Dune – MOVIE – Episode 85

The Buddies are still reading through Shōgun (it’s 50+ hours so give us a break), so they decided to jump into a different epic story based on a book. On this weeks episode they tackle 2021 Blockbuster, Dune. They are joined once again by their buddy Mikko (@BuddyHive) to talk things over. They got to talking about spices, drugs, Pearl Harbor, and why you can assume anyone from Sweden is a bad guy. So take a little break from Japan (we assume you’re reading Shōgun along with us), and join us in a much dryer scenery as we worm our way through Dune.

Intro (0:00-2:40)
Stock Up/Down (2:11-31:03)
Love/Hate (31:04-39:28)
Studio Notes/Recasting (39:30-46:27)
Critics Review (46:28-49:03)
Conclusion (49:04-52:58)

NEXT BOOK: Shōgun (Part 2 & 3) by James Clavell

Transcript for SEO Purposes 🙂

All right, welcome to Bookluck.
I’m Dylan, here with the man,
the ladies refer to as, “Shai Hulu’d.”
Keith, what’s up buddy?
Is that right?
Okay, thank you.
– Yeah, that’s what they say.
Is that good or bad?
Do you wanna give me a translation real quick?
– Well, “Shai Hulu’d” is the biggest sandworm,
so if you know what I’m saying.
And that Is a lie.
– We’re also excited to have a guest this week.
You may remember him from our red rising episode,
our friend from Finland, Miko, what’s up buddy?
Hey guys, glad to be here.
– Here at the Buddy Book Club,
we’re breaking down some best sellers
and some box office bangers.
This week we’ll be discussing 2021’s
much anticipated film, “Dune.”
If you’d like to recommend a book or movie
for us to read or watch,
you can visit our website,
buddybookluck.com, or sign into our DMs on Twitter,
Instagram, TikTok, Buddy Bookluck podcast.
You can list those iTunes and Spotify,
so please download and subscribe, gentlemen.
Dune Part One is leaving Netflix on February 28th,
and “Dune Part Two” comes out March 1st,
so I think this was an important time to go back
and take a look at this masterpiece.
– It masterpiece, in my opinion,
we’ll find out about you guys.
Keith, I went into our show on Spotify
and was looking for the episode, the “Dune” episode,
so I could kinda see what we talked about
because I couldn’t find my notes on it.
We never did “Dune.”
We never did the book.
This Is one of those ones that I think We debated
and talked about over text.
– I’ve read this book since we started the “Dune” bookluck,
so I don’t know how that, we didn’t talk about it.
I mean, I’m glad we’re doing “Show Got Now”
because that is my all-time number one,
but “Dune” is probably a pretty close second for me.
But for those that don’t know,
or maybe just don’t really understand,
I’m in your quick exposition here,
just like the 1984 movie,
when “Princess Irrallon” spends like 20 minutes
talking about what’s happening.
Dune is set in a distant future,
the Emperor runs the Empire,
and there’s several great houses.
The two at the center of this story
are “House of Traities” and “House of Harkinon.”
At the Emperor’s decree, “House of Traities”
was given stewardship of “Arakis” aka “Dune”
supplanting “House of Harkinon”
who had been there pretty much to harvest spice,
’cause “Arakis” is a source of spice,
which is the most important commodity in the galaxy.
You need spice for interstellar travel.
I guess navigators get all high and see the path,
all that stuff.
The whole thing is a trap though,
and the Harkinons return to decimate “House of Traities,”
Paul and his mother survive,
and they seek to take refuge with the Fremen,
who are the people that live on Dune.
That’s pretty much the story.
I think we just jump in,
hot and heavy with some stock up, stock down, Keith.
What do you have for stock up?
– Stock up, Command and Conquer,
aka Command and Conquer, right alert.
or, Red Alert?
that stocks super high.
– To say it’s a high stock,
but I mean, we’re buying it again.
If you’ve ever played one of the big strategies,
a lot of the missions in the game is you don’t have a base
sometime and you have to like start off
and take an enemy’s base, right?
You send a couple of engineers in there,
take over their headquarters
and just kind of restart a mission
while using the enemy’s base.
In this instance, I’m not really sure why they didn’t play
Command and Conquer and do the same thing.
The Harkinons get up their territory,
but they know they’re gonna come back
and then they come back and decimate everything.
It’s like, but you’re about to take it back over
and using all the resources again.
Why would you sabotage going in like,
burn all the palm trees, burn them?
It’s like, you’re about to just live there again.
You’re just like destroying your own home.
It didn’t really make a ton of sense.
Had they played, Command and Conquer,
they would have figured this out.
So can you explain that to me, DeMine and Miko?
– I can explain to you that whenever I play Command and Conquer,
the only thing I want to do is build kennels
so I can have a bunch of dogs.
I mean, takes one to no one, you know what I mean?
Yeah, honestly the only part that I thought
was a bit much was it seemed like they had already taken over
and then there’s like one shot of this ship
just unleashing endless warheads at the surface.
– Just destroying the city,
you’re raising the city for no reason.
– I think in that particular scene, our boy, Denny,
the director was just like, this is a super cool shot.
Let’s have all these warheads come out of this spaceship
and blow ship.
– All right, that’s fair.
Or if they’re like trying to send a message
or they’re not gonna use the place again,
but they’re like obviously going there to take it back over
and use the resources again.
So they’re like, fuck all these, it’s like, what are you doing?
– Yeah, Miko, how’d you feel about that?
– So they have a spice reserve that the Baron is like,
well let’s just start selling off that.
I think to your point, Keith, that you mentioned,
I think it’s just sending a message.
They’re just gonna go there and fucking annihilate
every single one of them that they could possibly be in the city
and then they’ll rebuild it because they’ve got the time
to be there.
I think they’re doing like the diamond play where they’re like,
oh, spice is super limited now and now we’ll have to sell it
for really high price.
You think they’re doing that play?
Exactly.
– Economics 101.
– Economics 101.
I don’t know if you guys realize this,
but Harkinon is a finished name, finished origin.
So I’m very glad to be here to shed some light
and don’t appreciate you questioning the motives
of my people, Keith, all right, so cool.
– I don’t know how closely associated you want to be
with the Baron, like they didn’t get into it much in the movie
but he likes to rape little boys.
So, yeah.
– Well, he’s played by a Swedish guy
so we can get into that later.
