The Upcoming Movies (and Movie Trailers) MegaThread!

[Cydonian Monk]

32 minutes ago, Superfluous J said:

Yes because if the GoT TV people showed anything, it was their ability to come up with their own ending to a series.

I'm honestly not sure which ending I was more disappointed in: "The Remembrance of Earth's Past" trilogy or the "Game of Thrones" TV series. 

[Nuke]

56 minutes ago, Cydonian Monk said:

I'm honestly not sure which ending I was more disappointed in: "The Remembrance of Earth's Past" trilogy or the "Game of Thrones" TV series. 

i kind of want this to keep going, get movies for all 6 books and maybe some of the expanded universe (i think the butlerian jihad series would make a good film series, perhaps hunters/sandworms, but i think id stop with those). maybe we can get dinklage to play bijaz. 

[tater]

I got sick of the books at some point after the initial 3.

[Cydonian Monk]

17 minutes ago, tater said:

I got sick of the books at some point after the initial 3.

I've tried many times to get through the 6th one (Chapterhouse). I can't tell you what happened in the 5th (Heretics) except for the very end. The 4th (Slugs for the Slug God) was just lots of slug boy and his good pal ghola potato. An interesting book in many ways, just... slooooow.

[Nuke]

1 hour ago, tater said:

I got sick of the books at some point after the initial 3.

sounds like you couldn't get through god emperor. i had this problem too, but managed to soldier on and even read it a second time. granted while the book is one of the best, it can be dialog intense which is a turn off for some readers. i know i have problems with long stretches of dialog, where i forget who is who and either have to back track or miss something important. probably try and find an audio book. 

Edited September 11, 2020 by Nuke

[kerbiloid]

 (Never was a fan of Dune and its feelosophy, but familiar with it since student times, and treating it as a nice comic setting).

The most strange thing I can see in Duna: why has the KSP Astronavigators' Guild still not possessed the whole galaxy, when they are the only one who can deliver the troops from planet to planet?

Ok, the Spice is a critical resource for their trips (in any sense), then why they just haven't declared the Arrakis their domain and deliver nobody to there?

6 hours ago, Nuke said:

i dont think the gender swap on kynes is a big deal.

But baron Harkonnen was at the head of the queue... Why not him?

Edited September 11, 2020 by kerbiloid

[tater]

1 hour ago, Nuke said:

sounds like you couldn't get through god emperor. i had this problem too, but managed to soldier on and even read it a second time. granted while the book is one of the best, it can be dialog intense which is a turn off for some readers. i know i have problems with long stretches of dialog, where i forget who is who and either have to back track or miss something important. probably try and find an audio book. 

Actually, I read God Emperor (just looked at the covers online). Think it was the next one where I bailed. I read God Emperor when it came out, actually.

Edited September 11, 2020 by tater

[Nuke]

7 hours ago, kerbiloid said:

 (Never was a fan of Dune and its feelosophy, but familiar with it since student times, and treating it as a nice comic setting).

The most strange thing I can see in Duna: why has the KSP Astronavigators' Guild still not possessed the whole galaxy, when they are the only one who can deliver the troops from planet to planet?

Ok, the Spice is a critical resource for their trips (in any sense), then why they just haven't declared the Arrakis their domain and deliver nobody to there?

But baron Harkonnen was at the head of the queue... Why not him?

Spoiler

 

the guild have essentially kept their method for creating the navigators a very closely guarded trade secret. if you were to take the extended universe as canon, then it was technically possible to do a blind jump with a holtzman drive but this was really unreliable. i think it was like a 1 in 5 chance (quoting from memory, which is probably bad) of a lethal misjump as precision was not guaranteed. there was also a slower but more reliable form of ftl, but it took months to travel between systems with it. but once the guild figured out how to use the spice to create prescient navigators they could use the drive flawlessly every time. this would cost a fortune, so they also established the guild bank to help pay for it all.

they started as a business like any other and their monopoly eventually elevated them to mythic proportions and gave them a lot of power in the emperium through things like trade embargoes or prohibiting the transport of troops. unless of course it was in the guild's interest. for example the guild actually had a secret arrangement with the fremen, the guild wouldnt deploy satellites and the fremen wouldn't interfere with spice harvesting operations, and the fremen provided them with a huge spice bribe. messing with the guild was really unadvised as a result, they could simply not show up at your planet anymore. and the fact that navigators had prescience probably helped keep espionage at bay. 

 

as for the baron, not a good candidate for a gender swap. cant have token characters portrayed as evil now, that would invalidate the intent. cancel culture is such a huge threat to the entertainment industry right now and if you dont throw them a bone they can cause a lot of trouble. its like negotiating with terrorists or giving into a 2 year old's tantrums. and thats why the doctor who season finale (possibly series finale) got pewned in the ratings by antiques roadshow in the uk. 

