a lizard queen speaking through
Speaker 3: a fan voice.
Speaker 2: Yeah, it sounds it sounds really good in my opinion.
Speaker 2: Also really like the way that it's brought to life
Speaker 2: in the new film adaptations, and they feel similar. They're
Speaker 2: probably not that similar if you line them up one
Speaker 2: to one, but they're both effective for me.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I agree. So Paul is given this trial, the
Speaker 3: trial of the Box where the reverend. So he puts
Speaker 3: his hand in a box that the reverend mother offers him,
Speaker 3: and then she puts a sort of poisoned thimble with
Speaker 3: a needle on it against his neck and tells him
Speaker 3: there's going to be pain in the box. He will
Speaker 3: want to remove his hand, but if he removes his hand,
Speaker 3: she will stab him with the gum jabbar the poison needle,
Speaker 3: and he will die. He's suffering, it's burning, the fire
Speaker 3: is consuming the flesh down to the bone, he thinks,
Speaker 3: or at least it feels that way. And the whole
Speaker 3: point is that someone of inferior will would remove their
Speaker 3: hand from the box in response to the pain. But
Speaker 3: there's something she's testing for kind of will in Paul
Speaker 3: to face the pain and keep his hand inside. And
Speaker 3: in this scene when trying to get through the pain.
Speaker 3: We hear Paul's inner voice reciting the Litany against Fear.
Speaker 3: One of the great things from the novel and the
Speaker 3: version of it used in the movie, is that he says,
Speaker 3: I must not fear. Fear is the mind killer. Fear
Speaker 3: is the little death that brings total obliteration. I will
Speaker 3: face my fear. I will permit it to pass over
Speaker 3: me and through me. And when it has gone past,
Speaker 3: I will turn the inner eye to see its path.
Speaker 3: Where the fear has gone, there will be nothing. Only
Speaker 3: I will remain.
Speaker 2: And I really like his reading of this with the
Speaker 2: inner voice. It's kind of there's an urgency to it
Speaker 2: because he is in pain. I heard the sample in
Speaker 2: a mix once before. I believe it was an Autecher mix.
Speaker 2: It was fay well, very well utilized.
Speaker 3: I think there are slight changes to the Litany against
Speaker 3: Fear here from in the book. I don't remember what
Speaker 3: the changes are, but I like this version of it.
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, it's still very much. It keeps most of
Speaker 2: the words and definitely keeps the spirit of the thing.
Speaker 3: And colwahad, He's okay, he passed the test. The reverend
Speaker 3: mother says coolwahad, which is a phrase meaning I am
Speaker 3: profoundly stirred, and she explains the prophecy of the quisats
Speaker 3: Haderak to Paul, but Paul fears for his father, and
Speaker 3: the reverend mother tells him what can be done to
Speaker 3: protect his father has been done, So you know, it's
Speaker 3: there's a kind of fatalism going on here.
Speaker 2: Yeah, all right, it's time to planet hop again.
Speaker 3: Oh boy, and now we're getting really depraved. So let's
Speaker 3: go to Gidee Prime, home of House Harconin and lured.
Speaker 3: The way the Harconins are realized in this movie, there
Speaker 3: is a level of weirdness that again goes beyond the books,
Speaker 3: is purely David Lynch, I think, so. First of all,
Speaker 3: I just wanted to focus. They give us a brief
Speaker 3: look at the exterior of Gidee Prime before we meet
Speaker 3: the characters, and it appears to be a kind of
Speaker 3: urban landscape of shadows and green light, with these unbroken
Speaker 3: walls of industrial looking buildings stretching up until they vanish
Speaker 3: into a dark sky. There's black smoke pouring out of
Speaker 3: a hidden orifice in the city walls, towers of metal
Speaker 3: struts in the foreground, almost like watchtowers or guard stations,
Speaker 3: with some kind of tortured sculpture looming between the buildings.
Speaker 3: And we see the sculpture many times. It is like
Speaker 3: a giant porcelain face on which the eyes and nose
Speaker 3: are hidden behind a shadow, and all that's visible is
Speaker 3: a giant gaping mouth over a plump chin, almost like
Speaker 3: the mouth of a fish, but on the head of
Speaker 3: a human baby. So is this sculpture opening its mouth
Speaker 3: to devour food, to scream in pain, or to gasp
Speaker 3: for breath? All seem to be implied this design for
Speaker 3: the home world of the Harconins, because it's like this
Speaker 3: little sculpture with the eyes hidden, is like greed, pain, fear,
Speaker 3: and desperation luxuriating in the ambiguity between them all.
Speaker 2: And is it also piping out smoke or some sort
Speaker 2: of vapor because the planet itself is supposed to be
Speaker 2: heavily polluted. So yes, I kind of like see it
Speaker 2: as that as well, like everything you said, but on
Speaker 2: top of that, it's spouting pollution.
Speaker 3: There you see smoke coming out. I interpreted as the
Speaker 3: smoke coming out from behind the sculpture, but I don't know.
Speaker 3: It could be it could be, but yeah, the planet
Speaker 3: has a very I think a lot with the green
Speaker 3: designs is to suggest not a natural green like plants,
Speaker 3: but like a poisonous green, a kind of industrial green ooze.
Speaker 2: Absolutely, yeah, I love this look. We only see like
Speaker 2: really a glimpse of it here, but it's reminiscent of
Speaker 2: hr Giger's original biomechanical designs for the planet from I
Speaker 2: believe the Jodroowski adaptation that never came to fruition, but
Speaker 2: little bits like that has kind of been passed down
Speaker 2: and become part of the tradition of portraying Dune on film,
Speaker 2: even in the recent DV adaptation. So we see a
Speaker 2: lot more of this planet in part two, of course,
Speaker 2: and they have their own wonderful and an inventive way
Speaker 2: of envisioning it, but there is still that biomechanical gothic
Speaker 2: aspect to everything.
Speaker 3: Yeah. Yeah, Well in the new movie, I love that
Speaker 3: they do it as a very desaturated or I don't
Speaker 3: know if that's the right term. Actually it's a black
Speaker 3: and white kind of environment with high contrast that I
Speaker 3: think is explained by Gideye Prime having a black son
Speaker 3: so they say there's no color on the surface of
Speaker 3: the planet.
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, I think that's supposed to be the reason
Speaker 2: for it, and give him an excuse to shoot it
Speaker 2: an infra red apparently.
Speaker 3: So we meet here the Harkonen Mintat Piterer Devrees, who
Speaker 3: is the you know, the court, the equivalent of Thufir
Speaker 3: Hawat to house the Treades. This is played by.
Speaker 2: Oh well, this of course is Brad Dorif born nineteen fifty. Yes,
Speaker 2: one of American cinema's finest weird actors. We've talked about
Speaker 2: it on the show before, in our episode on Toby
Speaker 2: Hooper's Spontaneous Combustion from nineteen eighty nine. And he's one
Speaker 2: of these actors that's enjoyable in pretty much anything, regardless
Speaker 2: of overall film quality. You know, he's probably best known
Speaker 2: for his performances in such films as nineteen seventy nine's
Speaker 2: Wise Blood, which is generally excellent, nineteen eighty eight Child's
Speaker 2: Play in two thousand and two's Lord of the Rings
Speaker 2: the Two Towers.
Speaker 3: In which he plays Grima worm tongue.
Speaker 2: Yeah, he had great performance there in which he has
Speaker 2: no eyebrows. But in this in Lynch's Doom, he of
Speaker 2: course has Mintat eyebrows, and I do love him in this.
Speaker 2: He captures the viciousness of Pider, But at the same time,
Speaker 2: this is a Dune character that I dearly love, and
Speaker 2: there's never enough time in any adaptation to explore him
Speaker 2: and his delicious, dangerous relationship with the baron, where they
Speaker 2: both expect to know that the other will try and
Speaker 2: kill them at one point the other. It's like a
Speaker 2: delicate balance.
Speaker 3: Yeah, he is an evil, vicious character, but also for
Speaker 3: some reason I find him pitiable.
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, I mean he is a twisted mentat. He
Speaker 2: is the product of some sort of either bizarre corruption
Speaker 2: of a normal mentat or some corruption of the mentat process.
Speaker 2: And with all these things you have to sort of
Speaker 2: pick and choose how are you going to present him.
Speaker 2: I do quite love David Datzmachian's performance in the recent
Speaker 2: adaptation as well, but it's just a different slice of
Speaker 2: the same character. He's more cerebral and withdrawn in that performance,
Speaker 2: and it still works. It still captures a part of
Speaker 2: what is a ultimately a brief but complex character.
Speaker 3: Right. So, Pider, he's speaking to himself. He says, it
Speaker 3: is by will alone, I set my mind in motion.
Speaker 3: So he's reciting a kind of Mintat litany here, some
Speaker 3: sort of equivalent to the Litany against Fear, except instead
Speaker 3: of about avoiding fear, this is about, like, you know,
Speaker 3: realizing your potential with the help of drugs. Because it
Speaker 3: goes on to say it is by the juice of
Speaker 3: Sappho that thoughts acquire speed, that lips acquire stains, the
Speaker 3: stains become a warning, and then he says that a
Speaker 3: bunch of times.
Speaker 2: Yeah, this mintat Mantra is not from the books, but
Speaker 2: it is. It's one of those additions that feels perfectly
Speaker 2: at home in the Dune universe. It works, It absolutely works.
