Speaker 1: Hey, you welcome to Weird House Cinema. Rewind. This is
Speaker 1: Rob lam and we're going to air the second of
Speaker 1: our two part look at David Lynch's Dune from nineteen
Speaker 1: eighty four. This was an episode that published three point
Speaker 1: fifteen twenty four. Big Dune fan, Obviously, we love David
Speaker 1: Lynch as well, so let's jump in and discuss the
Speaker 1: second half of this marvelously weird motion picture.
Speaker 2: Welcome to Stuff to Blow Your Mind, a production of iHeartRadio.
Speaker 1: Hey you 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 1: I mean depends on which which version, which cut you're going, right,
Speaker 1: But yeah, we just we had to split this one
Speaker 1: into because there's just too much weirdness because it is
Speaker 1: a David Lynch film, and it is based on the
Speaker 1: already weird book Dune by Frank Herbert published in nineteen
Speaker 1: sixty five. And then and then we just have such
Speaker 1: a rich cast that we have to at least acknowledge
Speaker 1: these various performers who really give it their all. And then,
Speaker 1: on top of all of this, Dune Part two just
Speaker 1: came out in cinemas. It is already a huge hit.
Speaker 1: Everyone's loving this film. Dune is in the air again.
Speaker 1: The spice is in the air again. And so we figured, well,
Speaker 1: if we're gonna cut a weird house cinema episode into
Speaker 1: two like this, this is the movie and this is
Speaker 1: 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
Speaker 3: Man 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 Dune 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 we're
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 towards 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 1: Yeah yeah, and ultimately lands on a very heroic note.
Speaker 1: We see Paul as a savior at the end of
Speaker 1: this film, and we'll get into all this, But ven
Speaker 1: News film is a different beast. While being very true
Speaker 1: to the book, I believe that the spirit of his
Speaker 1: portrayal of Paul is very much in keeping with the
Speaker 1: book 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 more about this as we go on, But obviously,
Speaker 3: if you have not heard part one of this Weird
Speaker 3: House series, you should go back. Listen to part one
Speaker 3: of our talk on Dune from last Friday. First brief recap.
Speaker 3: Let's see, we talked about the novel Dune and Frank Herbert.
Speaker 3: We talked about David Lynch and his sort of film
Speaker 3: career and some of the common themes and characteristics of
Speaker 3: his filmmaking, some of the story behind the making of
Speaker 3: nineteen eighty four's Dune where David Lynch. This movie is
Speaker 3: largely regarded as sort of an outlier in David Lynch's filmography,
Speaker 3: and he has to some extent disowned it.
Speaker 1: He was very.
Speaker 3: Dissatisfied with the final product that was released, and he'd
Speaker 3: even said that working on this version of Dune, produced
Speaker 3: by Dino de Laurentis, sort of taught him that he
Speaker 3: would rather not make a movie at all than make
Speaker 3: a movie that he didn't have full creative control over
Speaker 3: and he would go on to make many more in
Speaker 3: the wake of this where he did have creative control
Speaker 3: and are celebrated by many as a very strange, interesting,
Speaker 3: excellent artistic achievements.
Speaker 1: Dune was not.
Speaker 3: Beloved by critics at the time it came out. I
Speaker 3: think in the years since critical opinion has softened somewhat.
Speaker 3: It kind of has a people look back on it
Speaker 3: now and remember it fondly. But a lot of people
Speaker 3: did 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 doing is great.
Speaker 3: I love this movie and I have a great time
Speaker 3: watching it.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I think, especially as time has gone by, I
Speaker 1: think more and more people I think people who have
Speaker 1: attempted to adapt it can recognize this and know more
Speaker 1: about the history of adaptation regarding this novel. But I
Speaker 1: think the more the time, the more time has passed,
Speaker 1: the more a lot of people have realized that this
Speaker 1: was still a commendable effort. It's still it's still a
Speaker 1: pretty great telling of a Dune story, even if there
Speaker 1: are some very important thematic notes and ultimately happenings that
Speaker 1: they we'll discuss that I don't love. But still a
Speaker 1: lot of it. Is there, a lot of the look
Speaker 1: of Dune. Is there, a lot of the feel of Dune.
Speaker 1: Is there, lots of great performances, So you know, it's
Speaker 1: and even throwing on the fact that he had to
Speaker 1: cut it down so much, given all of these limitations,
Speaker 1: the finished product is a lot of fun. It has
Speaker 1: a lot of greatness in it.
Speaker 3: You know, I noticed something when watching the new movie
Speaker 3: Dune Part two that made me think differently on some
Speaker 3: stuff I said in part one of the series. So
Speaker 3: last time, we talked about how difficult Duane is to
Speaker 3: adapt for multiple reasons. On one hand, it's difficult because
Speaker 3: so much of the story is contextual at stuff about
Speaker 3: the setting rather than action that happens directly within the story.
Speaker 3: So it's a lot of world building that's very interesting
Speaker 3: and sort of gives the direct plot meaning. But the
Speaker 3: other 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 ooh, dune iraq, you know, thinking through something.
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.
Speaker 1: Yeah. Yeah, So we're going to continue to talk about
Speaker 1: these these differences, some of these choices as we roll
Speaker 1: on through here. Let's see, we got into the plot
Speaker 1: a bit in the last episode, and one key thing
Speaker 1: in case you've forgotten, or if you have, you're gonna
Speaker 1: ignore us and you're just gonna roll into part two
Speaker 1: without listening to part one, is that the one thing
Speaker 1: we're doing different with this differently with this Weird House
Speaker 1: Cinema episode is instead of rolling through the entire cast
Speaker 1: or notable members of the cast before going into the plot,
Speaker 1: we are touching in on cast members as we go,
Speaker 1: and this was in order to try and make the
Speaker 1: split between the two episodes a little less 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 Straades and how the Emperor is planning to use
Speaker 3: House Harkonen to destroy Duke Letto and his line.
Speaker 1: Yeah, and then we had to cut for time. So
Speaker 1: we're jumping back in here with more build up to
Speaker 1: the key plot. We're on a different planet. We're on
Speaker 1: a wet planet, so let let's jump right in Okay.
Speaker 3: So here we are at the planet Calidan. This is
Speaker 3: the home of House Atraades. It is a gray planet
Speaker 3: of rain and oceans, totally contrasted with the dryness of dune,
Speaker 3: though often comparisons are made between the waves of the
Speaker 3: sea and the dunes of the desert, and this comes
Speaker 3: up in several adaptations of the story as well. But
Speaker 3: here we get more narration. Now, last time we were
Speaker 3: joking about the amount of voiceover narration. There is to
Speaker 3: explain what's going on in this movie, and there's there's
Speaker 3: even more to come. So Princess Erirol continues on the soundtrack.
Speaker 3: She says, the powerful Benni Jeserts Sisterhood for ninety generations
Speaker 3: has been manipulating bloodlines to produce the Quisat's Hatarak, a
Speaker 3: super being on Caladan. Jessica, a member of the Sisterhood
Speaker 3: and the bound concubine of Duke Letto Atredees, had been
Speaker 3: ordered to bear only daughters because of her love for
Speaker 3: the Duke. She disobeyed and gave birth to a son,
Speaker 3: Paul Paul Atreides. Now, even all that exposition raises some questions,
Speaker 3: but like I think it was part of the story
Speaker 3: that the Benni jests they have many powers that they
Speaker 3: train for. They have powers of mind, the mind that
Speaker 3: can sort of command matter in various ways, and one
Speaker 3: of them is that say, they can control the sex
Speaker 3: of 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 1: So Paula Trades in this film is played by Kyle
Speaker 1: McLachlin born nineteen fifty nine. Kyle would have been in
Speaker 1: his early to mid twenties here, I believe, And it's
Speaker 1: awkward and it's difficult casting, but he, you know, awkwardly
Speaker 1: feels a bit too old in the first half of
Speaker 1: 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 McLachlin 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 epess really. Instead,
Speaker 3: he comes off as Kyle MacLaughlin 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 m macglaughlin'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 1: Yeah, he never feels like a boy. He always feels
Speaker 1: like a young man or you know, a guy in
Speaker 1: his twenties anyway, And I guess the moments where I
Speaker 1: think he is best are the sort of cold moments.
Speaker 1: Sometimes it's even a moment with the internal voice going on.
Speaker 1: And in these moments, it's almost like Paul is more
Speaker 1: of a cipher, you know, Paul kind of seen through
Speaker 1: the lens of, say, the protagonist in David Clintenberg Scanners.
Speaker 1: You know, someone whose mental reality, whose relationship with his
Speaker 1: own thoughts and the world around him is so different
Speaker 1: from ours that he feels a little alien, you know, personality. Yeah,
Speaker 1: so there are moments like that that that worked for me.
Speaker 1: And yeah, for the most part, I don't think it's
Speaker 1: a bad performance. You know, We've seen plenty of movies
Speaker 1: where the central handsome lead is not a good actor
Speaker 1: and is not good in any of his scenes. So
Speaker 1: it's nothing like that. It's a totally different beast. And
Speaker 1: it is very difficult and ultimately not fair to compare
Speaker 1: him in his performance to Timothy Chalomey in the New
Speaker 1: Dune movies, because in my opinion, Chalomy is just absolutely
Speaker 1: perfect because, for one, on one hand, he is able
Speaker 1: to capture the youthfulness of Paul. In part one, he
Speaker 1: really does look like a kid that is maybe fifteen,
Speaker 1: which I believe is his age in the book. And
Speaker 1: yet he is still label and I wasn't I was
Speaker 1: doubtful until I went into part two. He's still able
Speaker 1: to deliver that more serious, awaken Paul, that dangerous Paul
Speaker 1: that we get in the second half of of dv's
Speaker 1: version 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 that awakening
Speaker 3: to the terrible purpose, the sort of arc toward tyranny
Speaker 3: and the and the coldness and abuse of power. You
Speaker 3: see that come on with with such convincing intensity in
Speaker 3: the second film, and he I think he does a really,
Speaker 3: 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 1: Yeah, you know, despite the fact that you know, I remember,
Speaker 1: I think I've read in places that he was like
Speaker 1: a real student of the book, you know, and like
Speaker 1: came in and was was you know, done his homework,
Speaker 1: and certainly, you know, like you said, he'd go on
Speaker 1: to have a very accomplished career. He is a two
Speaker 1: time Emmy Award winner for his work on Lynch's Twin Peaks.
Speaker 1: This was his film debut, which he followed up with
Speaker 1: with Lynch's doune follow up, The neo noir Blue Velvet.
Speaker 1: And this is not a surprise for anyone, but because
Speaker 1: he's probably seen him in something. He's a terrific comedic
Speaker 1: actor as well. He has great comedic timing. I really
Speaker 1: enjoyed on Portlandia for example. Yes, he played the mayor.
Speaker 1: I think, yeah he did. All right, Well, what's what's
Speaker 1: Paul doing. What's Paul up 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 what basically what we're going to get
Speaker 3: in this scene is yet another sizeable exposition dump, serving
Speaker 3: to 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 what are the little like magnified scrolls or something.
Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, they better not have computers, Yes, because that's
Speaker 1: of course, a whole big deal in the universe that
Speaker 1: we have the Butlerrian Jahad that eradicated thinking machines, and
Speaker 1: we have this strong dictate, you know, religious and cultural
Speaker 1: that thou shalt not make a machine in the likeness
Speaker 1: 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 Aracus, which attack all rhythmic vibrations. And we
Speaker 3: learned that the Harkonins are the sworn enemy of Houseitreades
Speaker 3: and their home world gide Prime is close is close
Speaker 3: to Oracus.
