I recently finished Dune, the first book of the Frank Herbert series. I wanted to organize my thoughts on how it differs from the movies and figured I’d post it here in case anyone is interested.
You probably shouldn’t read this if you’re worried about spoilers for movies or book.
Duke Leto comes across as more tragic, less stupid
it is made clear that Leto was politically forced into accepting Dune.
The Harkonnen attack was expected, almost routine posturing. The surprise was the scale of it and the Emperor’s collaboration and contribution of elite troops.
He has to pretend to suspect his wife of treachery which makes their final time together worse.
Paul is kind of a Frankenstein’s Monster
Due to a past war which isn’t really expanded upon, thinking machines (computers) are banned technology. Instead of a computer, rich enough households have Mentats. They are humans who are selected early in life and trained in computer-like thought processes. They are used for logistics and tactics.
Paul has received some Mentat training in addition to some Bene Gesserit training.
Paul is the culmination of a selective breeding program which the Bene Gesserit have implemented covertly through scheming and manipulation of the great houses. The goal was to produce an evolution of the human race. The “Kwisatz Haderach” as they call it, is supposed to have greater prescience than any Bene Gesserit before him due to the ability to access both male and female ancestral memory.
Paul is an amalgamation of unnatural and powerful traits that make people who understand it fearful of him. He has the ability to compute like a Mentat together with massive amounts of information that comes to him across time.
These abilities are are apparent multiple times in the story and help him assume his position of leadership.
Paul and Chani are basically husband and wife
There was a 3 year time skip in the book during which Paul and Chani become mates and married in all but name. They have a child together.
This makes the political marriage at the end of the movie a lot more brutal
Paul love Chani but seems to be becoming a little detached from reality towards the end of the book.
The Jihad / Holy War
The Bene Gesserit pave the way for their people to take control of planets by planting religious myths and traditions into populations of several worlds, Dune is one such world
Paul is basically a messiah to the people of Dune. He fulfills multiple prophesies
Paul is aware fairly early on of the possibility of a Jihad in his name and is at first determined to prevent it thinking it a potential stain on the Atreides legacy.
Due to personal loss and increased prescience, Paul ultimately comes to the conclusion that things have gone too far and he can’t stop the holy war, it would continue with or without him.
Terraforming
There is a sub-plot about teraforming Dune into a green planet that I don’t remember being in the movie at all
Kinds, the Imperial Ecologist is the brainchild of the scheme and the Fremen were helping him implement it (yea he’s a guy in the book, obsessed with the nuts and bolts of ecology)
In the movie, I don’t think there is really any hint of the extent of what Paul is or what he can do, he’s mostly just a figurehead. Paul very much still feels like a boy at the end of the movie whereas I believe he is a man by the end of the book although stunted in some ways. The ending of the book feels more like a resolution, not a cliffhanger with the possibility of an upcoming battle.
Ultimately, it will be interesting to see where Dune Part III goes with this story which has been modified in some key ways.
EDIT: I forgot to mention that Paul’s sister, who appears only as an unborn child in the movie is a toddler by the end of the book. Due to being present when her mom became reverend mother, she is essentially an adult mentally which is very weird. TBH I am not surprised they cut this out–it’s not necessary for the plot at all.
Yea it’s Alia. More powerful in what way? Is this based on the books? In the first book a big deal is made out of Paul being unique in terms of his being a male Bene Gesserit and his ability to access both male and female ancestral memory. (Weird concept ik, but that’s what he wrote lol) I bet Robert Jordan was influenced by Dune when he wrote Wheel of Time. The magic system in that is gendered.
Dune Messiah? Honestly I don’t want to if she’s just going to be a giant Mary Sue the whole time
I’m not currently planning to read past Dune Messiah at this point. Dune is OK but I heard the second book concludes Paul’s arc and I have also heard these books get super weird later on and maybe not in a good way.
I read all of them and quite enjoyed them all. Though it has been quite a few years.
I guess you may say weird, because Paul’s son Leto II morphs into sort of a hybrid Sandworm and human (Children of Dune)). Then lives for centuries to while ruling the universe (God Emperor of Dune). But good science fiction is always a bit weird. So I found the weirdness to be a good thing.
You might just enjoy all of the other books , regardless of opinions that you may run across.
The series does go weird direction, especially in the later books.
I have also seen all the movies and although this is FAR better visually, it too falls short in many places. I think my biggest disapointment was Lady Jessica though, turning her from a shrewd but thoughtful reverand mother instead into some tattoed manipulative figurehead.
I consume a lot of sci-fi and fantasy. I’m not typically one to rate something lower because things took a weird twist. I just don’t think I’d like it in this case. Doesn’t fit the vibe of the books so far. Sounds kind of forced.