Speaker 2: And the whole thing about the juice of the Sappho
Speaker 2: is very much in the text.
Speaker 3: Yeah, he's so this is a nervous and unhappy Mintat
Speaker 3: in a dangerous situation.
Speaker 2: Yeah, nervous, angry, scheming, all those things, and yeah, we
Speaker 2: get it in this performance.
Speaker 3: So there are more visions of Giddee Prime people in
Speaker 3: pure white clothing walking through industrial mazes illuminated by green light.
Speaker 3: It's a very striking vision. Again, I love the designs
Speaker 3: of the planet here. I think they really work. We
Speaker 3: see harconin soldiers standing lined up with multiple barreled firearms
Speaker 3: in hand. Then finally we go to meet the Harconein
Speaker 3: Royalty in a room that is almost like it's green,
Speaker 3: like a bar of soap, and the Harconins are being
Speaker 3: attended by servants with almost Clive Barker style body modifications.
Speaker 3: Ears clipped and sown folded in on themselves, eyelids sewn
Speaker 3: shut with threads and tacks driven into the eyes. Also,
Speaker 3: everybody that has hair has red hair.
Speaker 2: Yeah, and the red hair touch is nice and helps
Speaker 2: us identify Harconins. But already this scene is too much
Speaker 2: like the eyes and ears sewn up is is just
Speaker 2: too much. And also that green, that green is too
Speaker 2: much like a modern perspective. I'll occasionally see stills from
Speaker 2: this and I'll initially think, oh, this is an unfinished sequence.
Speaker 2: That's green screen, you know, like that's where my mind goes, like,
Speaker 2: that's how alarming that green color is.
Speaker 3: So we finally meet the patriarch of the villainous house Harconin. Here,
Speaker 3: the Baron Vladimir Harconin being attended by doctors. So when
Speaker 3: we first see him, his face is covered in boils
Speaker 3: of some kind, and the doctors are doing something grotesque
Speaker 3: with them with a needle.
Speaker 2: Yeah. Now, this Baron Vladimir Harconin is played by Kenneth McMillan,
Speaker 2: who lived nineteen thirty two through nineteen eighty nine. American
Speaker 2: character actor who often played heavies and a reminder that
Speaker 2: by heavies I mean like threatening or dominant antagonists. He
Speaker 2: also played a lot of gruff authority figures. He didn't
Speaker 2: apparently didn't pursue an acting career until he was in
Speaker 2: his thirties, and he was forty before his first screen
Speaker 2: TV credits appear, showing up in a couple episodes of
Speaker 2: Dark Shadows, as well as an uncredited role in nineteen
Speaker 2: seventy three Serpico. He followed this up with small roles
Speaker 2: in the Taking of Pelham one, two three, The Stepford Wives,
Speaker 2: and Dog Day Afternoon. A fair amount of TV followed,
Speaker 2: including a role on the series Rota. He played a
Speaker 2: cop in the nineteen seventy nine Salem's Lot mini series
Speaker 2: from Toby Hooper, and he'd follow up Doune with a
Speaker 2: role in nineteen eighty five's Runaway Train and then mostly
Speaker 2: TV work.
Speaker 3: So this version of Baron Harkonen likes to scream and
Speaker 3: fly around in the air while screaming.
Speaker 2: Yeah. This character, this characterization of the Baron is a
Speaker 2: lot in the text. We are privy to his inner thoughts,
Speaker 2: and there are various dimensions to the character of the Baron,
Speaker 2: all of them evil. He is a man of vast
Speaker 2: greed and ambition, of appetite, brutality, fear, and endless plotting,
Speaker 2: and you can't possibly capture all of that on screen,
Speaker 2: so you pick and choose what you can. The recent
Speaker 2: adaptations do a great job focusing mostly on the brutal
Speaker 2: plotting aspect of the character. While this version of the
Speaker 2: Baron is a wild, gross demon of consumption, cackling, floating around, spitting,
Speaker 2: oozing and so forth. It's just too much, But to
Speaker 2: McMillan's credit, he rolls with it and delivers some nice menace.
Speaker 2: I'd say ultimately he's my third favorite Baron behind stellin
Speaker 2: Scars Guard. In the more recent adaptations, who's more of
Speaker 2: like the threatening and cerebral Baron? And then I have
Speaker 2: to say that Ian McNeice did a great job with
Speaker 2: it in the mini series, the sci fi mini series
Speaker 2: as well.
Speaker 3: Yeah, this is a less serious portrayal of the Baron
Speaker 3: than we get like with the Scar's Guard. Obviously, that
Speaker 3: is a very deep, dark, scary baron. This Baron is
Speaker 3: a lot funnier and that kind of continues with how
Speaker 3: the rest of how Harkonin is portrayed. We meet the
Speaker 3: baron's to nephew is a Fadea, and the Beast Rabon.
Speaker 3: I think they're called the Beast by the people of
Speaker 3: Irakus Rabon. What's his first name, Glossu or something, I believe.
Speaker 2: So, yeah, So the Beast here is played by Paul L.
Speaker 2: Smith of nineteen thirty six through twenty twelve, So this
Speaker 2: is another over the top performance just by another noted
Speaker 2: gruff character actor. So he's an American actor who played
Speaker 2: Bluto in the nineteen eighty Pope Eye movie. Other credits
Speaker 2: include Sam Raimi's Cohen Brothers scripted film Crime Way from
Speaker 2: eighty five, Red Sonia from eighty five, Gore from eighty seven,
Speaker 2: and the nineteen eighty two Spanish horror movie Pieces, which
Speaker 2: is on our potential to do list. But yeah, basically,
Speaker 2: this Beast is just a grotesque cartoon character. Dave Bautista
Speaker 2: does a solid job as the character in the recent films,
Speaker 2: and they really expand the role to make the role
Speaker 2: more meaningful and give Bautista much more to do.
Speaker 3: Like we were saying with Pider earlier, this is another
Speaker 3: character who is totally completely evil but also ends up
Speaker 3: being rather pitiable in the story.
Speaker 2: Yeah, and now the other son is, of course the
Speaker 2: golden child of House Harkonen. This is fate rap though,
Speaker 2: like you said, played by Sting, Yeah, fifty one. I
Speaker 2: believe this was only his fourth acting role, following nineteen
Speaker 2: eighty two's Brimstone and Treckle. And he'd follow this up
Speaker 2: by playing Frankenstein in nineteen eighty five's The Bride. That's
Speaker 2: the Doctor, by the way, that the true Frankenstein, not
Speaker 2: Frankenstein as a shorthand for the Monster. He's continued to
Speaker 2: act on and off over the years, often you know,
Speaker 2: really good, especially in small doses here and there. He
Speaker 2: is an Oscar winner. But in the original song category.
Speaker 3: Mm okay, I'm trying to think of what other movies
Speaker 3: is he He was in that. He was in the
Speaker 3: Who's Other Rock Opera? Not Tommy but Quadrophenia.
Speaker 2: He was, Yeah, he was. I think he had a
Speaker 2: small role in Lockstock and two smoking barrels much later,
Speaker 2: and like that was one where it's a very small role,
Speaker 2: but he's really good in it.
Speaker 3: You know, what do I think of Sting's performance in
Speaker 3: this movie? You know, it's absolutely memorable. I'm never gonna
Speaker 3: not be thinking about him in this role, especially his
Speaker 3: line delivery during the final fight scene, We'll get too
Speaker 3: later with you. I will kill him, I will kill you.
Speaker 2: Yeah, it's a it's a lot to figure out because
Speaker 2: he is he is over the top, and it's weird.
Speaker 2: It's a weird performance. He looks amazing and Fade Rotha
Speaker 2: on top of that is a strange character, like and
Speaker 2: no film adaptation, in my opinion, has really done him
Speaker 2: complete justice. Like he we don't know a lot about
Speaker 2: him ultimately, but we know and we know enough about
Speaker 2: him in the book that he's he's brash, he's not
Speaker 2: the plotter in the planner that his uncle is. His
Speaker 2: uncle is doing a lot to try and ensure that
Speaker 2: he moves up in the world and becomes the new
Speaker 2: face of House Harkonen. But there seems to be a
Speaker 2: lot of frustration with his maturity level and his appreciation
Speaker 2: for all of this. And you know, we just we
Speaker 2: tend to see less of that in the film adaptations.
Speaker 3: Yeah, the new movie does a good job of setting
Speaker 3: him up as a foil to Paul, that there are
Speaker 3: sort of two sides of the same coin. Yeah.
Speaker 2: Yeah, Austin Butler does a great job in doing Part
Speaker 2: two as this character, but it's a it's a rather
Speaker 2: different read on him. Like, on one hand, he's still
Speaker 2: supposed to be a kind of hot and supposed to
Speaker 2: be a definite threat to Paul, though perplexingly the new
Speaker 2: adaptations portray him as an honorable fighter, which I'm still
Speaker 2: trying to figure that out. I need to view Part
Speaker 2: two again in order to figure out how I really
Speaker 2: feel about all this, because I think one of the
Speaker 2: appeals of the character in the book and in this
Speaker 2: adaptation is that he will absolutely cheat to win, Yes,
Speaker 2: And I feel like that helped that that actually makes
Speaker 2: him more of a threat to Paul, because this is
Speaker 2: a guy will that will win at any cost and
Speaker 2: is used to winning at any cost and feels no
Speaker 2: shame about it.
