I like most SciFi and am interested in thinking about some of the minutia in regards to the format I have consumed. This is the movie thread, not the book thread. Hence why I didn't say "I don't care about this," only that I have little invested in the IP as I have only watched the movies and played three games (two of which I didn't like) compared to the plethora of books and other media projects. I still like the Lynch movie over these two, but these two are acceptable when you don't have any books tainting your views.
Why our universe matters is because that's who the writers are writing for: an audience in our universe. All writers have to chose what the target demographic is, from reading this thread, it's obviously not hardcore book readers (the people heavily invested in the IP). They must take into account what would make more sense to their target audience (harder to break immersion), which, a much larger percent of the population know how "easy" it is to put things in orbit VS how weather works on other planets.
The jist of the whole scene, as I interpreted it, was that the southern hemisphere of Arrakis is mostly covered in a persistent deadly/unnavigable sandstorm, so "we didn't think anyone could live there." If anything, a movie watcher could speculate that, at the very least, a space ship would be needed to travel from any non-sandstorm areas in the south to the north. Since they never saw a ship traverse from the north to the south (or vise-versa) that they didn't think anyone lived there.
They decided that they didn't have the money/time/interest to add an in-depth Spacing Guild, so without rewriting both movies, saying they aren't allowed to orbit over the southern hemisphere because of the spacing guild has a no fly zone that the extremely rich and established Harkonnen would not find a way around, would be almost as dumb. You're continually trying to argue that it's not dumb, if only they would rewrite both movies to make it so. Well no shit, but that wasn't part of the original statement or my reply.
See, here's the issue: This is an adaption of an existing IP, and while you can talk about the movies all you want, that doesn't preclude the discussion of the movies as representation of that existing IP. You yourself are not sticking to what information was presented in the movies and are bringing your own interpretation and outside information to the movies. That's OK, too but it doesn't give you any kind of objective right to say "something is dumb" when it patently goes against information presented in the first movie. If the movies are their own thing, they have to live by the rules of that universe.
"The books tainting your views" Double U Tee EFF.
WTF is this easier to put things into orbit BS? Its Dune, not Earth 2024; it has no bearing about whatever happens with Starlink. "Well, we have computers so the audience won't understand they don't have computers." Baloney. It's a weakness in writing to not account for that, and that is what everyone has been saying. FYI, There are two major settlements on Arrakis, both mentioned in the first movie: Arrakeen and Carthag. They are both near the north polar region. Carthag is the old Harkonnen capital so the Atreides chose Arakeen to have less Harkonnen spies. The Harkonnen has been on Arrakis for 80 years. How did they not know that the people who survived in the desert were also surviving in the desert in the south? There are no ships ever flying from north to south or south to north or whatever headcannon you came up with to justify that stupid line. It takes place at 02:12:45 when the Barron is groveling to the Emperor about not knowing. The Harkonnen underestimating the Fremen numbers is a thing in the book as well, though, so maybe they are just brutal AND stupid.
You wouldn't have had to "rewrite both movies": You could literally add one scene with Liet Kynes or now Stilgar talking about how they pay the Spacing Guild in raw spice to keep the skies clear. They don't spend much more time than that on it in the book.
It is literally an example of "Modern Audience" story telling, the screen writer thinking he knows better than the original IP author. Thank the Maker DV didn't adapt LOTR. We will never get another adaption of that quality, which also has a ton of changes but they all seemed to be within the spirit of Tolkien. Of all the changes, all the dialogue moved around (Elves at Helms Deep and the Army of the Dead from under the Mountain are similar shortcuts!) but the movies were so great, so packed with story, and the rest of the scripts seemed so true that even those changes were forgiven (No one will ever know about Prince Imrahil <sadface>)
Many people in this thread have judged the movie on a dual scale; how it is as a Sci-fi movie, and how it is a Dune movie. You can look back over the thread and see how people judged it by each measure. It's been pretty great going back and reading how Herbert came up with some of these concepts: Caucasian fighters, arabic and Causasian words, He was going against the Asmovian SF grain of the day, which was Robots and lasers, so he basically made a world where there were no robots and troops had to fight with melee weapons, etc. The Ecology came from the sand dunes of Florence, Oregon, which he went to in the late 50's, the connections with mushrooms and psylocibin and all kinds of other things, some of which I knew previously and some I read for the first time.
Edit: Rewatching Part One, at 00:48:00, The Baron Harkonnen himself says "There are no satellites over Arrakis. The Atreides will die in the dark." Also in Part One, re: Harkonnen estimates of the Fremen; Duke Leto is overjoyed to learn there are millions of Fremen from Duncan Idaho, when the Harkonnen estimate was given at 50,000.
It's shocking how much a better Dune movie Part One is.
