HBO’s Big Dune Show Is Here. [Bene Gesserit Voice] Don’t Bother With It!

slate.com HBO’s Big Dune Show Is Here. [Bene Gesserit Voice] Don’t Bother With It!

Dune: Prophecy lacks the spice.

Shows and TV @lemm.ee Blaze (he/him) @lemmy.cafe 1w ago

Bene Gesserit Voice

HBO’s Big Dune Show Is Here. Don’t Bother With It!

slate.com /culture/2024/11/dune-prophecy-hbo-max-show-review-emily-watson.html

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Watched the first episode last night, and was left underwhelmed. There's a lot of lore they pack into the first 5 minutes of exposition, which was fine, explaining the origins of the War against The Thinking Machines, and the Atredies/Harkonen feud.

But watching the show, a couple things struck me which took me out of the narrative they were trying to tell:

The CGI is just ok, and far more noticeable in the show than it was in the movies, and this is understandable given the difference in CGI budget, but it wasn't as immersive.

This story having taken place 10 THOUSAND years before the events of DUNE, humanity is already mining spice on Arakis? Already fighting the fremmen?, The Bene Gesserit is already in ALL the major houses in the galaxy after only 130 years? Valya has personally developed THE VOICE as "something I've been working on" lol? I'm sure this is all in service of how Herbert wrote the book (*edit: this just in, the writer has just learned that DUNE PROPHECY isn't actually based on a Frank Herbert book, witch makes a ton more sense as to why it's so disjointed narrative) , but I was stuck by how little the DUNE universe seems to have changed in 10 Millennia. Just seems like "hey folks you know all the stuff you loved about the DUNE movies, well, here's a TV show that's not meant to step on that cash cow's narrative, but it's the same, just you know 10 thousand years before, really ...... ta-da!"

As an aside I once saw a YouTube video, which tried to explain the lack of technological advancement in the Game of Thrones universe, due to the overwhelming threat Dragons posed, and how that affected the development of modern weaponry, and stymied almost all forward technical engineering progress. Also while I'm ranting, so "thinking machines" are out, to the point of almost publicly executing a little boy for playing with a transformer toy, but the Emperor has a 3D vid holo projector, how exactly does THAT work without thinking machines, i wonder.

Now lastly, and this is a personal preference, I've never been a Emily Watson fan, I find her difficult to watch.

I'll most likely keep watching every Sunday, because for all it's foibles, it's still top notch scifi, though not nearly on the same level as FOUNDATION or THE EXPANSE
- I loved Frank Herbert's Dune books but his son's prequels were disappointing. I've got no interest in movies or shows based on them.
- It's weird how you criticise this show for not being lore faithful, then hold up the Foundation as a shining diamond...
  
  (I haven't watched either, so this is just an outside observer musing)
  
  Foundation is not a faithful adaptation of the books, but the show is at least internally consistent.
  
  Based on OP's description, it seems like there are a few things that viewers of the Dune series will have to suspend their disbelief on, or else it may fail to meet logical consistency with the newer movies.
  
  And let's face it, a faithful adaptation of the Foundation books would be incredibly boring.
  
  it's not the lore i have a problem with, it's the sloppy writing hoping those who notice will overlook for the grandeur of the effort. it's the physical and logical timeline they're attempting to shoehorn in reverse while obviously presenting what is essentially the same universe in the same way, just ..... you know ..... so outside of any timeline that might intersect with the movies they can, wacka wacka wacka
- I haven't seen the show yet, but the hard stop at technology does make sense. It's one part of Paul's vision, to break out of the stagnation that humanity has put themselves in. I can't say if the timing of that makes sense with canon sources, but from my understanding things were already slowed in progress and set in stone by the time of the Butlerian Jihad. Spice was a thing, it just wasn't centered for space travel until the loss of AI.
  
  I think the loss of human progress is a very common theme in these long range scifi stories. Star Wars, Dune, Foundation (both before and after the fall), Warhammer, even the Bladerunner/Alien universe.
- On your unrelated A Song of Ice and Fire note, dragons would absolutely spur technological innovation in weaponry. Other countries would desperately look for a way to defend against them.
  
  In real life, the ballistae used in the final battle were invented in ancient Greece around 400 BCE, basically about 1,500 to 2,000 years earlier than the technological level of Westeros. Bow to crossbow to ballista is a pretty logical evolution and there are intermediate links between all of them in the historical and archaeological record.
- Some of the plot you outlined is straight out of the Dune prequels that were written by Herbert's son. In the prequels, Arrakis was discovered by a group of escaped slaves that stole a ship during an uprising, about 10000 years before the main plot if Dune, and they were called Free Men.
  
  Not defending the show at all, it sounds like another snoozfest from HBO, but I have read most the books so I'll probably give it a watch out of curiosity. Can't be worse than the 2000 Dune miniseries.
- Okay, the part where you say it’s not as good as Foundation really puts it in context.
  
  I like the current movies, but I’m not really a big Dune fan. So I’ll just give this a pass.
  
  I mean, the first ep is an hour long, you can check it out, make your own judgement, and as I said, I was underwhelmed, but it's in my rotation, and wanted to share some of the stuff which irked me

35 comments