Dan and Jordan continue their travel through the Dune films, this time taking in the much heraleded 2021 Denis Villeneuve adaptation. Does the new cast stack up? Is the story more sensibly conveyed? Is there a single distracting extra vacuuming in the background of this one?
| Speaker | Time | Text |
|---|---|---|
| I missed my cue. | ||
| It's worm time. | ||
|
unidentified
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It's time to pray. | |
| War mix! | ||
| There we go. | ||
|
unidentified
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Knowledge fight. | |
| Knowledge fight. | ||
| This is a bad remix. | ||
|
unidentified
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Good guys. | |
| We are the bad guys. | ||
| Knowledge fight. | ||
| Dan and Jordan. | ||
| Knowledge fight. | ||
| And the Harkonnens. | ||
| I need money. | ||
| Whatever that MAPES person was. | ||
| Stop it. | ||
| Andy in Kansas. | ||
| It's time to pray. | ||
| Andy in Kansas, you're on the air. | ||
|
unidentified
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Thanks for holding us. | |
| Hello, Alex. | ||
| I'm a first-time caller. | ||
| I'm a huge fan. | ||
| I love your room. | ||
|
unidentified
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Knowledge Fight. | |
| KnowledgeFight.com. | ||
| I love you. | ||
| Hey, everybody! | ||
| Welcome back to Doon Dune with Dan! | ||
| Doon Dune. | ||
| I'm Jordan. | ||
| Dune is being done. | ||
| I'm Dan. | ||
| He's Dan. | ||
| Today, we are doing part two. | ||
|
unidentified
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Sort of. | |
| Not really. | ||
| Not really. | ||
| Well, it's the second installment. | ||
| Yeah, we're doing part one of part two. | ||
| Exactly. | ||
| It's going to get very confusing. | ||
| Of a two-part series that's going to have a third part. | ||
| I mean, I guess it has to now. | ||
| There might even be a fourth part. | ||
| I mean, who knows? | ||
| I'll leave the... | ||
| Sort of suspense in the air whether or not I've been gotten by the dune bug. | ||
| Honestly, I want to talk about the James McAvoy one, so if I can get you that far... | ||
| We'll see. | ||
| All will be revealed by the end of this episode. | ||
| Let's have a little suspense. | ||
| It is possible, but today... | ||
| For those who are just joining us, if you missed our last episode, we talked about the 1984 David Lynch dune. | ||
| Indeed. | ||
| And I've had a little bit more time to reflect on it. | ||
| Okay. | ||
| Do we have pre-dune thoughts? | ||
| I mean, I think... | ||
| Okay. | ||
| I might have been too nice to it. | ||
| I think I was... | ||
| I didn't like it, and I thought it was bad. | ||
|
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But I like it less as time has gone on. | |
| I will definitely say that. | ||
| That is the reverse of, I think, most people. | ||
| What, the... | ||
| It grows on them? | ||
| Yeah, yeah, yeah. | ||
| The David Lynch dude seems to have grown on people a lot more. | ||
| Believe me, they hated it that much. | ||
| I have a suspicion that were I to get deep... | ||
| Deep into Dune. | ||
| I might be able to revisit it and see a certain amount of charm and things that are maybe being pointed to from deep Dune lore that don't come out in the actual telling of the story in the movie as it's presented. | ||
| I could see my appreciation of it growing. | ||
| That direction? | ||
|
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Sure. | |
| But that has not happened. | ||
| No. | ||
| And as a movie, I just think it's terrible. | ||
| It's terrible, isn't it? | ||
| Yeah, this is partially why I don't watch too many movies. | ||
| I get resentful. | ||
| Because sometimes it turns into David Lynch's dude. | ||
|
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Right. | |
| And that spoils all movies for you. | ||
| It goes on for days. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| Just thinking about, like... | ||
| I didn't enjoy that. | ||
| Yeah, yeah, yeah. | ||
| I like the idea that one bad apple is not, it's the opposite. | ||
| You know, like, if there's one bad apple, never eat apples ever again. | ||
|
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Mm-hmm. | |
| Yeah. | ||
| This is probably also, I mean, now that we've watched the 84 Dune and the first part of the new ones. | ||
| That's what we're going to talk about today. | ||
| I have watched more movies in the past week than probably a long stretch. | ||
| So maybe I should get back into movies. | ||
| Well, the last movie we watched was literally... | ||
| I would almost guarantee the last movie you watched was Elysium. | ||
|
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Ooh. | |
| No, I have to have seen something since then. | ||
|
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No, you watched something in between our last live shows. | |
| I mean, documentaries, those don't count. | ||
| Documentaries do not count as movies. | ||
| That's a hard, fast rule that I have just invented. | ||
| Okay, well then, shit. | ||
| I think there has to have been something, but I don't know what. | ||
| Right. | ||
|
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I don't know what. | |
| Well, I mean, that's interesting, because again, Elysian and these movies are only for work. | ||
|
unidentified
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It's true. | |
| But also somewhat enjoyable. | ||
| Here's an irony of my media diet, right? | ||
| I watched all of Lost initially, begrudgingly. | ||
| Right. | ||
| Because I wanted to be able to be part of the conversation that was happening in society. | ||
|
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Sure. | |
| And I've taken in some media because of that. | ||
| Like, that's the reason I watched Game of Thrones. | ||
| Sure. | ||
| Wanted to be able to talk to people about it. | ||
| Everyone wouldn't shut the fuck up about it. | ||
| They really didn't. | ||
| So I wanted to join in. | ||
|
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Yeah. | |
| Somehow movies don't, that doesn't apply. | ||
| Interesting. | ||
| Because there's so many movies that everyone's talking about. | ||
| Everybody's talking about. | ||
| Talking about what? | ||
| I found myself in the rhythm of L.A. Knight, the wrestler. | ||
| Everybody talking about what? | ||
| And then you got nothing? | ||
| All the people saying. | ||
| What are people talking about? | ||
| Barbie Oppenheimer, that was one of the last ones that everyone was talking about. | ||
| I didn't see either of them. | ||
| That didn't draw me to the theater, even though I would like to be conversant in these things. | ||
| I think here's the problem, and I'm going to be real honest with you about these movie conversations as opposed to the TV conversations. | ||
| I think you probably already know what the conversation is with movies, for the most part. | ||
| Not all the time. | ||
| But, don't you? | ||
| Maybe. | ||
| You know? | ||
| But I could have guessed what the conversation was going to be about Lost and Game of Thrones. | ||
| Sure, sure. | ||
| But, because it happens over weeks of time, and people are always coming up with new details and shit, you're supposed to keep following along. | ||
| And it feels, maybe it is an unpacked, or un-unpacked thing, a still-packed thing. | ||
| About, like, working at a movie theater makes me feel like it's not the same to watch a movie on a computer screen or something. | ||
| Fair. | ||
| Whereas watching a TV show feels completely normal on a TV screen. | ||
| Sure. | ||
| That makes sense. | ||
| There might be something with that that I just don't let myself watch Barbie or Oppenheimer on the computer screen. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| Maybe I should let that go. | ||
| That's interesting. | ||
| I don't think so. | ||
| Oh. | ||
| I mean, you know, why not? | ||
| You know, back half. | ||
| Well, if not letting it go meant I'll go to the theater and see these movies, then that seems like a good solution. | ||
| But instead of saying, like, no, fuck it, you don't need to ever watch movies. | ||
| You were the one who established that one bad apple should ruin every apple forever. | ||
| Sure. | ||
| That's fair. | ||
| I think we've gotten to the starting point, though. | ||
| Have we? | ||
| We've watched the 2021 Part 1 Dune from Dennis Villanueva. | ||
| I was surprised it was 2021. | ||
| I mean, I guess maybe because the new one just came out fairly recently. | ||
| Three years ago felt like... | ||
| I felt like longer ago than when I remember that happening. | ||
|
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Yeah. | |
| Time is a... | ||
| Writer's strike, my man. | ||
| Time is a weird thing. | ||
| But yeah, three years ago that came out. | ||
| Yep. | ||
| 2021. | ||
| Yep. | ||
| Still on a desert. | ||
| You couldn't update that? | ||
| Thoughts on the setting. | ||
|
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Has brown grown on you? | |
| It's very khaki, all the sand. | ||
| It's very khaki. | ||
| It's still too dry. | ||
| But, I mean, I guess that's part of it. | ||
| You know, that's part of the ambiance and the setting and what have you. | ||
| So, right out of the gate, I will say this. | ||
| I thought that the story was so much better told. | ||
| Yeah, yeah. | ||
| And one of the reasons is because initially... | ||
| The first voice you hear and the first people you hear and the perspective you hear is of Chani and the Fremen. | ||
| Yes. | ||
| So there was a larger entry point to that. | ||
| As opposed to the beginning of it being this giant monstrosity non-worm creature who is talking to an emperor. | ||
| Right. | ||
| It was more accessible in terms of like, oh, this story is essentially going to be about a struggle. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| As opposed to being about some kind of political weird machinations. | ||
| Although the political weird machinations are there. | ||
| That element of the Fremen and those people doesn't get introduced in the 1984 one until fairly into the movie. | ||
| Whereas this one, it's right at the gate. | ||
| And I think it does a much better job of establishing them as a major player in this. | ||
| And then also, you see them, and then you see the Harkonnens, and you see the Atreideses. | ||
| Atreadi. | ||
| Atreadi. | ||
| I like that. | ||
| And so you see them, they're all introduced as entities. | ||
|
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Mm-hmm. | |
| As opposed to it just being kind of like the Empire, Harkonnens, and Atreides. | ||
| Yeah, it is like a quintessential show-don't-tell kind of example. | ||
| If your 1984 David Lynch is literally, we're going to tell you the story of what's happening to catch you up, so then we can watch a movie, this one's like, hey, we're just going to tell a story. | ||
| We're going to show you what's happening. | ||
| Did I miss it, or were there not even... | ||
| The Emperor's not even in this. | ||
| Nope, not even in it. | ||
| He's not in it. | ||