And Nico are All Swedish And slash Baron type people today
also expand and grow massively like he does.
Yep. – you know what I mean, wink, wink.
wink wink.
– Oh yeah, yeah, they’re big,
big growers, not showers.
you know, he comes out of the ground And lifts off
and he’s like huge all of a sudden.
Is that you, Nico?
Yeah, pretty much.
Yeah.
Yeah, the Baron Is a massive, massive man.
I think he should have been more massive personally
but that’s my take.
– Nico, what’d you up for stock up?
Spices.
Spices make everything taste better in our world
and apparently in this world they also help you hallucinate.
I mean, that’s just what more can you ask for
from a little bit of something?
Yeah, in This world you have to go get some fun guy.
– I’ve been in a couple hot wings.
I were too hot for my liking.
I had like buffalo sauce, that’s too hot for me
and I’ve hallucinated so I don’t know what you’re talking about.
I think that’s in our world also.
Oh, gotcha.
Well, I apologize.
I had Stock up as drugs
so I think that covers it as well
because at least in the world of dune,
taking these drugs is not only religious, you know,
for the Fremen which is true in a lot of cultures on Earth here
but you need it for space travel.
That’s pretty cool, you know what I mean?
If we had some spice here, all of a sudden
we just need some guild navigators to start taking some spice
and we can go over that we wanted.
All the Fremen just like have blue eyes
from just ingesting a lot of spice.
It was like Miami in the 80s.
You know, it’s like, you just expected that cocaine was out.
Like everyone’s just expected to be high on cocaine.
In this society it kind of seems like a drug surreter, okay?
Keep doing it on any other stock ups.
Stock up nature over nurture.
I feel like Paul’s mom is constantly worried
and like crying about Paul
which he’s like he’s not able to handle it and all this stuff.
Yeah.
– Yet everything that she’s worried about
is because she passed those genes onto him.
She should know this stuff.
She’s like, you’re seeing things in the future?
That’s your whole thing.
the Benny Jesritz have lots of powers.
I think pressience is not one of them though.
It seems like she’s kind of grappling with the fact
that he might actually be the one
and or if he’s not, he’s probably gonna get killed
by that old lady.
– I think pressience or foresight, whatever the thing is,
is like singular to Paul.
So that is crazy for her.
There was the quizach-siderach
which is this, the Benny Jesritz Messiah that’s to come.
Has that power.
So I think when she sees it in him,
she’s concerned for him.
If that is him, it makes him like a big target and whatnot
but I think what you do get out of this movie
is a great relationship between Paul and his mom.
And there’s not a lot going on in terms of relationships
and dialogues in here besides Jason Momoa,
like running and hugging Paul every single time he sees him.
But you do get the feeling that
that’s such a strong relationship
and I think in a movie that’s really just so vast
and so visual, that relationship actually sticks with you.
– I thought that that was just like,
oh well she knows that all these things are gonna have to come
and he’s gonna have to be tested.
Like I thought that just was part of the right
of being a Benny Jesritz, like that’s what you do
but it sounds like it’s more about chosen one thing.
Yeah And the Gomb Javar Is only tested
on potential Benny Jesritz or whatever.
So I don’t know if a man has like been tested
by the Gomb Javar.
So that’s why it’s like a big thing
and she’s not sure he’s ready.
– Well she didn’t really train him that well.
That’s what my whole nature of her is.
Paul’s just a gamer because he’s a gamer.
Like he teaches himself the voice,
the task of the test even though she gives him no warning
of it or anything like that.
It’s like, what is she helping him out with?
She’s worried because she’s not, didn’t do anything.
She didn’t nurture him in any way.
– Yeah, I think that’s part of him or her
and their way of like discovering whether or not
he’s actually the one.
She can’t like tell him every step he’s gonna encounter
and like how to beat the test.
You know what I mean?
She’s gotta see if he can on his own beat the test.
– Well the Benny Jesritz like woman there that comes,
she’s like, oh your mom’s been teaching you.
So like it’s not illegal but it doesn’t seem like
she did a lot in the teaching.
the lady Helen Gaius, something or whatever.
Yeah so and it’s interesting because in this movie
there’s so few explanations of what’s happening
and most often it’s in like a sentence.
So I’m glad you picked that up that she said,
oh you’ve been training him because that’s actually like
not like a significant portion of the book
but it’s important in the book
in that the lady Jessica’s been training Paul in secret.
She’s not supposed to be training him.
Which does segue into my one of my other stockups
and I think you guys are gonna agree with me
on this one so I’m kind of excited about it.
Putting your hand in a mystery box.
That’s a stockup you’re buying that?
– I’m buying that big time.
Worked out for Paul, I think it could work out for me.
I don’t know about you guys.
Just putting my hand in a bunch of boxes.
– Are you just like going into men’s locker rooms
and just trying to see if there’s any holes
between the stalls that you can put your hand in?
Exactly.
What, you guys not doing that?
– It’s, you’re not supposed to put your hand in there.
I’m just saying.
Oh, but the gum, your bar scene Is interesting
’cause when’s the last time you saw that 84?
a couple months ago probably.
I Just watched It like right afterwards
because one, I was like, I could just restart
this Denny Vella news, whatever.
I can’t say his last name because I have no culture in me.
I was like, all right, I gotta rewatch the 1984 one.
It was just a no.
They actually did a pretty good job with the gum,
jibar scene.
I think almost better than this movie because in there,
what’s supposed to be happening to Paul’s hand is like,
he’s basically seeing it like burn and rot away.
They kind of show that visual of like this hand rotting
and like you’re feeling your hand being torn to pieces
but you can’t pull your hand out.
Where in this movie I feel like it didn’t seem like,
you could see who’s in pain,
but it wasn’t like what’s going on.
– I was carried by Timmy’s, Timothy Shalamy.
That was a good acting job but otherwise,
yeah, you would have no idea what was going on.
– Yeah, it’s like, oh, you put your hand in here
and like there’s a needle to your neck like, no, okay.
My other stock up is having no idea
what the fuck is going on.
So it’s normally in a movie,
I like to have a good idea of what’s happening
and being able to follow the overarching ideas
and just the pieces that are being moved around.
And doing itself is there’s just so much.
There’s just so much that there’s so many players in the game.
We kind of come in to the story in the middle of it.
