David Lynch has died

I'm still reserving judgement.

In a vacuum I don't love the changes he made to Part 2 but I can also see how they will make it flow much better into Part 3 than Dune > Dune Messiah ever did (that always felt disjointed to me); as well as make that story more compelling.

I wish just for once these directors had simply made the movie of the book and damn the consequences of what Hollywood thinks audiences want. The movies that directors such as Peter Jackson make are brilliantly done - if only the story wasn't hacked. And that's not even addressing the worst of the travesties such as Radagast the Brown being covered in bird shit and the dwarves in The Hobbit being a bunch of circus clowns.

Its often not directors defining pacing and length of the result, but producer/studio. A lot of bitter conflicts came up from this.

What works in books often doesn't work on screen and vice versa. They are different media.

I've tried to avoid spoilers below, but there are some minor ones for anyone reading who has never read Dune Messiah.

I've read Dune at least a dozen times and followed up with Dune Messiah a few times. Sometimes I get that feeling of disjointedness. At its most extreme, Paul feels like a total stranger. (Stilgar might as well be a different characters; we see a changed character, but not the change.) Sometimes it feels like the books flows nicely despite the time jump. My best guess is that it depends on what aspects I've been most focused on while reading.

I'm reserving judgment as well, but one part is really stuck in my craw. Although I felt like Villeneuve's Chani was generally stronger I felt the last scene made her look like a child and my first thought was that it was a weak attempt to set up a particular relationship for Part 3.

Agreed. The difference between a book and a film is that they are completely different things. You can't just graft a story from one directly onto another and expect results.

It's not about what they "think audience want" it's about what film directors know works for visual storytelling as opposed to written storytelling.

This is the the most famous, if not the only instance of Lynch giving up control of the final edit. He seemed angry about the way it turned out.

That's why the director is listed as "Alan Smithee"

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alan_Smithee

"Alan Smithee (also Allen Smithee) is an official pseudonym used by film directors who wish to disown a project."

> but I can also see how they will make it flow much better into Part 3 than Dune > Dune Messiah

Lynch could have made a Dune Messiah. Villeneuve is not able to express the mysticism.

> What works in books often doesn't work on screen and vice versa. They are different media.

Not really. The biggest issue is time. As far as i noticed, one needs 2 hours of movie for 100 pages of a book. Anything below this (fitting 400 pages in 2 hours) is art. That's why Lynch's version is better.

Yeah. He seemed pretty torn up about it. I believe he said he “died a death” over it.

Here’s more into for anyone interested.

https://www.cinedump.com/reviews/2021/6/3/dune-alan-smithee-...

Exactly

For example, 2001 was a great movie but Clarke's worst book imo because he collaborated with Kubrick to write it for for big screen.