Speaker 1: It is interesting that this film decides to go ahead
Speaker 1: and lay out stuff, you know, information concerning that tay Lasu,
Speaker 1: who are not going to be important in this film
Speaker 1: at all, Like they were clearly thinking ahead to subsequent films.
Speaker 1: I mean they're part of it, like their work is
Speaker 1: present here, but you don't actually need to bring them up. Likewise,
Speaker 1: later we're gonna get a mixtion. And you know, previously
Speaker 1: we had a mention of IX, and IX is not
Speaker 1: really important to this film either. So it seems like
Speaker 1: if you wanted to like cut down on the amount
Speaker 1: of information you're hitting the viewer with, these would would
Speaker 1: have been things you could have left on the cutting
Speaker 1: room floor.
Speaker 3: Yeah, yeah, interesting choice. We have just folded space from IX.
Speaker 1: Yes.
Speaker 3: Anyway, So Paul is approached in his state room here
Speaker 3: by three characters who are servants of House Aitraades. There
Speaker 3: is Thufir hawat the mentat, and his eyebrows would function
Speaker 3: 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.
Speaker 1: Yeah.
Speaker 3: We also meet in the scene Gerney Halleck, the war
Speaker 3: master who trains Paul in the Marshall Virtues, and we
Speaker 3: meet doctor Wellington Ua, the physician of hous Aitraades. He's
Speaker 3: a called a suk doctor and the Suk school of
Speaker 3: medicine is I think like the it's like the main
Speaker 3: sort of way medicine is done in the world of Doune.
Speaker 1: All right, let's go ahead and lay out these three
Speaker 1: actors then, because they come in like next to each other.
Speaker 1: It's almost kind of comedic the way they come out.
Speaker 1: But you know, and and so first of all, we
Speaker 1: have we have Howitt played by Freddie Jones, who lived
Speaker 1: nineteen twenty seven through twenty nineteen, British character actor who
Speaker 1: we talked about in our episode on eighty three's Kroll.
Speaker 1: He had previously been in Lynch's The Elephant Man, and
Speaker 1: he has a slew of other credits, including nineteen sixty
Speaker 1: nine's Frankenstein Must Be Destroyed, though that is generally I
Speaker 1: think one that a lot of people choose to skip
Speaker 1: in the Hammer of Frankenstein legacy. But in anyway, he's
Speaker 1: perfectly fine in this, if a bit doddering for my taste.
Speaker 1: I always picture Howitt as being a little more I
Speaker 1: don't know, he's more aloof here, which is in fitting
Speaker 1: with a mentat but I tend to imagine him always
Speaker 1: as being a bit more assertive. I mean, he's the
Speaker 1: 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 Doune Part one.
Speaker 1: Absolutely yeah, And I do love the eyebrows, like this
Speaker 1: is a film that does commit to helping the viewer
Speaker 1: out by having a lot of visual cues regarding factions
Speaker 1: how and different types of psychically enhanced people. And so
Speaker 1: the Mintats all have just out of control eyebrows and
Speaker 1: I'll allow it. It's gonna neat, okay.
Speaker 3: And he's got the red stained lips from the juice
Speaker 3: that the mintat straight.
Speaker 1: Yes, yes, more on that in a minute.
Speaker 3: But okay, So that's the fear how the mintat. But
Speaker 3: we also have Gurnie Halleck and doctor Ua.
Speaker 1: Yeah Hallick is of course. Gurney here is played by
Speaker 1: Patrick Stewart born in nineteen forty, So you know who
Speaker 1: Patrick Stewart is. We're talking about Captain Jeohn Luke McCard.
Speaker 1: We're talking about Charles Xavier. His pre track films also
Speaker 1: include nineteen eighty five's Life Force. He was born in
Speaker 1: nineteen forty. We talked about him briefly in our episode
Speaker 1: on Nyazaki's Nausicaa because he did one of the voices,
Speaker 1: so one of the key voices for that and did
Speaker 1: an excellent job. But yeah, he is our troubadour warrior
Speaker 1: and 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's 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 1: Yeah, yeah, Well, Meanwhile, in the recent Dune films, Josh
Speaker 1: Brolin had really had had more of an opportunity, I think,
Speaker 1: to inhabit this role and ultimately is just tremendous in it.
Speaker 1: So Josh Brolin easily my favorite Gurney that we've seen
Speaker 1: 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 1: Yeah, anytime he's on camera bravely defending the a treedee
Speaker 1: strategic stockpile of pugs, he's a joy, all right. And
Speaker 1: then we have Yeah, we have Doctor Wellington Ua played
Speaker 1: by Dean Stockwell nineteen thirty six through twenty twenty one,
Speaker 1: a wonderful American actor that we discussed in depth for
Speaker 1: our episode on The Dunwich Horror in which he starred
Speaker 1: as the warlock Wilburt Wetley. Definitely go back and listen
Speaker 1: to that episode if you want to hear us talk
Speaker 1: more about Dean Stockwell. But I think he does a
Speaker 1: fine job here. It makes for a very sympathetic Ua.
Speaker 1: Chang Chin is also great in the twenty twenty one adaptation.
Speaker 1: I agree.
Speaker 3: I feel like Doctor Yue is one of those characters
Speaker 3: that is hard to realize on screen because so much
Speaker 3: of his drama is internal. Like we were talking about that,
Speaker 3: you know, like he has sort of the reader in
Speaker 3: the book is given access to some of his internal
Speaker 3: thoughts that give a lot of meaning to his activity,
Speaker 3: to his his sort of tragic character arc.
Speaker 1: Yeah. Yeah, but if you're going into it cold, you
Speaker 1: really only you're still only encountering him for a short
Speaker 1: amount of time. So there's a lot of emotion and
Speaker 1: turmoil to pack into that performance in a very short time.
Speaker 1: I think both of these two gentlemen do a great
Speaker 1: job with it in their own way. And clearly this
Speaker 1: is something we'll touch on later, but clearly they shot
Speaker 1: more scenes with Dean stockwell, because at times they'll just
Speaker 1: like they'll like zoom zoo, they'll like fade into a
Speaker 1: scene where he's having like a really emotional moment about
Speaker 1: what he's about to do, and then we we fade
Speaker 1: back out of that. Like, clearly this was a longer
Speaker 1: scene that was going to be in the the intended
Speaker 1: 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 from
Speaker 3: the first third of the movie. Anyway, So these three
Speaker 3: men have all sort of been involved in training Paul
Speaker 3: to become a superhuman of sorts.
Speaker 4: Uh.
Speaker 3: He For example, when they walk into the room, he
Speaker 3: he grins, very pleased with himself and claims that he
Speaker 3: could tell who was approaching him from behind without looking.
Speaker 3: You know, he seems almost giddy with how powerful his
Speaker 3: ears are, and Gurney engages. Gurney comes up and he's like, Okay,
Speaker 3: time to knife fight Paul. So they're gonna have a
Speaker 3: knife sparring match. Paul is trained to fight with the
Speaker 3: blade using energy shields, and at first Paul says, you know,
Speaker 3: we already did our knife training this morning. I'm not
Speaker 3: in the mood for more, and Garnie Hallick says, moods
Speaker 3: a thing for cattle and love play, not fighting. So
Speaker 3: that's a pretty good moment for Patrick Stewart. But anyway,
Speaker 3: so they go into this fight, and the way the
Speaker 3: energy shields are represented in this movie kind of makes
Speaker 3: it so you can't really see the actors anymore. They're
Speaker 3: represented as these animated prisms that extend over the body
Speaker 3: from a device on the belt, and they make the
Speaker 3: characters look like sort of blocky early CGI characters like
Speaker 3: in the Money for Nothing video.
Speaker 1: Yeah, this this was disappointing for me rewatching the movie,
Speaker 1: because these effects were much better in my memory. I
Speaker 1: like the concept of the shield technology being you know,
Speaker 1: kind of blocky. I like the idea of it being
Speaker 1: this kind of like brownish color. The color schemes good
Speaker 1: and interestingly enough, I'd recently watched an extra about the
Speaker 1: the excellent Loki series mini series that came out way
Speaker 1: I guess it's more than many series went two seasons,
Speaker 1: but they were inspired by these effects to create their
Speaker 1: portal doors, which are important to the plot of Loki.
Speaker 1: So clearly it resonated with other people. But yeah, rewatching it.
Speaker 1: They just end up hiding almost all of the action.
Speaker 1: The new films do a much better job, not only
Speaker 1: just effects wise, but also creating a complex shield tech
Speaker 1: on the screen that makes instant visual sense because there
Speaker 1: are a lot of ins and outs to the way
Speaker 1: they work, and it's pivotal for understanding various things about
Speaker 1: combat and the done universe.
Speaker 3: Yeah, it's a difficult thing to rep resent, but they
Speaker 3: do a good job in the new movie. So the
Speaker 3: idea is that these personal energy shields deflect fast moving
Speaker 3: incoming objects. So if you try to stab somebody or
Speaker 3: shoot them, the shield will deflect that. So the way
Speaker 3: to harm someone with wearing one of these shields is
Speaker 3: quote the slow blade. You have to slowly move the
Speaker 3: knife through the shield. So it's counterintuitive to normal you know,
Speaker 3: fighting instincts. And the way it's represented in the new
Speaker 3: movies is that something that comes in fast and is
Speaker 3: deflected by the shield, the shield glows blue, but when
Speaker 3: something slowly is able to move through the shield, it
Speaker 3: turns red.
Speaker 1: Yeah, which is a great visual system for the viewer,
Speaker 1: you know, let us understand what's happening on the screen
Speaker 1: in the same way that mentats have giant eyebrows in
Speaker 1: this movie.
Speaker 3: Right, So, after the fight, Paul and doctor Ua trade
Speaker 3: information about Iracus. Paul is extremely interested in the worms,
Speaker 3: and we also learned about the people called the Freemen
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 attreinees like no, Aracus is a trap, but
Speaker 3: they're going to go anyway.
Speaker 1: Yep. And you know that alone, that statement alone is
Speaker 1: perhaps not completely out of keeping, Like there are people
Speaker 1: in house Atredes that realize that this is this is
Speaker 1: a trap. But key is that they think it is
Speaker 1: a trap that they can turn to their advantage. Right.
Speaker 3: Oh, and then we get even more fight training this one.
Speaker 3: This one is a real upgrade thing from the energy
Speaker 3: shield scene. Now we're going to get the weirding module
Speaker 3: with the stabbing robot. So they say, doctor Ua put
Speaker 3: the weirding module on him, rob How would you describe
Speaker 3: what the weirding module is and what it does?