Like obviously there’s a lot going on between these houses
and the emperor, but this movie does such a good job,
I feel like, of not getting bogged down in all of the lore
’cause there’s so much that they could have done
and could have done from the book.
And as someone who does love all of that lore
and just instead focused on the relationships between the people
and making it visually stunning.
– Having not read the book, I mean,
I’ve read reviews of people saying
like how comprehensive the book is,
how it’s like Game of Thrones, Star Wars,
whatever these other epic fantasies that have 5,000 characters.
They did a great job in this.
I understood that Harkonnen had been there for 80 years.
They had created whatever like 10 billion salaris
or whatever year they were cranking out.
And now it’s being handed over because the emperor
wants to pit them against each other
and the emperor is worried about a tradeee and so on and so forth.
I thought they, in like a sentence here
and a sentence there and a sentence there,
kind of filled in a lot of those blanks really well
in not a ton of dialogue, like in the 84 version
where they never really.
– Yeah, like 84 one is just like half exposition.
The only time I’ve seen that done well
is in the first Lord of the Rings movie
when it was like nine rings were gifted to the L
or nine rings were gifted to the men
and it’s just five minutes, it’s still epic.
Like it’s like holy shit, we’re really getting into this thing
and the music’s obviously phenomenal.
But that’s the only time I’ve seen it done well
in the 84 one, it was too much.
Keith, what about you?
– Well, the one I watched in the theaters,
I just kind of blown away by the visuals the whole time
and it was hard to follow the dialogue.
This time I watched it with the captions on
which I don’t really like usually doing.
That helped so much because they don’t talk a lot
and you kind of miss a lot of this stuff
but when you’re reading it you’re like,
Oh okay, now I’m picking up.
I think you can memorize by like the visuals
and not really really listening as much.
So that definitely helped this second time around.
– I got a lot, I’ll try to run through quickly.
I mean, Hans Zimmer, I’m a huge fan.
The bagpipes, when they open,
House of Traiti’s opens the doors
when they arrive on a raucous is just absolute goosebumps
for my 50% of my biology that comes from Scotland.
That’s amazing.
Then sword fighting, I don’t know if I’ve just been watching
a lot of anime and Tokyo vise and other things on HBO
but there’s like a cool honor in that sort of combat
versus just shooting a gun.
So I really appreciate all those fight scenes
and I’m sure we’ll get into our favorite scenes
and whatnot later but that’s awesome.
And then the last thing I really appreciate
and kind of makes me want to learn it
is the subtle use of sign language
that the mom uses and Paul a little bit or he understands.
I don’t know why that’s so cool
when she uses it for like three or four times
throughout the movie.
It just looks like it’s bad ass.
I get why DK Mac got to learn it now.
Obviously that’s not ASL.
It was created for the movie.
Like it’s not in the book, it’s not in the 84 version,
it’s not any other version.
They created it for the movie and I thought it was perfect.
That was really a great decision.
A couple for me was the CGI.
I mean CGI in general, it could be a love, I don’t know,
but the stock up CGI basically the reason why this stock is up
is because I’m comparing it to the 84 movie
which if you haven’t seen it or you haven’t seen it
in a long time or anyone is listening
and is interested in hasn’t seen it
and maybe they don’t want to watch it, which is fine.
It’s a David Lynch movie, so we shit on it
but there is some like good aspects to it.
One not good aspect is go watch the training scene,
watch the training scene in Dune with Gurney Hallock,
Josh Brolin’s character and Paul, you know,
when they’re just training, when they put their shields on
and they trained that whole thing, it’s almost exactly
the same word for word, like the script is almost exactly
the same as the 84 version, but the CGI is hilarious.
Like it’s actually laugh out loud funny
that someone thought that would make any sense.
It’s pretty much like block people.
You like they all of a sudden turn into block people,
it’s wild.
– Do you think in 40 years from now
we’re gonna look at this movie?
Like the CGI was so shitty in this,
even though it’s amazing to us now.
– I don’t know, some of that holds up.
I mean, and I watched 2001 Space Odyssey somewhat recently,
like within the last year or two years or so
and even that stuff holds up.
Like the only things that don’t hold up
is like the monitor stuff, just because we’re a monitor
society now, you know, tablets and whatnot
and even in Star Wars when they’re like the tie fighter
comes on the screen, it’s like,
it doesn’t make a lot of sense.
And Star Wars is just like all lights and knobs.
You know, there’s no screens.
Last stock up is Denny Veleneuve, the director.
I mean, before Dune, like his movies before Dune,
Blade Runner 2049, Arrival, Sicario.
Enemy haven’t seen it, but then prisoners,
like all of those movies are so good.
Getting into Blade Runner 2049 in Arrival,
the like immense visuals are just like holy smokes.
So I think he was perfect, like a absolute perfect match
to make this movie and I’m so glad that he’s doing,
that he did it and that he’s doing Dune Part II
and hopefully Dune Messiah.
Okay, let’s get into Stockdown.
Keith, what do you get for Stockdown before?
Stockdown National Pearl Harbor Remembrance Day.
For those I don’t know, it’s December 7th,
but I thought we would remember this.
I know it’s a year like 10,000.
It’s still part of history.
Like Pearl Harbor’s year 10,000?
What’s your 10,000?
The movie.
Oh, okay, yeah.
Keith’s been taking that spice a little bit.
They land right on Dune and there’s obvious hostility
that’s being presented to them.
There’s getting assassination attempts.
You would think there’d be kind of unhigh alert.
The US is at least side, we kind of had some inklings
that Japan might attack or do something,
but it was still a sneak attack.
This is like, they attack Dune.
It’s really not a sneak attack yet.
Somehow they pull the same thing that Pearl Harbor did
where they have older ships way too far away
and they’re all stacked together.
So they come in and they just bomb all the ships
to destroy everything immediately,
which is exactly what happened at Pearl Harbor.
What do we do?
And then they all don’t have any like uniforms on
or anything they’re like running out in their PJs.
Shouldn’t we be in high alert?
What are we doing here?
I thought traitors would be like a good and smart like army.
They’re not even ready in any way.
They’re all waking up from their naps.
Half year, like four, should be ready to go at least.
And they know, they know ahead of time.
This is a trap.
Lido atreides knows that they’re getting sent in there
and there’s some stuff going on.
Yeah, and there’s no guards inside.