| Nope. | ||
| The worm, non-worm, time-folding thing isn't in it. | ||
| Didn't even know they were there? | ||
| The guy with the vacuum isn't in it. | ||
| Not there. | ||
| The vacuum guy, tragic cut from the screenplay. | ||
| I think that that scene might have been a big problem for me in the first one. | ||
| It might have been too much, because it's so early in the movie, and I think it was too much. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| I think it was just like, guys. | ||
| Guys. | ||
| I genuinely think that for... | ||
| Brains like yours and mine. | ||
| At this point in 2024, with our knowledge of movies and movie history and shit, you cannot have the guy by himself mopping without us being like, I can't watch this movie! | ||
| It's over! | ||
| There needs to be eight guys mopping or no guys mopping! | ||
| I think that was a choice and it was distracting and it ruined the movie. | ||
| It ruined the entire movie, didn't it? | ||
| I really think it does. | ||
| They need to have more on-set discipline with these wrangling the extras, the background people. | ||
| It's too much. | ||
| If there was any, like they've done so many oral histories, they've done so many documentaries on what went wrong and all that shit, none of them ever really tackled what that guy was thinking and why it ruined the entire movie for everyone. | ||
| Like to catch up with that cat. | ||
| Absolutely. | ||
| Okay, so we've got it. | ||
| We've got the setting. | ||
| We've got the story opening up so far. | ||
| You are, I would say, immediately hit with a sense of scale that is much better executed in 2021, obviously. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| I mean, there's just some things that are essentially like... | ||
| You probably couldn't have done some of this stuff in 84. No. | ||
| So I'm trying to be as kind of fair about that as I can. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| But obviously, aesthetically, everything is much better. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
|
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Yeah, yeah, yeah. | |
| Totally. | ||
| I think what is so great about this version, though, right out of the gate, and what he did that kind of changes, I think for a lot of people who watched it who are fans of Dune, making everything feel so big. | ||
| Like, that was one of the first choices that made me feel comfortable, was whenever they have these gigantic spaceships showing up for no reason. | ||
| You know, like, you've got a temple that's 7,000 feet tall, but it's only so the guy can say, hey, here's your piece of mail, and then they're off again. | ||
| You know, like, that's one of the great thematic parts of Dune is... | ||
| Everything's too big? | ||
| The more important something looks, the less important it is. | ||
| Hmm. | ||
| People are imparting meaning to something that is meaningless. | ||
| But what about the worm? | ||
| That looks pretty important. | ||
| It looks real important. | ||
| Isn't this the inverse, then? | ||
| Ah, now we get into themes. | ||
| This is how we have a paradox. | ||
| Well, I mean, it's more like conflict, right? | ||
| So something that looks big... | ||
| Is unimportant. | ||
| And something like the worm is big. | ||
| And so it doesn't need to be around. | ||
| You don't need to know that a worm is nearby. | ||
| A worm doesn't need to be within a million miles of you. | ||
| The worm is so important, it is always on your mind. | ||
| Right? | ||
| That's what the Willie Nelson song was about. | ||
| It was the worm. | ||
| It's all about the worm. | ||
| So I do think that they did the worm. | ||
| Way better. | ||
| Yeah, it was great, right? | ||
| Because it was very Jaws-like in terms of they don't show you that much. | ||
| For the first good hour and a half, two hours of the movie, you probably only see it as a sarlacc pit. | ||
| You only see it as an opening chasm in the sand. | ||
| And I think that that choice is good because it retains your ability to imagine more. | ||
| Whereas in the first one, I just remember seeing the worm the first time. | ||
| I was like, that's early. | ||
| And now I've seen the worm. | ||
| I know what the worm is. | ||
| I know what the worm looks like. | ||
| And I think it took away some of the mystery which was retained in this one. | ||
| Yeah, that first time you see the worm, the choice of... | ||
| The sand just kind of shaking and then falling into fire. | ||
| Like, that is such a great way of introducing a supernatural force. | ||
| You know, just as like, it's not appearing from above. | ||
| It is something that not only can you not feel or see or anything, it could happen at any moment. | ||
| That kind of vibe. | ||
| Except, you know, of course you can see a giant worm coming at you. | ||
| There's a worm sign. | ||
| Right. | ||
| We've got a worm sign! | ||
| I just think of Mystery Science Theater. | ||
|
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How do you... | |
| Yeah, I know, totally. | ||
|
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We've got worm sign! | |
| We've got movie sign! | ||
| How do you feel about saving people this time? | ||
| Whatever Lito and Paul... | ||
| Well, see, here's the thing. | ||
| I realize, having seen it in both movies, because that's a scene that... | ||
| It's very similar in both. | ||
| Totally. | ||
| Whereas a lot of things are very different. | ||
| It is a defining character moment for Leto. | ||
| Yes. | ||
| And I get that. | ||
| And I think it was much better executed in this because there are multiple ships, first of all. | ||
| They deal with the idea that we can't fit everybody. | ||
| We've got to get some stuff off this. | ||
|
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Right. | |
| And so I think it was all in all much better done. | ||
|
unidentified
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Yeah. | |
| It didn't leave me thinking like, You only saved two of those people. | ||
| Yeah, it is a massive difference just to add the one line of being like, okay, we have to remove important stuff here to bring people on. | ||
| And having a voice that's like, we can't fit them all. | ||
| We can do this, this, or this, and we can't. | ||
| Damn you, men! | ||
| I'll put these lives in... | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| And that just takes away the little voice in the back of your head. | ||
| And that's kind of what movies should do. | ||
| Put you at ease and get those questions away. | ||
| Right. | ||
| To allow you to enjoy. | ||
| Yeah, and to establish the character. | ||
| Let's talk thropter. | ||
| Let's do it. | ||
| Thopter. | ||
| What? | ||
| Ornithopter. | ||
| Okay, whatever. | ||
| Not thropter. | ||
|
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Bug. | |
| I get you. | ||
| Bug thing. | ||
| Yes, that's exactly what it is. | ||
| I mean, it's a dragonfly, right? | ||
|
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Yeah, yeah, yeah. | |
| I have a couple problems. | ||
| What? | ||
| Well, my first thing is I think it looks cool. | ||
| It looks great. | ||
| I don't... | ||
| I have a respect for science fiction with the understanding that not every culture, not every universe that ever exists is going to follow the exact same line of technological progression so some things will look weird. | ||
| I get that. | ||
| This is using the same ideas. | ||
| As, like, a helicopter or whatever, but just in a really dumb way. | ||
| It's really dumb. | ||
| Exactly the same, but dumber. | ||
| Yes. | ||
| Unless, yeah, it makes no sense. | ||
| There's no way they would get to that point and then stop. | ||
| Yeah, yeah, yeah. | ||
| This idea would be, like, okay, maybe somebody would have that because it looks cool, and, like, maybe some... | ||
| A really rich person would have one of these thopters for, like, going out over the lake or whatever. | ||
| But that would not be a normal means of conveyance. | ||
| No. | ||
| It just doesn't make sense. | ||
| It would be so hard to steer. | ||
| Just no way. | ||
| It's like the steampunk, like, whenever hot air balloons are the in vogue mode of transmission. | ||
| Shut up. | ||
| Stop it. | ||
| I get that it's whimsical. | ||
| Shut up. | ||
| But it does look cool. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| No, no, no. | ||
| Agreed. | ||
| It reminds me of a... | ||
| The AT-AT in Star Wars, like in Empire Strikes Back, when you're a kid and you watch the giant lumbering thing come, you're like, oh, that's intimidating. | ||
| And then as an adult, you're like, slow and with the high center of gravity. | ||
| That's how you're designing this? | ||
| Who built this? | ||
| Whose idea was this? | ||
| There's some notes that have been ignored on this thing, for sure. | ||
| So also with that rescue scene. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| There is an added element that I didn't feel was present in the original, which is that there is defective equipment that the Harkonnens have left there that is the reason that there is a disaster to begin with. | ||
| In the original, it felt like these people were just sitting ducks. | ||
| And whether Leto was flying in there to observe the spice being made or not, they would be dead. | ||
| Whereas in this, they would have been saved. | ||
| There is a mechanism to get these little pods out of there. | ||
| And it just didn't happen because the Harkonnens fucked them over. | ||
| And that adds to... | ||
| The vibe of the whole situation. | ||
| Yes. | ||
| Everything that's going on makes more sense because of little things like that. | ||
| Right. | ||
| Now, what's great about that is, in terms of the movie and the story thematically, what's so important is that things are always happening on purpose. | ||
| So, that's like a great review. | ||
| That you know why something happened and that it happened for a reason as opposed to anything happening randomly. | ||
| Nothing in the story of Dune should ever be like, and then, bah! | ||
| That just happened. | ||
| Which it felt like a lot in the other one. | ||
| In the 84 movie, it feels like this is just a story of things that are happening. | ||
| Whereas in the actual conception of this universe, everything is according to plan. | ||
| And if it's... | ||
| If it doesn't go well in your plan, that's because somebody else's plan included your plan. | ||
| Right. | ||
| Not that something went wrong. | ||
| Right. | ||
| They thought this through and fucked you over in advance. | ||
| Totally. | ||
| And that makes just the feeling of these characters more real. | ||
| They felt like more full beings as opposed to like... | ||
| Not that he did a terrible job or anything, but in the first one, I didn't see... | ||
| A character. | ||
| I saw Patrick Stewart. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| Whereas I was like, young man, you must turn your face around. | ||
| I know he's a celebrity and I know he's an actor, but I still was like, I was more like, ah, these people are characters. | ||
| Yeah, yeah, yeah. | ||