Speaker 1: I mean, it looks like an underwater camera housing, That's
Speaker 1: what it looks like. And I guess this is not
Speaker 1: in the book, but it is supposedly some sort of
Speaker 1: thing that turns your voice into a weapon. The weirding
Speaker 1: way is a movement technique martial arts of the Benagest
Speaker 1: that is in the books. But if memory serves the
Speaker 1: filmmakers here, and I think maybe Lynch in particular wanted
Speaker 1: to avoid putting martial arts in their film. I think
Speaker 1: there's something about like Lynch didn't want to see karate
Speaker 1: on the Dunes of Aracus, or this might also be
Speaker 1: classified as something you could consider like the fear of
Speaker 1: looking silly and cinematic adaptations of Dune, which is something
Speaker 1: you see, and at least the and the more recent adaptations,
Speaker 1: there seem to be some choices that were made where
Speaker 1: they're like, Okay, we can't do that. That might look
Speaker 1: too silly, or at least that's the way I read
Speaker 1: into some of those changes. So, you know, fair enough,
Speaker 1: but the device and the concept here are kind of clunky,
Speaker 1: and it forces us to have to figure out another
Speaker 1: strange technology after just having experienced the shields. That's right.
Speaker 3: But the weirding module is silly.
Speaker 1: I'm sorry.
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 translates like sounds or voices into lethal energy attacks.
Speaker 3: So it's like a blaster that you operate by saying.
Speaker 1: Zap, yeah, zap, zong, et cetera. You can use that
Speaker 1: et cetera can be a killing word. That's right.
Speaker 3: I think I read somewhere that as you said, you know,
Speaker 3: so the Weirding module is original to Lynch's movie. It's
Speaker 3: not in the book, and I read somewhere that this
Speaker 3: might be like a strange literalization of a line in
Speaker 3: the novel about the name of maudieb the name later
Speaker 3: taken by Paul when he joins the Fremen, that name
Speaker 3: being a quote killing word, which I think may have
Speaker 3: been a metaphor in the original context, but then literalized
Speaker 3: into it this piece of sci fi technology.
Speaker 1: And so they run with it. It's weird, it's fun,
Speaker 1: but it is clunky, and it's not something I'm super
Speaker 1: attached too. Yeah.
Speaker 3: So he fights the stabbing robot, and Paul is shown
Speaker 3: to be very powerful at the weirding way.
Speaker 1: Yeah. Nice Toto track during this. I like it.
Speaker 3: Oh that's right, Yeah, with the percussion. So later we
Speaker 3: see Paul meeting other characters. He meets Duncan Idaho, who
Speaker 3: must go ahead of them to Iracus. He is the
Speaker 3: sword master of House A Treades, and I think he's
Speaker 3: going to go ahead to sort of meet with the
Speaker 3: Fremen and try to interface with them.
Speaker 1: Yeah. Played here by Richard Jordan who lived nineteen thirty
Speaker 1: seven through nineteen ninety three. Emmy nominated actor. His credits
Speaker 1: include seventy six is Logan's run nineteen ninety's The Hunted
Speaker 1: Red October in nineteen ninety three is Getty's not much
Speaker 1: really to say about him here, though, because he has
Speaker 1: almost no screen time and it's just quickly forgotten. He's
Speaker 1: an important character in the novel Dune and moving forward
Speaker 1: in the Dune series, but he's treated like a red
Speaker 1: shirt here, at least in this cut. The twenty twenty
Speaker 1: one film with Jason Momoa in the role is I
Speaker 1: think the best version of the character we've seen so
Speaker 1: far in an adaptation, and we'll just see where it
Speaker 1: goes from there in the future. Ah.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I didn't put it together yet, but we make
Speaker 3: a Jason Momoa gola a Momola if you will. So
Speaker 3: we also meet here Duke Leto, the head of house
Speaker 3: a Treades, 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 1: Yeah, this is a great bit, a recurring bit in
Speaker 1: this film. I like it. The Duke here is played
Speaker 1: by German actor Jurgen Procnow born nineteen forty one. His
Speaker 1: big breakout role was, of course, playing the captain in
Speaker 1: nineteen eighty one's The Boat or Doss Boat or Doss
Speaker 1: Boot if you will see previous discussions on the title
Speaker 1: for this film. But actor with a tremendous face and
Speaker 1: a great presence for playing stern, serious, distant and sometimes
Speaker 1: threatening characters. His filmography is all over the place, but
Speaker 1: a few notable points include Michael Mann's The Keep from
Speaker 1: eighty three, Twin Peaks Firewalk with Me in ninety two,
Speaker 1: kind of continuing this trend of Lynch often bringing back
Speaker 1: actors that he worked with on Doune for other projects.
Speaker 1: He of course plays the author Sutter Kane and John Carr.
Speaker 1: There's in the Mouth of Madness. He has a role
Speaker 1: in the Judge Dread film from ninety five, and he
Speaker 1: pops up in The English Patient in ninety six, but
Speaker 1: lots of other credits. I think he even plays an
Speaker 1: older Arnold Schwarzenegger in a TV bio movie about Arnold Swarzenegger. What. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it was like an A A and E movie or something.
Speaker 1: I remember it looked did not look good.
Speaker 3: Like a movie about an existing actor projecting that actor
Speaker 3: actor into the future.
Speaker 1: Yeah. I don't know, but at any rate, you know,
Speaker 1: it ends up being a more distant feeling duke here,
Speaker 1: and I think I think it works, you know, concerning
Speaker 1: his relationship with Paul, and there are these moments of
Speaker 1: warmth like the Sleeper Awaken speech. But I would say
Speaker 1: he's my third favorite duke leto the first, behind Oscar
Speaker 1: Isaac and William Hurt.
Speaker 3: I also really like Oscar Isaac's performance in the new film.
Speaker 3: Yeah that's Paul's father. We also meet Paul's mother, Lady Jessica,
Speaker 3: whom we meet walking through the rain in the courtyard
Speaker 3: of the palace, hidden under this voluminous hood, and she
Speaker 3: seems very interesting and mysterious when we first meet her,
Speaker 3: because we hear her inner voice worrying about Paul and
Speaker 3: saying that he must face the box. No man has
Speaker 3: ever faced it before, and tonight she may lose her son.
Speaker 3: So when we meet her, she's already worrying that she
Speaker 3: may have committed her son to a lethal challenge.
Speaker 1: Yeah, and she has played here by Francesca her Niece
Speaker 1: born nineteen forty five, English actor who also played the
Speaker 1: Witch of the Web in nineteen eighty three Skrawl. So
Speaker 1: another Krawl connection. Extensive stage, screen and TV credits. She
Speaker 1: 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 1: Agreed, Yeah, I think Rebecca Ferguson just gets more to
Speaker 1: do with the character. We get a stronger portrayal of
Speaker 1: Lady Jessica both before and after the initial fall of
Speaker 1: House of Tredes.
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 Mohem,
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 paul A Trades,
Speaker 3: the young heir of House Atreadees, and that she and
Speaker 3: the Benny Jester at Sisters must learn more about paul
Speaker 3: to find out what his significance is.
Speaker 1: So here she is, yeah, and this is where we
Speaker 1: get our goamja Bar scene, which is I think pretty
Speaker 1: effective here. I like it in both this adaptation and
Speaker 1: the recent adaptation. You know, it's one of the most
Speaker 1: famous scenes in the whole novel, and it's also one
Speaker 1: of the first big scenes in the novel. As I
Speaker 1: think we've discussed before, Like it happens almost immediately in
Speaker 1: your reading of the book, that's right.
Speaker 3: So the premise of the scene is that the Reverend
Speaker 3: Mother arrives, she speaks with Lady Jessica and Paul sort
Speaker 3: of awakes and overhears them speaking a little bit about
Speaker 3: something about his purpose and that he must be tested.
Speaker 3: So Paul is woken in the night and taken before
Speaker 3: the Reverend Mother. We do get some chewing out of
Speaker 3: Lady Jessica by the Reverend Mother because of her hubris
Speaker 3: disobeying orders and having a son trying. You know, She's like,
Speaker 3: you're trying to create the Queisout's hatterak, You're not supposed
Speaker 3: to do that. That is the super being of the universe.
Speaker 3: That's violation of orders.
Speaker 1: So forth.
Speaker 3: Now, somewhere before we actually get the Hand in the Box,
Speaker 3: there's a moment here where we see Duke Letto alone
Speaker 3: in his office, apparently maybe aware of what's going on,
Speaker 3: but not intervening. I don't recall if in the book
Speaker 3: he was aware or not, but anyway, we see him
Speaker 3: sitting alone in his office. And this is the first
Speaker 3: time we see the House of Trades pug. Can we
Speaker 3: set off a pug alarm pug alert sidebar on the pug.
Speaker 3: So we're going to see this pug pop up a
Speaker 3: number of times, Like when they arrive on the planet,
Speaker 3: they've got the pug with them. And then also later
Speaker 3: when the Harconins attack the house Atrdes, we see Gurnie
Speaker 3: Hallick Patrick Stewart running into battle with like this science fictionifle,
Speaker 3: clutching the pug to his chest.
Speaker 1: Yeah.
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. It's like
Speaker 3: a lot of images in David lynch movies, and I
Speaker 3: think part of what makes him a really great filmmaker
Speaker 3: and artist is he puts in these weird images that
Speaker 3: on one hand feel kind of off, but on the
Speaker 3: other hand you think about them and they just feel right.
Speaker 3: Something about the pug works. I don't know what it means,
Speaker 3: but it feels like, yeah, they would have a pug
Speaker 3: like this.
Speaker 1: Yeah. Well, we saw the Emperor had his own dog
Speaker 1: breeds running around, so it's weird, but it's also kind
Speaker 1: of fitting that a great house would have its signature
Speaker 1: dog breed. The pug is also the closest thing that
Speaker 1: we get to a chair dog, which we get much
Speaker 1: 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 1: Well, cheer dogs are not mistreated either, They just do
Speaker 1: they were. They have a function. You sit on them,
Speaker 1: and that you're not mistreating a chair dog to sit
Speaker 1: on a chair dog.
Speaker 3: Surely, Oh okay, I misunderstood.
Speaker 1: The cheer dog doesn't have a face or presumably a butt.
Speaker 1: I guess it's I don't know. There's probably some inherent
Speaker 1: cruelty in the creation of a cheer dog, but it's
Speaker 1: never really explored.
Speaker 3: Not to get too dark, I guess you could say
Speaker 3: there's 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 atreadees love
Speaker 3: their pugs.
Speaker 1: Pugs are cuties, no doubt about it. We have made
Speaker 1: 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 could Coming back
Speaker 3: to the Gomja bar scene. So this is where the
Speaker 3: reverend mother confronts Paul alone in the in the house
Speaker 3: on Kaladan.
Speaker 1: Here and she.
Speaker 3: Starts to command him using the voice. This is one
Speaker 3: of the many Benni Jesert arts having a way of
Speaker 3: manipulating their voice so as to sort of hypnotize and
Speaker 3: command people, even against their will. The Reverend Mother tries
Speaker 3: to use the voice to command Paul, but he's somewhat
Speaker 3: resistant at first. When she talks in this movie, it's
Speaker 3: kind of a lizard queen speaking through a fan voice.
Speaker 1: Yeah, it sounds really good in my opinion. I also
Speaker 1: really like the way that it's brought to life in
Speaker 1: the new film adaptations, and they feel similar. They're probably
Speaker 1: not that similar if you line them up one to one,
Speaker 1: but they're both effective for me. Yeah, I agree.
Speaker 3: So Paul is given this trial, the Trial of the
Speaker 3: Box where the reverend. So he puts his hand in
Speaker 3: a box that the Reverend Mother offers him, and then
Speaker 3: she puts a sort of poisoned thimble with a needle
Speaker 3: on it against his neck and tells him there's going
Speaker 3: to be pain in the box. He will want to
Speaker 3: remove his hand, but if he removes his hand, she
Speaker 3: will stab him with the gom 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: The fear has gone, there will be nothing.
