Posted Mar 23, 07:33 PM in Film by Scott Conley

I finally sat through the SciFi Channel remake of Frank Herbert’s Dune. Seeing as that metacritic offers no evaluative content on either this version or the 1984 original , I here present:

Ten Things About the Two Dunes

10. Man, the new kids just can’t act.
Seriously, it’s a sad day in science fiction when you find yourself pining for the dynamic duo of Kyle MacLaughlin and Sean Young, but in all seriousness, nearly everybody in this thing was terrible. Jessica was wooden, Paul simply schizophrenic- even the Mentats lacked that… mania they had in the feature film. Seeing Chani topless just ain’t gonna carry the day when it comes to this classic work, she’s also got to be unretarded.

The sad thing is that there is probably a crapload of talented actors out there who would kill for a piece of a miniseries with a cult following. SciFi found these guys.

The Bad Luck, Pal Award goes out to the guy that played Liet/Kynes. I thought he was pretty well done- one of the few cast decisions that was better than the original.

Honorable Mention to Julie Cox as Princess Irulan.

9. Size matters
The mini series is a whole lot longer than the feature film (yes I know there’s a 4-hour edit of the film, but how much whispering can you take?) and frankly, I am a sucker for content. Even poorly acted content.

The mini series includes a few scenes and details that are (understandably) omitted from the film, and I enjoyed the treatment- Paul’s son and the pieces off-planet (with Irulan) come to mind.

8. Please, call me Usul.
Turdbags had all that time and couldn’t find the 12 seconds needed to explain that Paul might be called something in addition to Mu’ad D’ib?

Hell, I just did it in three.

7. Mr. Keeslar? There’s a Mr. ‘Sting’ on the phone?
For starters, it’s just weird that they picked Alec Newman to play Paul when he looks so much like Sting.

Alec Newman	Some guy that kinda resembles him

Ok, maybe not so much right here. In fact, here he looks like Luke Skywalker, but without all that rich acting talent. But I assure you, while watching it, it kept hitting me that he was Sting-like.

Sting probably acted the part of Feyd-Rautha no better than Matt Keeslar, but every time he overdelivered a haughty Harkonnen sneer, I was like, it’s cool- he’s Sting!

Frankly, they should never have granted the license to reproduce this work without getting Sting back to play Feyd, but given the audience’s likely confusion when he had to duel Paul/Alec Newman, the choice was cool.

6. ‘Sardaukar’ is not Salusa Secundus for ‘dandy’
The book tells us that the Universe is ruled by an emperor who came to power behind the might of a fierce legion of warriors known as the [url=http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sardaukar]Sardaukar[/url]. They are bred on a prison planet and a ferocious fighting force.

Apparently, the SciFi channel needs to watch some Oz, cause I’ve never even heard of a prison (let alone a prison planet) that would evolve the puffy-shirt-with-matching-platter-sized-beret combo for ‘the strongest of the strong.’

Perhaps pictures might better carry my words.

Desired state?	Actual state.

Clearly, the figure on the left cuts an angular, red-eyed, black steel path of destruction with his 45 lb. bladed LasGun.

The guy on the right was photographed just outside of Oakland Colosseum. And the effect is far worse with real guys. Those hats are ridiculous, as the Sardaukar in the mini-series find themselves flopping and bouncing all over the set. Every action sequence with these guys makes me think that the casting call for Macbeth spilled onto the Dune set, and the Fremen are kicking their asses back to the Middle Ages.

5. They’re not MAGIC worms, you know.
Both works suffer from this (flaw?). Everytime the Fremen hop onto one of these enormous worms, the things just seem to glide their way across the desert surface. No slithering, no inching, no wriggling. Herbert goes all out of his way to explain in the novels the entire ecology of this thing, from birth to death, including its relationship to the spice (which the video versions are all over). In the movies however, their movement is a total mystery! They might as well be flying worms at this point.

Unless of course their ‘power’ comes from the sands..!

4. Abomination!
Alia is reasonably well-rendered in the mini-series, and by this I mean, the whole package of her existence is better explained, introduced and delivered in the series.

That said, the movie Alia is way creepier and far more quotable: “How can this be? For he IS the Kwisatz Haderach!”

Also, the Harkonnen/Atreides lineage storyline is better explained in the miniseries (though the whole Bene Gesserit genetic program is underserved, as ever), Alia’s movie version of the ‘punchline’ is again, far better.

3. LasGun + Shield = Denial?
Everybody knows that you don’t bring LasGuns to a knife fight.
Everybody also knows that shields attract worms.

Well, everybody except the Sardaukar.

And the Harkonnen.

And anybody watching this miniseries.

The Fremen are (bafflingly) charging into gunfights with knives. While the 1984 film made huge inroads into the imaginations of 12 yr old boys everywhere with their heavily overused ‘shields’ effect, at least they explained the whole ‘lasgun + shield = everybody dies’ concept enough to explain why knives are so useful again. It also explains why the gunfire is kept to a minimum. The SciFi implementation explains nothing, so we are left with curious-looking chaos.

2. This just in…
According to my friend Sam Bass, apparently seeing Chani’s “desert flowers” is enough to justify her terrible acting. Congratulations, Sam! If you’re lucky, maybe you can ‘spill the Water of Life’ for her in one of these…

1. Potential porn industry derivative works

My Private Duncan Idaho
Harkonnen Heartplug Horndogs
Boner Gesserit: Guildy Pleasures
Dr. Yueh’s Oral Surprise
Hornythopters!
Maker Riders 2: My Not-so-Shai Hulud
Frank Herbert’s Poon

Let me know if I missed any-

• Currently 2.7/5 Footballs.
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Current rating: 2.7 (6 ratings)

Bits

A Fine Line