| And I think part of that is that A to B to C makes sense. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| It also helps because Josh Brolin's really great at getting so angry. | ||
| You're like, Jesus, I forgot you were Josh Brolin for a second. | ||
| You're like, man, just calm it down. | ||
| So let's talk about that for a second. | ||
| Sure. | ||
| Josh Brolin. | ||
| He doesn't have the silly guitar. | ||
| He does not. | ||
| He still plays it. | ||
| Now, here's something that I was flummoxed by. | ||
| All right. | ||
| So, in the 84 one, you're introduced to Paul, and then in walks Dean Stockwell, Patrick Stewart, and Weird Computer Guy. | ||
| The three musketeers, quite literally. | ||
| Exactly. | ||
| And it seems like they're a team. | ||
| Yep. | ||
| And there is much more of a cohesiveness to these people who are, like, training Paul and raising him up and stuff. | ||
| That is not... | ||
| That doesn't feel that way in this one. | ||
| The, like, Lido... | ||
| Oscar Isaac's great. | ||
| Yep. | ||
| He's fantastic. | ||
| He's close with the computer guy. | ||
|
unidentified
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Mm-hmm. | |
| And close with Josh Brolin. | ||
| But then Dr. Yui is often his own thing. | ||
| Right. | ||
| He isn't part of that trio. | ||
| It doesn't feel like that at all. | ||
|
unidentified
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Mm-hmm. | |
| No. | ||
| So, he felt very disconnected as a character from all of it. | ||
| But then, maybe I missed it. | ||
| Okay. | ||
| You'll have to forgive me if I missed it. | ||
| But I didn't see any tease in this that there even was a traitor. | ||
| In this movie, I didn't feel like there was almost any setup to Dr. Yui taking out Lita. | ||
| No, there was no setup to that being a traitor, which is smart. | ||
| Is it? | ||
| It is. | ||
| I mean, you know in the 84 version. | ||
| I'm conflicted about it. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Okay. | |
| Tell me what you got. | ||
| Well, I think... | ||
| I don't know. | ||
| It's difficult to experience this movie without having seen the other one, obviously. | ||
| So I don't know how... | ||
| I knew that Dr. Yui was going to do that. | ||
| Right. | ||
| So it wasn't like a huge surprise. | ||
| I think it was too telegraphed in the 84 one. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Totally. | |
| But then it kind of felt like un-telegraphed entirely here. | ||
| Right. | ||
| And I don't know. | ||
| I don't think it's awful, but... | ||
| It did feel like maybe... | ||
| Like, Baron Harkonnen wasn't even bragging about, like, I have a plan or anything. | ||
| Right, right, right. | ||
| It's just, at the beginning, there is the scene with the Skarsgård and Bautista. | ||
| Dave Bautista. | ||
| Right, and he's like, when is a gift not a gift? | ||
| You know, he has that thing. | ||
| And that is kind of meant to signal... | ||
| We've got an idea behind all of this stuff. | ||
| But the establishment... | ||
| But I thought the when is a gift, not a gift was more about the emperor letting the Atreides take over Arrakis. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Right. | |
| It's all part of the same thing. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| But that's too granular, I think, for that line to be hinted at a traitor. | ||
| But see, now that's the other interesting aspect of the 2021 film that I like talking about, is that... | ||
| I don't even know what it would be like to come into that film not knowing a ton about Dune or having an osmosis about Dune. | ||
| You know what I mean? | ||
| Like just completely blind. | ||
| How could you possibly live in this world? | ||
| You'd have to be like eight? | ||
| How could you watch that movie without any knowledge of Dune? | ||
| But I think it would work as a movie even if you didn't know a ton. | ||
| Which I can't say for the Lynch version. | ||
| Agreed. | ||
| But I do think it would also, like... | ||
| I don't know. | ||
| It's very difficult to imagine sitting through two and a half hours and then the end of it being what it is. | ||
| And then being like, man, there's a second part of this. | ||
| I think if you're someone who's younger, that might be fucking annoying. | ||
| It probably is. | ||
| I believe that. | ||
| I'll tell you what, they did it with Across the Spider-Verse. | ||
| They had that same kind of ending where it's like, well... | ||
| See you next time. | ||
| What? | ||
| You're a movie! | ||
| You can't do that! | ||
| We can't do a next time on! | ||
| Well, look at the clock. | ||
| We gotta run. | ||
| No, no, no, no, no, no. | ||
| You have to finish the story, right? | ||
| I guess it was somewhat finished in terms of there being an episodicness to where it left off. | ||
| Sure. | ||
| I don't begrudge it that or anything. | ||
| No, no, no. | ||
| But it definitely did not end in a high climax. | ||
| Right. | ||
| Well, as we talked about in the last episode about the 84 version, that is the movie. | ||
| You know, the movie, there was a half of a movie that kind of made sense, and then the back half was insane. | ||
| Which is kind of what is making me a little worried about part two. | ||
| It's like everything that's insane is there. | ||
| Right, right, right, right. | ||
| But that's why they made the first part its own whole movie and fleshed it all out. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| And then they gave the second part another movie, so you'll have time to breathe, you'll be able to figure out what's going on. | ||
| They have a lot to do in that second movie. | ||
| They still do. | ||
| Honestly, it is a completely different story. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| So, I don't expect it to be, like, the same beats and everything. | ||
| Sure. | ||
| That'll be in the second one. | ||
| But, like, yeah. | ||
| Honestly, just, like, almost night and day. | ||
| Yeah, it really is. | ||
| It really is. | ||
| I didn't even notice, honestly, how different they really were until we kind of watched them back to back. | ||
| Because my memories of both of them, I hadn't watched the 2021 version in a while, were very different. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| Now it's really hard not to watch it and be like, these fuckers are acting their balls off. | ||
| No shit. | ||
| Everyone is acting so hard! | ||
| They are, and they are. | ||
| I imagine that, I mean, it looks like it's not that painful. | ||
| No. | ||
| It looks like they're having a good time. | ||
| Yes, but they are working. | ||
| So no one is like just smoothly entering the character. | ||
| Everybody is beating the shit out of the scenery. | ||
| Yeah, but I think I would say that is a positive. | ||
| Yeah, totally. | ||
| I would say... | ||
| Yes. | ||
| Okay. | ||
| I mean no disrespect to Kyle MacLachlan. | ||
| Timothee Chalamet is way better. | ||
| I'm not saying that Colin McLaughlin's a bad actor. | ||
| I'm not saying anything like that. | ||
| But there is a depth to what Chalamet is doing that carries more conflict. | ||
| He's able to convey much more of like, I don't want to do this. | ||
| There is a nice... | ||
| There is a nice thing, because sometimes with acting, it can be very easy to get caught up when people are full of shit. | ||
| But there is some nice things where you're like, okay, Kyle McLaughlin, that was his first movie. | ||
| Right. | ||
| Timothee Chalamet has done a lot of work. | ||
| There is a thing you can learn to do called acting, you know? | ||
| It's not all just bullshit. | ||
| Yeah, and some of it is probably experience, and some of it may just be... | ||
| Timothee Chalamet is able to tap into something. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Sure. | |
| I also felt, this might be a little bit out of left field, he was giving me a little bit of Nicolas Cage energy. | ||
| There is, oh man, I can't wait to show you part two if you feel the Nicolas Cage energy now. | ||
| I felt like there was a high potential for Nicolas Cage energy. | ||
| Oh boy. | ||
| Which you don't often see. | ||
| It is the zero to 60 drive angry power shows up in part two. | ||
| It's really fun to watch. | ||
| How do you feel about the Bene Gesserit? | ||
| Because I think... | ||
| Ooh, I got thoughts. | ||
| There we go. | ||
| This is like, to me, the big separation in thematic quality is how important the Bene Gesserit being in control of everything is to the centrality of the story. | ||
| So I have a couple thoughts. | ||
| Go for it. | ||
| Remind me about that because my first thought is aesthetic that I need to get through. | ||
| Sure, of course. | ||
| Nobody's got weird bald attack faces on that have giant sharp things attached. | ||
| It makes more sense. | ||
| They have costumes that are distinct, but not like... | ||
| They look like space nuns! | ||
| Yeah, exactly. | ||
| Not weird space monster nuns. | ||
| Which I thought was a bunch of... | ||
| Much more sensible. | ||
| I mean, everything was much more sensible. | ||
| Like, the way that the human computer guys just had a little mark on their lip. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Yeah, yeah, yeah. | |
| Makes much more sense. | ||
| Yeah! | ||
| Looks better. | ||
| They don't look insane. | ||
| No, it looks like part of their job as opposed to, oh, we find the most insane people we can and then turn them into computers. | ||
| Y 'all don't have crazy fucking eyebrows. | ||
| So, I thought that the Bene Gesserit was much more, like, subtly handled. | ||
| And, you know, it's very difficult to disambiguate between what is better told and what is a function of me seeing this after watching the first one and complaining about it to you, where you explain some things. | ||
| But I felt like what they do makes more sense. | ||
| The voice makes more sense. | ||
| A lot of it just makes more sense. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| But I still don't understand why... | ||
| The spice gives them the abilities to do these things. | ||
| That part I still don't fucking understand. | ||
| Right. | ||
| And I don't expect to. | ||
| I mean, it is... | ||
| Better to live there than to be like, it's midichlorians, if that makes sense. | ||
| Do you know what I mean? | ||
| It feels like it is a little bit. | ||
| There's not... | ||
| I mean, isn't the spice kind of midichlorians? | ||
| I mean, it's not not a MacGuffin in every aspect. | ||
| You know, it's like, if you've made this both the motivation for every character and every... | ||
| Plot device, then it is the ultimate MacGuffin. | ||
| But I also do think they did a better job of... | ||
| I think they just added one or two lines that better explained why... | ||
| Like, spice is important to everyone. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Yeah, yeah, yeah. | |
| That interstellar travel is literally impossible without it. | ||
| I don't feel like... | ||
| I feel like that was only clear after we talked about the first one. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| Whereas it felt like, alright, I get... | ||