Lido may have just an idiot.
Maybe that’s what it was.
I don’t know what was going on.
No.
Careful.
Slow down.
All right.
Can you explain me why all their ships are bunched together?
We’re in a desert.
You can put them anywhere, but they’re all strategically placed
so they can bomb them all at once.
I agree with you in large part, but for that,
I mean, there’s only a limited amount of space
within the shield wall.
I think is why all the ships need to be there.
They can’t be outside otherwise the worms are going to come get them.
I would just double down on why wasn’t
there more security at the shield?
Dr. UA, a medical doctor, rolls up, caps three guys at the door,
and then that’s it.
And then nobody notices the shield goes down.
That’s my issue.
I couldn’t agree more.
We’re talking about a shield wall here.
So that’s your first line of defense.
It’d be like if instead of Luke having
to shoot some torpedoes through a hole that had then
had to travel through the entire Death Star,
it’d be like if you could just walk in there
and push the destroy button, and they
had two storm troopers just waiting, just chill on there.
It’s like, this thing’s kind of a big deal.
Maybe we should have a whole battalion just hanging out there.
Yeah, I think Keith the only thing maybe in his defense
is that he didn’t expect it to come on day one, night one.
Maybe he was like, look, OK, they try to assassinate my kid,
but they’re not going to fully storm the house.
Right?
This is going to be a military 20-hour house.
They’re like, let’s just hang out.
We’re on the make-a.
Let’s put our feet up.
Everyone, everyone can go to sleep right now.
It’s dark outside.
Every single person in our army, let’s just all go to sleep.
Did the Harkonans, when they came in,
did they say Torah, Torah, Torah?
That was the attack signal for Japanese on Pearl Harbor.
Oh, is that right?
I thought that was the Jewish Bible.
I think it means Tiger, Tiger, Tiger,
but they haven’t said it yet in showguns,
so I don’t know what that actually means yet.
Was Dr.– what’s the name?
Japanese?
Dr. U.A.?
Chinese.
Is China even a place?
Like China’s not a place.
He’s just a guy.
Yeah, it’s good boy.
Well, they speak Mandarin.
Him and Paul speak Mandarin and that one quick scene.
I can just–
You know Mandarin?
Shush, anyhow.
All right.
Before he goes and meets a Reverend mother or whatever,
there’s like a quick Mandarin scene there.
So I’m guessing that’s–
Wow.
That’s U.A.
That’s why I bring you on the podcast.
You’re very well cultured.
Well, we’re on Dr. U.A.
How do we feel about his story arc in the sense
that protects his wife pretty much puts
Lido to his death, but thinking he can potentially
kill the Baron at the same time, but then also saves
Paul and Jessica.
Are we team Dr. U.A.?
Are we no, no, Dr. U.A.?
U.A. is clearly from House of Trades, based on his planning,
too, because I feel like his wasn’t great either.
This is one of my stock downs I can jump into is semantic language
that the Baron uses twice in this where he’s just like,
I said you could join your wife in death.
You’re just like, what?
No.
That’s not what–
When U.A. came to you and was like,
I want to be rejoined with my wife.
You know he didn’t mean in the afterlife, right?
Come on.
This is bullshit.
So he pulls that.
And then on the Reverend mother was like,
she was like, they should not be harmed, Paul and his mother.
He was like, I won’t harm them, but the desert, who knows?
You know, it’s just like, well, enough of this shit.
It’s a lie.
You are right there.
That’s all that is.
Yeah, exactly.
The fine print in the Harkonan Empire, I guess, is a big deal.
Everyone’s like, damn, the Baron.
He got me again.
Yeah, for the hundredth year in a row, or however old he is at this point.
But so yeah, for that with U.A.
I feel like was a stupid, like just dumb.
Like you got to know who you’re dealing with here.
I think you just, you got to say by your wife and move on.
My first talk down is words.
So one would think a movie based on a book,
words would be important.
And also just like a movie in general, words are important.
But I’m fairly certain that if they released this movie
without any dialogue, we still had the Hans Zimmer
score.
And obviously we could see the visuals.
I would watch it just for that.
And I would think it was probably one of the better movies I’d seen in the year.
I feel like when they gave people the script, it was like 20 pages.
And they were like, what’s going on?
You know, and half of the pages were just like Hans Zimmer score.
Hans Zimmer score.
Because there’s really not a ton of dialogue.
I 100% agree.
If this was like a silent movie without those cards in between the silent movie that
have like dialogue and whatever is going on, I would 100% watch this based on
Hans and all the faces of all these people that are very expressive or so creepily,
like non expressive that I get the expressiveness that they’re going for.
If that makes sense.
Perfect.
I know Keith will get that.
I think you pretty much understand exactly what’s happening in the story without any
dialogue.
Which it was so well done that you could really figure out that all out.
You know what I’m saying?
I was kind of stunned by it, honestly, because after I especially rewatched the 84 one, it’s
like there’s just everyone’s talking all the time.
And then someone’s not talking.
It’s a picture and someone’s talking about it.
So for this to be the complete opposite, just this vast desert visual and you’re just
like holy smokes.
So yeah, words.
We don’t really need them, you know?
Sometimes less is more.
Keith, what else do you have for a stock down?
Stock down being the chosen one.
And not because I feel like most movies and historical figures that are the chosen one,
they go through some suffering.
In this case, Paul’s dad gets murdered.
A lot of his friends and family get murdered to save him all this.
And that’s not the reason.
That’s not the stock down the reason.
But the reason is because we know him, this like godlike person, we follow story arc.
But then we get to watch him also completely exposed in the 40 yard dash by his mom.
They’re running away from the warm and he gets beat by like 15 yards in a 40 yard dash
by his mom.
This guy is not the chosen one.
Once the like the Fremen saw that, they should have been like, oh, this guy is in it.
No, he’s done.
Like you can’t be beat by your mom in a 40 yard.
I’m sorry.
You just can’t.
You just can’t have that happen.
So not being the chosen one or being the chosen one, stock down after seeing that.
I think the Fremen, what was his name?
Jami or Jame or whatever?
That guy?
I think he saw that and was like, I’m taking this guy right now.
That’s why he challenged him.
Are you kidding me?
Yeah.
We’re gonna let this guy in.
No, no, no, no.
They’re like, it was super brave.
It’s like, he’s also super fucking slow, huh?
