#primeideal

primeideal replied to this post:

what are your thoughts on Dune/do you like the book(s)?

I read several of the Dunebooks many years ago, and found them interesting and somewhat engaging, but couldn’t ever get into them the way I got into SW and LOTR and never felt the need to re-read or to read more than a few books in. I remember being deeply disappointed by the treatment of Alia in particular, which I think is one of the reasons I stopped reading (but it’s been a reallylong time and I don’t clearly remember). Also, while the books do complicate the kind of tropes that Paul (consciously) plays into, I still have a pretty visceral discomfort with his dynamic with the Fremen and definitely felt that revive while watching.

Re: the film, the cast was great, I loved a lot of the characters and their interrelationships (Paul-Jessica most of all, but Duncan and Kynes were wonderful, and I thought the treatment of Leto was very, very interesting), it was beautiful, and I enjoyed the way it builds the universe up over the course of the film (the planets, the Voice, whatever). And I enjoyed how Paul shifts between strangeness and being very recognizably human (sometimes annoyingly so, but it makes his ultimate evolution more intriguing). But I couldn’t ever quite get away from disliking some of the bones of the story, so it was never unreserved enjoyment, I guess.