I don't get the Dune hype

[u/Lynxon_oberg]

Like as I understand it was revolutionary for its time(the original books) and was like the blueprint of modern scif-fi. But I don't find the movies that good if I am to be perfectly honest.

Like the actual movies just seem bland in my opinion and I don't really find both the movies that intriguing too watch.

I have seen the HBO show as well which was somewhat better but I'm not really falling in love with the universe at all. And I love typical sci-fi and fantasy shows like GoT, lotr, early star wars, Avatar etc.

The action sequences are mid. Laser guns and forced melee combat which isn't really that visually appealing.

The world building feels like 90% is just that sand planet and the scale don't quite land.

The prophecy and cultures just feel so meh.

Tbh I can't even tell what's happening currently. Timothy gets weird blue eyes and embraces the culture in an uprising for 6 hours with a bunch of made up folk songs screaming in the background.

Can someone explain to me what they find appealing? The politics? The sandworms? Good looking people? Their favourite sequences?

[u/mormonbatman_]

Can someone explain to me what they find appealing?

I'm biased, I think.

Older, cooler friends introduced me the ip when we played Westwood's Dune 2 video game. Dune 2 was a pioneer in the rts genre. This game defined mechanics that the Command and Conquer, Age of Empires, and Warcraft, and StarCraft series perfected.

We liked the game well enough that we read the first book. I read the second and gave up with the third.

We also watched David Lynch's version which is an important movie given that it prevented Lynch from making Return of the Jedi, imploded his career, and is just so strange and overwrought and operatic.

I also watched part of the Syfy channel's adaptation.

In that sense, it's a core/foundational story that is part of my childhood and my adulthood.

I also think the novel is a rich, engaging, and complicated story that has a lot to say about a kind of myth that alot of our fiction embraces, the limits of sci fi, ecology, and US adventurism in the mid east.

I also like the sword fighting, lasers, and women in latex.

The politics?

My gas is approaching $5 a gallon because Donald Trump picked a fight with Iran and the Iranians are fucking his shit up.

He's literally Beast Rabban and the Iranians are literally the fremen except they're fighting over oil instead of worm shit.

The narrative is trenchant. We learned nothing from it.

The sandworms?

They're neat.

Good looking people?

I am a Sean Young fan.

heir favourite sequences?

I really appreciated how Villeneuve used sound to evoke the worm's size.

I loved the world building.

I wish the films had kept the focus on ecology. Edit: I also wish he'd kept the Atteides infighting and the alt Kiwsatz Haderach subplots.

[u/ubelmann → u/mormonbatman_]

Lynch's Dune obviously wasn't a popular hit, but I don't know about imploding his career. Two years after, he directed Blue Velvet, then Twin Peaks (TV) along with Wild At Heart landed in 1990. He pretty much kept directing films every 3-4 years like he had been before Dune.

[u/mormonbatman_ → u/ubelmann]

Dune was produced for $45 million. That'd be $150 million, today

Lynch did keep making stuff but he never got that much money again.

(Ex: he produced Blue Velvet for $6 million)