Like Jesus Christ.
Get across the sand, bud.
Not that this is a defense, but I guess Paul is supposed to be 15 and his mom is 27
or 28, I think, in this world.
So she is impregnated at 13?
Yeah.
But really the bad guy in this is bad, right?
Wait, no, no, no.
I gotta mix up.
So Chalamet and the actress are 12 years apart, but in the story they’re supposed to be 20
years apart.
That’s my bad.
So she’s 20 years.
And she’s an unless ex-brinter?
Like, what are we, what are we attributing that for?
So she’s 35 in the movie and he’s 15?
Well, as a 36 year old is in the prime of his life.
That’s what I’m saying.
Yeah, all right.
I bet you could take a bunch of 15 year olds in a race.
Sorry, just a clarify.
Make sure you don’t cut that out.
Did you have any other stockdowns, Miko?
Yeah, well, I don’t want to pile on the suede so we can maybe run through this one quick,
but there are always the villains.
And I think there’s a reason for it.
So stockdown on Swedish people.
How do you always have villains?
We.
Yeah, well, hey.
It’s not me that’s saying this.
It’s Stellan Scarcegard, the actor who plays the Baron.
It’s his career.
It’s the girl with the Dragon Tattoo.
He’s the bad guy.
King Arthur.
He’s the bad guy.
Amia is that his daughter?
He’s one of three people that could be the father and he’s been absent in her life.
Bad guy.
Good will hunting.
Bad guy.
Do you know how fucking easy this is for me?
Do you know how easy it is?
Exactly.
So, you know, whatever.
He won the field’s medal, but nobody really likes it.
He has the field’s medal.
Yeah, he did show to the funeral.
I mean, let’s be honest.
Exactly.
Bad guy.
Interesting.
Yeah.
And his son played the clown in it.
So.
That was a good guy in the Russian theater.
Shut the fuck up.
He’s a fucking dissenting opinion.
Wait, what Russian bomb of me?
Chernobyl.
Chernobyl, yeah, yeah.
That was phenomenal.
God, that was so good.
Maybe he was the one that sabotaged the plant.
Maybe that’s what it was.
That’s the real story that we didn’t think about.
Yes.
Cut the other part out.
Keep that part in.
Other stock down was the US state names like Duncan Idaho.
Not Idaho.
Not Idaho, especially how bad ass he is.
No, that last name does not suit him.
He’s like a Joe Montana type.
You know, Montana is a great last name if we’re going to pick a state.
But Idaho, no, that does not suit that.
I will say that in this movie, and I’m a big Jason MoMo of fan, just saying, but he does
kind of look like a potato in this movie.
I don’t know what he was eating, but he’s he’s swollen all the wrong places.
I was like, Jason MoMo, why are you so thick?
Why are you so thick in this movie?
You know, I didn’t understand.
I think he needs a beard.
That’s why.
Oh, maybe that was it.
Yeah, that’s the reason you’re not used to his face without it.
I know this is an audio medium, but as someone with a beard, I can tell you it greatly
helps in that aspect.
It checks out.
That makes sense.
My last stock down is top billing.
So this is an ensemble cast.
I think feel like everyone had top billing.
But one that I was most excited about was the lady known as Zendaya, or Zendaya.
I don’t know because once again, I’m on culture.
But she’s one phenomenal actress, too beautiful.
And I was like, oh, she’s going to play Shandhi.
Like this is super cool.
I’m excited to see her.
She’s pretty much in a music video.
That’s all she does for the entire movie.
She’s just in a music video.
She could have been in a Backstreet Boys music video where it’s just like flashing to her,
like looking at the camera with wind in her face or has her mask on her blue eyes or is
no dialogue.
Like when she got the script, she just started going through the first 10 pages, like read
them and she’s like, okay, when do I come in?
Next thing you know, she’s like scrambling, pulling pages being like, I have literally no
lines in this movie.
Why am I here?
First off, you talk about music videos and you didn’t mention her talent as a singer, replay?
That’s fucking so jammed.
Oh my, I don’t know if I know that song.
I think I brought this up a few times and you still haven’t listened to it.
And she also narrates.
I think she’s narrating a lot of the time.
So she is some line.
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
She does do some narrating.
But really though, I guess I’ll go back to stock up is for a slow burn.
I’m super jazzed for Dune Part 2 because Shandhi is a big character in the book.
She’s a really big character.
She’s his number one, who’s the person you talk to when you need advice for stuff in like
political?
Absolutely.
Sure, she’s like his consignory, whatever the case is.
But she’s the person he talks to in like full honesty.
You know, even when he’s like scared, he doesn’t know who he is.
Am I the quiz act, Sadarak?
Am I, am I all this stuff?
He talks to her about that.
So when he’s most vulnerable, that’s when you get like vulnerable, Paul too.
I’m excited to see more of her going forward.
I feel like we can go through some of this love, hate stuff pretty quickly.
So we’ll jump into that.
I just wanted to start with mine because I really just have one.
It’s three, but they’re really one.
So what I love is, and we’ve kind of already talked about it, but costume design, set design,
basically all the visuals, really.
Everything was incredible.
Making it seem so big.
The whole story is so massive.
So having an endoone, just a desert planet is hard to even imagine.
I think he did such a good job with it.
It’s just beautiful.
You could stop this movie, pause it at any time and be like, that’s a desktop background.
That’s a desktop background.
It was so well done.
So I love that aspect, keep away from you.
The Dragonfly helicopters?
Oh, the Ornithopters.
They are so perfectly done.
Yeah.
Yeah, they need those in real life.
I don’t know why we don’t have those already.
Even though it wasn’t a ton of world building, the world building was second this overall.
And then I liked it better than the book, the movie better than the book.
So I know that’s rare.
And you’re not supposed to say that on the book podcast here, but I understood the movie
way better.
So it was better visually.
Yeah, well, just in regards to the world building and whatnot, if you’re into board games,
supposedly, and I haven’t played it, there’s a doon board game, that’s legit.
And everyone plays as a different house and you have to have spice and you’re trading goods.
It’s intricate, but it’s supposedly super fun.
The reason I learned of doon is it was one of the original RTS, one of the original command
and conquer games.
I didn’t know what doon was in book.
Well, if anyone wants to come down to the Cape, my local library has the game and I just
go in there sometimes and I look at it.