Speaker 1: Only I will remain. And I really like his reading
Speaker 1: of this with the inner voices, so it's kind of
Speaker 1: there's an urgency to it because he is in pain.
Speaker 1: I heard the sample in a mix once before, I believe,
Speaker 1: in an autech or mix. It was very well, very
Speaker 1: 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 1: Yeah, yeah, it's still it very much keeps most of
Speaker 1: the words and definitely keeps the spirit of the thing.
Speaker 3: And col wahad, he's okay, he passed the test. The
Speaker 3: Reverend Mother says, coolwahad, which is a phrase meaning I
Speaker 3: am profoundly stirred. And she explains the prophecy of the
Speaker 3: Quisat's Haderak to Paul. But Paul fears for his father,
Speaker 3: and the Reverend Mother tells him what can be done
Speaker 3: to protect his father has been done, So you know,
Speaker 3: it's there's a kind of fatalism going on here.
Speaker 4: 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 giedde Prime, home of House Harconin and Lord.
Speaker 3: The way the Harconans are realized in this movie, there
Speaker 3: is a level of weirdness that again goes beyond the
Speaker 3: books is purely David Lynch, I think.
Speaker 1: So.
Speaker 3: First of all, I just wanted to focus. They give
Speaker 3: us a brief look at the exterior of Geedee Prime
Speaker 3: before we meet the characters, and it appears to be
Speaker 3: a kind of urban landscape of shadows and green light,
Speaker 3: with these unbroken walls of industrial looking buildings stretching up
Speaker 3: until they vanish into a dark sky. There's black smoke
Speaker 3: pouring out of a hidden orifice in the city walls,
Speaker 3: towers of metal struts in the foreground, almost like watchtowers
Speaker 3: or guard stations, with some kind of tortured sculpture looming
Speaker 3: between the buildings. And we see the sculpture many times.
Speaker 3: It is like a giant porcelain face on which the
Speaker 3: eyes and nose are hidden behind a shadow, and all
Speaker 3: that's visible is a giant gaping mouth over a plump chin,
Speaker 3: almost like the mouth of a fish, but on the
Speaker 3: head of a human baby. So is this sculpture opening
Speaker 3: its mouth to devour food, to scream in pain, or
Speaker 3: to gasp for breath? All seem to be implied. I
Speaker 3: love this design for the home world of the Harconins
Speaker 3: because it's like this little sculpture with the eyes hidden,
Speaker 3: is like greed, pain, fear, and desperation luxuriating in the
Speaker 3: ambiguity between them all.
Speaker 1: And is it also piping out smoke or some sort
Speaker 1: of vapor, because the planet itself is supposed to be
Speaker 1: heavily polluted. So yes, I kind of like see it
Speaker 1: as that as well, like everything you said, but on
Speaker 1: top of that, it's spouting pollution.
Speaker 3: You see smoke coming out I interpreted as the smoke
Speaker 3: 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 1: Absolutely, yeah, I love this look. We only see really
Speaker 1: a glimpse of it here, but it's reminiscent of hr
Speaker 1: Giger's original biomechanical designs for the planet from I believe
Speaker 1: the Jodowski adaptation that never came to fruition, but little
Speaker 1: bits like that has kind of been passed down and
Speaker 1: become part of the tradition of portraying Dune on film,
Speaker 1: even in the recent DV adaptation. So we see a
Speaker 1: lot more of this planet in Part two, of course,
Speaker 1: and they have their own wonderful and an inventive way
Speaker 1: of envisioning it, but there's still that biomechanical Gothic aspect
Speaker 1: 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 it's a
Speaker 3: black and white kind of environment with high contrast that
Speaker 3: I think is explained by Gidee Prime having a black son.
Speaker 3: So they say there's like there's no color on the
Speaker 3: surface of the planet.
Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, I think that's supposed to be the reason
Speaker 1: for it, and give himn excuse to shoot it an
Speaker 1: infra red apparently.
Speaker 3: So we meet here the Harkonen Mintat Piter Devrees, who
Speaker 3: is the you know, the court, the equivalent of Thufr
Speaker 3: Hawat to house the Treades.
Speaker 1: This is played by Oh well, this of course is
Speaker 1: Brad Dorif born nineteen fifty. Yes, one of American cinema's
Speaker 1: finest weird actors. We've talked about it on the show
Speaker 1: before in our episode on Toby Hooper's Spontaneous Combustion from
Speaker 1: nineteen eighty nine. And he's one of these actors that's
Speaker 1: enjoyable in pretty much anything, regardless of overall film quality.
Speaker 1: You know, he's probably best known for his performances in
Speaker 1: such films as nineteen seventy nine's Wise Blood, which is
Speaker 1: generally excellent, nineteen eighty eight Child's play in two thousand
Speaker 1: and two's Lord of the Rings the Two Towers, in
Speaker 1: which he plays Grima worm tongue. Yeah, he had great
Speaker 1: performance there, in which he has no eyebrows. But in this,
Speaker 1: in Lynch's Doom, he of course has mintat eyebrows, and
Speaker 1: I do love him. In this he captures the viciousness
Speaker 1: of Pider. But at the same time, this is a
Speaker 1: Dune character that I dearly love, and there's never enough
Speaker 1: time in any adaptation to explore him and his delicious,
Speaker 1: dangerous relationship with the baron, where they both expect to
Speaker 1: know that the other will try and kill them at
Speaker 1: one point or the other. It's like a delicate balance.
Speaker 3: Yeah, he is an evil, vicious character, but also for
Speaker 3: some reason I find him pitiable.
Speaker 1: Yeah yeah, I mean is a twisted Mintat. He is
Speaker 1: the product of some sort of either bizarre corruption of
Speaker 1: a normal mintat or some corruption of the mentat process.
Speaker 1: And with all these things you have to sort of
Speaker 1: pick and choose how are you going to present him?
Speaker 1: I do quite love David Datzmachian's performance in the recent
Speaker 1: adaptation as well, but it's just a different slice of
Speaker 1: the same character. He's more cerebral and withdrawn in that performance,
Speaker 1: and it still works. It still captures a part of
Speaker 1: what is a ultimately a brief but complex character. Right.
Speaker 3: So Pider, he's speaking to himself. He says, it is
Speaker 3: by will alone, I set my mind in motion. So
Speaker 3: he's reciting a kind of mintat litany here, some sort
Speaker 3: of equivalent to the Litany against Fear, except instead of
Speaker 3: about avoiding fear, this is about, like, you know, realizing
Speaker 3: your potential with the help of drugs. Because it goes
Speaker 3: on to say it is by the juice of Sappho
Speaker 3: that thoughts acquire speed, that lips acquires stains, the stains
Speaker 3: become a warning. Then he says that a bunch of times.
Speaker 1: Yeah, this mintat Mantra is not from the books, but
Speaker 1: it is. It's one of those additions that feels perfectly
Speaker 1: at home in the Dune universe. It works, it absolutely works,
Speaker 1: And the whole thing about the juice of the Sapho
Speaker 1: is very much in the text.
Speaker 3: Yeah, so this is a nervous and unhappy Mintat in
Speaker 3: a dangerous situation.
Speaker 1: Yeah, nervous, angry, scheming, all those things, and yeah, we
Speaker 1: get it in this performance.
Speaker 3: So there are more visions of gide 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 Harcone
Speaker 3: and 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's style body modifications,
Speaker 3: ears clipped and sewn 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 1: Yeah, and that the red hair touch is nice and
Speaker 1: helps us identify Harconins. But already the scene is too
Speaker 1: much like the eyes and ears sewn up is just
Speaker 1: too much. And also that green, that green is too
Speaker 1: much like a modern perspective. I'll occasionally see stills from
Speaker 1: this and I'll initially think, oh, this is an unfinished sequence.
Speaker 1: That's green screen, you know, like that's where my mind goes, Like,
Speaker 1: 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 boil
Speaker 3: of some kind and the doctors are doing something grotesque
Speaker 3: with them with a needle.
Speaker 1: Yeah. Now, this Baron Vladimir Harkonen is played by Kenneth McMillan,
Speaker 1: who lived nineteen thirty two through nineteen eighty nine. American
Speaker 1: character actor who often played heavies and a reminder that
Speaker 1: by heavies I mean like threatening or dominant antagonists. He
Speaker 1: also played a lot of gruff authority figures. He didn't
Speaker 1: apparently didn't pursue an acting career until he was in
Speaker 1: his thirties, and he was forty before his first screen
Speaker 1: in TV credits appear, showing up in a couple episodes
Speaker 1: of Dark Shadows, as well as an uncredited role in
Speaker 1: nineteen seventy three Serpico. He followed this up with small
Speaker 1: roles in the Taking of Pelham one, two three, The
Speaker 1: Stepford Wives and Dog Day Afternoon. A fair amount of
Speaker 1: TV followed, including a role on the series Rota. He
Speaker 1: played a cop in the nineteen seventy nine Salem's Lot
Speaker 1: mini series from Toby Hooper, and he'd follow up Doune
Speaker 1: with a role in nineteen eighty five's Runaway Train and
Speaker 1: then mostly TV work.
Speaker 3: So this version of Baron Harkonen likes to scream and
Speaker 3: fly around in the air while screaming yeah.
Speaker 1: This character, this characterization of the Baron is a lot
Speaker 1: in the text. We are privy to his inner thoughts,
Speaker 1: and there are various dimensions to the character of the Baron,
Speaker 1: all of them evil. He is a man of vast
Speaker 1: greed and ambition, of appetite, brutality, fear, and endless plotting,
Speaker 1: and you can't possibly capture all of that on screen,
Speaker 1: so you pick and choose what you can. The recent
Speaker 1: adaptations do a great job focusing mostly on the brutal
Speaker 1: plotting aspect of the character. While this version of the
Speaker 1: Baron is a wild, gross demon of consumption, cackling, floating around, spitting,
Speaker 1: oozing and so forth. It's just too much, But to
Speaker 1: McMillan's credit, he rolls with it and delivers some nice menace.
Speaker 1: I'd say ultimately he's my third favorite Baron behind stellin
Speaker 1: Scarsguard and the more recent adaptations. Who's more of like
Speaker 1: the threatening and cerebral baron. And then I have to
Speaker 1: say that Ian McNeice did a great job with it
Speaker 1: in the mini series, the sci Fi mini series as well.
