I had originally planned to share a very different video, a low-budget sci-fi feature, not short, called Magellan. But just as I was going to press SEND on my post I discovered that the movie was no longer available on YouTube. Damn. Ah, the impermanence of our online media. That’s why I still buy discs if it’s something that I want to “keep” because you never know when some license gets pulled or sold and you can’t catch up on that series that you were meaning to watch but didn’t have the time and now isn’t available on the service that created it (I’m looking at you, WestWorld!). Anyway, a little research later and I found that it had been moved. I’ll put the links below. But because I can’t embed it into my post, I’ve decided to share the new trailer for the upcoming Dune Part Two.

I love the Dune saga. I read all six of Frank Herbert’s original six novels. Dense books, I lost whole summers reading them, imagining them. I even loved the David Lynch movie, though all the whispering voice-over work was more than a little annoying. And the special effects were definitely 1980s pre-CGI quality. The “huge” battles reminded me of the sad little army of dozens fighting in Star Trek V: Why Does God Need a Star Ship? We would have to wait until Peter Jackson’s Lord of the Rings trilogy beginning in 2001 before we’d see a convincing clash of thousands of mostly CGI soldiers. 

The Dune miniseries (2001/2003) had far less money than the David Lynch movie, but the special effects were a little more tolerable, though it was clear that anything “big” was early CGI. But what I really liked about the miniseries was that it brought back the ambiguity about who was manipulating whom and the role of religious fanaticism that was in the books but was almost comical in the Lynch movie. All of which leads us back to last year’s Dune Part 1 and the upcoming Part 2. Like the miniseries, the Denis Villeneuve version seems to be taking its time to tell its story. I was going to write that the good versus bad aren’t quite as black and white, but then watching the trailer the Harkonnens are definitely monochromatic, which must mean something. It’ll be interesting to see if the smallness of human spirit isn’t lost in all of the spectacle and noise. 

Always remember:

I must not fear.
Fear is the mind-killer.
Fear is the little-death that brings total obliteration.
I will face my fear.
I will permit it to pass over me and through me.
And when it has gone past, I will turn the inner eye to see its path.
Where the fear has gone there will be nothing. Only I will remain.
  • Dune Part 2
    Dune Part 2
  • Dune Part 2
    Dune Part 2
  • Dune Part 2
    Dune Part 2

Sources:

Click the following links to watch Magellan on: