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Some of these criticisms are pretty odd. The Harkonnens absolutely were shown as perverse and brutal, a lot of that was just dumped on Feyd-Rautha here, and I liked what Villeneuve did with Feyd-Rautha very much. "Feyd-Rautha as a psychosexual Darth Maul" turned out lot better than the usual "Feyd-Rautha as a somewhat more competent Joffrey Baratheon" thing and Austin Butler was great with microexpressions. The worst thing about the casting of the Emperor Shaddam IV (not a particularly major character anyway) is that it's impossible to see Christopher Walken as something other than Christopher Walken, but other than that, casting him as intergalactic Joe Biden showcases that we're seeing a late-stage empire waiting to be pushed down. I don't understand the point about Irulan.
I understand the Alia criticism - I had been quite averse to early rumors on how Alia would be handled but ended up being OK with it, I guess that the murder toddler would have been something that might have become ridiculous too easily - and share the Chani criticism, though that might have also worked better if Zendaya was a better actor outside of the love scenes, which she handled well.
Personally I thought that the part with Paul taking the worm juice could have been handled (a lot) better and Dave Bautista was kind of wasted in this movie.
They really weren't, though. Pointlessly killing underlings is Darth Vader level "brutality." Gladiatorial combat is merely Roman. There was a hint at cannibalism, a hint at sadism, but "these are outrageously wealthy people who get high while they rape and torture slave children with impunity" was presumably soft-pedaled due to there being too many recent real-life analogies for Hollywood's (or the general public's) comfort. Most importantly, though, they are depicted as being out of control, rather than frighteningly in control. The Harkonnens of Villeneuve's Dune barely rate as comic book villains, to the point that viewers have to be told, rather than shown, that Feyd-Rautha is a "psychopath"--a word that never appears in the original book at all.
My memory from the books is that Feyd-Rautha was, while certainly Harkonnen, actually both competent and powerful, in contrast to Rabban. It was his reliance on underhanded fighting tactics that made him an otherwise-comparable foil to Paul (who decides to not use the Voice during their battle, though he could easily have done so). I don't mind his portrayal overmuch, but portraying him as a skilled and even potentially noble fighter ("you fought well") is a definite and unnecessary departure from the text.
Yes, but it fails to cast him as a formidable enemy. He was practically sleepwalking. I mean--this scene would have been much better, where Fenring declines to serve as the Emperor's champion:
An emperor of a late-stage empire waiting to be pushed down does not sleepwalk through the confrontation with Paul. He desperately claws at every possible escape, even as the walls close in around him.
Irulan is described thusly:
I would describe Florence Pugh as a bit sturdy for the role, her features too dark, and her hair was atrocious--it looked like she just never washed it. Her tracheomalacia makes her voice earthy rather than haughty. Ten years ago I'd have said Emily Blunt or Natalie Dormer. Today, maybe Anna Taylor-Joy? Pugh, I honestly don't know how she keeps getting jobs, she's by far the least-interesting player on the screen in everything I've ever seen her in.
I feel like most of the "Other Memory"-related plot points are included grudgingly, like Villeneuve knows he can't just abandon those entirely but kind of wishes he could. There are throwaway lines about knowing the past and predicting the future but unless you've read the books, I can't imagine getting much out of those. And if you haven't read the books, I can imagine being really confused about everything touching on the Water of Life. And they never address the "sandtrout" at all.
I just reread the book fight scene: underhanded Feyd and Paul are at such a level,with so many plans within plans, that it'd honestly be hard to show visually. Making Feyd honorable and having a more straightforward fight seems like an easy fix.
Since they cut out Hawat and a lot of the Feyd and Duke maneuvering around each other (here I simply give them a pass due to time), it's easy to also just "fix" the Coliseum scene by having Feyd show he's formidable but capable of being honorable. Otherwise you have to get into BG control words and Paul's inner struggle to try to play into the finale and...
This is kind of my problem: it's hard to tell how all of this comes across to a totally virgin audience since I've known about some of the plot points so long. It seems that Vileneuve gave people enough to essentially grok what was going on (even putting aside Jamis' words and Jessica's own initiation, the Harkonnen reveal shows there's some ancestral memory shit going on - and how else could Alia be sentient?). But it feels a bit hollow from my perspective.
The problem is the Harkkonnens are supposed to be utter monsters. The movie fails to show that, especially with Feyd. He's brutal, sure, but he lacks the terror-inducing psychotic insanity he's supposed to have. Worse, the movie likens him to Paul rather than contrasts him -- not only does Paul openly declare he's going to act like the Harkonnens, he treats Shaddam IV much the way Feyd treats Rabban.
I mean... if you've read the books, there's a very good reason for this.
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It's probably common for fans of books with new movie/TV adaptations be overtly worried about new audiences understanding the plot without the (often frankly not all that necessary) context the books provide. I remember that when GoT TV series was announced a lot of posters on westeros.org were convinced that it's going to be pared down and dumbed down a lot since the "normie viewer" would never understand ASoIaF plots and so on, and then the first four seasons were pretty much straight adaptation from the books and the normies mostly understood it just fine.
Point taken. But, in our defense, iirc part of it was the worry that the writers would feel that way.
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I remember watching the Harry Potter movies before reading the books, and was totally confused by parts of movies 3, 4, and 5. (These are some of the longest books, but don't have correspondingly larger movies than the first two.) Lots of other people I know IRL feel similarly.
GOT is different because they got a whole season to explain a book instead of just a movie.