| I can put that to the side and understand why everybody is so after this, like, expensive commodity. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| Whereas it just felt more magical in the first one. | ||
| Yeah, I'm... | ||
| So, to you saying, like, I don't know how much of this is what I got from this versus how much of this is what we've talked about and the adding all of that together and then the ability to kind of put things together on your own with that information. | ||
| Like, how everybody is watching Dune is brought in such a very specific and unique way because there are so many different interpretations, so many different... | ||
| Pieces of media that people have consumed that they bring to the story with them. | ||
| So what I'm interested in with the Bene Gesserit and not just the aesthetics of them is can you see a much better way of like these are the people who are not just controlling Paul or telling some people what to do. | ||
| These are the secret society that run everything. | ||
| I mean, yeah, because they say it. | ||
| Well, sure. | ||
| I mean, Paul just directly says it to his mom. | ||
| Sure, but that's, you know, I mean, I get that. | ||
| Like, it's spelled out. | ||
| Sure, sure. | ||
| But, yeah, I mean, it wasn't really shown as much, but they are clear that, like, the Bene Gesserit plants beliefs in various places. | ||
| We paved the way, we opened a way for you on Arrakis. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Right. | |
| You know, stuff like that. | ||
| So, yeah, I mean, there is, like, it definitely does feel more like they're pulling strings and stuff. | ||
| So, yeah, I mean, yeah, sure. | ||
| Yeah, well, so the reason that I kind of want to get into that is just the conflict of Dune and the parts of Dune and the ongoing, like, universe of it is kind of, to me, very closely associated with postmodern critical... | ||
| Critical theory in terms of literature because the story changes over time. | ||
| The meaning changes over time. | ||
| And what the author says it meant changes over time. | ||
| Sure. | ||
| So you don't have any, like, here's what the author means and this is what it means. | ||
| Here's what the author meant here. | ||
| Then ten years later, this is what the author said they meant, and so on and so forth. | ||
| And so with the Bene Gesserit, the question that becomes clear over time is one of agency. | ||
| Who is responsible for what? | ||
| And the accounting they're in, if that makes sense. | ||
| Well, they're responsible for everything, right then? | ||
| Right. | ||
| So that's the question. | ||
| Like, when you're watching this movie and looking at the thematic elements of agency, Can you give somebody else the power over the Bene Gesserit, is a question. | ||
| Like, when somebody makes a decision, do they decide it? | ||
| Or is it the result of somebody else's bullshit? | ||
| I mean, on some level, everything is the result of someone else's bullshit. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Sure. | |
| But the only times that they're, like, even directly involved in stuff... | ||
| Like, it's Paul putting his hand in the thing, the paint machine, or whatever. | ||
| Sure. | ||
| And so, you know, there is no real choice there. | ||
| There's a needle to his neck. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Right. | |
| You know? | ||
| I don't know. | ||
| I feel like I gotta see the rest of it before I really say. | ||
| But going back to, like, everyone feeling more like characters. | ||
| Yes, yeah, yeah, yeah. | ||
| That does touch on agency. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Yes! | |
| Because there did feel to be more agency. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Right. | |
| Of all of the people who were involved in every aspect of the story, so when you're saying, does anyone have agency over the Bene Gesserit, maybe not in the grander picture that isn't really shown in this first part, but everyone appears to have more. | ||
| Right. | ||
| Right. | ||
| It's the appearance. | ||
| It's the appearance of so much. | ||
| So much of this is based entirely upon appearance. | ||
| How big can we make this spaceship just to deliver one small, tiny guy? | ||
| Do you know what I mean? | ||
| Small, tiny guy. | ||
| What is the agency? | ||
| Who's the small, tiny guy? | ||
| The guy at the very beginning. | ||
| Whenever Oscar Isaac is standing there, we got the legions of Atreides soldiers. | ||
| See, I think that was like this movie's version of the guy in the worm tank. | ||
| Yeah, it was. | ||
| I think it was executed much better. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Yeah, yeah, yeah. | |
| A lot better. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| But, yeah. | ||
| You were going to say? | ||
| Well, you know, that scene does have, you know, Leto having to make the choice of accepting this stewardship of Arrakis. | ||
| Or is it a choice? | ||
| Right. | ||
| But he's able to portray that. | ||
| Like, it did feel like there isn't really a choice, but I'm also making a choice. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Right. | |
| So, like, that complexity of it... | ||
| Comes across in the movie, as opposed to, just seemed like a good business decision that someone was making in the first one. | ||
| Yeah, hey, we're gonna make a lot more money if we show up here. | ||
| Yeah, yeah. | ||
| As opposed to, I think that this guy might be fucking with us. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Yeah. | |
| And that we have to do it, but also maybe we shouldn't, but also there's only one way to go. | ||
| Yeah, and if we want to be able to make it through this, there needs to be a strategy, which is desert power. | ||
| Right. | ||
| Which I thought was clunky. | ||
| But whatever. | ||
| It's always tough whenever you pull a line directly from a book after you've had a screenplay written around it by people in 2020. | ||
| You're pulling a line from the past. | ||
| Literally. | ||
| So you're the guy going, we need desert power. | ||
| Sounds ridiculous now. | ||
| Well, it sounds like it should have a guitar lick after it. | ||
| Yeah, totally, totally. | ||
| But if you're talking about people at the time, it was like, we need nuclear power. | ||
| Like, that's just a totally normal way of describing things. | ||
| It's fine. | ||
| But now it sounds weird and clunky and stupid. | ||
| And especially, I mean, just because we're on the subject. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Sure. | |
| The end of the movie being Paul seeing someone riding a worm. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Hell yeah. | |
| And then him being like... | ||
| And being like, desert power. | ||
| Like, I thought that was fucking garbage. | ||
| That's terrible. | ||
| But still fine. | ||
| I don't hate it, I'm not mad at it, but that sucked. | ||
| If it was a hair metal video, you'd be like, that's the way to end a movie. | ||
| Yeah, I guess. | ||
| I guess that's kind of tipping my hand a little bit, and that is that I did like this. | ||
| I thought it was really good. | ||
| I thought it was a very well-made movie, and enough so that even though I think that last line, and, What's her name? | ||
| Johnny. | ||
| Johnny's response, it's just the beginning, also sucked. | ||
| That is a very annoying thing to end a movie. | ||
| I thought those were awful end lines. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Yeah, yeah, yeah. | |
| But I still will forgive it, because I thought it was good enough that it got me. | ||
| It is probably... | ||
| I mean, without question, when I watched that, I texted my dad. | ||
| Like, we have very few... | ||
| Genuine, deep connections. | ||
| But he gave me Dune, you know? | ||
| That's the part of the daddy issues there. | ||
| Ah, now this is coming into focus. | ||
| Totally, yeah, yeah, yeah. | ||
| Oh, Frank Herbert and daddy issues? | ||
| Nah! | ||
|
unidentified
|
So... | |
| So it was like, this is the version that is as close to something that's in my head as I think I've seen from any sci-fi translation from novel to screen. | ||
| So it was kind of amazing to see. | ||
| Truly. | ||
| I can imagine that being a pretty watershed moment of when you're in that theater. | ||
| Oh, yeah. | ||
| It was... | ||
| Yeah, man. | ||
| It's a big moment. | ||
| It really is weird. | ||
| Let me ask you, because you're growing up as a Dune fan. | ||
| Growing up as a Dune fan. | ||
| And so you have the books, and you like those. | ||
| But really the depiction you have is the 84 David Lynch movie. | ||
| I did not see the David Lynch movie. | ||
| Well, yeah, I did. | ||
| I mean, we watched it regularly when I was 15 or 16. So me and a few friends of mine. | ||
| Would watch bad movies, you know, and just, it would be like our MST3K, you know, we'd just riff over movies a bunch of times. | ||
| Sure. | ||
| And then we turned the 84 Lynch into one of the movies that we would just show random people, so we'd get together. | ||
| Try to freak them out? | ||
| Yeah, it would be a weird freak out, or like, oh, somebody's dating somebody new, guess what? | ||
| We're watching Dune tonight, and then it'd just be the, like, five of us staring at this stranger being like, they tried and failed, they tried and died! | ||
| So there's not a lot of respect that you had for the... | ||
| No. | ||
| And that's got to be a pretty weird state to be in, where you have something where you have a sincere fandom for it, and then the sort of authoritative existing depiction of it kind of sucks. | ||
| What's great about that... | ||
| And then you get to a point in life when something really good gets made. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Whew! | |
| Sure. | ||
| That's a lot of emotions. | ||
| Well, I think what's great about the 84 version is that it does a really good job of puncturing any kind of sci-fi gravitas you might have regarding Dune. | ||
| Once you watch the 84 version, you're like, am I really going to get super excited about Worms? | ||
| I saw those worms, and in my head they looked real cool, but now that I see them on the screen, I feel like maybe this is a little bit more silly, and maybe I shouldn't treat it as, these worms are scary. | ||
| But that takes away from the point of the material, as I understand it. | ||
| The worms should not be silly. | ||
| No. | ||
| There is a spiritual level to Shihalud. | ||
| And that obviously comes through better in this one. | ||
| Than the first one. | ||
| That's the problem. | ||
| It takes this thing, and the thing that you're supposed to be feeling about it, you're laughing about instead. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Yes. | |
| And that's kind of a difficult way to engage with the thing that you like, I imagine. | ||
| It can be, but I think it's... | ||
| I'm trying to think of a parallel, and I'm having a tough time. | ||
| It's a better place to have a distance from. | ||