Edited September 11, 2020 by Nuke
forgot the spoiler tags

[Nuke]

7 hours ago, tater said:

Actually, I read God Emperor (just looked at the covers online). Think it was the next one where I bailed. I read God Emperor when it came out, actually.

thats odd, i found heretics to be a good read. its no god emperor, but it was good. i had a lot of problems with the extended universe books, they just feel sloppy, especially the early ones. like the house series just drags on and on and on. and those intermediate books that were forced in between the original books were terrible and a blatant cash grab. the jihad and schools books i thought had improved a lot. i cant say i was a huge fan of hunters or sandworms, fellt like a sloppy way to tie up loose ends. 

Edited September 11, 2020 by Nuke

[Gargamel]

12 hours ago, Cydonian Monk said:

"Game of Thrones" TV series. 

While I agree it wasn't the ending we all wanted, I think it was the right ending for the story.  I might have to give the last season another watching to see what I think again though. 

 

The new Dune trailer looks interesting.   I read the book a few decades ago, might have seen the original movie, but I never really got that deep into the story line.   I think I'll be able to watch this one with an open mind, not clouded with the original story.   Still might stink though. 

[Nuke]

2 minutes ago, Gargamel said:

While I agree it wasn't the ending we all wanted, I think it was the right ending for the story.  I might have to give the last season another watching to see what I think again though. 

i aint doing that again, so no got spinoffs for me, thanks. its just something i watched because scifi shows seemed to have dried up at the time. seems like were in a scifi boom at the moment and i have no need to delve into fantasy. 

Edited September 11, 2020 by Nuke

[kerbiloid]

(Possible spoiler)

Spoiler

  

33 minutes ago, Nuke said:

for example the guild actually had a secret arrangement with the fremen, the guild wouldnt deploy satellites and the fremen wouldn't interfere with spice harvesting operations, and the fremen provided them with a huge spice bribe. messing with the guild was really unadvised as a result, they could simply not show up at your planet anymore. and the fact that navigators had prescience probably helped keep espionage at bay. 

No problem about the fremen. As they don't want the sats, let it be no sats (though I can't see how can they see a black sat by eyes).

But why deliver others' troops to this planet? As I can see, the fremen also don't welcome the aliens, so why not just reject everyone's (including the emperor) demand to get to this planet?
Anyway nobody should argue with that, if he wants to keep delivering his troops to any other place.

 

[TheSaint]

12 hours ago, tater said:

I got sick of the books at some point after the initial 3.

This was me. I was reading the books after my brother was done with them. I had finished Children of Dune, and hadn't been terribly impressed. He was about 3/4 of the way through God Emperor, and he was all, "It's really wild. Like half the book takes place in one room." And, that was that, never even picked it up. I had better things to spend my reading time on. (IIRC, that was right about the time we discovered Larry Niven.)

15 hours ago, Cydonian Monk said:

I'm honestly not sure which ending I was more disappointed in: "The Remembrance of Earth's Past" trilogy or the "Game of Thrones" TV series. 

Still have not watched a single episode of Game of Thrones.

[tater]

3 minutes ago, TheSaint said:

Still have not watched a single episode of Game of Thrones.

I read the books, and the initial series was actually decently done. The last season though... they got past the GRRM source material, and the writers picked an end point and drove it there in a way very unlike the usual meandering progression.

[cubinator]

1 hour ago, tater said:

I read the books, and the initial series was actually decently done. The last season though... they got past the GRRM source material, and the writers picked an end point and drove it there in a way very unlike the usual meandering progression.

...Better or worse than the Rise of Skywalker?  

[Cydonian Monk]

4 minutes ago, cubinator said:

...Better or worse than the Rise of Skywalker?  

Way worse. GoT started to come unravelled in the fifth season, and got progressively worse from then on out... until the last season when they just kind of forgot about quality and basic character motivations. And, oh, the "winner" of the whole thing was a semi-major character they completely left out of one of those later seasons. 

Rise of Skywalker, with its weird unexplained resurrection at the start of it, is in some ways _almost_ closer to the Song of Ice and Fire books GoT was based on. (In that not everybody who dies stays dead.) I still don't like it, or what they did to Ben and Jerry, er, Rey, but it was nowhere near as "wut" as the GoT endings.

Spoiler

Imagine Rey snapped halfway through RoS for little to no reason with essentially zero explanation or preparation for it and she just started killing everybody in the galaxy except Kylo, who then kills her. (Actually she had more "dark side" foreshadowing than Daenerys did, so it'd make even more sense for Rey....)

And imagine the Falcon gets destroyed by a random new death star because Rey "just kind of forgot about a moon-sized battlestation". 

And then imagine Palps got crushed by five bricks and died. But only after fighting Jar Jar's annoying uncle Vat Vat in a really dumb duel after Vat Vat swam all the way from Naboo.  

And then one of the slave kids Anakin used to hang with on Tatooine became the new Emperor.

 

[TheSaint]

21 minutes ago, cubinator said:

...Better or worse than the Rise of Skywalker?  

