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Dune: The Alternative Edition Redux

Ziester

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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.
 

spicediver

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Ziester said:
I'm also fan of the second miniseries. etc etc. .

Some interesting insights on the first miniseries there.

I hope you keep up your work on the fanedit and release it at some point.

Why not start a thread in FANEDITS IN THE WORKS and source some feedback on what you have done so far?

SD
 

ssj

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spicediver said:
Some interesting insights on the first miniseries there.

I hope you keep up your work on the fanedit and release it at some point.

Why not start a thread in FANEDITS IN THE WORKS and source some feedback on what you have done so far?

SD

i second these motions.
 

Melll

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As a huge fan of this movie, I watched this, and can only say this is an improvement.
 

Ken Poirier

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spicediver said:
the controversial Extended “TV” Version

Just curious, Why it the TV version considered controversial? I thought it followed the book more closely then the David Lynch film. If anything, I thought the 1984 version was the controversial one.
 

L8wrtr

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Not to hijack Spicediver's thread, but the Dune mini-series, while admirable in intent, fails (imho) in execution, particularly the characterization of Paul. I was so immensely put off by his whining and childish attitude that I thought they had cast him for Luke Skywalker. The 2nd mini-series was superior in just about every aspect, both fidelity to the characters, story, themes and overall quality ;)
 

Ken Poirier

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L8wrtr said:
I was so immensely put off by his whining and childish attitude that I thought they had cast him for Luke Skywalker.

LoL. He's just a dumb kid in the book and it is only by "fate" that he survives at all. It isn't until he spends many years in the desert that his balls finally drop. It's been a while since I watched the miniseries, but I have it, so I guess I'll just have to pop it in and see if I'm remembering it better then it was.
 

L8wrtr

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Ken Poirier said:
LoL. He's just a dumb kid in the book and it is only by "fate" that he survives at all. It isn't until he spends many years in the desert that his balls finally drop.

I don't know that a more inaccurate description of Paul Atreides could be made if someone tried. He is supremely intelligent, expertly trained, and most of all, he is deliberate and intellectual about his choices from page 1 of the novel. He sees the big picture of pressing issues sooner, and more clearly than either his father or mother, he commands respect of his cadre of teachers, and he is never petulant, whining or entitled, which are the three things I would use to describe how his character is portrayed in the mini-series.

I've read Dune easily over 15 times since high school. The only thing 'kid-like' I would attribute to his character is that while still on Caladan, is that he still has a sense of wonder and optimism, and holds a playful attitude with his instructors. While inexperienced at the start of the novel, is never an annoying, typical teen. He has been trained since birth to be a leader, and while he lacks real-world experience (as much as that term applies to a sci-fi fantasy set thousands of years in the future) he is anything but a dumb kid who's balls don't drop until after many years in the desert. He becomes a man of action the moment he wakes up during the Harkonnen attack. His mother even observes this once they are stranded in the desert. He is the one that enables their escape, while his Bene Gesserit mother is breaking down and lost, he literally slaps her out of it and pushes her. This 'dumb kid' with 'no balls' slays Jamis the first night they meet Fremen.

Methinks you may want to re-read the book ;)
 

Ken Poirier

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L8wrtr said:
Methinks you may want to re-read the book ;)

Perhaps I will, it was more then a decade ago since I read it. One of the great things about books though is everyone has their own interpretation of the characters. I have a tendency to view juvenile characters as juvenile.
 

spicediver

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Ken Poirier said:
Just curious, Why it the TV version considered controversial? I thought it followed the book more closely then the David Lynch film. If anything, I thought the 1984 version was the controversial one.

Controversial, because it was appallingly cobbled together by Universal/MCA's television division after Lynch asked for more money than the studio was willing to pay him to come in and work on it.


  • Some added scenes were in the wrong place
  • Fake footage was added, poorly
  • A cheap prologue will picture art was created
  • Wrong spaceships and/or locations were featured in establishing shots
  • The use of music was increased so that it became really repetitive yet Brain Eno's Prophecy Theme was removed altogether.
  • Princess Irulan's narration was replaced with a poorly read male narration - it did explain more, but overall it did more damage to the film than good.

It was also censored for American TV, so shots of of quiet mild violence are cut out.
 

ThrowgnCpr

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Amok

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This edit is the definitive version of the movie!
Question: With the Extended Edition now out on Bluray, will we be seeing a HD version of this edit?
 

spicediver

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People keep asking me this, and I understand the desire for a HD transfer, and I'm really grateful for the fanbase this edit now has, 7 years later.

But the amount of time involved in doing a HD edition would be a challange.

For one thing, my partner might not much like me locking myself away for a year working on it again in all my spare time :)

If the job was just substituting footage, sure. But what's involved in doing a HD edition of Dune Redux is much more than that.

All the rotoscoping of the blue eyes would have to be done again from scratch, frame by frame.

Also needing to be redone from scratch: the new film books, the film book corrections, the chapter titles and transitons, the custom credits and animated titles, and the colour corrections to the green tinge on all the Extended Edition footage. Plus other stuff I've forgtton about.

Aesthetically, I'm also concerned about how crap those low-res deleted scenes footage would look when cut together with HD footage.

It's possible I'll do it, but such a huge project is not something I can dive into right now.

 
Amok said:
This edit is the definitive version of the movie!
Question: With the Extended Edition now out on Bluray, will we be seeing a HD version of this edit?
 

TM2YC

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I've recently got myself a copy of this edit, which I'm saving to watch when I've read the book but I had peak at a few bits. The new opening and closing are very cleverly done.
 

waverboy

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Absolutely love this edit, with the glaring exceptions of the removal of some of the Princess’s narration at the beginning (re: orange spice gas enabling space folding and the quite endearing “Oh, I forgot to tell you”) and the classic closeup sandworm riding shots, especially the climactic one where you can see Paul’s eyes have turned blue; I don’t think those shots are exceptionally cheesy; they certainly fit in with everything else about the film, and that scene really needs the climactic closeup. Really bad call there IMO. Otherwise, a MASSIVE improvement on every level, and I’m very grateful for it. Thank you sir!
 

Baenwort

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A few months ago someone on YouTube upscaled the entire edit to 4k.
I'm really hopeful that this fan HD cut will produce a higher quality version of SpiceDiver's FanEdit.

old.reddit.com/r/fanedits/comments/qjnnzw/dune_alternative_enhanced_edition/

They've got a workprint and but it doesn't seem certain the will see it through. old.reddit.com/r/fanedits/comments/qef3mn/dune_alternative_hd_recreation/hsm23cg/ but perhaps if someone gave them some advice and guidance it will still happen.
 
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