| It's much better, like, as a sincere fan of something, which I don't know if I can even be. | ||
| You know, like, my form of being a sincere fan is to tinker and take it apart and see how it's made. | ||
| Be a little critical. | ||
| And then try and make something better out of it, or make something different, you know? | ||
| Like, so, if you take Dune seriously, or at least too seriously with the religious front, you're gonna wind up going crazy. | ||
| Because it doesn't make sense. | ||
| It doesn't. | ||
| It makes enough sense. | ||
| It does. | ||
| I guess. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| In the same way that the interstellar spice trade makes enough sense. | ||
| I'm sure if you got granular with it, it wouldn't hold up. | ||
| I mean, I wouldn't read the Orange Catholic Bible. | ||
| That's what I'll say. | ||
| Is that Herbert? | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| Oh. | ||
| Well, no, I mean, it's the in-universe Bible. | ||
| They did that? | ||
| That the Bene Gesserit write. | ||
| Did Frank Herbert write that? | ||
| I don't know if he wrote the whole thing. | ||
| So this might be fanfic. | ||
| He wrote a lot of it. | ||
| Oh, okay. | ||
| I'm going to read that. | ||
| Okay. | ||
| No, I'm not going to. | ||
| Alright, so as far as where we begin, we've got... | ||
| Let's get to the beginning. | ||
| Yeah, I was going to say. | ||
| We've got the opening. | ||
| Basically, the movie really gets going as far as the overarching plot. | ||
| Real quick, just to touch back on the point that I made about the Fremen speaking first. | ||
| Sure. | ||
| It contextualizes everything as, we don't care that the Harkonnens are leaving, who are our next oppressors going to be? | ||
| Right. | ||
| And that makes the story that prism, as opposed to, like, you fully siding. | ||
| If you watch the first one, you're supposed to fully side with the Atreides. | ||
| Totally! | ||
| They're the heroes! | ||
| They're literally the best! | ||
| Whereas in this one, you start off on a different foot, and I think it's a much better enterprise. | ||
| Anyway, go ahead, I'm sorry. | ||
| The main character's Dune. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Ooh. | |
| In case you were wondering, let's pull it back, man. | ||
| Yeah, man. | ||
| The main character's Dune or the main character's Time? | ||
| What? | ||
| Okay. | ||
| How do we start? | ||
| The story really gets going once Paul has the Gamjabar to his throat with the Reverend Mother Gaius Helen Mohiram or whatever her name is. | ||
| Sure. | ||
| His mom seemed a lot more conflicted in this version, which made sense. | ||
| So in this space, Jessica is standing outside. | ||
| She's not a reverend mother yet. | ||
| So she is just kind of somebody who was raised by the Bene Gesserit, trained in a lot of the stuff that they do, and then was meant to be a breeding mother for Duke Leto. | ||
| Right. | ||
| Because she takes agency. | ||
| In a way that she's not supposed to, she gives birth to Paul. | ||
| And that's what starts everything along this whole shebang. | ||
| And she seemed to have more of, like, again, you know, the word agency comes up. | ||
| She has much more of the appearance of agency in her character in this than the other depiction. | ||
| I thought she was great. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| In this movie. | ||
| And it felt more like she was there as opposed to, out of nowhere, she gets the Fredman guy by the neck at the end, or towards the end, and they're like, oh, you can fight? | ||
| Fuck yeah. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Yeah, yeah, yeah. | |
| It felt more like there was like, oh, she can stand on her own a bit here. | ||
| She's got the weirding way, as opposed to having a thing around her neck going, which is still not funny. | ||
| That was not missed. | ||
| Yeah, it wasn't missed. | ||
| You didn't miss that part. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| So here's something that I guess I was sort of confused about in the last one, but I didn't articulate it. | ||
| She could choose if she had a son? | ||
| Yes, there we go. | ||
| So that's something that can be done in the Dune world? | ||
| That's something they can do in the Dune world, yeah. | ||
| Okay. | ||
| Yeah, yeah, yeah. | ||
| That's a cognizant choice. | ||
| So the Bene Gesserit are... | ||
| The drivers of this story in a bunch of different ways. | ||
| But first and foremost is they have the ability to control their, you know, enzymes and shit and so on and so forth. | ||
| Their inner biology. | ||
| Is that from the spice? | ||
| Yeah, probably. | ||
| Probably. | ||
| Eh, who cares? | ||
|
unidentified
|
Great! | |
| Who cares? | ||
| I will tell you this. | ||
| The answer should always just be probably. | ||
| The amount of stuff Frank Herbert knows about women in the 60s and 70s. | ||
| Low, probably. | ||
| Very low. | ||
| Very low. | ||
| Much to be said about the word hysteria. | ||
| You know? | ||
| But, so she can control whether or not she gives birth to a boy or a girl. | ||
| They can also control whether or not somebody gets a disease. | ||
| So when you see Baron Harkonnen, Baron Harkonnen is Jessica's dad. | ||
| What? | ||
|
unidentified
|
Yeah! | |
| I didn't know that. | ||
| Yeah, and Jessica's mom... | ||
| Wait, so the houses are already combined. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Yeah. | |
| They don't even need to do the thing with Sting. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Well... | |
| The Sting thing. | ||
| Well, so... | ||
| There was a thing, so it's just like a spiral inbreeding program that Frank Herbert's created that is super gross, but is meant to create the super being. | ||
| Right. | ||
| I get that conceptually. | ||
| Right. | ||
| Now the problem there, again, is where we get back to postmodern critical theory, is if you have a group of characters who start having a eugenics program... | ||
| That's what it is, right? | ||
| If you keep writing about a eugenics program, you are talking about your thoughts on the eugenics program now. | ||
| You are no longer just observing that a eugenics program existed. | ||
| Yeah, probably. | ||
| So, I mean, I didn't realize that Jessica was Harkonnen's daughter. | ||
| That's strange. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| That puts things into... | ||
| I don't actually know if I care. | ||
| But, while we're on the subject of Harkonnen, I like this version a lot better. | ||
| Oh, you did? | ||
| Yeah, oh yeah. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Really? | |
| Oh, yeah. | ||
| Oh, come on. | ||
| You like the Skarsgård? | ||
| I think I do. | ||
| I understand he's more threatening. | ||
| Yep. | ||
| But he didn't pull a heart plug. | ||
| Not one heart plug. | ||
| No, that's true. | ||
| That was something that was missed. | ||
| I thought that touch was an interesting form of evil and, like, menace. | ||
| Truly, really fucking crazy, right? | ||
| But, having seen both versions, the 84 one is fucking goofy as shit. | ||
| It's so silly. | ||
|
unidentified
|
It's a Captain Planet villain. | |
| In the moment, I could suspend disbelief enough to take him seriously as a villainous figure, but with some context, absolutely not. | ||
| With a little bit of time, no. | ||
| I look back on him as a goofball. | ||
| Maybe a murderous goofball, but still. | ||
| Too silly. | ||
| So I like that portrayal of him because, yes, he's very intimidating. | ||
| Yes, his plans are very, very brilliant. | ||
| But he's also supposed to be like disease. | ||
| He's coded syphilitic insane. | ||
| Because, again, Jessica's mom was a Bene Gesserit and she gave him a disease to make him do this. | ||
| To make him go degenerate and insane. | ||
| Because he's an awful, horrible... | ||
| Anyways. | ||
| But, that... | ||
| That whole breeding program lasts for thousands of years and it leads to this exact moment starting our story. | ||
| And that is where Paul starts to dream of Chani. | ||
| That's the center of the whole idea. | ||
| You know, that whole show me the waters of your home world thing. | ||
| She is as undeveloped in this movie as the first one, but I get a sense she'll be very important in the second one. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Right. | |
| So it makes sense. | ||
| Yeah, because you just don't know her yet. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| He hasn't lived there. | ||
| Whereas I still don't know her in the first one. | ||
| No, no. | ||
| At all. | ||
| You know her in Blade Runner. | ||
| That's where you know... | ||
| The actress. | ||
| Yeah, exactly. | ||
| No, so when we go to Dune... | ||
| And you start to see all of the spice infect Paul. | ||
| That's where, like, I would say time introduces the character. | ||
| He also didn't end up taking a pellet of spice at any point in this. | ||
| No. | ||
| It just sort of happened naturally by being on the planet. | ||
| Which I thought was probably better. | ||
| Yeah, it's there. | ||
| That happens later on in the books. | ||
| But in the original Dune, Frank Herbert was very much of the sci-fi pellet is the form of food. | ||
| In the future, it's all going to be pellet-based. | ||
| Definitely that kind of sci-fi version. | ||
| But whenever Paul is able to separate where he is, where he goes all Kirk Vonnegut style on us, he's seeing the future, he's seeing the past, he's seeing the present all at the same time, that is where the overall theme of agency is established. | ||
| If you can see the future and the past and you're the only person who can make any of Mm-hmm. | ||
| Right? | ||
| I guess. | ||
| I'm following you. | ||
| Right. | ||
| I'm not saying I agree necessarily, but I'm following you. | ||
| If it is because of you that everything happens, you're the only person who can be responsible for stuff. | ||
| Right. | ||
| So that question is first raised with Leto. | ||
| I don't have a choice. | ||
| I have a choice. | ||
| But I don't have a choice. | ||
| Do I? | ||
| Yeah. | ||
|
unidentified
|
So... | |
| Do I have a choice, you know? | ||
| You have a choice how to respond, but you don't really have a choice. | ||
| Well, you could say Leto could have said no. | ||
| And then he would have had to start a war. | ||
| Right. | ||
| Which he would probably have lost. | ||
| Right. | ||
| Which... | ||
| Would have led to his people doing a thing. | ||
| But he also could have gone along with it and not sent Duncan Idaho to go make contact with the Fremen and set that in motion. | ||
| Totally. | ||
| So there are choices that there is still agency even within the lack of agency of the choice of going there. | ||
| Right. | ||
| The space that it goes from there, especially once you get into Duncan... | ||
| Who's... | ||
| You don't even know, but, like, they've... | ||
| Duncan is a time traveler. | ||
| I don't even know where to begin with Duncan. | ||
| We'll have to get to that next time, probably. | ||
| Duncan's such a great example of that other ever-changing... | ||
| No, this is totally what I meant when I wrote it in the past. | ||