For what it's worth, I don't consider the Harry Potter movies to be "stories" as such, but rather an "illustration" of the books. I'm not an art snob, and I'm not using that term derogatorily. They're very very good illustrations. But I don't think they stand alone the way Game of Thrones did. They were like "Passion of the Christ", but with wizards.
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I find book five meandering and confusing. I know a lot of people love it, but I think Order of the Phoenix was the point where Rowling desperately needed an editor to tell her to cut it down, but she was too big at that point to be reined in.
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The first thing I saw her in was Midsommar and she was great, made me want to give her a big hug in every scene she was in.
Maybe I'll check it out. I think the first thing I saw her in was that Black Widow movie, where she came across as Disney's "we have Scarlett Johannson at home."
If you do, I recommend the director's cut.
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Again, I would have swapped the casting around and had either Anya Taylor Joy or Lea Seydoux play Irulan and Florence Pugh play Lady Fenring but that's me.
I don't think Pugh could have played the seduction as well as Seydoux did.
But then, I think she was fine as Irulan and generally good in everything I see her in (even in her sellout Marvel role)
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Okay, but this is unfilmable without dubbing in everyone's thought balloons, and everyone craps on the Lynch movie for resorting to that. Visually it's just two guys looking at each other and maybe making a face.
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This is kind of where I'm at.
I watched the first movie and reread the first 3 books in preparation for the new movie and if nothing else I feel like Denis Villeneuve deserves credit for accurately capturing "the Vibe" of Herbert's books. Dune is big, it's weird, and it doesn't hold your hand. There are some changes I disagree with but like Peter Jackson's Lord of the Rings they at least feel in line with the original work. I'm still annoyed that they dropped the line "Are you suggesting that the duke's son is an animal?" from the Reverend Mother's test in part one but so it goes.
The handling of Alia was annoying from the outlook of a purist but understandable from a cinematic perspective and in light of the compressed timeline, and as such I was broadly ok with it. In Hindsight I would have swapped the casting around with either Anya Taylor Joy or Lea Seydoux as Irulan and Florence Pugh as Lady Fenring but that's neither here nor there.
I've seen people complaining about how Stilgar is portrayed but over all I feel that it was pretty faithful. He is the true believer, and he does volunteer to let Paul kill him so that Paul can be the de jure leader of the Fedaykin and Sietch Tabr not just the de facto, to which Paul gives the famous reply "I'm not going to break my knife before a fight".
Christopher walken was wasted in the sense that they cast him in a position of authority and then didn't give him an unhinged monologue to deliver a la Poolhall Junkies, Pulp Fiction, King of New York, the Rundown, Etc... and I agree with @naraburns criticism of his characterization.
On the flip side I disagree with Nara's complaints about Fayed Rutha, wanting a fair fight (or a minimally unfair fight) feels very in character as a major motivation of his in the books is wanting to prove that he his better than everyone else, and overall I agree that "Austin Butler as psychosexual Darth Maul" was the correct call given that truly book-accurate Harkonens are not compatible with a PG-13 rating. They're less about the random killing of underlings and more cannibalism, heartplugs, futanari, and general body-horror. Pity we couldn't go full Drukhari Gladiator/Event Horizon in this bitch.
I think one of my issues here is that I was not really that fond of the book Harkonnens, who just seem pointlessly evil. I'm not sure how many have read National Lampoon's Doon, but the first scene with the Hardchargin family has the baron Hardchargin just snap kitten necks throughout his speech about taking over planet Arruckus, with nephew Filp-Rotha raging He's killing all the good kittens!' Villeneuve makes the Harkonnens weird and alien in, for instance, how they're obsessed with purity (no body hair etc.) but in a fundamentally unpure way (the Baron's constant oil baths and so on) and, as said, more suggests the more perverted and atrocious stuff than focuses on it, and it makes them perfectly suitable villains for a movie like this.
Also re: Stilgar, I think the point is that Stilgar's a strongly religious guy who has not only expected the arrival of his Messiah for his entire life and (in the movie) been mocked by it by the /r/atheist Northerners, and now he's really seeing the Messiah come and genuinely do all the Messiah shit and demonstrating superhuman qualities. Of course he's awestruck! He should be! Within the context of this movie's timeframe, Stilgar is right and Chani is wrong.
This is the problem with cutting down on the BG ninja shit and having Paul's killing of Jamis happen in the last film and be relatively understated. When Stilgar seems to flip early on in Part Two, it's a bit less impactful.
In the books, Paul's defeat (and perceived humiliation) of Jamis alone was shocking to the Fremen. Jessica's POV hammers just how fucking strange (and terrifying) a creature trained like Paul appears, even when he's reluctant to kill.
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In the book in his duel with Paul, he's got a drugged blade and a hidden poison needle. He also accuses Paul of "treachery" when he realizes that Paul's crysknife is naturally acidic--to which Paul responds dryly, "Only a little acid to counter the soporific on the Emperor's blade." Feyd-Rautha's response is rage:
Feyd-Rautha doesn't seem to want fair fights, even minimally. He just wants to prove that he's better than everyone else, by winning by whatever means necessary. He even gloats about it (quietly) to Paul during the fight:
And yet from only a page before we have...
His whole thing through the rest of the book is that he's a striver, wanting to prove that he is better and more capable than his uncle and older brother, and thus take the throne. See also the bit about wanting to give the Atreides slave in gladiator pit a proper burial.
There's also the element of the Bene Gesserit wishing to preserve that genetic line, given the short time provided one can't put too fine a point on that, one must show him as somewhat admirable.
To explain the Bene Gesserit wanting to preserve the genetic line, you need only show some good quality; his competence at restoring spice production would be enough.
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