Why Dune's World Feels So Alive
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- Опубліковано 18 бер 2024
- To learn faster from non-fiction, check out shortform.com/thecloserlook and get 20% off! Start out with Story by Robert McKee. I found it a really insightful read!
Dune's world is uniquely immersive. In this video essay, I analyse how Dune created this effect, and how you can replicate it in your own work.
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Written, narrated & produced by Henry Boseley
Edited by Brandon Reardin
Music provided by Epidemic Sound
If you'd like to join my Discord server where we chat about our writing, and generally discuss the movies/shows we love, here's a link.
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Keep writing!
- Henry
Also brown people are facing genocide in asia forever. And it hasnt changed from the time herbert frank had written dune
And as herbert frank knew brown people does not need a messiah
@@HKM-fj5fk We all need a messiah in this blessed day
@thecloserlook the most impressive question is how can a country and a group of people continue to commit the same genocide and then write stories about it and celebrate it for great art while not talking about their crimes
@@HKM-fj5fk we need to correct this brother. It's time to cleanse this country of those sinners as it was written
its not 8 thousend years in the future. its the year 10000 but they use a different calender. its actually way further in the future
Pretty sure it’s around 20-25k years in the future. The year 10k is after guild and that reset I think 10k or so from now….
To be precise it’s actually 30,000 years into the future because the current calendar they use is after guild
Woops
@@rogue9230 i think actually its supposed to be between 22-25k years in the future because in their history, ancient romes time was around 15000 bg. before guild. so add 2000 years to that to get to our modern age and thats 13000 bg around. and it should be around 23000 years in the future. Sorry for nerding out.
23,000 years...10,000 AG (After Guild)
Dune nerd moment: 🤓
The Butlerian Jihad was not an AI uprising. It was in response to technology becoming so advanced that "men gave up their thinking to machines, believing it would set them free", enabling people who controlled the machines to practically enslave others. Basically, humanity had stagnated because we let tech do all the work for us, allowing those in power to puppeteer us. It wasn't a terminator-like event.
Sadly, that's one interpretation that's been retconned.
@@keith6706on whose authority?
@@ArbiterofMankindRaul’s
@@ArbiterofMankind Frank Herbert son, from what you can guess, I cant recall his name because of how irrelevant and boring are post Frank death books.
@@rissmebesce71 so not retconned then. Cus I don’t consider whatever Brian wrote to be canon. And just cus he’s the son means we take his opinion seriously. I mean when JK Rowling made stupid changes we don’t consider them canon.
I don’t remember who said it but I agree with “I don’t want my fantasy to be realistic, I want it to be convincing”
Dude that's PERFECT. Same for all my fiction. It has to be convincing.
I used to complain a lot about things in Marvel universe like "Oh, out of all the people in New York, Spiderman just happened to bump into the one guy....."
And then my girlfriend told me "it's a cinematic universe. Those things happen there",. Suddenly, I could forgive a lot more (not infinite tho) because I just believed the laws of physics and probability are bent towards giving a cinematic experience.
Personally I'm not convinced with Dune, but I didn't have a word for it until recently. I was talking about how dry (pun not intended) the movie was, and they pointed out that no one in Dune has hobbies. That's kind of the shorthand version of what feels so weird about Dune. Outside of coffee-brewing, people in the Dune movie seem to do *exactly* what they need to for their job, and nothing else. Like there's no sports or games, the closest thing that would count is *sparring*, but that's practice for Paul's *job*. 🤔
@@ctdaniels7049 Princess Irilon has her diary, and her father plays a game of chess against her. What else......oh Gerney Hallack plays his special guitar.
Hmm...that's just from the second movie. Maybe the first has even more examples.
I love how in the CG shots, the camera moves like it’s real. The show don’t tell, the lore from our POV character’s well, point of view. It’s masterful trickery, but I love it & it sucks me in ❤
FR. When I watched part 2, I just had the most vivid sensation that I somehow was able to see what was happening in a different dimension/world, like the gladiator battle in Geidi Prime felt like I got somehow stuck in a nightmare world and I had no idea how anything worked or what was happening so I had a very visceral sensation of fear
Yes! *and* it’s still good camera work, unlike the incessant crash zooms in all CG scenes in the first Avatar
It felt like it the opposite in Dune 2 for me. Everything about the movie was immersive except for the screenplay & pacing issues, which left me with a sense of disorientation, especially when paired with the convenient insertation of certain character, plot points or exposition to get the ball rolling for the climax.
@@simonbright2975 My experience with the film was that the pacing was excellent. Watched it twice in IMAX.
@@mich722 I might watch it again in the future, just to see if I'm missing something that failed to click, but my first gut reaction is usually quite on point. The writing was a step down from the first instalment, but the world-building improved significantly.
Actually the scene when Paul watches the videos about Arraks is a good example of how to deliver exposition becsuse he doesn't it know about it. It makes perfect sense for him to do research about his new home and so we're basically learning about it with him.