| No, I totally... | ||
| No, this is what I meant. | ||
| Okay. | ||
| No, no, no. | ||
| I know you might have thought that I... | ||
| Momoa was better. | ||
| Momoa was great. | ||
| Just while we're on that. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| He was much cooler. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| Cool dude. | ||
| Swordmaster. | ||
| Did not feel that way in the 84 version. | ||
| Not really, no. | ||
| Nope. | ||
| But before we get to go all the way with the spice and the Kwisatz Haderach and all that stuff, we have to get past the Harkonnen's killing everybody. | ||
| Right. | ||
|
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|
Right? | |
| Well, let's even pump the brakes a little bit more because there's another scene that's the same as in the first one, which is the Hunter Seeker. | ||
| Oh, the Hunter Seeker? | ||
| And I will say, much better done. | ||
| Not as loud. | ||
| Not as loud. | ||
| Smaller. | ||
| Much smaller. | ||
| Not bright as a thing. | ||
| So it's more difficult to see. | ||
| There was a bush in the room. | ||
| Paul was sort of hiding behind a hologram of a bush. | ||
| There's a lot more that makes that not feel silly. | ||
| Yeah, like a weird hot dog was floating in the middle of a room that somebody grabbed. | ||
| Yes. | ||
| It would require some sort of training, ability to control one's body, and then quick super movements to catch it. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| And so, yeah, that went down smoother. | ||
| Your Mapes, your shout-out to the Mapes. | ||
| Absolutely great. | ||
| I think that that role is also better with the presenting of the knife. | ||
|
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|
Sure. | |
| You know, like, there seemed to be more import. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| There? | ||
| Yeah, the Chris knife is the tooth of a sandworm. | ||
| Right. | ||
| And you can only draw it. | ||
| Every time you draw it, you have to draw blood, otherwise you can't put it back. | ||
| Oh, is that why people were cutting themselves? | ||
| Everybody cut their hands whenever they pulled it out. | ||
| Gotta cut your hand, put it back in. | ||
| You can only unsheathe it if you draw blood, etc. | ||
| Okay, well that makes sense. | ||
| Yeah, pretty cool. | ||
| I guess. | ||
| That's what people do in the desert, I suppose. | ||
| Seems fucking unnecessary. | ||
| It does. | ||
| Probably, considering the amount of water they find so important to keep, always cutting their hands open is probably a bad idea, but what are you gonna do? | ||
| I'm not one to tell other planets how to live. | ||
| Alright, so we got the hunter-seeker. | ||
| Caught it. | ||
| Boom! | ||
| I'm safe. | ||
| Not safe. | ||
| Dr. Yui, betrayal. | ||
| Can't believe it. | ||
| Can't believe the guy would betray you. | ||
| Remember the tooth. | ||
| Remember the tooth. | ||
| Which do you prefer? | ||
| Which tooth scene do you prefer? | ||
| I think it's obvious. | ||
| Remember the tooth. | ||
| I think this one was better. | ||
| And then I got kind of worried because I thought that... | ||
| Well, actually, I think it was better done that everyone in the room died, but Baron Harkonnen didn't because he put up his shield. | ||
| So that makes sense as opposed to like in the first one where it was like super targeted poison. | ||
| It was really crazy. | ||
| But I was a little bit worried that he was going to have all the blisters and shit after that. | ||
| I thought like, oh, this is how that's going to happen. | ||
| And I didn't want to look at it. | ||
| So I'm glad that that didn't happen. | ||
| Yeah, I thought that scene was better done. | ||
| Chomp. | ||
| Chomp. | ||
| It is kind of amazing the like... | ||
| It is crazy both ways. | ||
| It's crazy both ways to have a guy just suddenly bite down a tooth and then spread poison all over everywhere, and then you see a guy floating up in the ceiling going, I'm alive! | ||
| I'm alive! | ||
| I'm alive! | ||
| I think if someone floats and you don't understand really why he does, it's always going to be a little silly. | ||
| Yeah, that's fair. | ||
| Because that part was still visually a little bit silly. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| Yeah, the idea is he's gross. | ||
| He can't walk. | ||
| He's fat and his body is diseased. | ||
| But he floats. | ||
| He's got suspension things that allow him to float. | ||
| But no one else can float. | ||
| Other people float. | ||
| That's actually true. | ||
| Sardaukar. | ||
| Yeah, the army, they sort of float. | ||
| They're pretty scary in this, right? | ||
| Yeah, I mean, sure. | ||
| I'm told they're supposed to be scary. | ||
| They're scarier. | ||
| Everyone's fucking scary. | ||
| Everyone's killing each other. | ||
| Everybody is a lot scarier in this. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
|
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|
A lot less... | |
| Less silly goofball shit. | ||
| But yeah, so Baron Harkonnen's got his No Sting! | ||
| No Sting. | ||
| Part 2 gives us a sting. | ||
| Okay. | ||
|
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|
Yeah, but we don't get a sting in Part 1. We just got Dave Bautista being the other guy. | |
| Yeah. | ||
| The thick... | ||
| Are they both his nephew? | ||
| Yep. | ||
| Okay. | ||
| Bautista's great. | ||
| Yep. | ||
| Pro wrestler. | ||
| I know a bit about him. | ||
| Do you? | ||
| Yep. | ||
| What do you know about him? | ||
| He was in a stable called Evolution. | ||
| Okay. | ||
| Along with Ric Flair. | ||
| Okay. | ||
| Triple H. Really? | ||
| Randy Orton. | ||
| How old is David Bautista? | ||
| He's old. | ||
| He's old? | ||
| He was a grandpa back then. | ||
| I don't even know how old I am. | ||
| Me and my buddy Nicky Gifts used to call him the wrestling grandpa. | ||
| Because he was a... | ||
| I don't know. | ||
| He's old. | ||
| He's pretty old. | ||
| People say he's the best wrestler-turned-actor. | ||
| What's your opinion? | ||
| I have a limited sample size of things I've seen him in, but he was good in this. | ||
| It was a limited role. | ||
| How about Hulk Hogan as Mr. Nanny? | ||
| Hulk Hogan, Terry Bolia sucks. | ||
| Okay. | ||
| He sucks. | ||
| Yeah, that's definitely true. | ||
| Totally. | ||
| Macho Man Randy Savage was great in Spider-Man. | ||
| Spider-Man, he was. | ||
| Bonesaw was ready. | ||
| He was ready. | ||
| So you got that. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| Jesse, the body, the mind Ventura, has been great in portraying himself as a conspiracy dipshit. | ||
| Yeah, yeah, yeah. | ||
| He also did a really great handshake. | ||
| He wrote your favorite book. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Right. | |
| How do you pronounce it without laughing? | ||
| See, here's the thing. | ||
| When you actually start getting into wrestlers who act, shit gets a little bit deeper. | ||
| Because the WWE used to put out movies starring the wrestlers. | ||
| And some of those are atrocious. | ||
| So you have things with Dean Ambrose in them and Kane. | ||
| I think Kane did a Christmas movie. | ||
| Maybe The Undertaker's in that too. | ||
| I'm not sure. | ||
| Cain did a Christmas movie. | ||
| We might have to watch all of those. | ||
| Wait, Cain, the person or the character Cain was in a Christmas movie? | ||
| The person who is also like the mayor. | ||
| Right, now. | ||
| Yeah, Glenn Jacobs. | ||
| Glenn Jacobs as Kane in a Christmas movie? | ||
| I believe so, yeah. | ||
| I might be making all of this up. | ||
| What does Kane feel about Christmas? | ||
| He hates it. | ||
| I know Garfield was not a fan of Christmas. | ||
| That makes sense. | ||
| I don't know how Kane might feel about Christmas. | ||
| So, when you get back to the wrestler question. | ||
|
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|
Right. | |
| The Rock is fine, I think. | ||
| He counts as an actor and a wrestler. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| I think he might not have as much range and charm as people initially thought. | ||
| Like, I think he was real good out of the gate. | ||
| And then maybe he's fizzled a little bit. | ||
| And then John Cena is fantastic. | ||
| In the ways that he can be used in. | ||
| Yes. | ||
| He has a good comic sensibility about himself. | ||
| He never takes himself too seriously. | ||
| He's believable enough as an action star, so he's good in the fast movies. | ||
| Sure. | ||
| I don't know. | ||
| I would say if Batista is as good as everyone says he is, then him and John Cena are probably up there in the top echelon. | ||
| Yeah, John Cena. | ||
| To rock a little bit below. | ||
| Hogan way down. | ||
| Oh boy, on the bottom. | ||
| Under the ground. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| No holds barred. | ||
| I hadn't thought about John Cena too much because John Cena's a bit of a weird one in terms of being an actor. | ||
| Why is that? | ||
| He's just John Cena in different... | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| But I mean, not even like different ways. | ||
| Just like, here's John Cena if John Cena was doing this. | ||
| And then you go, ah, John Cena. | ||
| What are you doing? | ||
| I think I've conflated things. | ||
|
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|
Okay. | |
| I just want to make a quick clarification because I've looked this up. | ||
|
unidentified
|
All right. | |
| I believe Kane was in a movie called See No Evil, which was a horror movie but was maybe not a Christmas movie. | ||
| I think there was a Christmas movie somewhere. | ||
| Oh, my God. | ||
| Kane saves Christmas? | ||
|
unidentified
|
Mm-hmm. | |
| He's from hell, right? | ||
| Um, no. | ||
| Canonically? | ||
| Where is he from? | ||
| He's not just from, like, Georgia. | ||
| So, the Undertaker and Cain are brothers. | ||
| Right. | ||
| And initially, Undertaker said that Cain had set their childhood home on fire and it burned down and killed their parents and he died in the fire as well. | ||
| That's right. | ||
|
unidentified
|
I remember that now. | |
| But then Paul Bearer, who maybe was supposed to be dead, came back and he found Cain. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Uh-huh. | |
| And then it turns out that the Undertaker had burned down their family's home or something. | ||
| Okay. | ||
| So, boy, the lore gets messy. | ||
| Yeah, I mean... | ||
| I think he was just dead. | ||
| He was supposed to be dead. | ||
| And then I just pulled up a list of the films produced by the WWE. | ||
| Okay. | ||
| How many Christmas movies has the WWE made? | ||
| So we've got The Scorpion King. | ||
| Sure, that's definitely The Rock, yeah. | ||
| The Rundown, another rock. | ||
| All right. | ||
| Going hard with The Rock initially. | ||
| Walking Tall also. | ||
| Oh, I remember Walking Tall. | ||
| What am I thinking of? | ||
| I have no idea. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Dune Part 2. Jingle All the Way 2? | |
| Jingle All the Way 2? | ||
| That's not what I'm thinking of. | ||
