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Reader Poll - Do you want another Dune?
By Great White Snark | December 25, 2007
Director Peter Berg (of The Kingdom and Friday Night Lights) recently confirmed that he’s helming a big-budget remake of Dune.
Criminy. At the rate at which Hollywood is running out of franchises to ‘re-imagine’, we’ll see a remake of Rush Hour in time for Christmas, 2008.
(Ha, ha! What am I saying! No one could replace Chris Tucker in Rush Hour. That’d be like trying to play a DVD in an 8-track player, when all you really need is a no-talent, one-note, soul-sucking 8-track cassette. Silly me.)
We’re not talking about properties like King Kong and Dracula that have been recycled several times since the roaring 1920s gave way to the Great Depression. David Lynch’s vision for Dune came out in 1984. When Ronald Reagan was President. There should be a rule that a movie should not be remade if your average, under-educated American teenager today actually recognizes the name of the President in office at the time of the original movie’s release.
That, or Hollywood should just stop remaking movies from the last 25 years. Either way.
Berg explains:
While he’s “a big fan of Lynch,” he believes “that interpretation has left the door wide open for a remake.”
Fair point, Petrovich. Unfortunately the Sci Fi Channel beat you to that punch with a Dune mini-series a mere seven years ago. Doesn’t that shut your Door of Interpretation to more of a ’slightly ajar’ state?
Sorry, there are no polls available at the moment.Topics: Movies |
December 25th, 2007 at 10:28 pm
I love Lynch’s Dune. I was ecstatic when the special edition came out a year or two ago (the shorter version of the film is the better version… imagine that) and I actually really liked the sci fi channel’s take on the whole thing, but seriously, enough is enough.
December 26th, 2007 at 1:47 am
I liked the Lynch version, too. I never got through the entire novel, so I was never too distracted by the ways in which the movie strayed from the original story.
December 26th, 2007 at 5:04 pm
When you say “I never got through the entire novel” you mean you never finished even the FIRST Dune book? How you can call yourself a geek (or even a devotee of geekdome) without having read all 6 of the original Dune series (and I don’t consider the books of the son to be worthy in this regard)?
Anyway, bottom line is that the Sci-Fi Channel’s treatment hardly counts as a shut door, and Lynch’s film is entertaining but definitely now quite dated (and certainly not authoritative the way, say, Jackson’s LOTR sequence will be for at least a generation hence).
The better question is what has Peter Berg done to deserve such an opportunity?
December 26th, 2007 at 5:17 pm
Most people can consider themselves true geeks by not reading all six Dune novels. Reading all the Dune novels puts you squarely in NERD territory. UBER NERD territory at that.
December 26th, 2007 at 5:34 pm
Ooh, them’s fightin’ words. And from a “maximum in-your-face to the extreme unleashed hardcore toy news and info” guy no less!
December 27th, 2007 at 12:49 am
Whoa, whoa, whoa. Where’s the holiday spirit, fellas? Can’t we all agree that the point here is that there’s a new Dune movie on the horizon whose merits we can enjoy debating?
Nathan, I think Paul is a bit sensitive–as I am–about having his geek credentials questioned.
December 27th, 2007 at 11:00 am
I was really just defending the honor of Frank Herbert ;)
December 27th, 2007 at 11:02 am
I meant no hard feelings, in fact it was meant to be good natured teasing. I think that no matter who you are and what you like, the deeper into the mythos you go the less geeky you are and the more nerdy you get. For example, people who read all the Dragon Lance novels religiously are huge nerds as opposed to someone who read like one. Once… because he was bored.
December 27th, 2007 at 12:23 pm
Well put, Paul. And Nathan, I understand where you’re coming from… I’m pretty much a nerd for Joss Whedon.
December 29th, 2007 at 4:46 pm
I don’t even want the first DUNE….
have you seen it recently? It’s like realizing “Spaceballs” isn’t really that funny, “Tron” makes no sense, “Robocop” is actually pretty tame on the gore front (these days), and “Mad Max” looks like a bunch of gay 80s hair-bands playing at Burning Man (which actually rules).
Oh, and I read a Dragon Lance novel, once, because I was bored… but I did enjoy it.