Yesterday, I finished my re-read of Dune about ten hours before the
first part of the miniseries aired on Sci-Fi Channel... So, it's
about time for my half-assed attempt at a review. ;-)
Minimal spoilers follow...
Overall, the miniseries did an unusually good job. They managed to
compress a *lot* of book (basically Part I of III) into a single
2-hour movie, and still keep the intent and basic plot. We never
see the surface of Caladan at all, which was probably a good
decision, time-wise. However, the contrast between watery Caladan
and parched Arrakis gets carried in the first scene, where the
director gets the audience to focus on water almost subconsciously.
Other changes to save time weren't so good -- we hardly see Dr. Yueh
at all, and the audience should probably know him a little better
for the full impact of... uh... later scenes. ;-)
There were also some pretty cool scene transitions, which you'll
have to see to believe...
The design for the Guild transport ship was pretty cool. It looked
kinda like Rama chopped up into jigsaw pieces. ;-) It looked like
it spun for artificial gravity, and it had an open structure, with
plenty of ledges for smaller ships to land and park on during an
interstellar trip.
Big Changes:
Those aren't 'thopters! ;-) In case you didn't know, an ornithopter
is a heavier-than-air flying machine that flaps its wings like a
bird, for lift and most of its thrust. In the book, the flying
vehicles are ornithopters, or 'thopters for short, with rocket
assist for an extra burst of emergency power. The Atreides flying
machines shown in the miniseries look like they use some form of
turbofan mounted in stubby, movable wings, which they used for
lift and thrust. They don't even look capable of flapping. I
didn't see the Harkonnen machines in the miniseries flap, either,
but it looked like they could, because they had long, bird-like
wings that looked pretty flexible. Maybe we only saw the attacking
'thopters in glide mode.
Major Error?
There was a screen mounted in the thopter that looked suspiciously
like a computer screen. In the Foundation series, Asimov was able
to sneak computers into his later novels in the 80s without anybody
objecting. That's because the lack of computers was not an integral
part of the original Foundation stories. Not so for Dune. The
abandonment of computers, robots, and "thinking machines" about ten
thousand years before the start of the novel was a big part of
Herbert's setup. If they had computers, there would be no need for
Mentats and Bene Gesserit to develop their mental and observational
powers. Adding computers would make it a much more *pleasant* world,
IMO, but it wouldn't be Dune.
Lesser of Two Evils?
A while back, DB made a post where he said the Atreides were just
as bad as the Harkonnens. I disagree slightly. I think the Atreides
are the lesser of two evils -- but not by much. The difference
isn't too big -- it's as if the Atreides read the "Tips for Evil
Overlords" web page, and the Harkonnens didn't. ;-) The Atreides
have enough sense to treat their staff nicely enough to inspire
loyalty, and the story is told through the eyes of Atreides and
their followers, so the Atreides end up sounding pretty good there.
Despite that propagandizing, Atreides certainly wouldn't champion
causes like free speech too strongly. When a Fremen spat in the
floor in front of the Duke, his lieutenants came very close to
attacking him, until they learned that it was not an insult, but
a gift of water. If a commoner said something unflattering about
the Duke, without a good explanation like that, I don't think he
would live long.
______________________________________________________________________
Steve Sloan ......... Huntsville, Alabama =========> [EMAIL PROTECTED]
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