Speaker 3: Yeah, this is a less serious portrayal of the Baron
Speaker 3: than we get like with the Scars Guard. Obviously that
Speaker 3: is a very deep, dark, scary baron. This Baron is
Speaker 3: a lot funnier and and that kind of continues with
Speaker 3: how the rest of how Harkonin is portrayed. We meet
Speaker 3: the Baron's two nephews, Fade Rautha 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 1: So, yeah, So the Beast here is played by Paul L. Smith,
Speaker 1: who of nineteen thirty six through twenty twelve. So this
Speaker 1: is another over the top performance just by another noted
Speaker 1: gruff character actor. So he's an American actor who played
Speaker 1: Bluto in the nineteen eighty Popeye movie. Other credits include
Speaker 1: Sam Raimi's Cohen Brothers scripted film Crime Way from eighty five,
Speaker 1: Red Sonia from eighty five, Gore from eighty seven, and
Speaker 1: the nineteen eighty two Spanish horror movie Pieces, which is
Speaker 1: on our potential to do list. But yeah, basically, this
Speaker 1: Beast is just a grotesque cartoon character. Dave Bautista does
Speaker 1: a solid job as the character in the recent films,
Speaker 1: and they really expand the role to make the role
Speaker 1: 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 1: Yeah, and now the other son is, of course the
Speaker 1: golden child of House Harkonen. This is Fate Roth though,
Speaker 1: like you said, played by sting Yeaheen fifty one. I
Speaker 1: believe this was only his fourth acting role, following nineteen
Speaker 1: eighty two's Brimstone and Treckle, and he'd follow this up
Speaker 1: by playing Frankenstein in ten eighty five's The Bride. That's
Speaker 1: the Doctor, by the way, that the true Frankenstein, not
Speaker 1: Frankenstein as you know shorthand for the monster. He's continued
Speaker 1: to act on and off over the years. Often you know,
Speaker 1: really good, especially in small doses here and there. He
Speaker 1: is an Oscar winner, but in the original song category.
Speaker 3: M 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 1: He was, Yeah, he was. I think he had a
Speaker 1: small role in lock Stock and Two Smoking Barrels much later,
Speaker 1: and like that was one where it's a very small role,
Speaker 1: 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 later.
Speaker 3: I will kill him, I will kill you.
Speaker 1: Yeah, it's a it's a lot to figure out because
Speaker 1: he is. He is over the top and it's weird.
Speaker 1: It's a weird performance. He looks amazing and Fade Rotha
Speaker 1: on top of that is a strange character, like and
Speaker 1: no film adaptation, in my opinion, has really done him
Speaker 1: complete justice. Like he we don't know a lot about
Speaker 1: him ultimately, but we know and we know enough about
Speaker 1: him in the book that he's he's brash, he's not
Speaker 1: the plotter in the planner that his uncle is. His
Speaker 1: uncle is doing a lot to try and ensure that
Speaker 1: he moves up in the world and becomes a new
Speaker 1: face of House Harkonen. But there seems to be a
Speaker 1: lot of frustration with his maturity level and his appreciation
Speaker 1: for all of this, and you know, we just we
Speaker 1: 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 poll that they are
Speaker 3: sort of two sides of the same coin.
Speaker 1: Yeah. Yeah, Austin Butler does a great job in doing
Speaker 1: Part two. Is the character, but it's a it's a
Speaker 1: rather different read on him. Like, on one hand, he's
Speaker 1: still supposed to be a kind of hot and supposed
Speaker 1: to be a definite threat to Paul, though perplexingly the
Speaker 1: new adaptations portray him as an honorable fighter, which I'm
Speaker 1: still trying to figure that out. I need I need
Speaker 1: a view Part two again in order to figure out
Speaker 1: how I really feel about all this, because I think
Speaker 1: one of the appeals of the character in the book
Speaker 1: and in this adaptation is that he will absolutely cheat
Speaker 1: to win. Yes, and I feel like that helped that
Speaker 1: that actually makes him more of a threat to Paul,
Speaker 1: because this is a guy that will that will win
Speaker 1: at any cost and is used to winning at any
Speaker 1: cost and feels no shame about it. Yeah.
Speaker 3: Originally, the Harkonins are not like worthy opponents or you know, honorable, honorable.
Speaker 1: Villains.
Speaker 3: They're They're absolute like liars and cheaters and dirty tricksters,
Speaker 3: and they'll do whatever they can.
Speaker 1: Yeah. Though I'm sure DV has as his reasons, and
Speaker 1: like I say, I need to watch Doing Part two
Speaker 1: again to sort of figure out exactly how I feel
Speaker 1: 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 exercises 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 sex 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 1: Yeah, I think that was a solid cut for for
Speaker 1: the the new adaptations, for sure. And and it's it's
Speaker 1: something that is handled in this adaptation, in Lynch's adaptation
Speaker 1: in a way that has that has attracted a fair
Speaker 1: amount of criticism over the years.
Speaker 3: Yeah, from what I can tell, Well, it seems more
Speaker 3: implicit in Lynch's movie and a little more explicit in
Speaker 3: the book, but still I think it's somewhat there in
Speaker 3: the movie.
Speaker 1: Yea. But let's not detract from the utter weirdness of
Speaker 1: 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 the 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.
Speaker 1: Constantly. It's world building, baby, I like the detail. It's good.
Speaker 3: I don't recall if there's anything like that in the book,
Speaker 3: but it makes sense in this movie. The doctor is
Speaker 3: a ten. The baron also have a very David Lynch
Speaker 3: quality to them. This seems like purely Lynchy and flourish.
Speaker 3: One of them is like saying a little sort of
Speaker 3: nursery rhyme to the boils as he is picking at them,
Speaker 3: so he says, like, put the pick in there, Pete,
Speaker 3: turn it round real neat. That kind of cutesy rhyming
Speaker 3: in this grotesque context is an extremely David Lynch kind
Speaker 3: of thing to do.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I'll just mention briefly that that's the Leonardo Chimino
Speaker 1: playing the Baron's doctor Live nineteen seventeen through twenty twelve.
Speaker 1: You probably saw him in water World or in nineteen
Speaker 1: eighty seven's The Monster Squad when he played where he
Speaker 1: plays the old German guy. But yeah, this is weird
Speaker 1: and not in the books and just just strange, just
Speaker 1: strange 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 1: I don't think this is spice, though. To be sure,
Speaker 1: in the book they mentioned that, you know, a lot
Speaker 1: of royal houses use spice because spice extends your human life,
Speaker 1: and so I mean, it's maybe they're using spice and
Speaker 1: they just don't use it at the levels that frem
Speaker 1: and use it to gain their eyes. This, I don't know.
Speaker 1: I always kind of read this as some other kind
Speaker 1: of strange space drug in this universe of weird space drugs.
Speaker 1: It's like a mummified frog juice box. It's like you
Speaker 1: auto crush a petrified creature and then you inhale it,
Speaker 1: and then of course you chunk the juice box across
Speaker 1: the room. I'm not sure what this is all about.
Speaker 1: I don't think it's anything from the book or the books,
Speaker 1: but it is marvelously strange. I like it.
Speaker 3: So anyway, they're you know, they're talking about their plots
Speaker 3: against House of Treades and the baron to 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: he's just flying all the time here.
Speaker 1: Yeah. Yeah, this movie made the choice that he was
Speaker 1: going to fly around and float around, and all subsequent
Speaker 1: adaptations have gone on that route as well. Though it's
Speaker 1: more comical in this version and it's more threatening and
Speaker 1: ominous in dv's adaptations. But we're still not out of
Speaker 1: 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 Atredees or not the atreadees, sorry,
Speaker 3: the Harconins have this like plug, this like a valve
Speaker 3: in their heart that the Harconins 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 1: Yeah, this is not in the books, but it is
Speaker 1: kind of a fitting invention for the hearkens on a
Speaker 1: whole because yeah, so the baron apparently likes to level
Speaker 1: the playing field with his servants and his underlings so
Speaker 1: that he can kill them at will by simply pulling
Speaker 1: this thing out. But this sequence in particular that follows
Speaker 1: because basically what I think he's credited as a flower boy, like,
Speaker 1: a servant comes in and the baron approaches him rather
Speaker 1: lustily and then pulls out his heart plug and blood
Speaker 1: goes everywhere. And this sequence has generated for amount criticism
Speaker 1: over the years, dude to not only its grotesque qualities
Speaker 1: but also questionable implications during the AIDS crisis of the
Speaker 1: nineteen eighties, given that in quick succession we see same sex, desire,
Speaker 1: physical illness on the part of the baron, and also
Speaker 1: blood spraying everywhere. I don't think any of that was
Speaker 1: actually intentional, and Lynch is drawing directly on elements from
Speaker 1: the book here in many cases. But there's longstanding social
Speaker 1: 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 like remove the same sex attraction
Speaker 3: element from the Harconins because it's just not really necessary
Speaker 3: and and it avoids this kind of implication, the implication
Speaker 3: that like that in itself is part of their deviousness
Speaker 3: or is evil in some way. Okay, so I think
Speaker 3: we're done with Gidee Prime for now, right, Can.
Speaker 1: We onto Aracus? No?
Speaker 3: No, no, no, not onto Aracus.
Speaker 1: We're gonna go back to Caladan first. Okay.
Speaker 3: So we see, you know, the the Atredees 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 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 space ship 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 and the galaxy. And so their
Speaker 3: ship enters the Guilt 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 treated with apprehension and reverence
Speaker 3: as a mystical, almost magical event. It's so far from
Speaker 3: the kind of casual jet fighter pilots in space themes
Speaker 3: that we would get in so many other sci fi
Speaker 3: movies of the time. I love the feeling created here
Speaker 3: that to travel on a Guild highliner is to participate
Speaker 3: in a profound and unsettling mystery.
Speaker 1: Yeah. Absolutely, and one that is managed by a reclue
Speaker 1: cult that has a complete monopoly on space travel. A
Speaker 1: reminder that no one is moving star to star in
Speaker 1: the Dune universe except for the Guild. So there are
Speaker 1: no space battles because there's nobody to engage in those
Speaker 1: 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 reclusive cult, as you said.
Speaker 1: All right, so we board up the highliner and then
Speaker 1: we set off onward to Aracus. That's right.
Speaker 3: Finally we're at doune, so the planet appears as a
Speaker 3: reverse setting sun and they go down to the surface. Jessica,
Speaker 3: Leto and Paul arrive and set foot on the planet,
Speaker 3: and then Princess Irelon resus the narration gotta get more
Speaker 3: more voiceover narration. She says that House of Trades took
Speaker 3: control of Iracus sixty three standard days into the year
Speaker 3: ten thousand and one ninety one. It was known that
Speaker 3: the Harconins, the former rulers of Aracus, would leave many
Speaker 3: suicide troops behind a Trades patrols were doubled, and we
Speaker 3: learn in the following scenes that the Harconans have sabotaged
Speaker 3: machinery and defenses on the planet. We of course meet
Speaker 3: Duncan Idaho yet again. He comes to Duke Leto. He's
Speaker 3: dressed in a still suit. This is the first glimpse
Speaker 3: we get. I think of what the still suit looks
Speaker 3: like here, which it looks just kind of like a
Speaker 3: padded full body suit, but it's got the hose that
Speaker 3: connects to the nose. This is the local fremen 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 1: Yeah. Yeah, And the suits look pretty darn good in
Speaker 1: this film. In fact, I know peopleeople who prefer these
Speaker 1: suits to the new adaptations, but I like him in both. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I do too.
Speaker 3: So Duncan reports to the Duke that he's made contact
Speaker 3: with the Fremen and they could be powerful allies, especially
Speaker 3: since he believes there are many, many more of them
Speaker 3: than the Emperor realizes. They exist in vast numbers hidden
Speaker 3: from the Imperial census, so that's kind of threatening. So
Speaker 3: we watched the Attraadees troops being trained to preserve water,
Speaker 3: and we meet a new character. We meet leat Kines,
Speaker 3: the Judge of Change, which means he's supposed to oversee
Speaker 3: the change between Harcone and control of Iracus to a
Speaker 3: Trade's control of Iracus and then report to the lands
Speaker 3: Rad which is like the parliament of this universe, and
Speaker 3: like make sure that everything has been done fairly. But
Speaker 3: he's also an ecologist. He's an Imperial ecologist, and he's
Speaker 3: been on the planet a long time. I might have
Speaker 3: even been born here. He's sort of a daph did
Speaker 3: to Fremen ways and he has blue eyes from the Spice.