That was in the book, but the beginning of Dune the book, are the worst part of it, because Paul is basically a Mary Sue, he only began to known the consequences of his actions when he arrive at Arrakis and nearly his whole family is killed, and let not speak of the stupid visions, I liked more when they were more nightmares, that Paul didn't understand, then he began to use the Fremen, and he only understand the "visions" when he drank his own kool-aid, and began to believe the false prophecy that were propagated by the Bene Gesserit.
a world so complicated even the characters have to watch UA-cam videos about it
@@AzaleaJane It would have more easy if the actors watched the miniseries, that to this point the most faithful adaptation to the book.
The exposition of Dune is top-notch. A breath of fresh air
Not really. The first movie in particular is like 90% exposition.
in the 2nd movie some soldiers are getting shot with lasers and one asks "SHIELDS??" and their commander barks "NO!" then just never elaborates, i was grinning the whole time in the movies at that detail
@@vanillaicecream2385 I think there was too much exposition but they definitely explained that you can't use shields in the desert as it draws the worms.
@@KyleHerbert13 That's complete bull, however even so I don't blame the movie. The exposition is generally interesting and also quite unavoidable when you try to condense so much story and a whole universe to go with into a rather "short" movie.
@@janusprime5693 I did not find most of the exposition to be interesting. I was actually pretty bored with both movies. I don't really think they were bad, they were visually stunning, but the pacing and action left a lot to be desired.
I got a United States Postal Service ad right after you talked about wizards delivering mail by teleporting.
You get ads?
@@TheBoss0110101001
Well yes, because the creator makes no money off your view otherwise so it's like a lighter version of piracy and some UA-camrs actually deserve the money for making high quality content.
@@Melina_Evarblume_Seelie Or have Premium.
@@Melina_Evarblume_Seeliebro couldve just maybe not have ads. i watched the whole video, no ad blocker, no premium, and i got no ads
Coincidence? I think NOT!
I love Dune, it's so fulfilling when the movie for a book you love actually does it justice
you think it does it justice? I don't
@@AGamingEntity womp womp
@@AGamingEntitywomp womp
And not because its accurate in the story itself, there are changes. But it has the feel, the same themes and is straight up good. That matters more that accuracy to source material
@@AGamingEntitywhat do you not like? I haven't read the book so idk.
My favourite example of this is Bioshock. They propably just started with ADAM, Ayn Rand and underwater New York, and every other thing- location, science, characters, culture- exists as a natural cause of those 3 main ideas.
One minor point, perhaps, if I’m recalling my lore correctly. The Butlerian Jihad was a terminator-style war only in the Brian Herbert books, whereas Frank’s implied it to be more a philosophical struggle than a martial one.
It’s pretty explicitly stated in Frank’s books that the Butlerian Jihad was a war between men and their machine EMPOWERED oppressors. It was a commentary about how people could use technology to exploit each other. And how, in the wake of that, the trauma of the experience left humanity with a superstitious fear of technology that trapped us in feudalism for 10k years.
So yes, you are correct. That’s a Brian move and it very much contradicts his father’s writing. The machines were never sentient OR sapient in Dune and in the forth book the titular character even tries to explain that to a couple of bene gesserit who fear the creation of self aware machines.
Came here to say the same thing. The Butlerian Jihad was men using AI and machines to control and oppress other men.
@@sidwoodstock and if that's the case, we may have our own jihad soon....
@@rodrigobogado8756 We're in the very midst of it actually since Herbert as was pointed out didn't imply it was AI, but rather machines doing the job of men. That means lay-offs because machines do peoples' jobs (which basically started before Herbert during the Industrial Revolution and continues escalating to this day). The problem with this is the people that own the "machines" and therefore economic and political power. They have no duty, interest or incentive to split the money they save by not using people with the people who would work there otherwise. Take youtube's demonitization algorithm e.g. as a job that was traditionally done by humans: It does a worse job than humans, but that doesn't matter because A) it's cheaper and B) there's no real contender for youtube, so they're like "well, watcha gonna do? Go to a video website nobody uses? 😂"
Look at the power that tech companies like Google, Amazon, Microsoft and Apple have and you'll see that Herbert wasn't making stuff up, he was merely spinning the dangers he saw to their logical conclusion which could be seen over 50 years ago.
The one positive thing is that these are all publicly traded companies, so you could and should buy shares in these companies. The problem is when wages like in the US rn are so low that people don't have money left at the end of the month, creating a poverty death-spirale.
Yes. You are correct. Bruin Herbert's tale was a separate prequel capitalizing on the name whereas Frank's was very much part of the main story.
I loved the brutalist, angular and functional aesthetic of the new Dune. Back when I was reading the books, its how I imagined the universe in my head, instead of the overly ornate look of Dune in the past
Those Overdesigned space opera flash Gordon styles would closer to old media description but would overly kitsch for modern audience like the darker colors and simpler design of movie superhero customs because accurate design to comic one simply won't do on silver screen.
