Do you remember that nagging sense of mild disappointment as you sat through Dune 2? You’d been impressed by Dune: bit of a recondite plot if you hadn’t read the book but great to look at, with an austere art-house aesthetic, like Star Wars for people with an IQ. But then the sequel sold out. It turned a minor character from the book into the heroine of a stereotypical Hollywood romance, which not even the excitement of the sandworm-riding scenes could quite redeem.
No disrespect to Brian Aldiss,but I think of ‘Brian’as a sort of joke name
Anyway its latest screen incarnation, Dune: Prophecy, is worse, much worse. To give you an idea of how bad it is, its original title was Dune: Sisterhood (before presumably someone realised: ‘Is that really the ideal marketing tool in a genre mainly enjoyed by young males who aren’t that much interested in watching empowered womenfolk being stunning and brave’). And it’s based on a book by someone called Brian Herbert (son of Dune creator Frank).
No disrespect to Brian Aldiss, whose sci-fi books I haven’t read and is probably the great exception to my Brianist rule. But generally, I think of ‘Brian’ (as did the Monty Python team) as a sort of joke name. Brian Cant from Play Away; Brian the Snail from The Magic Roundabout; Brian Eno from Roxy Music; Brian Blessed from Flash Gordon. I’m not suggesting that they are not lovable (well, apart from that annoying suburban snail, which I always loathed) or entertaining characters. But I wouldn’t trust anyone with that name to write a halfway decent sequel or prequel to one of the best-selling sci-fi novel series ever.
Nor, by the look of Dune: Prophecy, did he.
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