Dune

To have characters suddenly start addressing the audience (or thin air) to exposit about what they are thinking comes across as a bit quaint in modern storytelling, no?

If anything, we've veered in the opposite direction: actors are expected to emote their thoughts and feelings at the audience, which in turn means that said thoughts and feelings are supposed to be so simple and obvious that even the Lowest Common Denominator can grasp them.

Complex motivations tend to be explained by other characters, or in motive rants.

edited 5th Jan '17 12:21:52 PM by Fighteer

Again, inner monologue can work very well, with stream of consciousness imagery, relevant flashbacks, imagine spots...

Literally speaking a monologue to the audience is unnecessary. A voiceover can easily convey thoughts.

I think those sorts of voiceovers work better in anime because, being animation, the people making it can completely control the flow of time within the work. This means you can have an internal monologue take up the better part of a minute, while only a few seconds go by in the world of the story.

You can do something similar in live action, but it generally requires either using slow motion (which can look very silly if overused), having everyone just stand still to convey how time isn't passing (which can look unnatural since there will still be subtle movements that indicate time is still passing), or having the video go to a freeze frame while the inner monologue happens (a technique that's been so exclusively used for comedic effect that a dramatic use of it is unlikely to be taken seriously).

Freeze frame would work best. For most cases you really don't need any of those options, anime typically has a voiceover playing while showing a visual of something that doesn't involve talking. The only time you would really need a freeze frame is for cases where a character processes their thoughts faster than it takes to verbally explain what they are thinking.

Sherlock for the inner monologue, both House Of Cards for the asides.

Really, the best way to convey a character's inner thoughts in a movie or TV show is a combination of clever script writing and good acting. And trusting your audience to pick up on it rather than trying to hit them over the head with it.

Unfortunately, it doesn't happen very often. Producers tend to worry too much that the audience won't get it, so "hit them on the head with it" is more popular.

I believe that both the characters' inner thoughts and much of the involved backstory can be done in a mostly "show, don't tell" style. The trick is, it might require additional scenes that the book only implied, or didn't include at all. The second trick is, that would pad out an already epic-length story—it'd almost HAVE to be something like an HBO series, rather than a couple theatrical releases.

But I think that's okay. I don't mean this as necessarily pejorative, but the movie theatres have become the default home for spectacle, usually harnessed to just enough plot/ideas to justify it. If you want your stories to be at all ruminative, or to have something philosophical going on, cable's become your go-to medium. I'm not saying that Dune is exactly Thomas Mann or anything ... but the things that are distinctive about it are exactly the things that movie companies aren't primarily about delivering right now.

I would agree. A successful adaptation would need both more time spent on character and less spectacle than current theatrical movies are geared to provide.

The Star Trek movies are a prime example of what would happen to a Dune movie now. The producers tried cerebral/character driven and spectacle with The Motion Picture and it was boring. The next movie was action and melodrama and was the big hit, setting the pattern for everything to follow, with the exception of Voyage Home, which was a comedy. There have been bad and good Star Trek films since Wrath of Khan, but all of them except IV have been action movies first and foremost. You can tell because each has a clearly-defined villain. The Abrams movies have only ramped up the action even further. The Next Generation movies did generally worse than the others because the Next Gen TV series had not been an action series, really, and the contrast between "sometimes thoughtful sci-fi ensemble piece" and "action movie staring Picard and Data" was usually too much for anyone to stomach.

Dune in the movie theater today would be an action movie, and therefore a failure as an adaptation of the novel.

edited 9th Jan '17 10:54:08 AM by Bense

Agreed. But a TV series doesn't get the spectacular budgets of adapted AAA films.

Unless it's Game Of Thrones on HBO,

Funny thing is, Dune isn't character-driven, it's plot-driven, to the point that the characters themselves are nothing more than plot devices. And plot is something that action movies are very light on, perhaps even more than character development.

I said this before, but I think people are overstating how complicated Dune needs to be. The book throws a lot of strange and complicated ideas at you, but many of them don't actually add much to the story; they're just bits of worldbuilding done for worldbuilding's sake.

Again, my example would be the mentats. There's this backstory about humanity going on a religious crusade against all thinking machines, destroying all existing computers and forbidding their creation. To compensate for this loss, people developed mentats, human beings able to make rapid and incredibly complex computations and data analysis, essentially human computers.

That's a neat concept, no question. But while it's a huge part of the cosmology of Dune, it's not actually relevant to the story at hand. You could remove all references to mentats or the Butlerian Jihad, and nothing of any consequence would have to change.

Then what's the point? The unique thing about Dune is the world. Now, you can say that about practically anything, but Dune is more explicit than most, as was noted above. The world drives the plot drives the characters. You're right, the mentats and the Butlerian Jihad aren't super-important, especially in the first book. But the world was constructed around them, and cutting them out leaves very large holes.

You can excise most of that stuff, while still keeping the core of the story: the child of a privileged family, in order to reclaim his birthright and avenge wrongs done to his family, must not only go native among a seemingly savage people, but step into the role of their messiah, a role with responsibilities he may not be prepared for, while being opposed by an ancient conspiracy's attempt to create their own messiah. That seems like a meaty enough narrative to me.

edited 9th Jan '17 11:58:49 PM by RavenWilder

The audience will then Fridge Logic the obvious problem with the story: why, in a sci-fi setting with other forms of high technology, are there no computers?