Speaker 3: Yeah. Originally, the Harconins are not like worthy opponents or
Speaker 3: you know, honorable honorable villains. They are They're absolute like
Speaker 3: liars and cheaters and dirty tricksters and they'll do whatever
Speaker 3: they can.
Speaker 2: Yeah, So I'm sure dv has has his reasons, And
Speaker 2: like I say, I need to watch Doing Part two
Speaker 2: again to sort of figure out exactly how I feel
Speaker 2: about that performance. Now.
Speaker 3: I do love the book, but I think there is
Speaker 3: a new There's a change made in the new movie
Speaker 3: that I appreciate, which is that it excises from the
Speaker 3: Harconin plot line and characterization some elements that I think
Speaker 3: you could fairly argue are homophobic in the original portrayal,
Speaker 3: where like these like the Harconin characters, especially the Baron,
Speaker 3: are portrayed as having same sec attraction and I think
Speaker 3: you can you can say fairly it is not incidental
Speaker 3: to the fact that they're villains, but more sort of
Speaker 3: portrayed as part of their deviousness.
Speaker 2: Yeah. I think that was a solid cut for for
Speaker 2: the the new adaptations for sure. And and it's it's
Speaker 2: something that is handled in this adaptation, in Lynch's adaptation
Speaker 2: in a way that has that has attracted a fair
Speaker 2: amount of criticism over the years.
Speaker 3: Yeah, from what I can tell, it seems more implicit
Speaker 3: in Lynch's movie and a little more explicit in the book.
Speaker 3: But still I think it's somewhat there in the movie.
Speaker 2: Yeah, but let's not detract from the utter weirdness of
Speaker 2: this absolute Lynchian circus of a scene.
Speaker 3: Yes, because the setting. We haven't even finished describing the
Speaker 3: room they're in that. Oh no, okay, So interesting things
Speaker 3: about this scene. There is boiling acid under the floor,
Speaker 3: and it just seems to be part of the culture
Speaker 3: of Gidee Prime that when you're done with things, like
Speaker 3: the way we might throw something in the garbage can,
Speaker 3: they can throw things through a hole in the floor
Speaker 3: grate into the boiling acid below. So they use the
Speaker 3: boiling acid as the dumpster, and it's just there underneath
Speaker 3: the floor at all times, and I guess they're presumably
Speaker 3: breathing the fumes from it constantly.
Speaker 2: It's world building, baby.
Speaker 3: I like the detail. It's good. I don't recall if
Speaker 3: there's anything like that in the book, but it makes
Speaker 3: sense in this movie. The doctors attending the baron also
Speaker 3: have a very David lynch quality to them. This seems
Speaker 3: like purely Lynchy and flourish. One of them is like
Speaker 3: saying a little sort of nursery rhyme to the boils
Speaker 3: as he is picking at them, so he says, like,
Speaker 3: put the pick in their peete, turn it round real neat.
Speaker 3: That kind of cutesy rhyming in this grotesque context is
Speaker 3: an extremely David Lynch kind of thing to do.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I'll just mention briefly that that's the Leonardo Chimino
Speaker 2: playing the Baron's Doctor livednineteen seventeen through twenty twelve. You
Speaker 2: probably saw him in water World or in nineteen eighty
Speaker 2: seven's The Monster Squad when he played where he plays
Speaker 2: the old German guy. But yeah, this is weird and
Speaker 2: not in the books and just just strange, just strange
Speaker 2: and grotesque.
Speaker 3: Speaking of strange and grotesque, what is the thing that
Speaker 3: Rabond like crushes and then drinks the juice of here?
Speaker 3: Is this in some way a spice based cocktail? I
Speaker 3: don't think, as far as I know, Rabond is not
Speaker 3: consuming spice, because do we see him with blue eyes
Speaker 3: at all? He crushes something in a glass box and
Speaker 3: then sucks up its juice.
Speaker 2: I don't think this is spice though. To be sure,
Speaker 2: in the book they mentioned that you know a lot
Speaker 2: of royal houses use spice because spice extends your human life,
Speaker 2: And so I mean it's maybe they're using spice and
Speaker 2: they just don't use it at the levels that frem
Speaker 2: and use it to gain their eyes.
Speaker 3: This, I don't know.
Speaker 2: I always kind of read this as some other kind
Speaker 2: of strange space drug in this universe of weird space drugs.
Speaker 2: It's like a mummified frog juice box. It's like you
Speaker 2: auto crush a petrified creature and then you inhale it,
Speaker 2: and then you, of course you chunk the juice box
Speaker 2: across the room. I'm not sure what this is all about.
Speaker 2: I don't think it's anything from the book or the books,
Speaker 2: but it is marvelously strange. I like it.
Speaker 3: So anyway, you know, they're talking about their plots against
Speaker 3: House of Treades and the Baron. Just a note, generally
Speaker 3: he often starts levitating up in the air when he
Speaker 3: gets really excited. Again, the difference I think from the
Speaker 3: book that like in the book they say the Baron
Speaker 3: has like suspensers that help him like stay aloft, like
Speaker 3: help him stand up or something like that. But this
Speaker 3: is he's just flying all the time here.
Speaker 2: Yeah. Yeah, this movie made the choice that he was
Speaker 2: going to fly around and float around, and all subsequent
Speaker 2: adaptations have gone on that route as well, though it's
Speaker 2: more comical in this version, and it's more threatening and
Speaker 2: ominous in dv's adaptations. But we're still not out of
Speaker 2: all the weird creations and recreations for this scene.
Speaker 3: Oh no, there's also like, oh, this grotesque thing where
Speaker 3: like many of the servants and people like the people
Speaker 3: who work for the atreadees or not the Atredees. Sorry,
Speaker 3: the Harconans have this like plug, this like a valve
Speaker 3: in their heart that the Harconans can just like pull
Speaker 3: out the plug and like all their blood runs out
Speaker 3: of their chest and they die. And it seems that
Speaker 3: the baron just sometimes removes people's plugs for fun.
Speaker 2: Yeah, this is not in the books, but it is.
Speaker 2: It is kind of a fitting invention for the hearkens
Speaker 2: on a hole because yeah, so the baron apparently likes
Speaker 2: to level the playing field with his servants in his
Speaker 2: underling so that he can kill them at will by
Speaker 2: simply pulling this thing out. But this sequence in particular
Speaker 2: that follows because basically a what I think he's credited
Speaker 2: as a flower boy, like a servant comes in and
Speaker 2: the baron approaches him rather lustily and then pulls out
Speaker 2: his heart plug and blood goes everywhere. And this sequence
Speaker 2: has generated for amount criticism over the years due to
Speaker 2: not only its grotesque qualities, but also questionable implications during
Speaker 2: the AIDS crisis of the nineteen eighties. Given that in
Speaker 2: Quick Secession we see same sex desire, physical illness on
Speaker 2: the part of the baron, and also blood spraying everywhere.
Speaker 2: I don't think any of that was actually intentional, and
Speaker 2: Lynch is drawing directly on elements from the book here
Speaker 2: in many cases. But there's longstanding social criticism of this sequence.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I can see, maybe an isolation, some of these
Speaker 3: weird elements working better individually, but put together like this,
Speaker 3: I can absolutely see what the critics are saying there.
Speaker 3: And again, I think it was a good choice in
Speaker 3: the newer movies to remove the same sex attraction element
Speaker 3: from the Harconins because it's just not really necessary and
Speaker 3: it avoids this kind of implication, the implication that like
Speaker 3: that in itself is part of their deviousness or is
Speaker 3: evil in some way. Okay, so I think we're done
Speaker 3: with Gidee Prime for now, right, Could we onto Aracus? No? No, no, no,
Speaker 3: not onto Aracus. We're gonna go back to Caladan first. Okay,
Speaker 3: So we see, you know, the the Atredes leaving the
Speaker 3: planet with their pug, Jessica, Letto and Paul. So they
Speaker 3: get on board the spaceship and blast off for Dune,
Speaker 3: and the spaceships we see them approaching the Guild Highliner,
Speaker 3: which is like an object that's sort of like a
Speaker 3: city sized baton floating in the void. And these are
Speaker 3: the ships that can travel through folded space. So you
Speaker 3: take a spaceship up to the Guild Highliner, I think,
Speaker 3: you get on board it, and then it takes you
Speaker 3: between the different stars in the galaxy. And so their
Speaker 3: ship enters the Guild Highliner through a huge opening framed
Speaker 3: by ornate gold decorations, like the frame of a Renaissance painting.
Speaker 3: I like that detail, and I really like this sequence
Speaker 3: because here space travel is true. We did with apprehension
Speaker 3: and reverence as a mystical, almost magical event. It's so
Speaker 3: far from the kind of casual jet fighter pilots in
Speaker 3: space themes that we would get in so many other
Speaker 3: sci fi movies of the time. I love the feeling
Speaker 3: created here that to travel on a Guild Highliner is
Speaker 3: to participate in a profound and unsettling mystery.
Speaker 2: Yeah, absolutely, and one that is managed by a reclusive
Speaker 2: cult that has a complete monopoly on space travel. A
Speaker 2: reminder that no one is moving star to star in
Speaker 2: the Doom universe except for the Guild. So there are
Speaker 2: no space battles because there's nobody to engage in those
Speaker 2: space battles. The Guild controls everything.