Probably the most awkward exposition in the 1984 Dune (besides all the internal whispering) was the Guild Navigator telling Emperor Shaddam that Ix makes many machines which are better than those on Richese. Not only is it irrelevant to the plot, it's already common knowledge in the Imperium. It's like telling a president that Microsoft makes many computers. So the line is only there to prove to book readers that the book was read.
This is totally random but the sight of your profile picture triggered a nostalgia-tinged fear reaction from when I was a kid playing Super Mario Bros 2 with my brother. We used to be terrified of that thing! (That and the evil sun) :)
> Microsoft makes many computers
Not only do I think that most real world politicians _need_ to be told this, it is also as inaccurate as it can be while still being vaguely useful.
@@dtkedtyjrtyj I mean they do make computers, like the surface books. Not their main business by far, so it still is rather misleading
Everything he explains about that style of limited exposition to very rich and deep lore is exactly why the Fromsoftware games have a unique way of getting into your brain.
I absolutely adore when a piece of media asks interesting questions and trusts you to put some pieces together, instead of spoonfeeding every detail for the lowest common denominator.
Thank you, creators who dare treat their audience like mature intelligent beings.
That said, beware the JJ Abrams mystery box
@@Iturnright It's really not the same. What we're talking about here is stuff that exists in the lore that can be slowly uncovered by astute viewers/players, NOT some sort of gimmick to generate interest with mysteries that have non-existant (or retconned or illogical) answers.
I think we got fooled enough by JJ's stuff like Lost and the SW sequels to know the difference..
@@thisisfyne If you mean in hindsight, as an after the fact evaluation of the cohesiveness of the universe as a whole, then yes. However, I would point out that Lost got extremely into peoples brains when it was on the air and fresh. There was a lot of lore (for a TV show) in Lost, which made the tangled writing and effective retconing all the more disappointing in the end. It was like a starting a jigsaw puzzle and realizing in the end the pieces just don't fit. Thus, I advocate for viewer/reader caution while the mystery is still in play - many people get pulled in before the incompleteness of the world is clear. For writers, beware the temptation to leave the laws of your world too open-ended for future addition. Write within the bounds of those laws. As for Dune and Dune lore continuity, let's just say I am markedly less enthusiastic for the inevitable adaptations of Children of Dune and beyond, and god help us if studios pick up Brian Herbert's "books".
@@Iturnright Yeah I can't disagree with that! I'm certainly one of the many people that got fooled by Lost and its many empty promises (although it was really good for like.. 4 seasons? before it fell apart). Overall I guess that's something that can closely relate to how much you trust the author/director; their credentials can certainly influence how much I'm willing to get involved as a fan, and how much I can trust that the deep lore is actually there. Most of Hollywood is out of the question then, of course, hence my example in videogames.
yeah, i still remember stumbling on a dwarven ruin for the first time in skyrim, having no idea what they were and having so many questions, questions that kept me playing and delving deeper and deeper into the as i grew more powerful, by far my favorite way a game encourages exploration
I think DUNE’s exposition is so good because:
A. It has great material to deal with.
B. The movie was given the time to be written carefully and edited into oblivion.
C. The movies are long enough to tell their story.
This is what makes ASOIAF so great, you can feel the ramifications of every event rippling through every other characters story, even if that character does not realize it in their POV
apart from the later seasons...
What’s ASOIAF?
@@heheing A song of ice and fire.
It's part of the Game of Thrones series.
@@Robbedem *Game of Thrones it's part of the ASOIAF series
9:29 - The clip of Trey Parker has genuinely changed my life. Before seeing it, I couldn't always determine why I didn't like certain movies and shows. The first time I saw it, everything made sense; I could go back and look at the stuff I didn't like, and it was almost always "and then" storytelling. You are correct that this can also be applied to lore.
Wait... you think Frank Herbert hides information from you? He gives so much context for everything in the story and it is able to flow so well. Going to quote Brandon Sanderson talking about Dune. "Dune, Classic sci-fi story. Traitor walks into the room you immediately go in his head and he goes "well it is going to suck when I betray these people."" Frank leaves barely any questions for the audience.
Frank Herbert didn't make the movies, Villeneuve (the writer/director) is responsible for making things unclear, because unlike a book, you have limited time in a movie and limited audience attention
@@adamfulks1969 yes you have a more limited time but what frustrates me is that SyFy got more information across in terms of character and world building than David did in less time.
Yes I think the SyFy series is better, terrible effects and silly costumes included. That show was able to tell the story of Dune in less time and was able to even add more to the story in less time. The new ones feel like a spark notes rendition.
@@db-du5l688 Yeah, he wasted too much time showing boring scenes of flying soldiers and such, instead of telling the actual story.
@@db-du5l688the SyFy miniseries is what got me into Dune. I wasn't impressed by it, but my immediate reaction to seeing it was that I had find out more about this universe.
