Movies are awesome because they’re huge and loud and sweaty and weird, like the sun, or Jay Cutler’s arms. Even the leanest movies are still massive storytelling bodies; big buckets o’ character and plot just barreling towards the end of their runtimes with complete disinterest as to whether or not anyone is actually watching them. They’re powered more by inertia than anything else. They’re lithe because they’re huge. It’s neat.

Anyway, my initial idea was to review movie-Dune, but after listening to audiobook-Dune I became preoccupied with the differences between the two, because as it turns out every book ever written is only three edits away from being the Unabomber’s manifesto.

Observation One: Brevity vs. Conveying Every Single Thing the Character Has Ever Thought, Ever, Regardless of Context or Relevance to the Plot

The best thing about a movie is also the best thing about owning a dog, or an HP laptop: neither one lasts very long, so if you’re not digging the experience you can just kind of veg until it’s over. A movie goes for two hours, give or take, and so it only has that small window to tell its story. A book, conversely, lasts for as long as it takes someone to read it. Given these stark differences in Time Allotted To Get The Fucking Point Across, it’s not surprising that different classes of creative people gravitate towards each medium – those who prioritize leanness and swiftness of storytelling bend towards movies, whereas books are preferred by serial killers and the kind of person at a party who keeps telling you about something that happened to them once, but they keep acting like you were there, which you weren’t, and also it was a dream. These are important differences, and cast downstream effects on the rest of the narrative-crafting process.

To prove this point I will now reconstruct, to the best of my ability, a scene found in both Dune-the-movie and Dune-the-rantings-of-a-madman-who-loved-mushrooms-more-than-I-will-ever-be-able-to-love-a-human-baby.

In ze film:

• The Baron is found convalescing in a vat of bean broth after nearly being assassinated, like you do. This highlights for the audience how the dude damn near bit it a few scenes earlier, and also that we’re in a sci-fi movie, where even the science of healing is abstruse and unempirical. There’s virtually no talking in this scene, and the weirdness of the world and the tone of our villain’s agenda are presented to us through the vectors of all our other senses. It’s wonderful, lean, deliciously cinematic. I feel like I’m in the world; I can practically smell the farts escaping from the Baron’s skin folds. Fart verisimilitude. Yes.

Book:

• In the book Dune before we even get to this bean-bath part of the story there is a long internal monologue by the Baron in which he reassesses his security detail and then promotes someone else to be his head guard. If you’re wondering what bearing this has on the plot, don’t worry, the answer is none, but it’s always good to witnesses the dry managerial aspects of being a space-dictator, like that famous sequence in Empire where Vader quietly does paperwork for several minutes while occasionally humming the first few lines of “Lips are Movin.”

Advantage Dune: Movie Version. This one is easy, because if I don’t have the time to consider everything that pops into my own head then I really don’t have the time to ponder every pretendo-thought that squeaks out of the grey matter of a large man in a space-hammock.

Let us continue, respectful and with minds bent towards scholarly intrigue, to the next dumb fucking thing that makes absolutely no goddamn sense.

Movie Dune!

• The Baron’s not-so-bright nephew Rabban – played admirably by a lump of protein pushed into the crude outline of Dave Bautista – shows up and asks if he missed anything good, also where is De Vries, I love that guy. The Baron, just splashing around and living his best life in an ocean of curd, informs him that they’re going to have to make back the money they spent on the coup by pushing planet Arrakis even harder for profits. Rabban accepts this task and asks about the Fremen, the natives who still occupy wide swaths of the planet. Bean Baron’s response?                                                                                                                                                                                                                  “Kill them all.”                                                                                                                                                                                                            That’s a beautiful distillation of plot into a filmable moment, masterfully rendered as to convey the import through raw emotion and minimal exposition. If you’re not rock hard right now then maybe you should find another hobby, because this is movie-porn.

Book Dune!