| But that apparently featured wrestler Santino Morella. | ||
| I like that. | ||
| I like that idea of WWE just taking other movies and then adding just Predator 6. Just as many as they possibly can. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| That's fun. | ||
| But Batista was good. | ||
| Anyways. | ||
| I enjoyed him. | ||
| Back at it. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| Alright. | ||
| So, once we get to the betrayal, it is, you know, full speed ahead. | ||
| Jake and Paul, or not Jake and Paul, Jessica and Paul. | ||
| You're thinking of Jake Paul. | ||
| Jake Paul, completely different guy. | ||
| Jessica and Paul, sent into the wilderness. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| Where do you think the next movie is going to differ from 84? | ||
| Boy, I hope in a lot of ways. | ||
| In a lot of ways? | ||
|
unidentified
|
Yeah. | |
| Like, what if, if anything... | ||
| Do you want from the 84 version to come back into Part 2? | ||
| Well, that's something I was actually thinking about. | ||
| I think I've already said quite a bit that the depictions of things were better in this one. | ||
| Totally. | ||
| Especially when there is one-to-one comparisons, like the Leto saving scene, the Hunter Seeker. | ||
| Those things are just demonstrably better in this version. | ||
| I was trying to think, is there anything that is demonstrably better in the old version? | ||
| I can't think of anything. | ||
| I can't think of anything. | ||
|
unidentified
|
No. | |
| Oh, boy. | ||
| I mean, this does not have Patrick Stewart in it. | ||
| And I can think of very few times where I don't want Patrick Stewart involved. | ||
| He's enjoyable, and that is fine. | ||
| But it's not necessary. | ||
| Oh. | ||
| Sorry, Pat. | ||
| Sorry. | ||
| We got Brolin. | ||
| We got Brolin. | ||
| We're going to make do. | ||
| Brolin did a great job. | ||
| Uh-huh. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| Okay. | ||
| Oh, I did have one question. | ||
| Sure. | ||
| So this might not be something that's within your pay grade to answer for me. | ||
| Okay. | ||
| I'm to understand that there's no computers, and there are just people computers, and this, you told me, this was not something I got from the movies. | ||
| Right. | ||
| There was, like, AI rose up, and they had to destroy all of the computers in a jihad. | ||
| Yes. | ||
| Right? | ||
| Yes. | ||
| This happened. | ||
| Yes. | ||
| So, um... | ||
| The year that we're given, 11,000. | ||
| Yeah, there's way up there. | ||
| Something along those lines. | ||
| So that begins with the Butlerian Jihad. | ||
| Okay. | ||
| All right? | ||
| That was a while back. | ||
| People, probably around our time, made AI. | ||
| AI was great. | ||
| Enslaved all of us because it's smarter than we are. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Right. | |
| You know, real bummer. | ||
| Then some people had a whole Joan of Arc moment. | ||
| Frank Herbert's son wrote a bad book about it. | ||
| Maybe more than one. | ||
| And so then they were like, hey, no more machines. | ||
| No more thinking machines. | ||
| Is this an overcorrection? | ||
| Not important. | ||
| No one can ever make machines again. | ||
| And then they genetically, you know... | ||
| Made juice-drinking robot people. | ||
| Essentially, part of the Dune universe is whether or not epigenetics can be forced by just torturing people. | ||
| If you torture somebody enough in the Dune universe, or specifically in Atreides, or main character shield of any kind, if you torture them enough, they will get magic powers. | ||
| That is an important aspect of the Dune-iverse. | ||
| You gotta torture people. | ||
| And then they can become robot people. | ||
| And then they can become robot people. | ||
| So now, this is all good and well. | ||
| I mean, it's not. | ||
| But, fine. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| There are definitely machines. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Mm-hmm. | |
| And they would require processing power. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Sure. | |
| So, something has changed. | ||
| They're not thinking machines, though. | ||
| Some of them would have to be. | ||
| No, they don't have to be thinking machines. | ||
| They would. | ||
| They're probably not. | ||
| They are. | ||
| They're probably not. | ||
| They have to in order to do the things that they're doing in the movie. | ||
| They are. | ||
| These machines are not sophisticated enough. | ||
| The distinction would be automatic ice cream maker versus hand crank. | ||
| Everything would have to be hand crank ice cream machines in this world, and it is not. | ||
| So there's a plot hole there. | ||
| My man, you don't even know about the Tilex yet. | ||
| No, I don't know anything about them. | ||
| No, you don't even know that there's a whole planet of people. | ||
| I don't know if you've caught on to a lot of sci-fi from this time period or not, but... | ||
| A planet should just be called a... | ||
| Everybody from here is the same. | ||
| Right, right. | ||
| You know? | ||
| So everybody from Tlylax is a Tlylaxu, and they are the people who make all the machines for everybody, and they're totally not thinking machines. | ||
| Nobody's making a thinking machine. | ||
| That would be crazy. | ||
| Did Herbert Sun write another book about this? | ||
| They're thinking machines! | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| I mean, it's... | ||
| It's nitpicking a little bit, but it was something that I was like, wait, the whole premise of this is supposed to... | ||
| You've set a limitation for the machinery that's supposed to exist in this universe, and you're flagrantly breaking it. | ||
| See, that's another aspect of where we are in the story, in how things change in that critical theory. | ||
| That's going to change. | ||
| It always changes. | ||
| The rule, any established rule, has to be an established rule, right? | ||
| Because if you break it, then there's no point in me believing anything that you have to say. | ||
| So whenever you say, you know, like, okay, Dr. Yui is an imperial sook doctor, conditioned, they cannot break your trust, that's the whole purpose, that's the guy who betrays you, then what you're telling me is either you cannot be trusted as an author. | ||
| There's unreliable rule sets. | ||
| On purpose. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| Or not on purpose. | ||
| Which you hope it's the prior. | ||
| Right. | ||
| But then you have to find a reason for the prior. | ||
| Right. | ||
| And then it doesn't matter eventually if it changes. | ||
| So if you got everything right, if you've got it, and he says he did it on purpose and all this, and this is the purpose, and then ten years later, well, that's not why he did it. | ||
| And then you write another book with different thoughts on it. | ||
| So then you can no longer trust him and his thoughts on his own book don't really fucking matter anymore, do they? | ||
| No, because they're the publics. | ||
| Right. | ||
| They're the peoples. | ||
| You only have the form of communication is not what the author says about the book. | ||
| It is the book. | ||
| You can only communicate with the book, not with the author or what they say they think about the book. | ||
| Sure. | ||
| That kind of thing. | ||
| And in this case, the movie. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Right. | |
| Because I haven't read the book. | ||
| Right. | ||
| The source material, if you will. | ||
| That kind of thing. | ||
| One thing I thought also, another little thing, was that I thought it was much more understandable that there was a population on Arrakis in this than in the 84 one. | ||
| There actually seemed to be people, like the pilgrims at the gate and stuff like that. | ||
| Whereas in the other one, it felt like there's just these Fremen warrior people. | ||
| It didn't feel like a full population of people, whereas this did. | ||
| That kind of felt better. | ||
| The Siege scenes and the explanation of the water of life at the Siege Tabor. | ||
| Do you remember whenever he was like... | ||
| No one would ever drink of this. | ||
| Oh, no, they haven't been there yet. | ||
| Shit. | ||
| Well, spoilers. | ||
| No, no, no. | ||
| In the 84 version, whenever they go to the sieges. | ||
| Yeah, I remember that. | ||
| Yeah, and he's standing there and he's speaking to what are supposed to be millions of people or whatever. | ||
| You don't get that scale at all. | ||
| They try to do as best as you can in 84 version of giving that scale, but I don't think it plays. | ||
| Whatsoever. | ||
| In this and in part two, you're going to get a much better view of the Fremen people. | ||
| And it's really, really well done. | ||
| I really, really like this. | ||
| It felt more of a fuller body of people than in the other one. | ||
| The other one just felt like kind of plot device-y. | ||
| Yep, yep. | ||
| And then they forced us to stop the movie. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| So, like, the other thing, too, that you really can feel more in this one is... | ||
| So, in the first movie, I think you could be forgiven if you get to the end and you think, well, if they just let the Atreides run the planet, everything would have been good. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| Paul would have been a good ruler. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Right. | |
| And then, you know, because that's kind of what it feels like in this Lynch version. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| Whereas in this version... | ||
| It doesn't really feel that way. | ||
| It feels like Leto is a benevolent, good person as a whole, as evidenced by him valuing human life overall. | ||
| over this commodity. | ||
| But it doesn't feel like he would actually represent the interests of the people indigenous to Arrakis. | ||
| Right. | ||
|
unidentified
|
He would be more willing to, Mm-hmm. | |
| Mm-hmm. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| Whereas that's absent in the first one. | ||
| Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. | ||
| The first one is just a tragedy of like, oh, if only it had worked out, Paul would have brought rain eventually. | ||
| It's just he decided to go this route because the Harkonnens fucked him over. | ||
| Right. | ||
| And that, I think, is a much more complicated and interesting story. | ||
| Right, right. | ||
| It is... | ||
| What I find interesting about that observation so much is that this is the era where we... | ||
| Begin to get the intergalactic space treaties are everything kind of trope. | ||
| When we deal with the space weirdos now on Carrie, we're always talking about intergalactic space treaties. | ||
| The germination of that is actually the morality question. | ||
| The good versus evil guys in all these hard sci-fi things are people who honor space treaties or who break space treaties. | ||
| And it is not as complicated as they would. | ||