Hey, some of my people finally...who did not think the new movies are the definitive rendition of the books.
Whenever I see a really great or a really bad film come out, I wait for one of these videos
I loved how in Dune Part II where Feyd-Rautha pulls out a microphone and started to sing "Every breath you take...."
👁️👁️
Nerd correction: 2:56
Dune actually takes place over 20,000 years in the future. 10,191 AG is only marked after the spacing guild is formed, which itself took a many number of millenia past modern day. Villeneuve actually had to present a world from tens of thousands of years in the future AND make it make sense in only a few introductory scenes.
6:35 As a Brazilian, you can imagine the jumpscare I got when I heard out of nowhere a very loud "CARALHO", a very bad curse word, on an English speaking video.
FINALMENTE O COMENTARIO BR QUE EU TAVA ESPERANDO KFSJGKFJKGJSG
What does that mean ?
The movie doesn't think their audience are idiots who cannot understand what's going on and hit them with an exposition monologue. Instead it gives us a sense of exploration and adventure
What are you talking about? It was boring AF, devoid of everything that makes Dune... Dune. Shallow, bland, uninteresting, should I say, primitive. The miniseries was awesome. Not perfect, but the closest to the book. I don't care about pretty pictures and booming sounds. I care about the characters and the story and it was NOT conveyed. At all. At many places, it was complete re-written, and not for the better, of course.
10:05 THIS, THIS exactly, this in my opinion is what seperates good art from truely great art, good art does this in pieces, great are is built on it, it doesn't just go for plotting or world building, but also characterisation in my opinion, the backstory needs to have clear connectioon with the present behaviour, motivations, and actions and at that point the character arc basically writes itself, it is such a fascinating concept to me, how just forming connection can make stories feel so, real and memorable
true! maybe they could have explained the anti-ai and computer rule in that same way. Not sure how exactly
I clicked so fast
🤣🤣🤣
Gotta go fast
Squeaky voiced nerd who never wrote anything great in his life thinks he knows better than accomplished writers
Me too
same haha
Talking about the one slip up of exposition in the first film with a narrator explaining spice and space travel - it actually isnt a slip up because the narrator is the same voice from the filmbook Paul uses to learn about the Fremen, its all in world. That scene to me just shows the atreides and Paul travelling through space to arrakis, while paul is in the ship learning and watching his filmbook in preparation (hes only a teenager....he doesnt know everything about the giant universe he lives in either) - and it also serves perfectly equally as a succinct use for quick exposition.
Dune takes place around 20,000 years in our future. The date given is AG (After Guild), and then there is BG (Before Guild). Lots of time.
2:58 This is a pet-peeve of mine, people keep assuming that that year is in our modern AD system.. it’s not. It has a completely different year 0. That year 0 is 10,000 years in the future from us. Dune takes place not 8,000 years in the future but 20,000 years.
There's also a more subtle version of this, where there's something about a story where the writer has clearly not thought through the consequences. The most common examples of this in sci-fi are everyone in the universe speaking English with no explanation and every planet having the exact same characteristics as Earth, same gravity, atmosphere, lighting, etc.
When you talked about cause and effect and having everything connected like a large spiral, one show that came to mind, though not sci-fi, was Breaking Bad. The writing in that show was so great with every action having an effect on every other character.
Stuff with language is tricky. What if the player speaks Portuguese? I've been in situation where game assumes I don't know Spanish and the only dialogue options are to say that I don't understand the language. But I do. I want to reply but I can't.
I mean it's still better than when whoever was in charge of writing it visited 2 Spanish classes and that's it.
It's even funnier when they want to make signs in Russian but none of them know how to read Cyrillic yet alone how to speak Russian. Or the sign should be in Russian but for some reason it's in Bulgarian lol.
There was another part of exposition during the first Dune when Paul was training and his master said "the slow blade penetrates the shield" I doubt that it was Paul's first time training so that line was for us the audience.
Usually I think realism isn't particularly needed in a world with giant sandworms and dangerous telepaths. But this kind of realism does make it clear that a lot of thought was put into everything both in the original novels and these new movies.
Realistic elements make the fantastical subjects more believable and immersive.
@@Space_Devil Similar to the ODM Gear in Attack on Titan.
You run out of gas, you're screwed.
You can't latch onto a building or a tree, you're screwed
You mistime a landing and you're screwed because when you're fighting Titans of course you are.
@@claytonrios1 Yeah, I've often just differentiated between realism and naturalism in this regard. All that matters is internal consistency and a natural sense of logical progression no matter how unrealistic your fundemental concept or idea may be.
@@phthaloboy5558 I have seen that done well with Gundam and plenty of classic Shonen as well.
There are no telepaths in DUNE. Anything resembling telepathy is definitively NOT telepathy.
These vids help me make my documentary. Despite it being non fiction the bulk of the lessons are transferable.
that was one of the most useful and awesome ad reads I have ever heard, genuinely genuine
Hey Henry, you rock the bald look. Don’t let anyone tell you otherwise!