And I’m like, if only I had friends to play this with.
You go, what’d you love?
I think my number one is spitting as a sign of respect.
I think that’s so cool.
I know you guys are thinking it’s omniscient.
Come on, say it.
This is nothing sexual, okay?
It’s just purely, I think, spitting is cool.
I think I’ve always not spitting is cool.
I’ve always wanted to be able to do that like spit where it just like comes out in like
a straight line.
I don’t know how to describe it.
Yeah, I know you’re saying like almost like tobacco spit, but it’s not tobacco.
Yes.
Or tunes where they would chew tobacco and spit it into the can.
That’s the coolest thing ever.
So yeah, I’d love that scene where he just spits and it’s Duncan says, thank you for honoring
us with your moisture of your body or whatever.
I thought that was awesome, though.
That was a big, big love for me.
Except Lido just kind of does the spray spit, you know, I was like, yeah, not a good spit
for him.
He was a terrible character.
Yeah.
I mean, that’s where I figured it out here.
I agree with you, Miko, and also relating this to show gun, which we’re reading now.
It’s the same for me.
We read that and they’re talking about like slurping your noodles or like your sake.
You’re supposed to like slurp it and so many households, you know, when you’re a kid,
it’s like, don’t slurp your soup.
You know, whatever this guy, this thing and the other thing.
And there it’s, you know, you know, if you really like it, you’re supposed to slurp it.
And whenever I go to like a ramen joint, I love that because I slurp the shit out of my
suit.
I had a couple, there was like two pieces of dialogue that I really liked because we’ve
talked about how limited the dialogue was, but I really liked the line, uh, fear is the
mind killer that she says when she’s sitting outside of the room with one Paul has got the
poison needle and hand in the box.
I’m seeing it or whatever.
I love that line.
And then super subtle, uh, by what’s his name?
Josh Browell and his character, uh, Bernie.
Bernie, how are you?
Bernie, how are you?
Thank you.
Um, he quotes the Bible because I had to look this up.
And I’m not a, I don’t know, just man.
I’m sorry, God, but from Deuteronomy 3319, if you want to look it up, okay.
He said after they were talking about how much the hercone and pulled out the spice and how
much money they made or whatever, they’re sitting at that big table with all the, whatever,
how’s the trade ease top brass?
And he just says, kind of like under his breath, they shall suck the abundance of the seas
and the treasure hid in the sand.
And I was like, that’s just fucking cool.
Nobody talks like that.
Like I’ve never heard anyone say anything that cool in real life.
And that’s why I love movies is because they just say super cool shit like that.
You couldn’t do it in real life.
At the same time, you believe it.
It doesn’t seem like, oh, that’s ridiculous.
So you believe that someone would say that in regards to the, the fears of the mind killer,
it’s, I think it’s like a Benny Jeser prayer or something like that.
If you Google it, it’s a longer, it’s like a full paragraph or something.
But it’s actually just so unpoint for life, just in the sense that in our daily lives,
like we all live in this like state of fear, you know, we have that in.
And it’s something in our system, you know, where like our parasympathetic nervous system
or whatever it like goes off and you kind of lose focus of what you’re supposed to be
doing because the fear kind of takes over.
And if you just like zone that out, it’s almost like Buddhist in a way, like you know,
it was like live in a way that is true to yourself and not have all this noise.
That’s just your own head talking to you.
But the, the quote of the full thing in the book is so good.
And sometimes when I’m in situations like that, like say that I was on a roller coaster
and I was like, I’m going to shit my pants, my fears the mind killer.
All right.
Let’s jump into hate.
I’ll start because I only have one.
And my hate is where it stopped.
I know that they said, oh, we wanted to make this into two parts because it is a very defined
stopping point.
I couldn’t disagree more.
It’s not very defined.
It didn’t make a lot of sense to stop it there.
It’s like really not it, not a ton happens in this movie.
You know, obviously there’s the big battle or not even a battle, but the assault on a racquet
by the Harkinins.
But outside of that, it’s really not a luck going on.
It’s just like really pretty things happening.
It was a weird place to stop it.
I know they gave a little teaser in there by showing someone riding a sandworm, which was
pretty cool.
But I didn’t like where it stopped.
And more importantly, I didn’t like that it stopped.
This could have been 20 hours and I would have been down.
So yeah, I’m just a little upset about that.
Meek out about you.
I do agree with you.
I didn’t like it.
I would say I hated it.
I do dislike how they ended it.
And especially learning that they actually shot more and decided to not include it in this
part, but they will include it in part two is a little bit annoying because if you already
shot it, why don’t you just give it to us now?
Why are you making us aware that that exists and then I somehow went into this movie like
pretty blind on that it was stopping and that it was a part one, but it wasn’t marketed
as such.
No, I was in the wear of it either.
So you’re not alone.
I remember pausing it like with 30 minutes left and I was like, no, this is how they’re
going to finish the story with 30 minutes left.
This is crazy.
You know, they’re just going to burn through all of this other stuff and then it just like
stopped and I was like, wait, what?
It was almost like a soprano is like fade to black.
I was like, wait, what the hell is going on here?
Yeah.
I mean, I watched the 84 version as well before watching this one.
So I was like, oh man, they’re ramping up to the best part to where all the shit’s
about to go down.
And then it sandworm and cut the credits.
And then they rated the 84 one kind of does the same thing, but then that last half hour
is just them trying to fit everything in which didn’t work really well.
Keith, what about you, heates?
Just the doctor, Lido.
I don’t know if you saw this.
If you’ve been on the Twitter is recently, but Josh Brolin released a poem for Timothy
Shalame.
I don’t know if you guys can look it up.
I can rate it also.
It is very, very uncomfortable.
She does first.
Did you guys see it?
No.
No.
Your face is etched by Adolescence.
That’s the first line.
And it gets more cringey from there.
When famous people think they then have the ability to just go and do stuff and their shit
doesn’t stink, that’s unfortunate.
But considering I’ve loved Josh Brolin since the goonies, I’m just going to stay away from
that and pretend like it doesn’t exist.
Okay, that’s a smart move.
If he wrote this about his newborn baby, it actually makes some sense, but it’s written
for another man that’s 26 or so, I think, it’s very weird.
And not just a send it to him, but like, hey.
To release it on the world.
Yeah.
Gotta see this.
Alright, I’ll get into some studio notes quickly.