Remember, one of the key underpinnings of the plot is the idea that, with computer technology taboo, human society has engineered human computers and other forms of biological technology to replace them.

edited 10th Jan '17 4:55:35 AM by Fighteer

I don't think that's really an issue. Most Space Opera stories assume We Will Use Manual Labor in the Future, and audiences usually don't question why the spaceships need to be piloted manually, or why human beings are sent into battle instead of unmanned drones.

Even so, they visibly use high technology, including computers and ray guns, yet Dune has neither. Why not?

edited 10th Jan '17 9:35:27 AM by Fighteer

Um, they do have ray guns. It's just that they also have forcefields, which make ray guns obsolete. All a movie would have to do is show someone with a forcefield No-Sell being shot at, and that would be conveyed very quickly and easily. Yes, I'm aware that in the books forcefields only block kinetic attacks, while using a laser on them causes mutual destruction, but since the end result (no one bothers using lasers or other ranged weaponry) is the same, that's the sort of detail a film adaptation can and should leave out.

As for the absence of computers, I'm not sure most people would really notice. Like I said, We Will Use Manual Labor in the Future is all but omnipresent in Space Opera, so what points in the story, specifically, do you feel would make audiences go, "Wait, why aren't they using a computer here?"

edited 10th Jan '17 10:48:46 AM by RavenWilder

The lasgun-shield interaction is precisely why melee combat is a thing in that universe. You suggest leaving that out, but what's left behind is a huge plot hole. Anyway, it's the sort of thing that can be delivered without too much clunky exposition.

Another thing that's a major plot point is the galactic taboo on the use of nuclear weapons ("atomics"). This not only sets up the reason why the Fremen are able to be any kind of threat (why wouldn't the Harkonnens, who are established as ruthless to the point of psychosis, employ weapons of mass destruction against the Arrakian natives?), but also the astonishment over the Atreides' use of them at the climax to breach the shield wall. (They get away with it under the legal technicality that they were using it on geography, not people.)

Amusingly, the David Lynch film more or less ignores the lasgun thing too, to the point where ranged combat is seen in many key scenes, including the climax. I believe the film establishes that the sandstorm shorts out everyone's shields, but a critical plot element is that this only gives tactical advantage to the Fremen, who were expecting it, and brought ranged weaponry specifically for the purpose of disabling the Emperor's starship.

The Lynch film also did that horrible thing with the sonic weaponry, that fans still haven't forgiven it for... hand to hand combat is the lynchpin of the Dune universe at the time of the story, so it makes no thematic sense to give the heroic faction unstoppable ranged superiority.

edited 10th Jan '17 1:54:37 PM by Fighteer

If you just have the shields block lasguns, though, rather than causing mutual destruction, then it has the same effect as far as the story is concerned (no one brings lasguns to battle because they're ineffective against enemies with shields), but is much simpler and easier to establish.

And the ban on atomics wouldn't require much explanation. In Real Life, dropping nuclear weapons on people is the biggest international taboo there is, something it's understood would turn almost everyone against you. Having the same hold true in the future barely even requires comment.

The fact that using a lasgun causes a fusion explosion to engulf both attacker and shield, however, is a plot point in later novels. Seems silly to leave it out entirely. The Great Convention against atomics is also a valuable thing to set up since it gets removed in later novels (along with shields) and people start blowing up planets as a result.

Frankly, I'm not sure a hypothetical series would get all the way to God Emperor, so maybe it's not a problem. If it doesn't, though, the ending of Children becomes a bit weird... or weirder, anyway.

Edited to add: The literary appeal of Dune is and always has been its extensive worldbuilding. The characters are stock heroic archetypes, for the most part. So a film adaptation that focuses too much on the characters is rather badly missing the point.

Fine, we don't need to leave in the bit about Paul being a Mentat, which is barely mentioned in passing in the novels, and more informs why he's so successful as a Kwisatz Haderach than it does drive the plot. ^note Him being given Mentat training is part of the masquerade concealing his potential as a KH, but that's way too subtle for a film plot. But the idea of political leaders using "human computers" is important to the story because it establishes why Piter DeVries (sp?) and Thufir Hawat are such crucial resources that someone like the Baron would go to all the trouble of keeping Thufir around instead of killing him.

edited 10th Jan '17 1:54:04 PM by Fighteer

By far the best option for adopting Dune would be as a space Game Of Thrones. Ten episodes would easily cover the contents of the first book. (And thanks to Game Of Thrones, people unfamiliar with the plot would actually be surprised at Paul winning, rather than taking it for granted.) We know from GOT that strong acting and great cinematography can get people to accept a lot in the way of exposition and world building.

edited 10th Jan '17 7:14:58 PM by Galadriel

That's pretty much what I was trying to get at. I think Fighteer's concerns can (and must) be addressed .. but that's unlikely to happen on the big screen, much less successfully. And yes, a small-screen adaptation raises budget concerns. But overcoming that (maybe by attracting HBO, or some other deep-pocketed backer) seems like a better gamble than overcoming the obstacles that a movie adaptation poses.

edited 11th Jan '17 8:41:50 AM by Jhimmibhob

Yes. Also, I had another thought about the Mentat thing — it may need to be addressed because it explains why Paul has Awesomeness by Analysis powers. The fact that the Dune universe has people trained to be living computers certainly covers the potential Plot Hole there.

edited 11th Jan '17 8:44:10 AM by Fighteer