Cheers dude!
@@TheCloserLookjuyt don't show your soyjack face
The disney starwars films is just giving fan service. ''I've got a bad feeling about this'' ... he said the thing that Solo said.
this is the best channel! Never clicked so fast! I love it for information and the enthusiastic but also soothing voice!! could listen to it for hours!
scavenger's reign is a masterclass in this
I would argue that Villeneuve should have restated the importance of spice in Part Two so the audience fully understood why Paul threatening to nuke the spice fields is such a big deal. The fact that I have seen many people confused about the purpose of spice and why it is so important tells me that Villeneuve didn't either show or tell the audience in a clear enough way for them to understand. At points you need long exposition scenes to get across both plot and reasoning. For instance when Villeneuve adapts Dune Messiah, he is going to have to put in multiple exposition scenes at the start of the movie, so the audience can get a full understanding of the plotting that is going on. Same with the ending where there needs to be an info dump in the final confrontation so we can understand the plan; however, the info dump in the final confrontation is also a character revealing their plan to Paul and therefore the audience. So it's not so much an info dump, but a person acting like a sterotypical villain revealing their master plan but by revealing their plan, also aiding the plan at the same time.
Its actually not 8000 years in the future. The year system, in Dune, began to count after the establishment of the space guild, wich happend in the year 16.000. So it plays 24.000 years in the future.
best inclusion of an ad into a story i've ever seen on youtube. and I've been here since the start of youtube so I've seen them all. Until the final pitch I literally thought this guy was passing along some interesting advice, only to find out it was an ad, but it was done in such a way where I still felt that I should genuinely check it out, and I did. I think that comes full circle back to the point of good writing. He took his own advice then showed us how it works, by selling us something lol. Good stuff. very impressed, and thanks for the ad, I think it's going to help me immensely.
I enjoy your insights and find them really interesting and they ring true. Keep the good work coming and much love from Canada!
this was a masterclass. I write novels, but I havent published any. Only just now I'm starting to considerate these details and your videos help so much (sorry my english, it's my second language)
Finally, another The Closer Look video.
One thing with lore I like to consider is that it isn’t so much that the audience knows about it so long as the author does and the story makes sense enough around the lore that things can be explained if need be.
You've been an immense help in my writing journey. Thank you so much for your valuable content and tips!
No problem. Glad you've found the videos useful!
I love how many different ways The Closer Look can describe verisimilitude without using the word. I feel you man
It's the space between the notes that creates the music ;)
...or like Lao Tzi wrote:
“Thirty spokes converge at the hub,
but emptiness completes the wheel.
Clay is shaped to make a pot,
and what’s useful is its emptiness.
Carve fine doors and windows,
but the room is useful in its emptiness.
What is
is beneficial, while what is not
also proves useful.”
This is one of my favorite videos on this channel, there are many good ones but this one hits on one of the most fundamental basics of wordbuilding on the head.
Glad you like it!
Wasn’t expecting a little segment about one of my favourite games of all time thrown in there, love some MP3 appreciation
This has some really great points! 10/10 👌
Glad you think so!
I started gathering notes last night for writing the second draft of my fantasy novel. This could not have been a better video.
"What is your name?"
"Paul"
"What do you want your name to be?"
"What is the name of that mouse?"
Mua'Dib
"I want to be named Paul Mua'Dib"
"You are now Paul Mua'Dib."
- Dune, 1984. True brilliance 😆
That was also use in the miniseries.
>Because they are self-aware that they are actually fiction
Exactly! It's the same problem with Marvel too. Disney can't take their material seriously anymore. Their writers are self-aware it's fantasy, it's all fake, and won't even try to make it consistent and express anything deeper beyond the superficiality of the setting they bought the rights to.
Dune is not all setting, but the attention to it adds so much to the story being told that it elevates the movie.
Amazing video! made me rethink a lot of things about the worldbuilding I've been attempting
Sting-Rautha will always be my favorite. He has a wild look to him that no subsequent actor in that role has been able to recreate.
I absolutely love your work. Thanks for always bringing thoughtful contributions and insights into the defining human activity - storytelling.
Ive never noticed TSIASOS in your videos, but I love the Paolini representation!
11:25 Multiverse of Madness PTSD intensifies, btw thank you so so much for that video, it ended up almost singlehandedly inspiring a character for a fantasy story I'm working on, if he turns out to be a good character, I owe you big time
Well. I think Jacksons LOTR world felt equally alive. LOTR and Dune will be the two film franchises of the early 21st century no doubt.
Oh and do not forget golden compass. Nowadays movies suffer from overuse of green screen and CGI and most importantly bad plot. You can watch a movie that feel theatrical but you cannot watch one with bad plot
Brilliantly insightful as always. Already looking forward to your next video dropping (but no pressure!! 🙂)
“In the way no hollywood film like it ever has before”
Oof way to shit on the 4years of prep work for lord of the rings before they were even filmed, i.e. armor making for different races, language making, entire towns/cities built, literal sword smithing, armadas of horse trainers training horses, etc…..