Speaker 1: Yeah, and this is of course Max Foncito playing in
Speaker 1: the role, who lived nineteen twenty nine through twenty twenty.
Speaker 1: See our recent episode on Flash Gordon for a longer
Speaker 1: discussion on Max here. But he is as always a
Speaker 1: fine presence in a film, but he is barely in this.
Speaker 1: This character's presence is much reduced. We see a lot
Speaker 1: more of kinds in the recent films, played by Sharon
Speaker 1: Duncan Brewster, who is also.
Speaker 3: Great, yes she is. I wonder why they use so
Speaker 3: little of doctor Kines in this movie. Makes you wonder
Speaker 3: if stuff got cut.
Speaker 1: Oh yeah, I get the feeling. It's just like the
Speaker 1: economy of the cut here. And you know I should
Speaker 1: throw in I've probably mentioned this in the last episode.
Speaker 1: There are those longer unauthorized cuts of nineteen eighty four's
Speaker 1: Dune that Lynch totally disowns. Those are like, you know,
Speaker 1: Smithy directed productions, and I really haven't seen those in full.
Speaker 1: So maybe we can have some listeners ride in with
Speaker 1: their thoughts on deleted scenes that pop up again in
Speaker 1: that longer cut, but certainly in this the only official
Speaker 1: 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 Dune novel, But it really under
Speaker 3: sells the role of the Benny 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 gear 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 1: Yeah, yeah, like the ground has been prepared for one
Speaker 1: such as he and that's it's an important factor. Yeah,
Speaker 1: 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.
Speaker 1: 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.
Speaker 1: Yeah.
Speaker 3: Anyway, and this is the scene where Leto, Paul and
Speaker 3: Kines go out in a flying machine to observe spice
Speaker 3: harvesters at work. They're seeing, you know, the machines out
Speaker 3: in the desert getting the spice from the sand. But
Speaker 3: uh oh, there is worm sign. This apparently is a
Speaker 3: common thing about how spice production takes place. The harvesters
Speaker 3: will work up until the last minute when a worm
Speaker 3: is about to arrive and eat them, and then they
Speaker 3: will be lifted away by a flying vehicle called a
Speaker 3: carry all and taken to safety. But uh oh, they're
Speaker 3: observing here that a spice harvester is working, a worm
Speaker 3: is on the way, and the carry all that is
Speaker 3: supposed to rescue it has been sabotaged. So Duke Leto
Speaker 3: leads a rescue of the men working the spice harvester
Speaker 3: is leaving the spice behind, rescuing the workers and bringing
Speaker 3: them onto his ornithopter, and then we see a worm
Speaker 3: eat the harvester as they take off, and we hear
Speaker 3: Kine's inner voice saying, Oh, I like this, Duke. He
Speaker 3: left the spice behind and saved the men.
Speaker 1: I talked a lot about ornithopters in Wednesday's short form episode,
Speaker 1: but briefly, I'll just say the ornithopters in the recent
Speaker 1: adaptations are amazing. They're like apache helicopters combined with a
Speaker 1: dragonfly in a way that it's like terrifying. And the
Speaker 1: jestic on the screen in this adaptation, especially the Atreades
Speaker 1: ornithopter is like a big metal berb. You know, it's clunky,
Speaker 1: it's chonky. It's got these little wings that seem decorative
Speaker 1: and not functional. The harconin ornithopters, which I don't even
Speaker 1: know if we really get to see them all that much,
Speaker 1: but the design for those is a lot more interesting,
Speaker 1: but also still doesn't fully embrace the whole flapping of wings.
Speaker 3: Yeah, okay, So we're getting into the plots here, the
Speaker 3: plots against House Atreadees. So first of all, Lady Jessica
Speaker 3: determines that doctor Yua has a secret concerning his wife
Speaker 3: and his hatred of the Harconans, but that is not
Speaker 3: fully fleshed out yet. We get to meet the housekeeper
Speaker 3: on Erken here, the capital of Aracus. This is shout
Speaker 3: out Mapes. Paul tries spice for the first time and
Speaker 3: he has visions the second moon. The sleeper must awaken.
Speaker 3: And we also get the hunter Seeker attack on Paul,
Speaker 3: which is something that's realized in both movie adaptations, where
Speaker 3: there's like this little needleli like mosquito type creature that's
Speaker 3: trying to assassinate Paul and he manages to avoid it.
Speaker 1: Yeah, great sequence in both films and Mapes, by the way,
Speaker 1: is played by Linda Hunt born nineteen forty five Academy
Speaker 1: Award winning actor. She played Billy Kwan in the Year
Speaker 1: Living Dangerously from eighty two, so I have to single
Speaker 1: her out. Yeah.
Speaker 3: So but here we're getting to the Harconin attack. The
Speaker 3: double Cross is in motion now, so there we've received
Speaker 3: word that there was a trader among house the trades,
Speaker 3: and we finally learn it is doctor Yua here and
Speaker 3: there are reasons. So doctor Yua ambushes Duke Leto in
Speaker 3: the night with a with a drugged dart that kind
Speaker 3: of paralyzes him, and then doctor Yua explains his plot.
Speaker 3: He has sabotaged the shields of the city, destroyed the
Speaker 3: weirding modules, and the Harconin troops are.
Speaker 1: On the way.
Speaker 3: But he's like, okay, it's not over, Duke Leto, you
Speaker 3: can still kill Baron Harconin, and he gives Leto the
Speaker 3: poison gas tooth. He tells him, when you see the baron,
Speaker 3: remember the tooth. And this is a great plot point.
Speaker 1: Yeah, the tooth stain is of course fittingly grosser in
Speaker 1: this adaptation, like even when Ua is like getting it
Speaker 1: out of its box to implant it, like it's just
Speaker 1: like this is gonna hurt, This is gonna be a
Speaker 1: little gross.
Speaker 3: The idea is he'll bite down on it when the
Speaker 3: baron leans over him, and that'll spit the poison gas
Speaker 3: in the baron's face and kill him. And we learn,
Speaker 3: of course, doctor Eua is not doing this out of
Speaker 3: maliciousness towards House aitredees, but he wants revenge against the
Speaker 3: baron because the Harconans have have for many years captured
Speaker 3: his wife and have probably murdered her.
Speaker 1: But he has to know for sure, and this is
Speaker 1: this is how he's going to get to know for sure.
Speaker 1: But he's also going to plot the destruction of the
Speaker 1: architect 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 1: 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 Uey's idea.
Speaker 3: But actually it turns out doctor yue has been trying
Speaker 3: to protect them. He has packed still suits for them,
Speaker 3: and Paul and Jessica use the benijesrit voice to command
Speaker 3: the Harconin troops and escape into the desert. Meanwhile, Duke
Speaker 3: Letto's tooth strike against the Baron is about to unfold.
Speaker 3: The barons there gloating over him, but it failed to
Speaker 3: get the baron. Instead, it kills Pyder degrees, it kills
Speaker 3: the house harcone in Mintat played by Brad Duraf and
Speaker 3: the baron we get his reaction where he's like, I'm alive,
Speaker 3: I'm alive.
Speaker 1: Floating in the air, screaming. So inspiring the poison tooth sequence,
Speaker 1: at least when they have when they refer back to
Speaker 1: it visually, it is as you might expect, far more
Speaker 1: grotesque in this adaptation, because we see that like it's
Speaker 1: like an explosion of gas, caustic gas has gone off
Speaker 1: in the Duke's mouth and is like eaten through his cheek.
Speaker 1: Even so, it's grim stuff.
Speaker 3: Now, I know we've been dwelling on a lot of
Speaker 3: detail in the plot, so I think maybe we should
Speaker 3: shift into moving a little more quickly through the movie.
Speaker 3: And this is a good place to do it because
Speaker 3: this is also where the movie starts moving much more
Speaker 3: quickly through the plot. And this I think is a
Speaker 3: fair major criticism of the eighty four Dune is that
Speaker 3: somewhere around right here, the things start happening way too fast.
Speaker 1: Becomes fragmentary and kind of feels like done the scrap
Speaker 1: 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: Emperor and the Guild want him destroyed, and finally he
Speaker 3: hears that they will call him wad Deep. So that's
Speaker 3: a premonition of everything to come. And he realizes that
Speaker 3: the spice is in everything on the planet, and the
Speaker 3: spice is changing him. It's causing him to reach his
Speaker 3: potential as the Chosen One, and he knows the future
Speaker 3: and 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 1: And here we do see the.
Speaker 3: Worm in its full glory while it's chasing them. We
Speaker 3: see its trifled maw leaping out from the sand, and
Speaker 3: it's design is almost like a flower with like petals
Speaker 3: opening around this toothy mouth. I really do like the
Speaker 3: design of the worms in this movie. I think I
Speaker 3: think they look great. They're scary and menacing. Some of
Speaker 3: the worm riding scenes, however, are are quite funny and
Speaker 3: don't 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 1: Thumpers are huge in this movie, like then, and it works.
Speaker 1: Like you'll often see on the poster. There's Paul Adrades
Speaker 1: with something slung across his back in the desert. That's
Speaker 1: the thumper. So yeah, it's big, no criticism, it's just
Speaker 1: a big 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 assembled, waiting for them, eyes glowing blue.
Speaker 3: It's almost like they're standing at attention for their arrival.
Speaker 3: And here we meet still Gar, the leader of the
Speaker 3: Fremen group, and we're also going to meet Channi of
Speaker 3: the Fremen.
Speaker 1: Yeah. So still Gar is played by Everett McGill born
Speaker 1: nineteen forty five, accomplished American character actor with a very
Speaker 1: signature look. His other credits include eighty one's Quest for Fire,
Speaker 1: eighty five, Silver Bullet, The Stephen King Werewolf Movie, eighty
Speaker 1: six is Heartbreak Ridge, nineteen eighty Seven's Werewolf, eighty nine's
Speaker 1: Licensed to Kill, Twin Peaks nineteen ninety ones, The People
Speaker 1: Under the Stairs, Under Siege Too, and Lynches the straight story. Again,
Speaker 1: not really fair to compare this performance to Javier Bardam
Speaker 1: Stillgar in the New movies, because he, again, like a
Speaker 1: lot of these characters, he had a lot more room
Speaker 1: to breathe, and there's a lot more space for that
Speaker 1: character to come alive.
Speaker 3: Yeah, this is speed still gar Yeah, I guess we
Speaker 3: should go ahead and introduce Channi as well.
Speaker 1: Yeah. Chani is played by Sean Young born nineteen fifty nine,
Speaker 1: American actress who had previously appeared in nineteen eighty one
Speaker 1: Stripes and more importantly eighty two's Blade Runner as the
Speaker 1: replicant Rachel. Subsequent roles included eighty seven's No Way Out
Speaker 1: in Wall Street, ninety one's A Kiss Before Dying, ninety
Speaker 1: four's Ace Venture a pet detective, and more recently Blade
Speaker 1: Runner twenty forty nine. In another case, hard to compare
Speaker 1: this Channey to the recent film where Zindia does a
Speaker 1: great job playing a more complex and I think arguably
Speaker 1: stronger vision of this character. That Chani is a strong
Speaker 1: character in this nineteen sixty five novel, but I think
Speaker 1: some of her strengths had to be updated for like
Speaker 1: a modern audience. Well, also in the new movie.
