Lynch's Dune

Thesis: If Lynch was making Dune now, instead of 20 years ago, it would be much be much better. Specifically, he wouldn't need those dratted weirding modules.

See, the fremen need to be these naturally ferocious fighters, right, because they live in this complete wasteland. (We Fremen have a saying: 'God created Arakis to train the faithful.' Kind of like high school.) Then Paul and Jessica teach them the secret Atreides 'Weirding Way' which makes them into completely supernatural fighters. The Weirding Way is the fighting equivalent of the Bene Gesseret mind tricks, or the mentat computing skills. Yet another one of the ubermensch training regimes that are the bedrock of the Dune universe.

In 1984, Lynch didn't have a good way to show this. The others are pretty easy -- the Voice can be shown with audio effects, and mentats can be explained away with a fun little rhyme. But how do you portray supernatural fighters? Back then, you couldn't. So Lynch gave them some weird voice activated phasers and halfway excused it with one of the best lines in all of recorded history. (My name is a killing word. I mean, dude.)

Flash forward to the brave new world of 2004. Finally you can forget about the modules. Why? Because we now have the cinematic iconography needed. The fremen have Matrix powers, an accepted visual shorthand for that level of fighting skill. We all know it when we see it. Bullet time, gun katas, wire tricks, spice-fu.

Now the Sardaukar can be a legitimate threat, simply by giving them limited Matrix powers as well. The movie dropped the whole point that they are spiritual cousins to the fremen, raised on an almost equally lethal planet. Instead they're hazmat-suit wearing freaks who look scary because the Atreides soldiers are only slightly more effective as a military force than an army of particularly frisky kittens.

Last, but not least, given modern CG the effect shots wouldn't look like poorly animated Boston covers.

In conclusion, if anyone has a time machine to spare, this is my official proposal to use it to kidnap David Lynch (and Kyle MacLachlan!) from 20 years ago, bring him forward to today, fund the making of a new original Dune movie, send a production assistant forward in time until they find memory erasing technology, wipe Lynch's memory of this entire process, and return him to his native time after convincing him to write a note to himself reading 'Dune not weird enough. Need new plot. Work in severed hand nose ear.'

(no subject)

For the record:

If you're in a video store, and you happen across The Bushido Blade, and you think that a samurai adventure with Toshiro Mifune and James Earl Jones has to be good...

...you're so very, very wrong. A tragic waste of potential. The acting was out of grade school play, or a particularly pretentious roleplaying session. You could see the actors pause to think what their character should say next. Except Mifune, of course, but he seemed to be dubbed by Mojo Jojo. James Earl Jones has little more than a cameo, and displays only slightly more talent than everyone else.

Every Japanese native we meet has some improbable reason for knowing English, including the evil warlord who opposes all things modern and foreign. But not the love interest of the only American who knows some Japanese -- to whom he still speaks in English.

They even managed to work in a blackface routine, just to round things out.

In conclusion, yeech.