Dune

[Buster's Uncle]

The others are obvious, but the Harkonnens as depraved homosexual Jews is an interesting take,  (with some resonance, leaving aside a bunch of issues with that- some of them that Herbert definitely intended, back in the day).

[Valka]

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[Buster's Uncle]

No, I'm thinking -other than the Fremen being overtly derived from Islam- on a purely symbolic level.  It's not like the Atredies were given to religious expression before.

[Valka]

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[vonbach]

I would ask vonbach to quote the relevant parts of the novel that point to the Harkonnens either being Jewish or portraying the same role that our real-world Jews did.

What isn't it obvious? You have the Harkonnens a depraved money hungry people oppressing the freemen in their land  and the Harkonnens offshoot, the Atraides. The whole thing ends in a revolution.
He's talking about Israel and the three middle eastern religions in general.

[Valka]

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[vonbach]

I'm seriously asking this: Point out which parts of Dune portray the Harkonnens as the Jews.

The book is about the rise of Islam and the religions in general. So the eldest house is the eldest religion
so house Harkonnen are the jews. At one point its revealed that the Atraides at an offshoot of House Harkonnen
hence Christianity. That leaves Islam with Paul as Mohammed. Never mind the whole book takes place in a sandy wasteland where a precious resource everyone needs is located.  Just like the middle east and the oil there.

What did the RL Jews do that's analogous to what the Harkonnens did?

The Israelis haven't exactly been friendly to the local Arabs who's land they're on.

[Valka]

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[bvanevery]

I ran out of "The Orville" episodes to watch this evening, so I started looking through the On Demand sci-fi catalog.  Going alphabetically, I came to the 1984 version of "Dune", which I saw in the original in the theater.  Has at least one "great" line by Sting: "I will kill him!"  Sure you will.  Love that line, have said it so often over the years and nobody knows what I'm talking about.

The Mindworms in SMAC are a sort-of Dune ripoff.  As is Psi combat.  That may seem dumb but... how dumb is the original material?  I was reminded of this in the intro to the film.  The Spice only comes from one planet?  And couldn't reverse engineer any effect of this compound?  Which we eventually learn is merely dead worms.  Pretty crappy tech tree, wouldn't you say?

Well the film can't be completely stupid, because it has a pre-STTNG Patrick Stewart trying to cut up Paul Atreides in force shield practice.  The visuals are also definitely holding up.  World building is cool, "Great House" military dudes marching around and stuff.  It'll be interesting to see what deficiencies this film has in the end, as I remember a lot of people over the years thinking it was kind of stupid.  However I only read the first 2 Dune books a few years ago, so I never had a "hard baked" idea of how this was "supposed to" be done.

[Buster's Uncle]

It was a terrible movie.

Did you see the worse David Lynch version with Virginia Madsen/Irulan at the beginning, or the less-terrible "Alan Smithee" version that begins with a little background on the Butlerian Jihad narrated over still pics?

Have you seen the two Sci Fi channel miniseries?  I'd love to be able to piece together the best parts from those and the movie...

[bvanevery]

Did you see the worse David Lynch version with Virginia Madsen/Irulan at the beginning,

This hair chick announces how stupid the Dune tech tree is, leading me to this post.

"Yeah the universe runs on worm feces."  Worthy of an Orville episode!

Have you seen the two Sci Fi channel miniseries?

I know I've seen at least 1.  Thought it was decent.  This movie I'm now watching, in the background because it's too much of a yawner to give undivided attention, is often "David Lynch weird" about stuff.  I wouldn't call that artistically invalid per se, but it can easily make a plot harder to follow.  Like thematic stuff, one starts wondering, "Why are they being weird?"
 
The visual design of this movie is really strong though.  Great stuff for contemplating world building.  Totally the opposite of the Star Wars franchise.

[Buster's Uncle]

Yeah; it's mostly costumes and sets I'd use from the movie - virtually none of the actors and absolutely none of the script.  The score has grown on me, too - there's nothing in either miniseries that sticks with you.  I hated the electric guitars at the climax in the theater, but even that's grown on me.

Both the movie and the first miniseries had the artistic courage to portray far-future people living in a very alien culture, by our standards, in silly hats.  The Battlestar Galactica remake, went in exactly the opposite direction, which I'd assert undermined the whole affair, throwing out what little was somewhat clever about the original and turning it into just a soap opera about Americans In Space, which got old in a hurry.

[bvanevery]

To be fair to BG, the orignial had plenty of "70s schlock" in it that wasn't worth a damn.  And good bits too.  This is my childhood, I say it with love.  Gotta love Daggit barking around and stuff.  The more recent "dark" series, I understand why they were interested in dumping tonalities of the older series.  The main failing of the new one, according to a friend of mine who was following it for awhile, was that they went "character driven" somewhere in the course of it.  Which was boring.  I didn't watch the whole thing, only a chunk of the final season IIRC, and it didn't leave enough of an impression on me to remember one way or the other.  I suppose I could play "catch up" on that.  I watched a little bit of "Caprica" but then my life moved onwards and I didn't have access to a TV.  "Home for the holidays" is how I end up seeing a lot of this stuff.

One of the things that bugs me about the SMAC conception of humanity's possible futures, is the degree to which they made something a "new technological breakthrough", that is already old hat even in the present day.  It's good to contemplate a lot of different possible directions for the future... but I think this Dune movie, is demonstrating what an opposite authorial approach looks like.  When "the future" is something other than us, and it looks rather different from now.

Meanwhile, this Baron character is a little over the top.  Just sayin'.

[Buster's Uncle]

The Baron in the miniseries was almost as bad --- but not quite.

[bvanevery]

Well the atrocity is over.  I'm not sure if I feel nerve stapled or nerve gassed.

I did at least get to hear Sting's great line again... and it doesn't come off as well as I've remembered it all these years.  He did have some good finger biting action in the final knife fight, didn't remember that part.  The fight itself was mostly cringeworthy.  In the intervening years I learned a fair amount of Russian style fighting, a lot of it standup grappling and anti-knife work, so the "shaky freeze poses" are particularly regrettable to watch.  Paul's finishing move where he "bends like a reed in the wind" isn't bad though, and could actually work.  As long as the other opponent is clumsy and not "live" with his knife as he's going down.  It does take training to remain "live" when being thrown, so considering that Sting is a pretty big jerk, the finish is plausible.  Feel like it could be the subject a MythBusters episode.