Speaker 3: I think you could argue in part two is is
Speaker 3: you get a lot of the story from Channie's perspective,
Speaker 3: which makes a lot of sense. That's a good way
Speaker 3: to frame it, to see like the way Paul changes. Yeah,
Speaker 3: so I think that that was a really strong choice.
Speaker 3: And like you said, Zendeia is great in the new one,
Speaker 3: I don't want to as is Javi or Barden. Also,
Speaker 3: they're both fantastic in the new movie. I don't want
Speaker 3: to blame Sean Young and Everett McGill for the shortcomings
Speaker 3: of these characters in this version. I think it is
Speaker 3: not the fault of the actors. I think it is
Speaker 3: the fault of the script and the editing that, like,
Speaker 3: these actors are just not given time to portray these characters.
Speaker 3: In the movie, it's just just lightning speed editing from
Speaker 3: now on. So, like what happens when they arrive at
Speaker 3: the siege is that, you know still Gar. He's like, oh, hi,
Speaker 3: I'm still Gar. You know I'm the leader of the
Speaker 3: Fremen group. The boy man will be taken into the
Speaker 3: tribe and then Lady Jessica like grabs him by the throat.
Speaker 3: Paul scrambles. He says, oh, she has the weirding way.
Speaker 3: If you can do this to the strongest of us,
Speaker 3: you're worth ten times your weight in water. And then
Speaker 3: still Gar says, teach us the Weirding way, and you
Speaker 3: shall have sanctuary, and Jessica accepts, and Paul meets Channida.
Speaker 3: Channi is the daughter of the at kinds. She's a
Speaker 3: member of the Fremen tribe here and you know he
Speaker 3: has seen her before in dreams and premonitions, like a
Speaker 3: warrior of great bravery and great beauty. Kyle, of course,
Speaker 3: is smitten. Here they introduced to Stilgar. You know, it's
Speaker 3: all going to be. You're welcomed by the people. Oh,
Speaker 3: you need a new name. Your name will be Ussel,
Speaker 3: that is the pillar of strength. Oh but what else
Speaker 3: can be your name? Your name will be wad deeb.
Speaker 3: Paul picks that because it's the name of the desert mouse,
Speaker 3: whose 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.
Speaker 1: And this whole.
Speaker 3: Sequence 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 it comes so fast.
Speaker 1: Yeah, the new has a lot more time to work
Speaker 1: with this part of the story, with Paul and Jessica
Speaker 1: gradually changing from you know, endangered outsiders to tentative allies
Speaker 1: to the fremen, to valued members of a movement to
Speaker 1: members of its people, to leaders, and eventually, in Paul's case,
Speaker 1: 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 metle Okay, let's check in on the Harkonins because
Speaker 3: they're doing some really good stuff here. So we come
Speaker 3: into the They're on Arakine, I think, and Vladimir Harkonen
Speaker 3: is laughing crazily as he flies around a big machine
Speaker 3: in his levitation suit. Rabon, who is supposed to be
Speaker 3: 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
Speaker 3: cow peels off. Part of its face, starts eating the
Speaker 3: cowface 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.
Speaker 1: This, Yeah, I have no words.
Speaker 3: Then Rabon leaves, Then out comes Fade, wearing like this
Speaker 3: wings of Victory speedo. That's amazing, top all time top
Speaker 3: five movie speedo. Yeah, and the Baron reveals that after
Speaker 3: Rabon has become despised by the people of Doune, he's
Speaker 3: going to give the planet to Fade so that he
Speaker 3: can be loved by contrast.
Speaker 1: Yep, yep, that's the whole plan. I mean, that's part
Speaker 1: of the plan. It is legitimately part of the plan.
Speaker 1: The Rabond's gonna crush the planet, get the spice levels up,
Speaker 1: the spice production levels up. Everyone's gonna hate him, and
Speaker 1: then Fade's going to come in as the savior and
Speaker 1: will be at least to some degree beloved by the people,
Speaker 1: or as much as you can love a hard conan despot.
Speaker 3: Yeah, and by the Baron's face boils. Just keep looking
Speaker 3: worse and worse. We also see here the captured Soufir
Speaker 3: hawat the mintat of house the Treades. 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 1: Yeah, this is also unnecessary and so weird, especially the
Speaker 1: cat rat thing. It almost feels like Lynch is trolling
Speaker 1: us a little bit. In the book, this basic situation exis,
Speaker 1: but it's essentially just a poison anecdote con like, hey,
Speaker 1: loyal a tradees nintet, you have to work for us now,
Speaker 1: isn't that delightful? And if you don't, you're going to
Speaker 1: die because of this poison in your system. And they
Speaker 1: apparently filmed sequences of this plot line for Dune Part
Speaker 1: two and just had to cut it for time, which
Speaker 1: you know, is a shame, but I guess understandable given
Speaker 1: them all that's going on in the movie.
Speaker 3: Yeah. So, back at the Seech of the Fremen, Lady
Speaker 3: Jessica is offered a chance 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 all 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 1: Yeah, yeah, she is super creepy. Herbert in general likes
Speaker 1: creepy super babies and super creepy super children. They pop
Speaker 1: up elsewhere in the dooone novels. Obviously, DV went in
Speaker 1: a slightly different direction with the way this is portrayed
Speaker 1: in the film, and uh, again interesting, I think it's
Speaker 1: interesting what they did. It'll be also interesting to see
Speaker 1: how this is incorporated into subsequent adaptations of especially done Messiah. Yeah.
Speaker 3: Also here we see more of Paul and Johnny falling
Speaker 3: in love.
Speaker 1: But also we get.
Speaker 3: Addressing the assembled Frimen fighters and he's like, hey, look,
Speaker 3: we got a common enemy, the Harconans. We've got to
Speaker 3: destroy him. My mom and I are going to teach
Speaker 3: you the Weirding Way. We've got to attack and destroy
Speaker 3: the spice trade. So we see a lot of weirding
Speaker 3: Way training sessions with the weirding module where they're saying
Speaker 3: like chucked sah and it you know, makes it shoot
Speaker 3: a little blast out that they say will paralyzed nerves,
Speaker 3: shatter bones, set fires, suffocate an enemy, or burst his organs,
Speaker 3: and they're just going to keep on attacking the Harconins
Speaker 3: until they have victory. This is also the my name
Speaker 3: is a killing word scene where he discovers that in
Speaker 3: the name wadde but will like make things break and shatter.
Speaker 1: All right, we're getting the troops together, We're gonna we're
Speaker 1: gonna bring spice production to its knees and eventually take
Speaker 1: out the Hearken Its.
Speaker 3: Okay, Now we also get the worm taming scene here
Speaker 3: where Paul has to go learn to ride a worm,
Speaker 3: because you can't be a true Fremen unless you can
Speaker 3: ride a worm.
Speaker 1: And so we go. He goes out with his.
Speaker 3: Worm riding materials, the thumper, the hooks, which are a
Speaker 3: gift from the Siet, and the freemen are gathered on
Speaker 3: the sand dune looking on. Stillgar has a very cold look,
Speaker 3: but Paul like he sets the thumber going, he does
Speaker 3: the litany against fear. They realize he has called a
Speaker 3: very big worm, and this is again along with the
Speaker 3: prophecies of what the Fremen called the lisan Al Kayib,
Speaker 3: you know, the voice from the outer world, the messiah
Speaker 3: figure they're waiting for. So we get some shots of
Speaker 3: Paul getting onto the worm, like using the hooks and
Speaker 3: rolling over on the top. Not the best looking shots
Speaker 3: in the movie. A couple of these do look kind
Speaker 3: of kind of cheap, But then when we see the
Speaker 3: worm by itself, it looks awesome and the flower petals
Speaker 3: open and we see the big mouth, heavy dune theme
Speaker 3: playing on the soundtrack. As like, Stillgar comes to climb
Speaker 3: the trailing rope behind Paul and join him on the worm.
Speaker 3: But Rob, I think we may have alluded to this earlier.
Speaker 3: There is a very funny soundtrack moment here where like
Speaker 3: the heavy horns of the dune theme give way to
Speaker 3: rock and distorted guitars. And I enjoy this because it's funny,
Speaker 3: but I don't think it quite has the intended effect.
Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, it's a little, a little goofy. In general.
Speaker 1: I have to reiterate love the Toto score. I have
Speaker 1: listened to it all the way through a couple of
Speaker 1: times since we recorded part one of This Weird House.
Speaker 1: 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 from an attacks on
Speaker 3: the Harken 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
Speaker 3: course the Baron and the Emperor become aware of this
Speaker 3: figure called wad Deeb that like 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 Deeb and the
Speaker 3: freemen pretty much completely shut down spice production and that
Speaker 3: Rabon 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 Gurney 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 reuni. 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 Spacing Guild shows
Speaker 3: 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 has Matt in their industrial religious looking robes.
Speaker 3: Once again, they speak a foreign language that is like
Speaker 3: automatically translated by this weird microphone and the language itself.
Speaker 3: I was listening to it. It sounds like kind of feral,
Speaker 3: so there's kind of grunts and snarling like a wild animal,
Speaker 3: but also notes of igor in the monster Masha, and
Speaker 3: so they speak to him, and the conversation very much
Speaker 3: has the effect of wait, who's the emperor here, because
Speaker 3: the Spacing Guild is really browbeating him. They're like, look,
Speaker 3: you don't get the spice mining back under control immediately,
Speaker 3: you are going to live out the rest of your
Speaker 3: life in a pain amplifier. I don't know what a
Speaker 3: pain amplifier is, but I get the idea.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I feel like they this is a moment where
Speaker 1: they kind of overplay the power of the Guild here
Speaker 1: because altimate, I mean, the Guild is very powerful in
Speaker 1: the Dune universe, but so is the Benajestrit, so is
Speaker 1: House Carino. So everything is in kind of like a
Speaker 1: precarious balance of power, yes, and here we're just kind
Speaker 1: of like, yeah, the Guild pushes everybody around, which is
Speaker 1: is not really the flavor of the Guild and the
Speaker 1: 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. He's like, I know
Speaker 3: how we're going to deal with this complete destruction of
Speaker 3: every life on the planet.
Speaker 1: We're just gonna just destroy them all.
Speaker 3: Meanwhile, we get the sequence where Paul is finally going
Speaker 3: to fulfill the prophecy and drink the water of life.
Speaker 3: Of course, he tells Channi that he had a vision
Speaker 3: and he must do this. She doesn't like the idea,
Speaker 3: but he thinks he has no choice. He's got to
Speaker 3: do it. So Paul is let out into the desert.
Speaker 3: Chany pledges her love to him, and they give him
Speaker 3: the water of life to drink, and he has many
Speaker 3: more visions of like you know, water dripping in a cavern,
Speaker 3: in the mouth of a worm opening, and I like
Speaker 3: how the mouth of the worm is intercut with an
Speaker 3: extreme close up of a human eye, so like the
Speaker 3: worm's mouth is like the pupil within the iris. I
Speaker 3: thought that was pretty cool.
Speaker 1: And here come the worm jets, because I think this
Speaker 1: is where we get the track that Eno collaborated on.
