DUNE Off To A Promising Start At Domestic Box Office With $5.1M From Thursday Night Preview Screenings

@MyCoolYoung - you shouldn’t let strangers control your life stranger likes movie there’s chance you may not

WarnerMedia CEO Ann Sarnoff's reply is so patently stupid. They wouldn't make two parts in one go, LOTR-style, because they "wanted to wait and see how it performed" ... but now they are saying "If you see how it ends..."

Which one is it? Absolute morons at the head of WB.

@Vanillain - as a non-reader I can tell you not everything made sense. The basics where there and the most important stuff could be filled in with a little effort, but I still think they could've done a better job.

It took me reading the wikipedia page of the book that I learned how rich the lore was

@dmac3232 - yeah that is very true. And I wouldn't have wanted explanations of everyone's jobs either.

My problem was more with how the different factions all were positioned opposite each other though. And that is something they could've integrated a bit more natural than exposition dumps.

For example, I'm still wondering why the Harkonnen's were mad at the house of Atreides, even though they were put on Arakis by the Emperor. Or why they don't rely on technology as much

@bkmeijer - Yeah, the prohibition on AI is a huge, huge element of Dune lore, and one of my personal favorites things about it, and they don't even touch on it here. A lot of things they at least mentioned so you can put 2 and 2 together -- this movie asks you to do a lot of that; YMMV -- but in that instance there wasn't even a single line.

I thought they spelled out well enough that the Harkonnen and Atreides had been involved in a long-running blood feud, and that's really all you needed to know. But then I'm very familiar with this story and it's hard for me to assess objectively. Personally, the one scene I thought was probably going to confuse most people was the Sardaukar ceremony. It was deeply weird and I loved it, but I bet people coming in dark had absolutely no clue what any of that was about.

Again, it's just a hard, hard story to adapt. Reading through various reactions on reddit over the past few months, a ton of book fans have their quibbles with what went in and what was left out. Everybody has their favorite stuff; for example, there's a huge banquet scene with a handful of people verbally jousting with each other that fleshes out a ton of cultural and political details. In my case, I didn't miss it at all. I saw some complaints that the movie didn't spell out the need for extreme water discipline well enough, where I thought they did so throughout. So again, YMMV.

I will say this, as much as I loved it, I do know this movie isn't going to be for everybody. But if you're on the same wave length, as I was, it was absolutely mind-blowing.

@PantherKing - I didn't read the book and loved the movie! I was able to comprehend and follow the plot. Watched the Lynch version today and it was truly awful. Felt like it was 5 hours long and rushed at the same time. Nice set design though!

@TheRidd1er - I still have some affection for it, and it does get some stuff right, at least from a visual standpoint. But yes, for the most part, it's a pretty horrendous film. I re-watched it for the first time in a while on Max the other day, and you're just racing through plot points to get to the finish line.

@PantherKing - Better avoid the Lynch one then! But yes, the new does still throw a lot of things at you. Admittedly you have to pay close attention!