Speaker 3: Yeah, that's a really good point. But so I think
Speaker 3: this is something that the Lynch movie does especially well,
Speaker 3: is create this sense of awe and mystery and intrepidation
Speaker 3: and danger about interstellar travel. Yeah, you're at the mercy
Speaker 3: of this, this reclusive cult, as you said.
Speaker 2: All right, so we board up the high liner and
Speaker 2: then we set off onward to Aracus.
Speaker 3: That's right. Finally we're at Doune, So the planet appears
Speaker 3: as a reverse setting sun and they go down to
Speaker 3: the surface. Jessica, Letto and Paul arrive and set foot
Speaker 3: on the planet, and then Princess Irelon resumes the narration.
Speaker 3: Got to get more more voiceover narration. She says that
Speaker 3: House of Trades took control of Iracas sixty three standard
Speaker 3: days into the year ten thousand and one, ninety one,
Speaker 3: it was known that the Harconins, the former rulers of Aracus,
Speaker 3: would leave many suicide troops behind. A trade's patrols were doubled,
Speaker 3: and we learn in the following scenes that the Harconans
Speaker 3: have sabotaged machinery and defenses on the planet. We of
Speaker 3: course meet Duncan Idaho yet again. He comes to Duke Letto.
Speaker 3: He's dressed in a still suit. This is the first
Speaker 3: glimpse we get. I think of what the still suit
Speaker 3: looks like here, which it looks just kind of like
Speaker 3: a padded full body suit, but it's got the hose
Speaker 3: that connects to the nose. This is the local freemen attire,
Speaker 3: which allows one to survive in the desert without losing water.
Speaker 3: It recycles your sweat, the vapor in your breath, your urine,
Speaker 3: your feces, everything, All the water comes back.
Speaker 2: Yeah. Yeah, and the suits look pretty darn good in
Speaker 2: this film. In fact, I know people who prefer these
Speaker 2: suits to the new adaptations. But I like him in both.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I do too. So Duncan reports to the Duke
Speaker 3: that he's made contact with the Fremen and they could
Speaker 3: be powerful allies, especially since he believes there are many,
Speaker 3: many more of them than the Emperor realizes. They exist
Speaker 3: in vast numbers hidden from the Imperial census. So that's
Speaker 3: kind of threatening. So we watch the atreadees troops being
Speaker 3: trained to preserve water, and we meet a new character.
Speaker 3: We meet Leat Kines, the Judge of Change, which means
Speaker 3: he's supposed to oversee the change between the Harconean control
Speaker 3: of Iracus to a Trade's control of Iracus and then
Speaker 3: report to the lands Rad which is like the Parliament
Speaker 3: of this universe, and like make sure that everything has
Speaker 3: been done fairly. But he's also an ecologist. He's an
Speaker 3: imperial ecologist, and he's been on the planet a long time.
Speaker 3: I might have even been born here. He's sort of
Speaker 3: adapted to Fremen ways and he has blue eyes from
Speaker 3: the Spice.
Speaker 2: Yeah, And this is of course Max Foncito playing in
Speaker 2: the role I lived in nineteen twenty nine through twenty twenty.
Speaker 2: See our recent episode on Flash Gordon for a longer
Speaker 2: discussion on Max here. But he is as always a
Speaker 2: fine presence in a film, but he is barely in this.
Speaker 2: This character's presence is much reduced. We see a lot
Speaker 2: more of kinds in the recent films, played by Sharon
Speaker 2: Duncan Brewster, who is also great.
Speaker 3: Yes she is. I wonder why they use so little
Speaker 3: of doctor Kynes in this movie. Makes you wonder if
Speaker 3: stuff got cut.
Speaker 2: Oh yeah, I get the feeling. It's just like the
Speaker 2: economy of the cut here. And you know I should
Speaker 2: throw in I probably mentioned this in the last episode.
Speaker 2: There are those longer unauthorized cuts of nineteen eighty four's
Speaker 2: Dune that Lynch totally disowns. Those are like, you know,
Speaker 2: Smithy directed productions, and I really haven't seen those in full.
Speaker 2: So maybe we can have some listeners ride in with
Speaker 2: their thoughts on deleted scenes that pop up again in
Speaker 2: that longer cut. But certainly, in this the only official
Speaker 2: cut of David Lynch's Dune, this character is barely present.
Speaker 3: He is present long enough to observe that Paul wears
Speaker 3: a still suit as if he was born to it,
Speaker 3: because the you know, the treadees are putting on still
Speaker 3: suits to go out and survey spice production. Paul is
Speaker 3: wearing his like a pro so that's part of a prophecy. Actually, oh,
Speaker 3: how do you even? This is actually a good point
Speaker 3: to discuss the way that I think the Lynch movie.
Speaker 3: One way it sort of fails is it it plays
Speaker 3: up a lot about the Spacing Guild that is not
Speaker 3: really in the original Doune novel, But it really under
Speaker 3: sells the role of the Beni Jessert, I think, and
Speaker 3: like their whole plot to like establish, like seed these
Speaker 3: prophecies throughout the cultures of the galaxy that would later
Speaker 3: connect to the figure that they're going to use to
Speaker 3: attain power, the Quisat's Hatterak. And so they put all
Speaker 3: of these prophecies out among the people, and Paul arrives
Speaker 3: on this planet and is immediately observed by people who
Speaker 3: are familiar with these prophecies to fulfill them.
Speaker 2: Yeah. Yeah, like the ground has been prepared for one
Speaker 2: such as he, and that's it's an important factor. Yeah,
Speaker 2: that is just not as present in this adaptation.
Speaker 3: And that's something again I really appreciate about the new
Speaker 3: movies is they sort of downplay the role of the
Speaker 3: Spacing Guild and play no I mean, I don't know,
Speaker 3: the Spacing Guild is cool too, so it's not like
Speaker 3: I don't want to see them, but they focus more
Speaker 3: on the plots and politics of the Beni Jesert, which
Speaker 3: I think is a smart move. Ye anyway, and this
Speaker 3: is the scene where Letto, Paul and Kines go out
Speaker 3: in a flying machine to observe spice harvesters at work.
Speaker 3: They're seeing, you know, the machines out in the desert
Speaker 3: getting the spice from the sand. But uh oh, there
Speaker 3: is worm sign. This apparently is a common thing about
Speaker 3: how spice production takes place. The harvesters will work up
Speaker 3: until the last minute when a worm is about to
Speaker 3: arrive and eat them, and then they will be lifted
Speaker 3: away by a flying vehicle called a carry all and
Speaker 3: taken to safety. But uh oh, they're observing here that
Speaker 3: a spice harvester is working, a worm is on the way,
Speaker 3: and the carry all that is supposed to rescue it
Speaker 3: has been sabotaged. So Duke Leto leads a rescue of
Speaker 3: the men working. The spice harvester is leaving the spice behind,
Speaker 3: rescuing the workers and bringing them onto his ornithopter. And
Speaker 3: then we see a worm eat the harvester as they
Speaker 3: take off, and we hear Kine's inner voice saying, oh,
Speaker 3: I like this, Duke. He left the spice behind and
Speaker 3: saved the men.
Speaker 2: I talked a lot about ornithopters in Wednesday's short form episode,
Speaker 2: but briefly, I'll just say, yeah, the ornithopters in the
Speaker 2: recent adaptations are amazing. They're like apache helicopters combined with
Speaker 2: a dragonfly in a way that it's like terrifying and
Speaker 2: majestic on the screen. In this adaptation, especially the Atreades
Speaker 2: ornithopter is like a big metal berb, you know. It's
Speaker 2: it's clunky, it's chonky. It's got these little wings that
Speaker 2: seem decorative and not functional. The Harconin ornithopters, which I
Speaker 2: don't even know if we really get to see them
Speaker 2: all that much, but the design for those is a
Speaker 2: lot more interesting, but also still doesn't fully embrace the
Speaker 2: whole flapping of wings.
Speaker 3: Yeah. Okay, so we're getting into the plots here against
Speaker 3: House a Treadees. So first of all, Lady Jessica determines
Speaker 3: that doctor Yua has a secret concerning his wife and
Speaker 3: his hatred of the Harconans, but that is not fully
Speaker 3: fleshed out yet. We get to meet the housekeeper on
Speaker 3: Erken here, the capital of Iracus. This is shout out mapes.
Speaker 3: Paul tries spice for the first time, and he has
Speaker 3: visions the second moon the sleeper must awaken. And we
Speaker 3: also get the hunter Seeker attack on Paul, which is
Speaker 3: something that's realized in both movie adaptations, where there's like
Speaker 3: this little needlelike mosquito type creature that's trying to assassinate
Speaker 3: Paul and he manages to avoid it.
Speaker 2: Yeah, great sequence in both films and mapes. By the way,
Speaker 2: is played by Linda hunt Boord nineteen forty five Academy
Speaker 2: Award winning actor. She played Billy Kwan in the Year
Speaker 2: Living Dangerously from eighty two, so I have to single
Speaker 2: her out.
Speaker 3: Yeah. So, but here we're getting to the Harconin attack.