| It's like a way of doing a very simple good versus evil with a false layer of complication on top of it. | ||
| You know, this is the good guy. | ||
| The good guy drinks from this well. | ||
| The bad guy drinks from this well. | ||
| It is that exact same thing. | ||
| But it gives you this kind of bigger, oh, it's more important because it's not just, you know, water or something like that. | ||
| But that, again, is part of that, like, the more important something appears, the less important it actually is. | ||
| Throughout the whole kind of cosmology of the piece, if you will. | ||
| Sure. | ||
| I think it has a fuller perspective, for sure. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| And I appreciate that, and it made it more enjoyable as a watch. | ||
| Yes. | ||
| Then I think we've got one thing to do. | ||
| No. | ||
| What? | ||
| Well, I'm not done yet. | ||
| Oh, you're not done yet? | ||
| I had another thought I needed to throw at you. | ||
| Oh, give me one more thought. | ||
| The one thing that stuck out. | ||
| Okay. | ||
| Then I was like, what the fuck is going on here? | ||
| All right. | ||
| So the Atreides show up on Arrakis, and they have bagpipes. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| So that threw me off. | ||
| We're in the year 11,000 or whatever. | ||
| We're way in the future. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| And bagpipes. | ||
| Are what has stood the test of time as a... | ||
| What did you expect? | ||
| I don't know. | ||
| What did you expect? | ||
| A guitar? | ||
| A harp? | ||
| No. | ||
| The bagpipe. | ||
| The bagpipe exists throughout all space-time. | ||
| Uh-huh. | ||
| You gotta remember something, right? | ||
| Space-time is a thing. | ||
| It's one thing. | ||
| It's not like we live in space and time. | ||
| Right. | ||
| We are in space-time. | ||
| And bagpipes. | ||
| Shut up. | ||
| Shut up. | ||
| Here's the problem. | ||
| At the beginning and the end. | ||
| Here's the problem. | ||
| Those bagpipes are exactly the same as our universe's Earth bagpipes. | ||
| So there is an implication that there is probably some sort of a connection or a lineage that goes from those bagpipes to the people who are playing the fanfare for the arrival at Arrakis. | ||
| Of course! | ||
| Now, here's where I get fucked up about that. | ||
|
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Where? | |
| You know what exists at the same time as bagpipes? | ||
| What? | ||
| Fucking helicopters. | ||
| That's true. | ||
|
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So, we end up with dragonfly machines and bagpipes in this universe, and it doesn't make sense! | |
| It's infuriating. | ||
| If you're gonna have independent inventions, you can't also have the same inventions with even less changes. | ||
| Right, I would want... | ||
| A variation of a bagpipe or something like that. | ||
| I do like the idea of in this multiverse, we can change anything. | ||
| Any little aspect can be changed, but let me tell you something. | ||
| The guy who invented the bagpipes... | ||
| Nailed it. | ||
| That is the man who stays. | ||
| And it's like... | ||
| Fixed point in the universe. | ||
| To quote Ryan Reynolds' character in Blade Trinity, just like a great white shark, he's never had to evolve. | ||
| It was born perfect, the bagpipe. | ||
| He's never had to evolve into being a dragonfly bullshit. | ||
| I do like that. | ||
| It's fine. | ||
| It was just a little bit distracting. | ||
| But I don't know what it wouldn't have been. | ||
| It's not quite one guy vacuuming a giant pool of slime by himself. | ||
| No. | ||
| It's not that distracting. | ||
| And it did sound good. | ||
| So, I mean, like, ultimately the effect was good. | ||
| It just was like, that's very, it felt anachronistic. | ||
| That's what the future can do. | ||
| It can make a bagpipe sound good. | ||
| I like a bagpipe. | ||
| It took tens of thousands of years to get there. | ||
| You don't like a bagpipe? | ||
| I mean, a bagpipe can be elsewhere. | ||
| I've never been like, oh man, I miss bagpipes. | ||
| If I lived in the future and somebody was bringing a bagpipe up, my reaction would be like, we didn't get helicopters, but bagpipes stuck around. | ||
| Right. | ||
| Some people complain that the Doors didn't have a bass player in it. | ||
| That's not my complaint. | ||
| No. | ||
| My complaint, no bagpipes. | ||
| No bagpipes? | ||
| Yep. | ||
| What else could have been approved with bagpipes? | ||
| Just about everything, really. | ||
| Rolling Stones. | ||
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Sure. | |
| Bob Dylan. | ||
| Also Sprock Zarathustra. | ||
| Uh-huh. | ||
| Yep. | ||
| Um... | ||
| I think Chicago, the band. | ||
| Chicago, the band, or the city? | ||
| The city has plenty of... | ||
| We've got plenty of bagpipes here. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| Our cops love bagpipes and shit, don't they? | ||
| The band America. | ||
| Sure. | ||
| Europe. | ||
| The country of... | ||
| America. | ||
| But not the country of Europe. | ||
| Could have been improved. | ||
| Could have been. | ||
| A little bit of bagpipe. | ||
| Absolutely. | ||
| Trying to think if there's any other thoughts that I had, just generally speaking. | ||
| The Shield still looked bad. | ||
| Sure. | ||
| But better. | ||
| But that's just a technological thing. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| The problem with the Shield is it is so much a... | ||
| It exists purely because if it doesn't exist, then so much of the story can't happen. | ||
| You know, the only reason that... | ||
| I mean, honestly, the only reason that this fight is theoretically happening between the Emperor and Leto is because of hand-to-hand combat. | ||
| Leto train troops with Jessica's Bene Gesserit skills. | ||
| And they're good. | ||
| And that means that in order for this whole story to happen, there has to be a reason that hand-to-hand combat is more important than just having a spaceship that suits a giant laser at some guy. | ||
| Right. | ||
| Once you have spaceships with giant lasers, who needs to fucking sword fight? | ||
| Now, that being said... | ||
| Sword fighting's cool. | ||
| Well... | ||
| When they take over, when there's the attack on the Atreides, the betrayal and all that, there are a lot of bombs. | ||
| Yep. | ||
| So... | ||
| Bombs are still chill. | ||
| Okay. | ||
| You can still shoot guns. | ||
| Rail guns? | ||
| You just throw a rock from space and it blows up the whole fucking planet. | ||
|
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Hmm. | |
| So it's difficult to, like, talk about the whole plot because we've only seen the first part. | ||
| Right. | ||
| You know what I mean? | ||
| Right. | ||
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But... | |
| The experience. | ||
| Of the first one, the 84 one, was... | ||
| I came away from it thinking, like, bah. | ||
| I've seen it. | ||
| Okay. | ||
| You did it. | ||
| Whereas I came away from this thinking, like, I'm gonna watch the next part, and then, you know, I did... | ||
| I did... | ||
| I'm not gonna say... | ||
| You're looking forward to watching part two. | ||
|
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I am. | |
| I am. | ||
| I'm not saying I'm as in as you, certainly. | ||
|
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Sure, sure. | |
| But definitely, I got more of it. | ||
| You all... | ||
| I will tell you this. | ||
| I... | ||
| You're not going to make it to Children of Dune, my friend. | ||
| It's just not going to happen. | ||
| That's a challenge. | ||
| Hey, I wish you the best. | ||
| I wish everybody who attempts Children of Dune the best, and I wish everybody who makes it all the way to the end a Happy New Year. | ||
| Okay. | ||
| Well, the challenge is the gauntlet has been laid down. | ||
| I would suggest just skipping to God Emperor. | ||
|
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Okay. | |
| You'll get it. | ||
| So, yeah, good stuff. | ||
| Good stuff as all. | ||
| I think, let me ask you a question. | ||
| What expectation do you have for part two? | ||
| Man. | ||
| What do you think is something that is going to happen for sure that's going to be cool? | ||
| I mean, obviously, Paul's got to ride the worm. | ||
|
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Sure. | |
| And that's probably a big moment. | ||
| It's going to be a big moment. | ||
| Sure. | ||
| Yeah, that's something that I think is probably, that's what sticks out the most to me. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| I mean, obviously, the end of the movie, of this first part. | ||
| He sees someone riding a worm. | ||
| Somebody's riding a worm. | ||
| He looks pretty into it. | ||
| Pretty cool. | ||
| So, obviously, that's... | ||
| If you're ending on that note, then there's gonna be... | ||
| There's gonna be a worm. | ||
| Yeah, there's gonna be a worm riding scene. | ||
| I'm having a lot of difficulty thinking about what the fuck's gonna happen in the second one. | ||
| Because, quite frankly, as I understand it, structurally, this first one was about the first part of the first movie. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| And then the second part's gonna be the second part. | ||
|
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Basically. | |
| And that shit was insane. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| So, I don't want to imagine. | ||
| I just want to see, I want to experience it, whatever happens, happens. | ||
| It'll obviously be different. | ||
| And that's good. | ||
| It'll be better to talk about it. | ||
| Because if it was the same, but just extended, I think I'd have a problem with that. | ||
| I think it'll be interesting. | ||
| Because I think, well, I'll be interested to find out what context you get about the other movie from this movie, and then what's different. | ||
| You know? | ||
| Lots of going to be different. | ||
| I think that's essentially the whole... | ||
| Sure. | ||
| And then once I've seen that, we'll have a better ability to try and see if there are little pieces of Alex lore that can be teased out. | ||
| You got it. | ||
| So that, I guess, will be next time. | ||
| I think that's the idea. | ||
| Indeed. | ||
| Sweet. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| Well, you've got me. | ||
| Hooked a little. | ||
| I've been, I've been doomed. | ||
| You've been, uh, we're not gonna, we've, you doomed it. | ||
| I've enjoyed, I've enjoyed a piece of Dune media. | ||
| That is the best that any of us could hope for. | ||
| Yeah, at the end of the day. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| That's pretty good. | ||
| All right, then, uh, we'll see you, uh, next week. | ||
| Yeah, definitely. | ||
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Woo, yeah, woo, yeah, woo! | |
| And now here comes the sex robots. | ||
| Andy in Kansas, you're on the air, thanks for holding. | ||
| Hello Alex, I'm a first time caller. | ||
|
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I'm a huge fan. | |
| I love your work. |