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’).
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