I'm also fan of the second miniseries. The plot changes in the second one make perfect sense. Like cutting some of the more hard to swallow parts such as Paul going all the way to Selusus Secundus just to drop a riddle on Farad'n. I've been trying to fix the first miniseries, off and on, for a while. I have the whole thing fanedited but i'm a bit hung up deciding how much I want to bother with visual fixes. I don't want to threadjack this with a whole discussion about that.
In theory the first miniseries was a good idea. Lynch's Dune is mostly composed of events from the first part of novel. The creators of the miniseries sought to use a more traditional Three-act structure like in the book.
But, from what I gather from the commentary, Harrison was under to pressure to make the story more palatable to non-readers and so he made alot of changes. There were a couple plotlines written into the difficult first act. The problem was that stylistically they just don't match the material that's based on Herbert's writting. Paul has a terribly awkward romance subplot with Irulan where Irulan thinks Paul is "cute" and Paul acts like a small child. The Harkonnens temporally start acting like the three stooges in their new subplot about Rabban trying to be useful by sending the hunter-seeker.
There are changes that work well though, like Reverend Mother Mohaim not spilling the beans about the Kwisatz Haderach immediately. Paul and Chani's relationship is fleshed out. The manipulation of the Fremen is explained well both through the dialogue and visually when Paul fakes a miracle.
As Spicedriver was saying, the casting is not going to please everyone. But there are some good performances in there if you cut away the qustionable parts. Ian Mcniece as Baron Harkonnen is great when he's not randomly breaking into iambic pentameter.
There are some absurd technical glitches in the first miniseries. And you can't talk about it without mentioning the bad CGI. In fairness, the knife practice with Halleck, the fight with Jamis and some of the effects like weirding way looked excellent. The real problem for me was the combination of bad CGI with a lackluster soundtrack. Herbert wrote some really melodramatic dialogue and music can help chessy dialogue feel much less ridiculous. Watching the miniseries reminds me of those Importance of John Williams videos on youtube. You can't communicate the looming dread that Paul is supposed to be feeling with awkward CGI visions and techno music. In the Children of Dune miniseries the soundtrack is Brian Tyler's magnum opus, it's simply fantastic. That was what really what made me want to look at fixing these, because I figured I could at least make the first one watchable if I swapped Tyler's soundtrack into the first one.
In theory the first miniseries was a good idea. Lynch's Dune is mostly composed of events from the first part of novel. The creators of the miniseries sought to use a more traditional Three-act structure like in the book.
But, from what I gather from the commentary, Harrison was under to pressure to make the story more palatable to non-readers and so he made alot of changes. There were a couple plotlines written into the difficult first act. The problem was that stylistically they just don't match the material that's based on Herbert's writting. Paul has a terribly awkward romance subplot with Irulan where Irulan thinks Paul is "cute" and Paul acts like a small child. The Harkonnens temporally start acting like the three stooges in their new subplot about Rabban trying to be useful by sending the hunter-seeker.
There are changes that work well though, like Reverend Mother Mohaim not spilling the beans about the Kwisatz Haderach immediately. Paul and Chani's relationship is fleshed out. The manipulation of the Fremen is explained well both through the dialogue and visually when Paul fakes a miracle.
As Spicedriver was saying, the casting is not going to please everyone. But there are some good performances in there if you cut away the qustionable parts. Ian Mcniece as Baron Harkonnen is great when he's not randomly breaking into iambic pentameter.
There are some absurd technical glitches in the first miniseries. And you can't talk about it without mentioning the bad CGI. In fairness, the knife practice with Halleck, the fight with Jamis and some of the effects like weirding way looked excellent. The real problem for me was the combination of bad CGI with a lackluster soundtrack. Herbert wrote some really melodramatic dialogue and music can help chessy dialogue feel much less ridiculous. Watching the miniseries reminds me of those Importance of John Williams videos on youtube. You can't communicate the looming dread that Paul is supposed to be feeling with awkward CGI visions and techno music. In the Children of Dune miniseries the soundtrack is Brian Tyler's magnum opus, it's simply fantastic. That was what really what made me want to look at fixing these, because I figured I could at least make the first one watchable if I swapped Tyler's soundtrack into the first one.