Movies and TV Shows

I don't trust HBO to make shows with full arcs and endings. They bombed GoT so hard that the echoes still reverberate from the walls, and House of Dragons did absolutely nothing to rekindle the simple joy of watching a well produced, written, and acted play.

If anything HoD solidified that HBO has lost the thread of entertainment amidst the wash of CGI, fanciful scenery, and dreadfully dull, plodding characters. Viserys was the only shining light of the show and with his passing, the remaining cast and characters desperately attempt to fill time and space with plot that feels tedious at best.

HBO is desperate for a hit to pull themselves back into the hearts and living rooms of the world, but they seem to think that the calculus is pageantry and computer generated fluff, rather than cornerstone fundamentals of story telling. And that is why I expect they will continue to fail.

Watched the first episode last night, and was left underwhelmed. There's a lot of lore they pack into the first 5 minutes of exposition, which was fine, explaining the origins of the War against The Thinking Machines, and the Atredies/Harkonen feud.

But watching the show, a couple things struck me which took me out of the narrative they were trying to tell:

1. The CGI is just ok, and far more noticeable in the show than it was in the movies, and this is understandable given the difference in CGI budget, but it wasn't as immersive.
2. This story having taken place 10 THOUSAND years before the events of DUNE, humanity is already mining spice on Arakis? Already fighting the fremmen?, The Bene Gesserit is already in ALL the major houses in the galaxy after only 130 years? Valya has personally developed THE VOICE as "something I've been working on" lol? I'm sure this is all in service of how Herbert wrote the book (*edit: this just in, the writer has just learned that DUNE PROPHECY isn't actually based on a Frank Herbert book, witch makes a ton more sense as to why it's so disjointed narrative) , but I was stuck by how little the DUNE universe seems to have changed in 10 Millennia. Just seems like "hey folks you know all the stuff you loved about the DUNE movies, well, here's a TV show that's not meant to step on that cash cow's narrative, but it's the same, just you know 10 thousand years before, really ...... ta-da!"

As an aside I once saw a YouTube video, which tried to explain the lack of technological advancement in the Game of Thrones universe, due to the overwhelming threat Dragons posed, and how that affected the development of modern weaponry, and stymied almost all forward technical engineering progress. Also while I'm ranting, so "thinking machines" are out, to the point of almost publicly executing a little boy for playing with a transformer toy, but the Emperor has a 3D vid holo projector, how exactly does THAT work without thinking machines, i wonder.

Now lastly, and this is a personal preference, I've never been a Emily Watson fan, I find her difficult to watch.

I'll most likely keep watching every Sunday, because for all it's foibles, it's still top notch scifi, though not nearly on the same level as FOUNDATION or THE EXPANSE

I liked it. I’m the rare person who prefers the Brian books to the frank books, though, so… 🤷🏻‍♀️

It did stick pretty close to the source with a couple differences.

It’s 10000y after present, 10000y before Paul… and they were called free men, not freman. But yeah they were mining spice at this point, they had only realized how valuable it is in that last hundred years or so. Valya DID invent the voice. Though she was much more of a bitch in the books.

Still no guild yet, so youll notice there are no heighliners

Well it does feel like a TV series alright. The sets look cheap and lots of enclosed spaces instead of the expansive and "everything is huge" feel of the movies. That's understandable though, since this is obviously not a movie with a movie budget. That aside, the older cast are great, but I'm not impressed with the younger cast yet, as with most shows with new, young actors. The full blown exposition in the first 10 minutes was a bad sign for me, because they're leaning on tell-don't-show. I know they have a lot of info to get through as a background, but the films were able to do that without just narrating everything. All the more for a series that has more than double the runtime in total.

I read the Frank books but not the Brian ones, so I'm going in blind except for the info I already know from the original books. So let's see, we're just in the first episode. I'm looking forward to the next one and hopefully it picks up.

I liked it. It seemed like the first episode was all about exposition. Can’t wait to see more with what they do with the universe.

I mean I don't even know where did they get the materials. Also I'm guessing it's a fan-service-fest like no other.

Im waiting for the 3 Body Problem spin off series. Because why not right? It would make just as much sense to make.