Speaker 3: Oh interesting with the visions.
Speaker 1: Here, I think so, I think so.
Speaker 3: But worms gather from the desert around the frimend to
Speaker 3: sort of keep a vigil beside Paul, and they don't attack.
Speaker 3: It's almost if the worms are showing reverence from what
Speaker 3: deep And eventually he is awakened in Chinese arms with
Speaker 3: a new sense of determination and terrible purpose. He's ready
Speaker 3: to be the messiah of the Fremen now, and he
Speaker 3: stands before them in this great underground hall and gives
Speaker 3: a speech that is in some ways kind of powerful,
Speaker 3: but unfortunately contains the sentence a storm is coming. Oh man,
Speaker 3: if writers just to skip over that one, you don't
Speaker 3: need the storm is coming. Yeah, but his kind of difference,
Speaker 3: he's like, you know, when it arrives, it will shake
Speaker 3: the universe. He swears vengeance against the Emperor and chance
Speaker 3: long live the fighters. So the Freemen warriors stream out
Speaker 3: of their seech and prepare for war, and we also
Speaker 3: see the Emperor in his Sardikar arriving on Oracus from
Speaker 3: deep space with the help of the Guild Highliners, and
Speaker 3: the final battle comes about. So the Fremen Mountain assault
Speaker 3: on Arakan, led by Paul Stilgar and Gurney Halleck. They
Speaker 3: will use the atreades house atomics as well as the
Speaker 3: power of the worm. So they deploy all these thumpers
Speaker 3: and some of what Stilgar calls worm sign the likes
Speaker 3: of which God has never seen.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I don't know. I'm not going to geek out
Speaker 1: on a bunch of din stuff Bett. Yeah, I don't
Speaker 1: like that line, and I don't think of a freeman
Speaker 1: 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 1: Oh yeah, I love the addition of having these kind
Speaker 1: of like static electrical discharges in the air around them. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it looks really cool.
Speaker 3: As the battle is going on, there's a confrontation between
Speaker 3: Baron Harkonen and the Emperor. The Emperor has killed Raban
Speaker 3: and like stuck his head on a big spike, and
Speaker 3: then he's gathered people in his portable throne room. So
Speaker 3: they got Princess Erilan there, the Reverend mother, a bunch
Speaker 3: of Sardokar members of the Space and Guild. The Emperor
Speaker 3: gives the baron a very um disappointed in you speech.
Speaker 3: Before the Baron can suffer a similar fate to Rebond,
Speaker 3: they are interrupted by the arrival of someone in black robes.
Speaker 3: It is a child. Uh oh, it's Paul's sister Alia,
Speaker 3: and she is instantly so so unsettlingly creepy, with this
Speaker 3: horrible voice voiced by an adult. I think we actually
Speaker 3: see her talk her voice. I would describe it like
Speaker 3: putting on a shoe and then feeling something start moving
Speaker 3: under your toes.
Speaker 1: You know. Yeah, this kid is perfectly unsettling in a
Speaker 1: way very similar to the accidental unsettling character of the
Speaker 1: kid in an House by the Cemetery, Yeah, where Bob's
Speaker 1: voice was dubbed by an adult woman and he comes
Speaker 1: off in some sort of like a like a strange being.
Speaker 1: But 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 guy's
Speaker 3: Helen Moheim. She's like, I am a messenger from Wa 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
Speaker 3: is an abomination. But oh she also screams get out
Speaker 3: of my mind, exactly like David Bowie and The Man
Speaker 3: who Fell to Earth.
Speaker 1: Oh yeah.
Speaker 3: Anyway, so Paul and the Freemen use the house atomics
Speaker 3: to blow up the mountains that are shielding the approach
Speaker 3: to raken and they mount their assault. They bring lots
Speaker 3: of loose worms alongside them, and the freemen and the
Speaker 3: worms clash with the Emperor's sardikar. At some point, we
Speaker 3: see the Emperor personally controlling a mounted gun to fire
Speaker 3: at the worms. Not sure about that choice, like he
Speaker 3: doesn't seem like much of a hands on warrior. But
Speaker 3: also also the Emperor tasks Baron Harkonen with destroying Alia.
Speaker 3: But of course Alia I think she's going to get
Speaker 3: the better of this encounter, and she does.
Speaker 1: She Like what exactly does she do to the baron?
Speaker 1: She jabs him with the with the gomjabar I believe,
Speaker 1: Oh yeah, okay, and kills him like this is the
Speaker 1: death blow. She is Ali of the knife after all.
Speaker 1: Oh okay. Yeah.
Speaker 3: We see her like she's so happy about it. She's
Speaker 3: dancing around with her eyes closed holding a knife. And
Speaker 3: we also see the baron he flies away as he
Speaker 3: is dying and then is chomped by by a worm from.
Speaker 1: The That's a bit much. That's a bit much, okay.
Speaker 3: So the final confrontation, you know, the freemen are victorious
Speaker 3: in the battle. They've taken the city. They gather everybody
Speaker 3: all of the power players in like the big room
Speaker 3: in the palace at Arikene, and and Paul goes up
Speaker 3: to the emperor and his retinue and demonstrates his power.
Speaker 3: He intimidates the Emperor and silences the reverend mother with
Speaker 3: a powerful word. Also, she's like ah, and she appears
Speaker 3: to have metal teeth.
Speaker 1: Now, oh wow, maybe she has ixy and teeth. I
Speaker 1: don't know. Maybe.
Speaker 3: But so Paul is confronted by the remaining member of
Speaker 3: how Sarkona and the young fade Rautha. They're have to
Speaker 3: face one another, of course, and fade Ratha takes the
Speaker 3: Emperor's blade in his hand for the fight. This is
Speaker 3: going to be a knife fight to the death. There
Speaker 3: are things I really like about this fight. I like
Speaker 3: how there are people playing pyramid shaped drums.
Speaker 1: Yeah, those are cool. Sting keeps yelling I will kill you.
Speaker 1: I love that line. This has always been one of
Speaker 1: my favorite cheesy lines from this film and just in
Speaker 1: from film in general.
Speaker 3: We already talked about this difference, but I do like
Speaker 3: that this keeps. Fade Ratha is 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: Ratha here tries to cheat with a poisoned barb, but
Speaker 3: Paul gets arounded by saying, I will bend like a
Speaker 3: read in the wind, and he sort of like binds
Speaker 3: and lets Fade come around him and then stabs him
Speaker 3: in a very very strange way.
Speaker 1: Yeah, this is this is a quality kill, and this
Speaker 1: is I think this falls in line with what you
Speaker 1: were talking about in the first so we did about
Speaker 1: the Lynchian approach to portrayals of death, because he drives
Speaker 1: his knife up through Fade's chin into his brain, and
Speaker 1: then after Fad has fallen dead under the floor, he
Speaker 1: uses the weirding voice to shatter the stone floor beneath him,
Speaker 1: a moment that really feels to reson like it resonates
Speaker 1: with a kind of biblical power. You know. It's a
Speaker 1: moment that I think really legitimately rules in this film
Speaker 1: and cements the ascendant might of Paul Triades.
Speaker 3: I agree. I think it's very cool. They also say,
Speaker 3: you know, Ussol 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 Maadib had become the hand of God, fulfilling
Speaker 3: the frim and prophecy. Where there was war, Maadeeb would
Speaker 3: now bring peace where there was hatred. Madeeb would bring love,
Speaker 3: et cetera.
Speaker 1: Uh yeah, yeah, is that what the story he is?
Speaker 1: I don't think so, not so much. Yeah.
Speaker 3: So in the end, yeah, we get this very heroic
Speaker 3: kind of conclusion, and in fact it goes beyond heroic
Speaker 3: and becomes like transcendent, almost religious, where Paul literally causes
Speaker 3: a miracle.
Speaker 1: Yes, Paul makes it rain on Oracus. It's a in
Speaker 1: a way, I have to be fair. It is a
Speaker 1: great visual capper for the film, but it is one
Speaker 1: that makes zero sense within the context of the film
Speaker 1: and has no footing in the novel. Because Paul does
Speaker 1: not control the weather and greening efforts on Oracus, which
Speaker 1: I've been alluded to and are part of the world
Speaker 1: of Dune. These are going to be gradual, These are
Speaker 1: going to be focused on particular parts of the planet.
Speaker 1: So this moment is all feels and no sense. Yeah.
Speaker 3: Yeah, So it's a very different kind of ending than
Speaker 3: we get from Dune part two of 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 Irolin.
Speaker 1: In the new movie, yeah, yeah, the movie does a
Speaker 1: great job of playing up the fact that this is
Speaker 1: leading into a massive holy war, Interstellar Holy war. It
Speaker 1: is not going to be peace and love across the universe.
Speaker 1: It is going to be pretty grim days ahead, and
Speaker 1: it is because 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.
Speaker 1: Yeah.
Speaker 3: I don't know if that's something. I don't know if
Speaker 3: that's good. It's not really what the story is, but
Speaker 3: it doesn't feel as sad as the ending of the
Speaker 3: New one.
Speaker 1: Yeah. Yeah, the new film has a grimness and a
Speaker 1: sadness to it. My son watched the has only seen
Speaker 1: these the new adaptations, and he when I was asking
Speaker 1: him about how he felt about the movies, he was like, Oh,
Speaker 1: it's really cool, but it's kind of joyless. And then
Speaker 1: that is true. I mean, the film is not a
Speaker 1: joyful experience, especially as it wraps up. And I would
Speaker 1: say that Dune in general is a very joyful thing,
Speaker 1: and certainly in my own life, but a lot of
Speaker 1: that is in the details of everything in the world
Speaker 1: building and the ecology and the philosophy and the use
Speaker 1: of religion and history. It's like the sum of the
Speaker 1: whole is joy, but the actual events that occur in
Speaker 1: 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 1: Yeah, if there's any unfinished business and we can discuss
Speaker 1: it in future listener mail installments, that'll be a good
Speaker 1: place for that. And likewise, Yeah, if you have thoughts
Speaker 1: on the new Dune adaptations, the nineteen eighty four's Dune
Speaker 1: that we've been discussing in this episode, your history with
Speaker 1: the film, any of the merch any of that weird
Speaker 1: merchandise they put out, like those strange action figures, are
Speaker 1: these legitimately cool revel model kits that I don't think
Speaker 1: anybody bought initially, but now go for you know, one
Speaker 1: hundreds of dollars online, writ in We would love to
Speaker 1: hear from you. We'll even hear thoughts about those. The
Speaker 1: mini series, The sci Fi Mini Series, which again has
Speaker 1: a great cast, but some CGI that has really not
Speaker 1: aged well. Just a reminder to everybody that's stuff to
Speaker 1: blow your mind. Is primarily a science culture podcast, with
Speaker 1: core episodes on Tuesdays and Thursday, short form episode on Wednesdays.
Speaker 1: On Mondays we do listener mail, and on Fridays we
Speaker 1: just set aside most serious concerns to just talk about
Speaker 1: a weird movie on Weird House Cinema. If you want
Speaker 1: a complete list of all the movies we've covered so far,
Speaker 1: and sometimes a peek ahead of the future, go to
Speaker 1: letterbox dot com. It's l E T T E r
Speaker 1: boxd dot com. We are Weird House on there and
Speaker 1: we've got a list for you to look at.
Speaker 3: Huge thanks as always to our excellent audio producer, JJ Pozway.
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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