Speaker 3: The double Cross is in motion now, so there has
Speaker 3: we've we've received word that there was a trader among
Speaker 3: house the trades, and we finally learn it is doctor
Speaker 3: Yua here uh and there are reasons so uh. Doctor
Speaker 3: Ua ambushes Duke Letto in the night with a with
Speaker 3: a drugged dart that kind of paralyzes him, and then
Speaker 3: doctor Ua explains his plot. He has sabotaged the shields
Speaker 3: of the city, destroyed the weirding modules, and the Harconin
Speaker 3: troops are on the way, but He's like, Okay, it's
Speaker 3: not over, Duke Leto, you can still kill Baron Harconin,
Speaker 3: and he gives Leto the poison gas tooth. He tells him,
Speaker 3: when you see the baron, remember the tooth. And this
Speaker 3: is a great plot point.
Speaker 2: Yeah, the tooth stain is of course fittingly grosser in
Speaker 2: this adaptation, like even when uas like getting it out
Speaker 2: of its box to implant it, like it just like
Speaker 2: this is gonna hurt. This is gonna be a little gross.
Speaker 3: The idea is he'll bite down on it when the
Speaker 3: baron leans over him, and that will that'll spit the
Speaker 3: poison gas in the Baron's face and kill him. And
Speaker 3: we learn, of course doctor Yue is not doing this
Speaker 3: out of maliciousness toward House Atredees, but he wants revenge
Speaker 3: against the baron because the Harconans have for many years
Speaker 3: captured his wife and have probably murdered her.
Speaker 2: But he has to know for sure, and this is
Speaker 2: how he's going to get to know for sure. But
Speaker 2: he's also going to plot the destruction of the architect
Speaker 2: of his wife's probable death right.
Speaker 3: So the attack begins. The Harconin troops here look so creepy.
Speaker 3: They look like welders with these black full hood masks
Speaker 3: with a little green square window in the front, and
Speaker 3: so that looks really creepy. However, the actual violence in
Speaker 3: this battle scene is not very cool. It is mostly
Speaker 3: i think, unintentionally funny.
Speaker 2: Yeah, it's a little hockey.
Speaker 3: Baron Harconin leaves Paul and Jessica with Pyder Devrees with
Speaker 3: instructions to kill them. They are sent off to the
Speaker 3: desert to be left there to be eaten by worms
Speaker 3: so there will be no evidence this was doctor Yuay's idea.
Speaker 3: But actually it turns out Doctor Yua has been trying
Speaker 3: to protect them. He has packed still suits for them,
Speaker 3: and Paul and Jessica use the Beni Jesert voice to
Speaker 3: command the Harconean troops and escape into the desert. Meanwhile,
Speaker 3: Duke Letto's tooth strike against the Baron is about to
Speaker 3: unfold the Barons. They're gloating over him, but it fails
Speaker 3: to get the baron. Instead, it kills Pyder DeVries, it
Speaker 3: kills the house harcone in Mintat played by Brad Duraf,
Speaker 3: and the baron we get his reaction where he's like,
Speaker 3: I'm alive. I'm alive, floating in the air, screaming so inspiring.
Speaker 2: The poison tooth sequence, at least when they have when
Speaker 2: they refer back to it visually, it is, as you
Speaker 2: might expect, far more grotesque in this adaptation, because we
Speaker 2: see that it's like an explosion of gas stick gas
Speaker 2: has gone off in the Duke's mouth and is like
Speaker 2: eaten through his cheek. Even so, it's it's grim stuff. No.
Speaker 3: I know, we've been dwelling on a lot of detail
Speaker 3: in the plot, so I think maybe we should shift
Speaker 3: into moving a little more quickly through the movie. And
Speaker 3: this is a good place to do it, because this
Speaker 3: is also where the movie starts moving much more quickly
Speaker 3: through the plot. And this, I think is a is
Speaker 3: a fair major criticism of the eighty four Dune is
Speaker 3: that somewhere around right here things start happening way too fast.
Speaker 2: Yeah, it becomes fragmentary and kind of feels like Doune
Speaker 2: the scrap Book leading up to like the final confrontation.
Speaker 3: Yes, yes, okay, So Paul and Jessica escape into the desert.
Speaker 3: They go to the forbidden South Polar regions. They're trying
Speaker 3: to avoid being eaten by a worm. And this is
Speaker 3: where Paul really like he gets he gets deep spice,
Speaker 3: exposure to spice. In the desert, he sees the second moon,
Speaker 3: you know. He hears the voice saying the sleeper must awaken.
Speaker 3: He sees a hand reaching from space. He knows the
Speaker 3: and the Guild want him destroyed, and finally he hears
Speaker 3: that they will call him wad Deep. So that's a
Speaker 3: premonition of everything to come. And he realizes that the
Speaker 3: spice is in everything on the planet, and the spice
Speaker 3: is changing him. It's causing him to reach his potential
Speaker 3: as the chosen One, and he knows the future and
Speaker 3: his own terrible destiny. Also revealed here is that Jessica,
Speaker 3: Lady Jessica, is pregnant with Paul's sister, who is also
Speaker 3: faded for greatness in some way. And there's adventure in
Speaker 3: the desert as Paul and Jessica travel across the sand
Speaker 3: trying to avoid worms. They have to, of course, do
Speaker 3: the Fremen walk to walk without rhythm on the sand,
Speaker 3: and here we do see the worm in its full
Speaker 3: glory while it's chasing them. We see its trifled maw
Speaker 3: leaping out from the sand and its design is almost
Speaker 3: like a flower with petals opening around this toothy mouth.
Speaker 3: I really do like the design of the worms in
Speaker 3: this movie. I think they look great. They're scary and menacing.
Speaker 3: Some of the worm riding scenes, however, are quite funny
Speaker 3: and don't really have the same grandeur as when you're
Speaker 3: just seeing the worm in its opening mouth. Also, somewhere
Speaker 3: in the sequence we first see the use I think
Speaker 3: of the thumper, a very important technology in this movie.
Speaker 2: Thumpers are huge in this movie, and it works. Like
Speaker 2: you'll often see on the poster, there's Paul Addredes with
Speaker 2: something slung across his back in the desert. That's the thumper.
Speaker 2: So yeah, it's big, no criticism, it's just a big
Speaker 2: idea of what these things look like.
Speaker 3: So Paul and Jessica come across a Fremen seat, a
Speaker 3: Fremen encampment in the rocks. So they find man car
Speaker 3: steps and they go into the rocks and they just
Speaker 3: kind of walk up on it and all of the
Speaker 3: freemen are there, like as symboled waiting for them, eyes
Speaker 3: glowing blue. It's almost like they're standing at attention for
Speaker 3: their arrival. And here we meet Stilgar the leader of
Speaker 3: the Fremen group, and we're also going to meet Channi
Speaker 3: of the Yeah.
Speaker 2: So, still Gar is played by Everett McGill born nineteen
Speaker 2: forty five, accomplished American character actor with a very signature look.
Speaker 2: His other credits include eighty one's Quest for Fire, eighty
Speaker 2: five Silver Bullet, The Stephen King, Werewolf Movie, eighty six's
Speaker 2: Heartbreak Ridge, nineteen eighty seven's Werewolf, eighty nine's Licensed to Kill,
Speaker 2: Twin Peaks nineteen ninety ones, The People Under the Stairs
Speaker 2: under Siege two, and Lynches The Straight Story. Again, not
Speaker 2: really fair to compare this performance to Javier Bardam Stillgar
Speaker 2: in the new movies because he, again, like a lot
Speaker 2: of these characters, he had a lot more room to breathe,
Speaker 2: and there's a lot more space for that character to
Speaker 2: come alive.
Speaker 3: Yeah, this is speed still Gar. Yeah, I guess we
Speaker 3: should go ahead and introduce Chawny as well. Yeah.
Speaker 2: Channie is played by Sean Young born nineteen fifty nine,
Speaker 2: American actress who had previously appeared in nineteen eighty one
Speaker 2: Stripes and more importantly eighty two's Blade Runner as the
Speaker 2: replicant Rachel. Subsequent roles included eighty seven's No Way Out
Speaker 2: in Wall Street ninety one, Kiss Before Dying ninety four
Speaker 2: is Ace Venture a pet detective, and more recently Blade
Speaker 2: Runner twenty forty nine. In another case, hard to compare
Speaker 2: this Channey to the recent film, where Zendeia does a
Speaker 2: great job playing a more complex and I think arguably
Speaker 2: stronger vision of this character. Chani is a strong character
Speaker 2: in this nineteen sixty five novel, but I think some
Speaker 2: of our strengths had to be updated for like a
Speaker 2: modern audience.
Speaker 3: Well, also in the new movie, I think you could
Speaker 3: argue in some ways Part two is is you get
Speaker 3: a lot of the story from Channi's perspective, which makes
Speaker 3: a lot of sense. That's a good way to frame it,
Speaker 3: to see, like the way Paul changes. So I think
Speaker 3: that was a really strong choice. And like you said,
Speaker 3: Zendeia is great in the new one. I don't want
Speaker 3: to as is Harve or Barden. Also, they're both fantastic
Speaker 3: in the new movie. I don't want to blame Sean
Speaker 3: Young and Everett McGill for the shortcomings of these characters
Speaker 3: in this version. I think it is not the fault
Speaker 3: of the actors. I think it is the fault of
Speaker 3: the script and the editing that like, these actors are
Speaker 3: just not given time to portray these characters in the movie.
Speaker 3: It's just just lightning speed editing from now on. So,
Speaker 3: like what happens when they arrive at the siege is
Speaker 3: that you know still Gar. He's like, oh, hi, I'm Stillgar.