His point is that the style of worldbuilding in Dune is unlike LOTR
I personally think another great example of showing you lore vs telling is Mad Max Fury Road. So many little visual details that let you in on the state of the world.
Yes, in movies like Rebel Moon there were significant lore dumps. The problem is they felt very inconsequential for the story. We got to know the princess was assasinated. But it didn't translate into much of a conflict that we se on screen. We heard that the main character was an OG back in the day. I was thinking, will she be recognized by someone from the team they try to recruit/will she be recognized by some other allies or enemies than the bad general? Nah, no payoff here. We get introduced quickly to places and people like they are supposed to mean something to us. It's assumed they might mean something for the world. But we didn't get lore dumps on them beforehand for some reason so it doesn't feel impactful. Kinda frustrating.
The costuming in the 1984 Dune was much better than that one main example you gave. The still suits were excellent. Great vid btw.
@1:15 Sting wanted Feyd to emerge from the shower naked, but the producers over-ruled this as it would cause a classification issue. So he had to wear something, so something ostentatious was selected. So, not really an issue.
But overall, the points were quite valid, Herbert built a rich universe, if the dictionary, glossary, or encyclopædia was evident enough.
But I am yet to be convinced that Villeneuve's version is so much better than Lynch's. Villeneuve, unlike Lynch, had a longer run-time, editorial control, and then made very weird adjustments to the story. I may watch it one day, but the Spicediver version wins for me.
I walked out of _Dune: Part 2_ saying that it’s unquestionably the greatest film to be released in years - if nothing else, the sound design is absolutely mindblowing - yet I’m not convinced I like it as a _Dune_ adaptation. I actually disagree with Henry’s assessment that Villenueve succeeded as “show, don’t tell”; I thought there was entirely too much on-the-nose expository dialogue in the film, some of which slipped into that condescending, schoolmarmy tone that too often plagues modern cinema. I think it was most apparent to me in the constant back-and-forth between Jessica (whom, incidentally, I love in this film) and Alia, which seemed excessive to me.
Mostly, though, I absolutely despise the changes he made to Chani’s character and the inevitable effects that had on her relationship with Paul. The fact that the final shot was of her walking off into the sunset was particularly egregious: it sidelined Paul in his own story, an all-too-common trope in recent film and television.
And for the love of all that’s holy, I cannot fathom why he had Paul kill the baron instead of Alia. That was such an important plot point in the books (and miniseries), and to put the fatal blow in Paul’s hands effectively reduces his character arc to a revenge story, while stripping Alia of so much of her significance. It’s weird that a movie which tried so hard to turn Chani into a feminist icon stripped the agency from Alia.
Somewhat off topic: why did Villeneuve go out of his way not to use terms like “weirding way” and “witch,” the latter of which is only uttered once, in passing, by an unseen background character?
You should talk about dredd, with Keith Urban. It took me a bit to figure out why i liked that movie so much, and it's the subtle world building in almost every shot.
love your analysis and videos! Well done!
It is more that Frank Herbert made a very deep and immersive universe, like any good to great world builder does, that detail helps others adapt or good spine and foundation to work from.
The armour sets could do with more personalization, which would happen in reality with knights, warriors, and houses on top of whatever settles as a functional universal platform for weapon or armour. Frank Herbert is actually on the record to love David Lynch's film, except the ending with the rain falling and Frank Herbert's weird universe is far more instep with David Lynch artistic style then minimalistic future realism. IT is also good to not get too many exposition moments absolutely and even Lynch film didn't do long info dumps without purpose which was like covering deep universe, but his version of The Greatest Story Ever Told/historical recording being told to those watching like a wandering poet. DUNE by Lynch very much is a warping of The Greatest Story Ever told in film (which had both the actor playing the Emperor in his Dune and Max Von Sydow). I'd even recommend watching the film The Greatest Story Ever Told because it echoes in how Lynch adapted Dune with Frank Herbert.
What also works is that we learn about Arrakis as the Atredius do because that is the new world for them, which is then cleverly done, weaving in us learning about the universe with freeman learning about outsiders and learning about Arrakis with the Atredius as the Freeman show them. This obviously is done well in the book but in this new film they manage that well it just could have done with a warmer colour palette like how Dune Part 2 starts is how I visualize Arrakis looking.
Even Frank Herbert didn't tell you everything in the universe in the first DUNE book, but you get that element of a deeper universe behind it all, an almost naturalistic like awareness of small parts in a deep universe via giving enough but not everything.
You got so good at transitioning to an advert you forgot that it ended up not having an actual ending to your video where it gave closing thoughts about the topic.. Instead it just transitioned to an advert that abruptly ended and its pretty bad..
The entire rest of the video prior to the end was absolutely amazing though (:
It's actually far more than 8000 years in the future, since the date we get in the film is not C.E. and the film does not claim it would be.