I’m going to run through this.
So the book was released in ’65 by Frank Herbert.
People wanted to adapt it into a film, but it was like so complex.
I don’t know if it’s going to happen.
So this guy Alejandro Jodorowski, I don’t know if I’m saying that particularly well
or that’s how your pronounce his last name.
He got the rights to it in the ’70s and he wanted to make a 14 hour film adaptation.
In his words, he wanted to fabricate the feeling of LSD on the big screen.
So he wanted to make everyone that watched it feel like they were on LSD.
They didn’t get enough funding, so that was scrapped.
If you guys haven’t seen the documentary, Jodorowski’s Dune, I would suggest watching it.
It’s pretty cool.
Because basically all the guys he used, like, went on to make Star Wars, went on to make
Alien, went on to make all of these sci-fi movies that are iconic.
So then David Lynch’s Dune, that we’ve been talking about, that came out in ’84.
It was supposed to be a three hour movie, but it was cut to just over two hours.
And he kind of disowned it.
I like it, but hate it.
And I think most people just don’t like it, but whatever.
Then there was a sci-fi channel show.
Finally, we got our movie here, villainyweve villainywe.
He shared his interest in making it in 2016, so he got hired to direct it, but he wanted
to make a rival and blade run our first.
So he didn’t get to writing it until 2018 with Eric Roth, who wrote some other big flicks,
including Forest Gump, which he won an Oscar for.
But he’s written a bunch of stuff, and there’s another guy too, but whatever.
It was supposed to be released earlier, but because of COVID, it got released in 2021,
and it got simultaneously released on HBO Max.
So there was concern that they weren’t going to come out of part two unless this movie
was successful, but it ended up making 400,000,000 on 165,000,000 budget.
So we got part two.
It’s an ’83, ’90 on Run Tomatoes.
Did you guys want to recast this?
In the recast rewrite review, is there anyone that you would recast?
I mean, there’s a phenomenal cast.
I really struggled with recasting.
I tried to come up with something just so we would have gone to it.
But I mean, I could recast Paula Trades to Tom Holland or Barry Cockat.
I don’t have to say that.
I thought, fuck off.
Yes, and I appreciate you saying you just struggled with it because I thought Timothy
Shalame was so good.
He is.
Danny said he didn’t want anyone else, supposedly.
I only wanted Timothy Shalame.
He wanted someone young, but that looked wise, kind of thing, like that I had a sense of
aged wisdom about them.
And I think he fits the bill.
They’ve got to be young looking.
They have to be kind of, sorry, Keith, they get into the poem pretty, but not too pretty.
Tab alive to adolescence.
I guess if we had Tom Holland, we could have had a live sexy, though.
Oh, yeah.
Anyway, well, Havons and Dyer are dating, right?
So like that kind of just happened, so.
The other thing I wish was that more of the Harkinins were just all Swedes.
And they care for them, not all being Swedes in my right, Mike.
And I write?
Well, it’s funny you say that, Keith, because in the ’84 version, they’re all genders.
Like they’re all genders.
I was going to bring that up.
Yeah, it’s coming that up.
It’s someone who’s married to a ginger that is extremely offensive.
So I’m glad they went bald in the new version.
But yes, Keith, they should have just had the whole Scars Guard family be all of our
conans, because they are weirdly different enough looking that they could have all played
whatever different roles of, you know, Dave Batista is great.
Austin Butler, who will be in the new one, great.
But they have a variety of Scars Guards, and they’re weird little Swedish Brady Bunch
that they could have fit them in somewhere.
And yeah, the more Swedes is villains, it just makes my argument easier.
Yeah, honestly, Dave Batista is so good.
I mean, he doesn’t do much, but he sells it for some reason.
It’s like he’s a wrestler, you know what I mean?
But he’s good.
I mean, obviously he’s good in the Guardians of Galaxy stuff, but I just thought he doesn’t
have a lot of stuff going on in this movie, but I wouldn’t recast him for sure not.
And you were saying about Austin Butler is going to be in the new one.
Yeah, that he plays fade, who is played by sting in the ’84 version.
So it should be, he’s kind of a main character too.
I want more Baron Harkinon.
I thought every time he was on screen, it was awesome.
Like just, he just takes over the scene and I just wanted more of that dark, terrible
place.
I was actually thinking when I was watching this, it was kind of like a Rick and Morty type
thing, but like the Harkin in world just seems so terrible and it’s so dark and everyone
so mean.
They’re like, what’s the daily life for just like a Harkin in Soldier?
You know, what are they going all the way to five?
Yeah, one and nine to five.
Do they deal with the normal things that we deal with?
Are they just like just, you know, terrible all around and knowing un-braw animal bones?
It just, I needed to see it.
Get you a one-way ticket to Stockholm and you can experience it first and because it’s
basically whatever they do.
Yeah, I guess if I was going to like try to figure out a recast, the only, I wouldn’t,
I wasn’t massive on Jason Mamo’s character, like the Dunkin’ Idaho character.
I mean, you’ve got to have a badass there, though.
Yeah, I know.
I know.
And I just, I like Jason Mamo for sure, so no problem for me, but I just don’t think he’s
that good of an actor.
He’s just more charismatic good guy that I was down and I also trusted his badassery, you
know, so it fits.
He’s good in that fight, too, you know, at the end against the Sardakar.
I know some of the other ones, you’re right.
He looks like a potato.
I didn’t put his together with the lack of beard until we started talking about it, but
that fight scene, you get emotional, I get choked out.
And no spoilers here.
If they did continue the series because they’ve said villain, wave, or whatever has said
that he wants to make the next one, he wants to make Messiah and then had plans for, then
it going to like HBO or someone and doing a series about it.
There’s more, not Dunkin’ Idaho, but there’s more stuff for Jason Mamo in the future
in the books.
So I really hope that happens because that character does some very interesting things.
It’s a, it’s, it’s, Villeneuve if you want to say his, his last name.
No, no, I, thank you for doing that.
Now that we’re like an hour and 20 minutes into this and I’ve said it like 30 times, but
I really appreciate that you could have helped me out maybe even before we went live to
just say like, hey, I liked it.
No, it’s more organic this way.
I, I think you as a content creator would have wanted it this way.
For a review here, I got Paul Burns at the Sydney Morning Herald, FYI Keith.