Speaker 3: You know I'm the leader of the Fremen group. The
Speaker 3: boy man will be taken into the tribe and then
Speaker 3: Lady Jessica like grabs him by the throat. Paul scrambles.
Speaker 3: He says, oh, she has the Weirding way. If you
Speaker 3: can do this to the strongest of us, you're worth
Speaker 3: ten times your weight in water. And then still Gar says,
Speaker 3: teach us the Weirding way, and you shall have sanctuary.
Speaker 3: And Jessica accepts, and Paul meets Johnny daughter Channi is
Speaker 3: the daughter of Leat Kinds. She's a member of the
Speaker 3: Fremen tribe here and you know he has seen her
Speaker 3: before in dreams and premonitions, like a warrior of great
Speaker 3: bravery and great beauty. Kyle, of course, is smitten. Here
Speaker 3: they introduce to still Gar. You know it's all going
Speaker 3: to be You're welcomed by the people. Oh you need
Speaker 3: a new name. Your name will be Usel that is
Speaker 3: the pillar of strength. Oh but what else can be
Speaker 3: your name? Your name will be wad deeb. Paul picks
Speaker 3: that because it's the name of the desert mouse, whose
Speaker 3: figure is seen on the second moon of the planet.
Speaker 3: And so they're brought into these subterranean caverns where the
Speaker 3: Fremen live. They discover that the Freemen have huge caches
Speaker 3: of water they are collecting from the atmosphere via wind traps,
Speaker 3: these vast pools in the dark. And this whole sequence
Speaker 3: where Jessica and Paul are welcomed into the Fremen world.
Speaker 3: You know, the cast is doing the best they can.
Speaker 3: The sets are cool and stuff, but it is so rushed.
Speaker 3: The introductions are not given a chance to breathe. It's
Speaker 3: just like, hi, oh wow, you were really strong. Now
Speaker 3: you're one of us. Here are all our secrets. I
Speaker 3: love you. And it comes so fast.
Speaker 2: Yeah, the new has a lot more time to work
Speaker 2: with this part of the story, with Paul and Jessica
Speaker 2: gradually changing from you know, endangered outsiders to tentative allies
Speaker 2: to the Fremen, valued members of a movement to members
Speaker 2: of its people, to leaders, and eventually, in Paul's case,
Speaker 2: to Messiah.
Speaker 3: What is at least half the run time of this
Speaker 3: recent movie is like, I don't know five minutes in
Speaker 3: this metalle, Okay, let's check in on the Harconins because
Speaker 3: they're doing some really good stuff here. So we come
Speaker 3: into them on They're on Arakine, I think, and Vladimir
Speaker 3: Harconin is laughing crazily as he flies around a big
Speaker 3: machine in his levitation suit. Rabon, who is supposed to
Speaker 3: be running spice production on the planet, he walks up to.
Speaker 3: This is what happens. There's like a dead cow hanging
Speaker 3: from the ceiling, and Rabon walks up to the dead cow,
Speaker 3: peels off part of its face starts eating the cow
Speaker 3: face raw. Then the baron tells Rabon to be harsh
Speaker 3: and brutal in ruling Aracus. And while he's saying this,
Speaker 3: he's like reaching his fingers into Rabond's mouth to like
Speaker 3: play with the chewed up cow face as he explains this, Yeah,
Speaker 3: I have no words. Then Rabond leaves then out comes
Speaker 3: Fade wearing like this wings of victory speedo. That's amazing.
Speaker 3: Top all time Top five movie speedo, and the Baron
Speaker 3: reveals that after Rabon has become despised by the people
Speaker 3: of Doune, he's going to give the planet to Fade
Speaker 3: so that he can be loved by contrast.
Speaker 2: Yep, yep, that's the whole plan. I mean, that's part
Speaker 2: of the plan. It is legitimately part of the plan.
Speaker 2: Rabond's gonna crush the planet, get the spice levels up,
Speaker 2: the spice production levels up. Everyone's gonna hate him, and
Speaker 2: then Fade's going to come in as the savior and
Speaker 2: will be at least to some degree beloved by the people,
Speaker 2: or as much as you can love a hard conean despot.
Speaker 3: Yeah, and but the Baron's face boils just keep looking
Speaker 3: worse and worse. We also see here the captured Sufir
Speaker 3: hawat the mintat of House the Treads. They explained to
Speaker 3: him that he must milk a hairless cat that has
Speaker 3: a rat taped to it every day in order to
Speaker 3: acquire the antidote to a poison that the Hearks have
Speaker 3: given him.
Speaker 2: Yeah. This is also unnecessary and so weird, especially the
Speaker 2: cat rat thing. It almost feels like Lynch is trolling
Speaker 2: us a little bit.
Speaker 3: In the book.
Speaker 2: This basic situation exists, but it's essentially just a poison
Speaker 2: anecdote con like, hey, loyal a tradees mintet, you have
Speaker 2: to work for us now, isn't that delightful? And if
Speaker 2: you don't, you're going to die because of this poison
Speaker 2: in your system. And they apparently filmed sequences of this
Speaker 2: plotline for Dune Part two and just had to cut
Speaker 2: it for time, which you know, is a shame, but
Speaker 2: I guess understandable given them all that's going on in
Speaker 2: the movie.
Speaker 3: Yeah. So, back at the Sieeche of the Freemen, Lady
Speaker 3: Jessica is offered to Chants to become the reverend mother
Speaker 3: of the Seech, but to do so, she has to
Speaker 3: drink the poisonous water of life and survive. And this
Speaker 3: calls back to a prophecy about the Quisat's Hatterak that
Speaker 3: young Paul would drink the water of life and survive.
Speaker 3: Other men who have tried have died, but maybe Paul
Speaker 3: could survive it as well. But before that, Lady Jessica
Speaker 3: has to drink it. She does, and this causes her
Speaker 3: later to give birth to When she gives birth to
Speaker 3: her daughter named Alia, Alia is like born with all
Speaker 3: the knowledge and power of a reverend mother and like
Speaker 3: matures very rapidly, so we've got like a super genius
Speaker 3: Benny jesser At baby and that's just that's just not
Speaker 3: what you want, abomination. She's scary as heck when we
Speaker 3: see her later in the in the finale, it's one
Speaker 3: of the creepiest things ever committed to film.
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, she is super creepy. Herbert in general likes
Speaker 2: creepy super babies and super creepy super children. They pop
Speaker 2: up elsewhere in the Doom novels. Obviously, DV went in
Speaker 2: a slightly different direction with the way this is portrayed
Speaker 2: in the film, and again, interesting, I think it's interesting
Speaker 2: what they did. It'll be also interesting to see how
Speaker 2: this is incorporated into subsequent adaptations of especially done Messiah.
Speaker 3: Yeah. Also here we see more of Paul and Chahnnie
Speaker 3: falling in love. But also we get Paul addressing the
Speaker 3: assembled Frimen fighters and he's like, hey, look, we got
Speaker 3: a common enemy, the Harconins. We've got to destroy him.
Speaker 3: My mom and I are going to teach you the
Speaker 3: weirding way. We've got to attack and destroy the spice trade.
Speaker 3: So we see a lot of weirding way training sessions
Speaker 3: with the weirding module where they're saying like chuck sah
Speaker 3: and it you know, makes it shoot a little blast
Speaker 3: out that they say will paralyzed nerves, shatter bones, set fires,
Speaker 3: suffocate an enemy, or burst his organs, and they're just
Speaker 3: going to keep on attacking the Harconins until they have victory.
Speaker 3: This is also the my name is a killing word
Speaker 3: scene where he discovers that in the name wadd but
Speaker 3: will like make things break and shatter.
Speaker 2: All right, we're getting the troops together. We're gonna we're
Speaker 2: gonna bring spice production to its knees and eventually take
Speaker 2: out the hearken it so okay.
Speaker 3: Now we also get the worm taming scene here where
Speaker 3: Paul has to go learn to ride a worm because
Speaker 3: you can't be a true freemen unless you can ride
Speaker 3: a worm. And so we go. He goes out with
Speaker 3: his worm riding materials, the thumper, the hooks, which are
Speaker 3: a gift from the Siech, and the freemen are gathered
Speaker 3: on the sand dune looking on Stillgar has a very
Speaker 3: cold look, but Paul like he sets the thumber going.
Speaker 3: He does the Litany against fear. They realize he is
Speaker 3: called a very big worm. And this is again along
Speaker 3: with the prophecies of what the freemen called the Lissan
Speaker 3: al Kayib, the you know, the voice from the outer world,
Speaker 3: the messiah figure they're waiting for. So we get some
Speaker 3: shots of Paul getting onto the worm, like using the
Speaker 3: hooks and ro over on the top. Not the best
Speaker 3: looking shots in the movie. A couple of these do
Speaker 3: look kind of kind of cheap, But then when we
Speaker 3: see the worm by itself, it looks awesome and the
Speaker 3: flower petals open and we see the big mouth heavy
Speaker 3: dune theme playing on the soundtrack, as like Stilgar comes
Speaker 3: to climb the trailing rope behind Paul and join him
Speaker 3: on the worm. But Rob, I think we may have
Speaker 3: alluded to this earlier. There is a very funny soundtrack
Speaker 3: moment here where like the heavy horns of the dune
Speaker 3: theme give way to rock and distorted guitars. And I
Speaker 3: enjoy this because it's funny, but I don't think it
Speaker 3: quite has the intended effect.
