Jodorowsky's Dune

[tony]

Anyone seen it?

[QOA]

On Thursday, February 5, 2015 at 6:59:15 PM UTC-5, tony wrote:
> Anyone seen it?

i have. it's quite a good documentary though that may depend on your opinion of the subject material and jodorowsky himself.

i wouldn't necessarily expect a movie adaptation to be an in the flesh version of the book so i think it would have been quite good. most importantly though i think they did a good job chronicling the process of attempting to make this movie. i happen to be fond of jodorowsky too so that helps.

i don't want to ruin too much but jodorowsky would have taken liberties. i would compare it to some of the movies made from philip k dick stories, like blade runner or total recall. in other words he would have made use of the dune universe and elements of the story to create his own work. it would have been, jodorowsky's dune indeed.

[tony]

"QOA" wrote -

<snip>

Tony replied:

I liked Jodorowsky's ambition: to change the world through art. He hoped
the movie would just bring everyone to a higher state of consciousness.
This was a strange idea to be sure, but it was not so strange knowing the
type of movies he had made in the past. For example, has anyone seen El
Topo? In addition, as I understand it, Jodorowsky wasn't trying to make a
faithful version of the book, but a version that would convey a similar
sequence of emotions that readers experienced from the book.

I think the analogy between Philip K. Dick movie adaptations and Jodorowsky
is a good one. However, personally I didn't find that Ridley Scott's
version of "Blade Runner" was an improvement over the novel "Do Androids
Dream of Electric Sheep." Ridley Scott's version left me depressed, while
Philip K. Dick's version left me inspired.

[Ed Stasiak]

> QOA

>
> i wouldn't necessarily expect a movie adaptation to be an in the flesh version
> of the book so i think it would have been quite good.

Agreed. I recently watched "Jodorowsky's Dune" and it's a fascinating documentary
and Jodorowsky was (and still is IMO) passionate about "Dune" and there are all
kinda interesting parts to the tale of his efforts to make the movie.

For instance, he cast his 12-year old son as Paul and to insure he'd be able to
effectively and realistically do the combat scenes, he forced him to take two years
of unrelenting daily martial arts training with one of France's top instructors (who
apparently is a total hard-ass military drill instructor).

But had Jodorowsky made his version of "Dune", it would have been a terrible
adaption of the novel while at the same time, a very cool sci-fi movie and I kinda
feel bad that it never got made.

And oddly, Frank Herbert apparently was cool with Jodorowsky's vision for the film,
despite it having only a passing relation to his original story.

Even for those who aren't hard-core fans of the "Dune" series, I highly recommend
watching this documentary.

[tony]

I has forgotten how Jodorwosky had been grooming his son to play Paul.
Although I like the idea of having a young, teenage actor play Paul, I
thought that casting ones son in that role was inappropriate because it was
likely to place too much pressure on a young inexperienced actor.

[415f...@gmail.com]

I viewed it, opened an alternative thoughts on Dune books

[Thomas Korn]

On Thursday, February 5, 2015 at 2:59:15 PM UTC-9, tony wrote:
> Anyone seen it?

I would have loved to have seen Jodorosky's version come to the screen. While he did take liberities with the ending.. that was a brilliant cinematic adaptation I thought kept the spirit of the book. Plus, Orson Wells as the Baron? Tell me you didn't want to see that?

The novels do not lend themselves to cinematic action. Everyone is trying to guess what's going on inside everyone elses heads while preventing action. This would be nothing but endless voice over for almost all the charactrers if you were to follow the letter of the novel. Rather tedious visually speaking. The Sci Fy channel got it all wrong..and they had 8 hours to spread the story out.

Jodorosky would have at least made it cinematic (not having it rain at the end is a huge plus IMHO.)