If i remember correctly it’s about 10150 AG, which is after guild, and the Spacer Guild was setup after the holy Jihad against the machines/AI, which I’m pretty sure was around 10,000 AD. Someone correct me if I’m wrong?
Edit: I could be getting the Sun Eater series confused…. They are very similar and I’m reading that at the moment….
I am so glad this video was made. Ive long thought this!
This was a good listen 👏🏾
I haven't watched dune in my life. I'm not even a writer, and yet i can't stop watching his videos
movie logic aka internal consistency is crucial to a story making sense and being satisfying. like people who think mystery movies HAVE to keep you guessing when half the reason we like those movies is the satisfaction of figuring out the mystery before the characters do, and you can only do that with logical actions.
the side effects magic being real in harry potter would mean the world would look vastly different than what it is in the movies.
same for making hyperspace ramming a thing. even if it only works a fraction of the time, you would still be trying to use it because of how overpowered it is
The example with wizards really reminded me of Witch Hat Atelier. That manga series examines an extremely grounded setting where existence of magic users has enormous political, economic and social consequences. I dare to say even to the same level of mundane detail as Dune. Definitely worth looking into.
Just a correction: they are not fighting for the control of spice, they were sent there by the emperor to fail so he would have an excuse to kill them cause they were getting too big and the emperor felt threatened. So the Atreides were defending themselves while the others were fighting for control and power, at no moment the spice factor on this war
The film and the books are juxtaposed thematically in how they present information. The book sounds like an encyclopedia whereas the film is a Rothko painting. Both are descriptive and can describe the same things, but with different levels of precision. The weirdest thing about the two is that it leaves you with the same 'flavor' because the director enjoyed the books so much as a young adult.
The closer look is a top 5 UA-camr
15:00 there’s another important quote like this that goes smth like “You shouldn’t write your world to be realistic, but to be believable”
So bring unrealistic stuff as much as you want. As long as you can make it believable, having such things have concrete consequences on the world you build, people will get immersed
Henry, for someone who enjoys a good world and story as much as you, and have also played video games before, I’m very surprised how you’ve never mentioned Red Dead Redemption 2, or RDR1, it’s some of the best storytelling in video game history.
RDR is boring as hell though. The missions put you on rail, you just go through the motions of what the game requires you to do. I hate having so little agency in a videogame just because the developer wants to shove a specific narrative down people's throat at all costs. Nakey Jakey is right; Rockstar's game design is limiting and outdated.
@thisisfyne bro stfu the story and realism in among the best in a game. Just cause you can't do certain things like stealth a robbery means the whole game sucks??!!
I feel like The Witcher 3 also needs to be Mentioned
@@isaachamilton4727 You completely missed the point of his comment 😭
It may have the best realism and story, but that doesn't mean it has the best gameplay
And anyways Nakeyjakey just uploaded a video on Rdr2 praising it's Open World
@@finngeorgas4090 Witcher 3 was definitely not a bad game, but I just found the game so boring, the story was just “this person has seen Ciri -> this person has seen Ciri -> this person has seen Ciri -> this person has seen Ciri” etc, all while doing chores for everyone, I’ve also seen a lot of videos on UA-cam saying this same thing, just my opinion tho, not a game for me personally.
Actually all the lore that the director isn't willing to talk about exists in the phenomenal book by Frank Herbert that these films are based on. The book also is written like a documentary or like an epic, with many details unexplained because in this world it is common knowledge. One correction, Dune 1 movie says that spice is needed in space travel. This is NOT common knowledge in the Dune universe of the book. It is an extremely well guarded secret of the Spacing Guild. Spice is also a geriatric drug and extremely addictive, which was why the population of the Dune universe probably didn't realize the double significance of the spice for the Spacing Guild. Sorry for geeking out, but I highly recommend reading the book!
You posted and today is a good day. As written.
I won’t shame you for your French accent... but Denis Villeneuve is from Québec so he doesn’t speak French with a French accent. Strangely, he speaks English with a French accent however
Matt and Trey's talk on writing is so simple but genius. "Causality is what creates a story"
when i watched the first one i felt it was lacking sometimes. years later I watched it again and I liked it, and now I watched the part 2 and I'm so hooked. I read books 1-5 but I thought they couldnt actually do it.
But they did it and it's gorgeous
I think Matt Mercer said it best when he put it like this: Don't start off making a world, start off making a town. Why was this town built here? Perhaps it's built next to a forest or mountain due to the precious resources such places might contain. Perhaps there are valuable ores, or special hardwood trees, and these things would naturally impact the economics and culture of this town.
Naturally, this town being so close to such precious resources would cause other settlements to become interested. They might try to trade, try to steal, try to conquer. Then, from there, you can build other civilisations from the starting point that they have some kind of relationship or connection to the first town you build.
It's much easier to create connections between aspects of your world when you envision the connections first and construct the aspects as mere extensions of those.