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, it's a little a little goofy. In general,
Speaker 2: I have to reiterate love the Toto score. I have
Speaker 2: listened to it all the way through a couple of
Speaker 2: times since we recorded part one of This Weird House.
Speaker 2: But yeah, it's a little little comical here with the guitar.
Speaker 3: Oh Man, that desert I mean, it's right on the edge,
Speaker 3: like that desert theme. It is pure velveta, Like it
Speaker 3: is so smooth and cheesy and rock yacht rock sounding,
Speaker 3: but it's also great and it fills me with feelings
Speaker 3: I can't deny it. Yeah, So a bunch of time passes,
Speaker 3: we see Paul and Stilgar leading frem and attacks on
Speaker 3: the Hearken and spice mining operations. You know, they're using
Speaker 3: the weirding modules to say boom and zap and make
Speaker 3: things explode. And then of course Paul thinks he is
Speaker 3: going to be able to get his revenge because when
Speaker 3: the spice flow stops, that's going to summon the Baron
Speaker 3: and the Emperor to the planet because they're going to
Speaker 3: come there be forced to deal with us. Yeah. Of course,
Speaker 3: the Baron and the Emperor become aware of this figure
Speaker 3: called wad Deep that like there they're wounded fighters come
Speaker 3: back to them and they're muttering what Deep? What Deep?
Speaker 3: So like who is this guy? And you know they're like,
Speaker 3: we've got to destroy him. We get some more voiceover
Speaker 3: from Virginia Madsen telling us that wad Deep and the
Speaker 3: Frimen pretty much completely shut down spice production and that
Speaker 3: Rabond is trying to hide this from his uncle but
Speaker 3: apparently not succeeding, and things are getting really dire so
Speaker 3: soon I think the Emperor is going to have to come.
Speaker 3: Oh but before that, we get Paul's reunion with Gurney
Speaker 3: Halleck with Patrick Stewart. They like run into each other.
Speaker 3: I guess Garnie Halleck is now working for the Harconins
Speaker 3: or working maybe independently as like a spice harvester protector
Speaker 3: here in the desert, and Paul and Gurney run into
Speaker 3: one another and reunite. Of course, Gurney thought Paul was
Speaker 3: dead this whole time. By the way, there is maximum
Speaker 3: Toto all over the soundtrack in the background of this section,
Speaker 3: overdriven guitars wailing the whole thing, and eventually we see
Speaker 3: the circumstances they're going to drive us toward the terrible conclusion.
Speaker 3: So back at the Imperial Palace, the space in Guild
Speaker 3: shows back up once again to harass the Emperor some more.
Speaker 3: No Guild Navigator. This time, it's only like the Holy
Speaker 3: Brotherhood of Hazmatt in their industrial religious looking robes. Once again,
Speaker 3: they speak a foreign language that is like automatically translated
Speaker 3: by this weird microphone and the language itself. I was
Speaker 3: listening to it. It sounds like kind of feral. So
Speaker 3: there's kind of grunts and snarling like a wild animal,
Speaker 3: but also notes of igor in the monster mash. Yeah,
Speaker 3: and so they speak to him, and they the conversation
Speaker 3: that very much has the effect of wait, who's the
Speaker 3: emperor here? Because the Spacing Guild is really browbeating him.
Speaker 3: They're like, look, if you don't get the spice mining
Speaker 3: back under control immediately, you are going to live out
Speaker 3: the rest of your life in a pain amplifier. I
Speaker 3: don't know what a pain amplifier is, but I get
Speaker 3: the idea.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I feel like they this is a moment where
Speaker 2: they kind of overplay the power of the Guild here
Speaker 2: because all tim I mean, the Guild is very powerful
Speaker 2: in the Dune universe, but so is the Benajestrit, so
Speaker 2: is House Carino. So everything is in kind of like
Speaker 2: a precarious balance of power. Yes, and here we're just
Speaker 2: kind of like, yeah, the Guild pushes everybody around, which
Speaker 2: is not really the flavor of the Guild and the
Speaker 2: actual source material.
Speaker 3: I totally agree, but I also do like that the
Speaker 3: Emperor is not portrayed as just all powerful, that he
Speaker 3: has factions that he must appease. And you know, if,
Speaker 3: like if the lands Rod and the Space and Guild
Speaker 3: and people are turning against him, that is a threat
Speaker 3: to him. And it's not like he can just crush
Speaker 3: them all. That's true anyway. So the Emperor is going
Speaker 3: to take Sardikar to the planet Iracus. He's like, I
Speaker 3: know how we're going to deal with this complete destruction
Speaker 3: of every life on the planet. We're just going to
Speaker 3: just destroy them all. Meanwhile, we get the sequence where
Speaker 3: Paul is finally going to fulfill the prophecy and drink
Speaker 3: the water of life. Of course, he tells Channi that
Speaker 3: he had a vision and he must do this. She
Speaker 3: doesn't like the idea, but he thinks he has no choice.
Speaker 3: He's got to do it. So Paul is led out
Speaker 3: into the desert. Chany pledges her love to him, and
Speaker 3: they give him the water of Life to drink, and
Speaker 3: he has many more visions of like in a water
Speaker 3: dripping in a cavern and the mouth of a worm opening,
Speaker 3: and I like how the mouth of the worm is
Speaker 3: innercut with an extreme close up of a human eye,
Speaker 3: so like the worm's mouth is like the pupil within
Speaker 3: the iris. I thought that was pretty cool.
Speaker 2: And here come the worm jets, because I think this
Speaker 2: is where we get the track that Eno collaborated on.
Speaker 3: Oh interesting with the visions here, I think so, I
Speaker 3: think so. But worms gather from the desert around the
Speaker 3: Fremen to sort of keep a vigil beside Paul, and
Speaker 3: they don't attack. It's almost if the worms are showing
Speaker 3: reverence from what deep And eventually he is awakened in
Speaker 3: Chinese's arms with a new sense of determination and terrible purpose.
Speaker 3: He's ready to be the messiah of the Fremen now
Speaker 3: and he stands before them in this great underground hall
Speaker 3: and gives a speech that is in some ways kind
Speaker 3: of powerful but unfortunately contains the sentence a storm is coming.
Speaker 3: Oh man, if writers just just skip over that one,
Speaker 3: you don't need the storm is coming, yeah, but his
Speaker 3: this kind of differences. He's like, you know, when it arrives,
Speaker 3: it will shake the universe. He swears vengeance against the
Speaker 3: Emperor and chance long live the fighters. So the Fremen
Speaker 3: warriors stream out of their seech and prepare for war,
Speaker 3: and we also see the Emperor in his Sardikar arriving
Speaker 3: on Oracus from deep space with the help of the
Speaker 3: Guild highliners. And the final battle comes about. So the
Speaker 3: Fremen Mountain assault on Irakan, led by Paul Stilgar and
Speaker 3: Gurney Halleck. They will use the a treades house atomics
Speaker 3: as well as the power of the worm. So they
Speaker 3: deploy all these thumpers and some of what Stilgar calls
Speaker 3: worm sign the likes of which God has never seen. Yeah,
Speaker 3: I don't know.
Speaker 2: I'm not going to geek out on a bunch of
Speaker 2: din stuff.
Speaker 3: Bet.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I don't like that line, And I don't think
Speaker 2: of a Fremen would say it like quite like that.
Speaker 3: I don't think so either. Yeah, that's a little uncharacteristic.
Speaker 3: But the worms are cool here. I like the way
Speaker 3: the worms are depicted is coming into the battle.
Speaker 2: Oh yeah, I love the addition of having these kind
Speaker 2: of like static electrical discharges in the air around them.
Speaker 3: Yeah, it looks really cool as the battle is going on.
Speaker 3: There's a confrontation between Baron Harkonen and the Emperor. The
Speaker 3: Emperor has killed Rabon and like stuck his head on
Speaker 3: a big spike, and then he's gathered people in his
Speaker 3: portable throne room. So they got Princess Erilan there, the
Speaker 3: Reverend mother, a bunch of Sardocar members of the Space
Speaker 3: and Guild. The Emperor gives the baron a very I'm
Speaker 3: disappointed in you speech. But before the Baron can suffer
Speaker 3: a similar fate to Rabond, they are interrupted by the
Speaker 3: arrival of someone in black robes. It is a child.
Speaker 3: Uh oh, it's Paul's sister Alia, and she is instantly
Speaker 3: so so unsettlingly creepy with this horrible voice voiced by
Speaker 3: an adult. I think we actually see her talk her voice.
Speaker 3: I would describe it like putting on a shoe and
Speaker 3: then feeling something start moving under your toes.
Speaker 2: Yeah, this kid is perfectly unsettling in a way very
Speaker 2: similar to the accidental unsettling character of the kid in
Speaker 2: a House by the Cemetery. Yeah, where Bob's voice was
Speaker 2: dubbed by an adult woman and he comes off in
Speaker 2: some sort of like a like a strange being, but
Speaker 2: it's intentional here and it absolutely works. This kid's creepy.
Speaker 3: So Alia, the sort of reverend mother child, has a
Speaker 3: confrontation with the Emperor and with the Reverend mother guys
Speaker 3: Helen Moheim. She's like, I am a messenger from what deep,
Speaker 3: poor Emperor. I'm afraid my brother won't be very pleased
Speaker 3: with you. It's it's I can't really do it justice.