• The Baron isn’t doing any bean-based rejuvenating in the book – we just find him in his room, swinging from his admittedly awesome space hammock, considering firing the same guard he promoted a few scenes earlier which, while still completely pointless from a narrative standpoint, at least wraps up the caustic and white-hot “Baron considers making another personnel decision, but then decides not to” arc. Anyway, the Baron then explains the plot of the entire book so far, oftentimes expounding on plotlines that we’ve never seen, never will see, and have no bearing whatsoever on the plot. The same guard from before just kind of nods and keeps agreeing to everything, which might make the him the most relatable character in the book.                                                                                                                                            But don’t worry! Rabban finally shows up. Now we’re getting somewhere!                                                                                                                                                                                                              Except we’re not. The Baron then explains everything he just explained to the guard to Rabban except weaving in even more commentary on characters, guilds, and the efficacy of paperwork (most of his monstrous schemes are paperwork-based. The whole Arrakis thing is probably just a feint and the Baron’s real goal is to file a false insurance claim). Oh, also, Rabban is literally never seen again and all of these machinations come to essentially nothing, because Frank Herbert had mushrooms growing in his brain.

Everyone is Ugly and Gross vs. Everyone is Beautiful and Cool and Their Only Flaws Are Those Trendy Flaws That You Like to Pretend That You Have, Like Being Too Kind or Working Too Hard, Instead of a Believable Flaw, Like Lactose Intolerance

Because books are unconstrained by time, and because authors are weirdos who have no idea what qualities are found in a likable human, characters in sci-fi novels are oftentimes more robustly-realized than their film counterparts.

Tables will support my cause:

 

Gurney Halleck

Book Gurney	Movie Gurney
Former lowlife, reformed by Duke Leto. Now exhibits unwavering loyalty to his retainer. Is also is a poet-warrior of some renown. Feels both professional and moral obligations to train Paul, while also loving the young man like a brother.	Has a goatee and runs weird. Yells more than I do when I remember that I’m going to die one day.

 

Duke Leto

Book Leto	Movie Leto
Both a towering cock and a good dad. The former is in many ways little better than the cynical heads of the other houses: sends men on suicide missions; wants to take advantage of the Fremen to build an army for his own selfish purpose. The latter loves his son and tries to balance the awful responsibilities of being a leader in the world of Dune with something vaguely resembling humanity.	Danny Tanner with a beard.  Goes full Mufasa whenever his son has doubts. Is Oscar Isaac.

The Villains

Book Villains	Movie Villains
Strongly implied to be pedophiles.	Not strongly implied to be pedophiles.

Paul

Book Paul	Movie Paul
Borderline narcissistic, yet also well-intentioned. Has Jesus powers. Is scheming against everyone in his life, including his mother and several babies, but is also genuinely concerned for others. Loves his Fremen wife, but is open to nailing the Emperor’s daughter.	Solid cheekbones.

The End

Reading the book that a science fiction film is based off of is fascinating for the same reason I assume people want to listen to Charles Manson’s recordings, or look at one of Hitler’s paintings: it’s fascinating and even a little instructive to try and locate the incipient strands of crazy contained within an otherwise unassuming work, to try to determine the exact point in the creative process where the artist lost their fucking mind. A movie is basically a filter designed to remove all this extraneous crazy, like sifting river-water for gold, or at least a precious metal that isn’t uncomfortably cool with pedophilia as a storytelling device.

But authors, who are actually insane, still deserve credit for providing the initial mass of Stuff, the giant pile of crazy from which a coherent narrative will eventually be carved. Every Harold Ramis needs a Dan Aykroyd, basically – someone to sit in a chair and say crazy shit while the half of the battery who isn’t demonstrably insane edits out the weirder strokes. That’s the tradeoff required to craft good art in a collaborative setting: you can get a Ghostbusters, but someone has to animate a sequence in which a ghost blows Dan Aykroyd. Welcome to Hollywood.