You just reminded me. In an interview this week, Daisy Ridley confirmed what was already dreadfully obvious about the SW sequel trilogy: Nobody had a plan. Lucas must be so proud.

[Superfluous J]

2 hours ago, TheSaint said:

Still have not watched a single episode of Game of Thrones.

The first few seasons are amazing, and the entire book series (as much as I've read, at least) is too. I personally found the books much more palatable once I'd watched enough of the series to put a face to a name. The first chapter of the book drops about 50 names on you and assumes you know all of them by heart. I actually stopped reading the first time because of it.

If you ever do give the series a start, this is a helpful image of how the nuance of the show changes over time.

 

Edited September 11, 2020 by Superfluous J

[Nuke]

10 hours ago, kerbiloid said:

(Possible spoiler)

  Hide contents

  

No problem about the fremen. As they don't want the sats, let it be no sats (though I can't see how can they see a black sat by eyes).

But why deliver others' troops to this planet? As I can see, the fremen also don't welcome the aliens, so why not just reject everyone's (including the emperor) demand to get to this planet?
Anyway nobody should argue with that, if he wants to keep delivering his troops to any other place.

 

Spoiler

the fremen don't actually control the planet. they more or less live under the emperor's boot at the start of the book. arrakis is a fiefdom that the emperor grants to one of the great houses for the purposes of spice production. while the freman can gather enough spice to maintain their arrangement with the guild and hide their numbers, they are not capable of large scale production, which the guild also wants to be maintained. prior to the events in dune the guild, the emperor, and the landsraad (you can think of it as the equivalent to the u.n. for the great houses) all maintain a balance of power. its only when this is threatened that all hell breaks loose. 

 

[Nuke]

8 hours ago, TheSaint said:

This was me. I was reading the books after my brother was done with them. I had finished Children of Dune, and hadn't been terribly impressed. He was about 3/4 of the way through God Emperor, and he was all, "It's really wild. Like half the book takes place in one room." And, that was that, never even picked it up. I had better things to spend my reading time on. (IIRC, that was right about the time we discovered Larry Niven.)

i think im gonna do some niven books next. ive been doing asimov, reading the foundation series and id just finished the main trilogy (which i liked despite being kind of old fashioned). i regret not reading a lot of classic scifi.

[benzman]

I have tried to read Dune a couple of times but give up after twenty pages or so.  I guess that sort of thing just does not float my boat.

 

[Superfluous J]

18 hours ago, benzman said:

I have tried to read Dune a couple of times but give up after twenty pages or so.  I guess that sort of thing just does not float my boat.

 

The first time through for me was a slog as well.

The second time though I just skipped every chapter with the Harkonnens in it. Much much better story. Shorter too.

Related to this: The last time I read The Lord of the Rings trilogy, for The Two Towers and Return Of The King I read them in a kind of "movie order." I swapped between books 1 and 2, reading a chapter of each at a time. It broke up the Frodo/Sam stuff and made it not quite so much of a slog.

[Shpaget]

On 9/9/2020 at 8:43 PM, Spaceception said:

You know, I realized after I saw that trailer that I probably had the chance to get Dune at the bookstore just the other day. It wasn't on my mind then, but it is now.

You know, you could go back to the bookstore and get it.

On 9/11/2020 at 2:16 AM, Superfluous J said:

Yes because if the GoT TV people showed anything, it was their ability to come up with their own ending to a series.

Wasn't it some sort of a big deal back then that they managed to get GRRM to tell them the ending so that they can film before the novels come out?

[kerbiloid]

I was just skipping all its philosophy after the sacred revelations like "it's more artistic to kill with edge than with point", and other showing off, from the (like their history showed a few chapters later) losers who were totally defeated with a single strike.
The story became much more dynamic and reasonable, though as I said above, actually the whole saga should occupy just one paragraph:

The Guild of Astronavigators asked the Emperor and the Galactic Council:
"Is it ok if that dry and useless planet is ours, while all of you keep trading, and Your Majesty can deliver the troops to be the galactic Majesty, rather than just Salusa Secundus's one? No objections, we hope?"
Everyone had just silently nodded.
"Very well, friends, then let's discuss our future cooperation."

The thing that liquided me off when I first read it, is that the author is sure than running across a desert in hazmat and gasmask is much better than without it.
One this idea provides Duna with a place of honor in the hall of shame, in the corresponding thread.

Upd.
And btw, no Bene Hesserits onboard.
"A woman onboard is a bad luck, especially if she's a professional brainwasher.", like the old nav proverb teaches.
Exactly that case.

Edited September 13, 2020 by kerbiloid

[Superfluous J]

1 hour ago, Shpaget said:

Wasn't it some sort of a big deal back then that they managed to get GRRM to tell them the ending so that they can film before the novels come out?

I do not recall that at all. If they did, he flat out lied to them because there's no way he'd have actually thought that was a good ending.