Speaker 3: It's so creepy, and the Reverend mother is like she's
Speaker 3: an abomination. But oh she also screams get out of
Speaker 3: my mind, exactly like David Bowie and The Man who
Speaker 3: Fell to Earth. Oh yeah, anyway, So Paul and the
Speaker 3: freemen used the house atomics to blow up the mountains
Speaker 3: that are shielding the approach to our Keene, and they
Speaker 3: mount their assault. They bring lots of loose worms alongside them,
Speaker 3: and the freemen and their worms clash with the Emperor's sardikar.
Speaker 3: At some point, we see the Emperor personally controlling a
Speaker 3: mounted gun to fire at the worms. Not sure about
Speaker 3: that choice, like he doesn't seem like much of a
Speaker 3: hands on warrior, but also also the Emperor tasks Baron
Speaker 3: Harkonen with destroying Alia. But of course Alia, I think
Speaker 3: she's going to get the better of this encounter. And
Speaker 3: she does. She Like, what exactly does she do to
Speaker 3: the baron?
Speaker 2: She jabs him with the with the gomdjabar.
Speaker 3: I believe, Oh yeah, okay.
Speaker 2: And kills him like this is the death blow. She
Speaker 2: is Alia of the knife after all.
Speaker 3: Oh okay. Yeah, we see her like she's so happy
Speaker 3: about it. She's dancing around with her eyes closed holding
Speaker 3: a knife, and we also see the baron he flies
Speaker 3: away as he is dying and then is chomped by
Speaker 3: a worm from the That's a bit much. That's a
Speaker 3: bit much, okay. So the final confrontation, you know, the
Speaker 3: freemen are victorious in the battle. They've taken the city.
Speaker 3: They gather everybody, all of the power players in like
Speaker 3: the big room in the palace at Arikine, and Paul
Speaker 3: goes up to the emperor and his retinue and demonstrates
Speaker 3: his power. He intimidates the Emperor and silences the reverend
Speaker 3: mother with a powerful word. Also, she's like, ah, and
Speaker 3: she appears to have metal teeth.
Speaker 2: Now, oh wow, maybe she has X and teeth.
Speaker 3: I don't know, maybe, but so Paul is confronted by
Speaker 3: the remaining member of how Sarcona and the young Fade Rautha.
Speaker 3: They're going to have to face one another, of course,
Speaker 3: and Fade Rautha takes the Emperor's blade in his hand
Speaker 3: for the fight. This is going to be a knife
Speaker 3: fight to the death. There are things I really like
Speaker 3: about this fight. I like how there are people playing
Speaker 3: pyramid shaped drums.
Speaker 2: Yeah, those are cool.
Speaker 3: Sting keeps yelling I will kill you.
Speaker 2: I love that line. This has always been one of
Speaker 2: my favorite cheesy lines from this film and just in
Speaker 2: from film in general.
Speaker 3: We already talked about this difference, but I do like
Speaker 3: that this keeps Fade Rautha as a cheater. He's not
Speaker 3: the kind of honorable fighter in a way honorable fighter
Speaker 3: that they make Fade Rotha in the new movie Fade
Speaker 3: Rotha here tries to cheat with a poisoned barb, but
Speaker 3: Paul gets arounded by saying, I will bend like a
Speaker 3: reed in the wind. And he sort of like bends
Speaker 3: and lets Fade come around him and then stabs him
Speaker 3: in a very very strange way.
Speaker 2: Yeah, this is this is a quality kill, and this
Speaker 2: is I think this falls in line with what you
Speaker 2: were talking about in the first episode we did about
Speaker 2: the Lynchian approach to portrayals of death, because he drives
Speaker 2: his knife up through a Fade's chin into his brain,
Speaker 2: and then after Fade has fallen dead under the floor,
Speaker 2: he uses the weirding voice to shatter the stone floor
Speaker 2: beneath him, a moment that really feels to reson like
Speaker 2: it resonates with a kind of biblical power. You know.
Speaker 2: It's a moment that I think really legitimately rules in
Speaker 2: this film and cements the ascendant might of paul A Triades.
Speaker 3: I agree. I think it's very cool. They also say,
Speaker 3: you know, Usul no longer needs a weirding module. He
Speaker 3: can just like speak a word without the module and
Speaker 3: make things shatter. And from here we just sort of
Speaker 3: get a rather quick wrap up. Like the Princess, Irelan
Speaker 3: narrates that MAUDIEB had become the hand of God fulfilling
Speaker 3: the frim and prophecy. Where there was war MODEEP would
Speaker 3: now bring peace where there was hatred MADEEP would bring love,
Speaker 3: et cetera. Uh Yeah, yeah, is that what the story is?
Speaker 3: I don't think so, not so much. Yeah, So in
Speaker 3: the end, yeah, we get this very heroic kind of conclusion,
Speaker 3: and in fact it goes beyond heroic and becomes like transcendent,
Speaker 3: almost religious, where Paul literally causes a miracle.
Speaker 2: Yes, Paul makes it rain on Racus. It's in a way,
Speaker 2: I have to be fair. It is a great visual
Speaker 2: capper for the film, but it is one that makes
Speaker 2: zero sense within the context of the film and has
Speaker 2: no footing in the novel. Because Paul not control the
Speaker 2: weather and greening efforts on Aracus, which have been alluded
Speaker 2: to and are part of the world of Dune. These
Speaker 2: are going to be gradual, These are going to be
Speaker 2: focused on particular parts of the planet. So this moment
Speaker 2: is all feels and no sense.
Speaker 3: Yeah. Yeah, So it's a very different kind of ending
Speaker 3: than we get from Dune Part two, the New one,
Speaker 3: which does go a longer way to try to to
Speaker 3: show Paul's change and change not for the better, his
Speaker 3: arc toward tyranny and his coldness, especially the most painful
Speaker 3: thing being at the end of the movie, the way
Speaker 3: he rejects Shawni for his you know, political alliance with
Speaker 3: House Corono by saying he's going to marry Princess Erolan.
Speaker 3: In the new movie.
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, the movie does a great job of playing
Speaker 2: up the fact that this is leading into a massive
Speaker 2: holy war, Interstellar Holy war. It is not going to
Speaker 2: be peace and love across the universe. It is going
Speaker 2: to be pretty grim days ahead, and it is because
Speaker 2: as Paul has risen to such power.
Speaker 3: On the other hand, if you're just trying to make
Speaker 3: a standalone film, the Lynch movie has a much more
Speaker 3: feel good ending. Yeah. I don't know if that's something.
Speaker 3: I don't know if that's good. It's not really what
Speaker 3: the story is, but it doesn't feel as sad as
Speaker 3: the ending of the new one.
Speaker 2: Yeah. Yeah, the new film has a grimness and a
Speaker 2: sadness to it. My son watched the has only seen
Speaker 2: these the new adaptations, and he when I was asking
Speaker 2: him about how he felt about the movies, he was like, Oh,
Speaker 2: it's it's really cool, but it's kind of joyless. And
Speaker 2: then that is true. I mean, the film is not
Speaker 2: a joyful experience, especially as it wraps up. And I
Speaker 2: would say that Dune in general is a very joyful thing,
Speaker 2: and certainly in my own life, but a lot of
Speaker 2: that is in the details of everything in the world
Speaker 2: building and the ecology and the philosophy and the use
Speaker 2: of religion and history. It's like the sum of the
Speaker 2: whole is joy, but the actual events that occur in
Speaker 2: the film here, especially towards the end, are not.
Speaker 3: I feel like there's so much more I could say,
Speaker 3: but we've gone on way too long already, so I
Speaker 3: think we must wrap it up.
Speaker 2: Yeah, if there's any unfinished business and we can discuss
Speaker 2: it in future listener mail installments, that'll be a good
Speaker 2: place for that. And likewise, Yeah, if you have thoughts
Speaker 2: on the new Dune adaptations, the nineteen eighty four's Dune
Speaker 2: that we've been discussing in this episode, your history with
Speaker 2: the film, any of the merch any of that weird
Speaker 2: merchandise they put out, like those strange action figures. Are
Speaker 2: these legitimately cool revel model kits that I don't think
Speaker 2: anybody bought initially, but now go for you know, one
Speaker 2: hundreds of dollars online right in We would love to
Speaker 2: hear from you. We'll even hear thoughts about those. The
Speaker 2: mini series, the sci fi mini series, which again has
Speaker 2: a great cast, but some CGI that is really not aged. Well,
Speaker 2: just a reminder to everybody that's stuff to Blow Your
Speaker 2: Mind is primarily a science culture podcast, with core episodes
Speaker 2: on Tuesdays and Thursday, short form episode on Wednesdays. On
Speaker 2: Mondays we do listener mail, and on Fridays we just
Speaker 2: set aside most serious concerns to just talk about a
Speaker 2: weird movie on Weird House Cinema. If you want a
Speaker 2: complete list of all the movies we've covered so far,
Speaker 2: and sometimes a peek ahead of the future, go to
Speaker 2: letterbox dot com. It's l E T T E r
Speaker 2: boxd dot com. We are Weird House on there and
Speaker 2: we've got a list for you to look at.
Speaker 3: Huge thanks as always to our excellent audio producer Jjpousway.
Speaker 3: If you would like to get in touch with us
Speaker 3: with feedback on this episode or any other, to suggest
Speaker 3: topic for the future, or just to say hi, you
Speaker 3: can email us at contact at stuff to Blow your
Speaker 3: Mind dot com.
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