If you want to go pay this guy a visit when you’re in Australia, I think you should.
He says, “Dune is a triumph of mediocrity.
What it does, it does well enough, but was it worth doing?”
It’s a cookie cutter movie, a restatement of every trope that it now impoverishes cinema.
What is this guy talking about?
Cookie cutter?
Cookie cutter?
If it’s cookie cutter, that means anyone can do it.
So let’s go see some other person go and try to make this movie.
Trope?
It’s based on source material.
If you’re telling me the trope of like a young person who has to fill in to his father’s
shoes, but then has issues with that or is potentially looked at as someone that he’s not
sure he can fill the shoes of yet in this terms of the Messiah.
Okay, sure.
That’s a trope, but that’s, that’s just life.
What does he think a trope is?
A badass story I want to see more of?
Come on, dude.
Yeah.
If you guys see the Jane Silent Bob strikes back where they find out all the reviews for their
movie and go be the shit out of them, let’s be sure.
On poopshoot.com.
Exactly.
That’s what we need to do to that guy is go beat the shit out of them because that is
easy.
That’s easy.
Allegedly beat the shit out of them.
Thank you.
Okay, allegedly what needs to happen is something harmful towards him.
Okay, use some semantics.
We’re gonna let him reunite with his wife.
That’s right.
Jesus, this wife dead?
Yeah, just saying it’s a triumph of mediocrity is, is I couldn’t imagine seeing one of those
just awe-inspiring scenes.
I mean, like, mediocre.
This guy is the barren harkening of reviewers here is terrible.
He’s got a sad life.
He’s, again, I’m gonna do another movie, The Critic from Ratatouille that doesn’t like anything
and that just shits on all over everything.
That’s this guy.
He would watch his child be born and call it mediocre.
Okay.
No, he called it a trope.
He’d be like, oh my god, birth.
It’s such a trope.
Everyone’s dead.
Hey, the Ratatouille, Rivera liked the Ratatouille.
What do you mean?
Come on, kid, do you do you even watch the movie?
Yeah.
It’s not a trope in the end, but before that, he basically killed that other friend chef
with his review.
Sorry, Paul.
We didn’t need to tear you apart.
Mika’s gonna kill you, I guess, but allegedly, sorry.
No, he’s going to die.
It’s not me doing it.
It’s just, eventually, everyone does, right?
Yeah, exactly.
It’s semantics.
All right.
Let’s get into it.
Would you recommend it in any last words, Keith?
You first.
I’d recommend it.
I think the movie experience is good.
I think you watch it a second time with the subtitles on.
That’s how I would recommend it, and you’ll fall of the story a little bit better.
I gave it 3.25, buddies.
Out of four.
This is not a four, by the way.
I gave it a lot lower.
The first time I watched it, second time viewing is better.
Agreed.
But it’s not like a second time viewing is better, like 10 inches, or something like that,
like a Nolan movie, where it’s like, I didn’t understand what that was happening.
And now I have to read it.
It’s just like, you get a little more of it.
You’re not trying to catch up the whole time.
It’s like, there’s a lot more subtle stuff you can pick up on the second time.
Like, oh, okay, now I get why they did that.
And me, guys, the fourth time, would you recommend it?
I would 100%, obviously, recommend it.
I’ve watched it four times.
I think everything about this movie is entertaining.
It’s enjoyable.
I mean, we’ve talked about a million times.
It doesn’t even need to be dialogue.
It’s so good.
Speaking of “Tenet,” I read that Hans Zimmer turned down doing the score for “Tenet”
to do this movie instead, because he was such a fan of “Dun.”
I mean, it just has everything start to finish for me, except–I mean, it needs
a part two.
But other than that, I think it’s great.
And I’d give it, I don’t know.
I would never give anything 100%, but what can I do?
3.9 buddies here for–
Oh, no.
Oh, right.
It’s the highest ever.
You can get something for it.
Pulp fiction.
That’s for it.
I should have brought this up in the hate.
They haven’t introduced the Emperor.
And when I looked up whose cast is the Emperor, I’m extremely excited to see what he will
bring to the role.
And that is Mr. Christopher Walken.
I put this watch in my ass hole, speaking about a fiction.
The watch.
It’s a moped watch.
Yeah, I’d obviously recommend it.
I think as a “Dun” series lover, I haven’t read the whole series.
I haven’t read a chapter house, but I love the series.
And the fact that I still love this movie, considering that it leaves out so much of the
book, I think speaks more to it for me than anything else.
It’s just so beautiful.
It’s such a great job with it.
I gave it a three and a half, which is pretty high in my book.
And I really hope everyone watches it.
Just put it on.
And if you don’t even like the story or you don’t like Sapphire, just when you have people
over, put it on, put it on mute.
It’s just like a beautiful background on your TV.
So all right, parting words for you, Miko, have you started reading Shogun?
Shogun has still not arrived for me.
I live in the middle of nowhere for all the listeners.
Don’t tell Paul.
Okay, well, I’m hoping you get to Shogun.
And will this be the first book you’ve read since Red Rising?
This will be, yes, it will be the first book I’ve read, covered, covered since Red Rising,
and the second book I’ve read, covered, covered in my entire life.
For the embossed guy.
So I’m suspicious.
I’m nothing if not ambitious.
I mean, I’ve never said that before, but I guess I’ll lean into it now.
I’ve got some baby books that I need to read, but I’m not reading those, “Secrets Covered
Covered” because, whatever.
Yeah, you’ll be fine.
Yeah, you’ll be fine.
You’ll figure it out.
Well, on those late nights when you’re up with the baby and you can crack a book, Shogun
will be there for you.
All right, Keith, talk about Shogun.
That’s what you got to come up next, right?
Books two and books three.
Honestly, I’m upset we haven’t read Doon yet, so we might have to go back and do that.
We might have to adjust the whole calendar.
We’ll figure that one out.
Either way, March 1, Doon Part 2 is coming out.
If you haven’t seen Doon Part 1, it leaves Netflix the 28th, or it’s a leap year, it might
be the 29th.
So, check it out.
Otherwise, Miko, thanks for joining.
Always fun to have you on.
You got the greatest insights, and he didn’t mean anything he said about killing Paul.
That’s Paul Burns from Sydney Morning, Harold.
His address is now just kidding.
Keith, I’ll catch you next time for Shogun.
Bye, bye.