I love the inclusion of game design tips from GabeN. I think its very healthy for your creativity to be able to take inspirations from other mediums.
Constantine was another film that followed the same departure from exposition. The lack of gaps being filled in drew us into that world as the director built it up around us also. Underappreciated film. Love the style. I think Denis Villenueve also had plenty of incentive to not repeat the over-exposition of the 80's version.
Bro I’ve been waiting for another post
The palm trees aren't a flex of wealth but a symbol of the Fremen's dream for a verdant Dune.
Wow! The back of my mind is always pondering why Villeneuve's sci fi films are different than seemingly ALL the others, and you NAILED it! I never could put my finger on the fact that all the other sci fi films _feel self-concious about their fictional status._ Even Star Wars! Really all the sci fi I can think of that's NOT Villeneuve's. Arrival and Blade Runner 2049 have very little exposition too. But _especially_ Arrival and the Dune movies. Brillaint analysis. I could never put my finger on the fact that THAT'S why other sci fi doesn't feel _immersive_ like Villeneuve's.
Denies Villeneuve actually dosen’t like lore and tries to reduce it’s HARD presence as much as possible. Now a days we have movies that explored dumbledoors backstory or actually show the battle that put Aang in ice or explain even the reason dumbo the elephant has his name. So Villeneuve decided to make everything obvious to avoid questions. To make this world thousands of years in the future recognizable and quick to understand, and then move on. The lore is blasted through and never explored again because it doesn’t matter to the story or themes. (Tastefully don’t mostly through showing not telling) Lote is only a framework in which the story exists in but it has nothing to do with Paul’s plot or emotional journey or the themes of the book. The priests look like priests, the king look kings, the movie even has some regular ass bagpipes in it. Soft world building isn’t meant to be explained and doing so ruins the whole point. The existence of the lore only exists to beat nerds to the punch. The story could exists just fine without it if the audience could just suspend their disbelief and fuck with the raw vibe. This philosophy is at the core of some of the weirdest and most creative art that you are supposed to feel not understand or explain away. Nobody is confused why there are pirates in the future in treasure planet or trying to explain the biology of how Thor is able to shoot electricity from his fingers or why you never see characters go to the bathroom in movies unless it’s a joke. You just accept the premise and movie on. But pedantic nerds love to ruin any artistic ambiguity or anything that doesn’t justify it’s existence dismissing it as “plot holes” or “getting in the way of their immersion” and this forces artists such as Frank Herbert to explain away any ambiguity so the audience moves on. These “plot holes” are also always critiqued in relation to the plot and never as seen as what they actually are. A creative decision made by an artist for thematic or aesthetic purposes. (I’m thinking of how a bunch of nerds said “elves aren’t black” when a black person is cast as an elf in the new LOTR show. Dude, step outside, elves aren’t real. And a black elf isn’t breaking the internal logic of a world. Elves haven’t been established to only be white. We just happen to have not seen any black elves until now. And changing the internal logic of a work isn’t retconning unless done in retrospect. Either way it doesn’t matter and has nothing to do with story???) Lore sucks and isn’t ever anything more than window dressing or a reaction to nerds. That ISNT TO SAY that making a world feel more alive isn’t a good thing. Showing that a world has existed before and will exists after what we are shown can have important aesthetic or thematic significance. But it doesn’t have to explain away ambiguity. And not all am I guilty is lifeless. Look at anything Miyazaki has made. Also “lore” can be as simple and ordinary as alluding to some friends Paul has that we never see or a weird little thing people just kinda do. Ambiguity also can have be used to make things more alive as people in real life has hard to understand motivations or actions and we don’t know everything about everything all the time. I assumed, like everyone else, dumbo was named dumbo because he was simply just named that way. I had my own version of the clone wars I had imagined in my head when obi-wan described it. And while I love the prequels, I also liked the little version I had invented in my head. I liked participating in the art and I liked not knowing.
Great video as always
Love your videos. And Dune ... its the SW prequels i dreamed of since 1999.
God ... Chalamet would have been a perfect Anakin Skywalker if those film would have been made today ... and in good.
I like Hayden as Anakin…. The issue wasn’t the actor it was the lines he was told to read. Timmy would have sounded just as bitchy with the same script….
That Dune Popcorn bucket better chill out or I’m not gonna pull out!
based
'Tis a good day when The Proximal Gaze posts a video.
When it comes to exposition, I also feel like not enough people factor in the fact that like half the population of the adult movie ticket-buying demograph already knows the lore and details. We came to see it acted out, not re-explained with necessary brevity - and people like me are so satisfied because that's exactly what we got. I wanted to see and feel Dune not re-read a shorter audio version of it.
It's not about realism, it's about authenticity. Every aspect of a story needs to compliment the others and not just for show
As a long time D&D DM I can tell when it comes to lore, less is definitely more. I might create a ton of it, for the world, to help me fill out why the world is what it's like now, but unless it's particularly relevant to the players I'll keep it for info only.