I haven’t seen the David Lynch Dune yet so I can’t rate that one fairly.
Of the new ones, Part 1 and Part 2, I think Part 1 is better because the differences between book and movie are more subtle at that point. Part 2 doesn’t really inform the audience very well about where things are going to the point that the 3rd movie might go in a different direction from the books entirely.
Also, I don’t think Zendaya did a very good job playing the part of Chani. She acted pretty much exactly the same way as she did as MJ in Spiderman. She came across as a petulant teen. I remember she kept making this scrunched up face that looked like a toddler with a dirty diaper…
It really didn’t come off like that when I was reading the books. After all it is fantasy/SciFi.
Of course when I was reading the books I did not read any reviews so I went in without any biases… or other peoples thoughts about how I would like the next book. So they stood on their own. I didn’t find the transition jarring or disturbing at all.
The first 6 were Frank Herbert’s. Then his son Brian Herbert & Kevin J Anderson wrote another 12 books. But also there were several years (centuries in book time) between the first 3 books and the second set of three. Things and authors change over time. I wouldn’t call Leto II a plot twist as much as an evolution. I think when it comes to the last 12 books, all bets are off. They are not bad, but are really disconnected from the original series.
Sounds to me like you’re implying that looking up information about a book before reading it exhibits an inability to think for oneself. That’s ridiculous. The sheer volume of available media is staggering and no one person can possibly consume all of it before dying. We have to make choices about what we spend our time on and you need to do something to narrow down your choices.
I did not explicity say so before, but I’ll say it now. I wasn’t terribly impressed by the first Dune book and that also factors into my decision on how far to go with the series.
It isn’t that it’s bad, it’s that I think I can find something that scratches my sci-fi itch better. The concepts being explored in Dune are not very mind-blowing today. I don’t feel my imagination being stretched. Also, the pacing is glacial. For every 1 part of science fiction concept, there are 99 parts of political intrigue and scheming which I am not personally that excited to read about.
I am saying that our opinions can be influenced, yes. The evidence of this is all around us. Does that mean we can’t think for ourselves, clearly no it does not. But to say that we are never influenced by information around us clearly indicates a false premise.
But the original statement was along the lines of, I have “heard” that the books get weird, so I am not going to read them. Specifically:
If that doesn’t indicate that there is some preconception going on, please explain how it does not.
My comment about not having read any reviews (keep in mind when I read the books it was before the Internet even existed) was simply made to indicate that “I” started reading the books without any preconceptions.
In any case, it is not worth arguing any further. I was trying to be helpful by indicating that you may actually enjoy the books if you gave them a chance. If you are not interested, and did not even like the first books, by all means, simply ignore my comments. Certainly, no personal offense or even criticism was intended.
By the way, speaking of preconceptions, I don’t think that I would enjoy even the first two Dune books, based on some research.
(I was thinking about listening to the books on tape instead of reading the books myself.)
I do like more exciting sci-fi media, though.
No offense to those that love the Dune books.
I know that the Dune books are very important to the sci-fi genre.
The slightly older dune (but not the really old dune) miniseries showed the “superhuman speed” with an afterimage effect. The producers also portrayed the “voice” better, in my opinion.
Sorry for coming back aggressively, my sleep patterns have not been great lately…
I was probably extrapolating past what you were actually talking about here.
See, there is this debate online about the value of negative reviews. Some feel that negative reviews only serve to damage the chances of success for a piece of media. It’s a sales-focused opinion with a bit of “toxic positivity” possibly mixed in.
I strongly support negative reviews because they tend to be more detailed and therefore more useful. It is entirely possible to read a negative review and realize that the points they list as negatives are positives for yourself or non-issues.
I notice that Amazon seems to have purged a lot of one-star reviews from books to the point where I think they are actively inflating ratings at this point. Not a fan!
Anyway, knowing my own preferences which have been shaped by lots and lots of Sci-fi and Fantasy consumption, I am pretty sure I will be dissatisfied with Dune if I continue on with it. Hearing about the inclusion of the worm/man hybrid isn’t the entire reason.
I could contrast this reaction to Frank Herbert with my reaction to Alastair Reynolds. He wrote two shorts from the Netflix anthology series Love, Death, and Robots (Zima Blue and Beyond the Aquila Rift). I was impressed by the concepts in these shorts and tracked down Reynolds as a result. He’s not the greatest at writing characters IMO but I love his work when it comes to science fiction concepts. Since watching those shorts I’ve read a collection of his short stories, and five of his novels. And in looking for similar books I found someone disparaging Reynolds saying that he was just stealing from Vernor Vinge. I disagree with that sentiment but I liked Vinge’s work too. I’ve read one of his short story collections, one of his novels, and have another one ready to go on the shelf.
