Waterstone Media Podcast #4 - Dune and Adaptations
This week, Taylor and I dove headfirst into the waters of adaptations! I hope you enjoy.
If you'd like to listen to the audio on the go, you can find all the links here:
Transcript:
Ryan: Top of the morning, everyone, and welcome to another episode of the Waterstone media podcast. As always, I am joined by my friend and fellow writer, Taylor crook. Taylor, how are you doing today?
Taylor: I'm excellent. Thanks. How are you?
Ryan: I am doing well. What have you been up to in the world of writing and publishing?
Taylor: Well, that one chapter that I had to write for infernal shadow that would allow me to get back to my editing's spawned some, I believe you referred to them as baby chapters. So there's a little bit more writing, but I've actually been really quite enjoying that writing and found that the changes I've made to the characters, or I guess, I guess the changes I've made to the development of the character.
Uh, in the book, they're probably still gonna end up in the same places. It's just, it's a little more earned [00:01:00]now and those are all it's it's, I'm excited about it. So it's, it is a good news bit of extra work that I'm doing. So I don't mind at all. I'm happy to be writing those chapters and it's been fun to get into that world with a chapter writing mindset, as opposed to an editing mindset and give them my sort of.
More, uh, practiced touch as it were. Uh, so yeah, it's looking pretty good on him for Infernal shadow. It's it's been, it's been a lot of fun in the last couple last couple of chapters, for sure.
Ryan: Very nice. What, what percentage would you say that you are through that?
Taylor: Like the editing process as a whole, like yeah.
48. Cause I feel like I'm more than halfway through the book, but I feel like once I finished this edit and like big rewrite, I think I'm just going to run it back one more time. I think I'm going to [00:02:00] have to just go back and do another one only because I'm changing so many things that I'm going to have to make sure that the continuity on the things that I changed is, is still there.
So storylines that have been removed, I have to make sure there aren't any little hints at stuff that don't go anywhere. Stairways to nowhere air and everything like that. Uh, and then I think there's going to be just some more, you know, the grammar stupidity. I might actually do my next readthrough on pro writing aid and try and do it sort of two, two birds with one stone.
Okay. So, because I shouldn't be adding any big chunks of paragraph or anything like that, that stuff should be done and should be more about removing things that are leading to nowhere or setting up things that didn't get set up properly. So it's, it is a, it's a messier process for sure. But that's what happens when it's been two years since I've seen this book.
So.
Ryan: I enjoy how specific your answer was to the question of percentages. [00:03:00]
Taylor: It wasn't quite half 48 seemed right. Uh, how about you? What you working on?
Ryan: I have been very busy, both writing the next, last sword book. As well as getting everything ready for the launch of fall of forgotten gods, which happens on Wednesday.
Taylor: Beautiful.
Ryan: It has been very fun, but it is definitely the most complicated launch that I've put together in a while because I started the membership program earlier in the year. So there are different editions going out to members that require a fair amount of extra work to put together, but it's been really fun.
I've really enjoyed doing that and I'm excited to share it with the world.
Taylor: Good. And you were saying that your membership program is, is getting some [00:04:00] pretty quick traction that you were maybe not expecting to ramp up so quickly.
Ryan: I was very pleased to see as many readers running the membership as they did.
Taylor: That's cool.
Ryan: I, yeah, my readers are fantastic.
Taylor: Perfect. Well, they're welcome to dabble in my books as well.
Ryan: So today we are talking about adaptations and specifically we were talking about adaptations with the movie dune the most recent one that just came out and let's start off with just a very easy, very softball question. Taylor, did you like the new movie
and why?
Taylor: I loved it? I loved it. And to be fair, there is a very large place in my heart for the 19, [00:05:00] what is it? 80, 87. The Lynch one. I can't remember when it was either way. There's a big place in my heart for that. I think John or Jean-Luc Picard, I think big Patrick Stewart as gurney Hallok is one of my favorite things. Uh, yeah, so it's. I had this discussion with my buddy that I was watching it with.
And it's not, I love this dune and that is clearly the better movie, but that's not to say that I dislike the, the old one. It just, you know, there's challenges when you're trying to adopt a book as ambitious as dune in 1987.
Ryan: Um, what were some of the things that stood out to you as being your favorite parts of the newest version?
Taylor: So there's a couple things that I thought they did really well. And it's, I guess it'll be kind of geared towards this conversation more because the last time I watched it, it was with this podcast in [00:06:00]mind, but I thought that they did a really good job distilling everything that you need to know about house Atreides Atreides and who they are and what they stand for into a couple of establishing scenes.
In the beginning of the movie, because it's already a lengthy movie. We, there's no way that we can go into the history of all of these things and, and be set up the way we need to be set up to understand what the Atreides are to this world the same way they did it in a book. So they had, they have that scene and there's, there's actually a quote it's there's the scene where the, the Envoy from the emperor comes.
Basically is giving the Atreides, uh Arakis and Leto says, I wrote down the quote here. Um, but obviously it's not easily accessible. Lado says something along the lines of, I here it is there is no call. We do not [00:07:00] answer. There is no faith that we betrayed. And I don't believe that's a line in the book, but I thought it was a really good distillation of duke Leto Atreides.
And house Atreides as a whole and what it means for the lands ride, because it lets you, I was like, oh, okay. So this is, and you know, and they're all there and they're sort of crispy uniforms and on kaledin and looking very formal. And I just thought, I thought it was a good, I thought they handled that really well.
Ryan: When you think of what makes a good adaptation, what are the first things that spring to mind for you?
Taylor: So if you had asked me this, when I was younger, I would have said, well, how faithful is it to the book? You know, I would have, I wouldn't have been very firm on. If you're adapting, you're adapting the book, you better be beat, beat by beat.
You better be absolutely true to it. And Lord of the rings does a very good job. [00:08:00] Obviously he doesn't get everything, but so that was my, sort of my bar for it. But I think now that I'm a little bit older and I see I've seen different versions of adaptations as a whole, I think as long as you're putting together a good product, that is true to what the actual story is.
If you can do something like I just described and, and distill. Uh, a greater message in a, in an establishing scene, then good on you, more power to you because the last thing you want is for it to be a slog as well. Like, you know, you don't want to take a book like the Hobbit and drag it into three movies and add a bunch of stuff that wasn't there, you know?
I think, I think that it's, what's the, what's the movie that you're putting out because at the end of the day, you're putting out a movie, you're not putting out a book and those are two different mediums. So again, we talked about this offline a little bit, but the MCU is just one big adaptation of [00:09:00] various comic book storylines.
And there's obviously a little more freedom with comic storylines because writer to writer characters changed so much in comic books anyway. So it's not like just because they did the infinity stones and Thanos and those things. It didn't mean they had to do it exactly like they did last time because that's the nature of comic books anyway.
But the point is they treated the characters well, and they, the changes that they made were beneficial and were made with the idea that you're writing a movie. And you're creating a movie here. So what, what makes sense for that medium? And then at the end of the day, stay true to the, the important parts of the source material.
Ryan: So I actually want to focus in on that because I think that's an important piece. And you mentioned it twice because I was counting, but when you say. That you want something to stay true to the story, even if it doesn't necessarily mean following the original story [00:10:00] beat for beat, what is it that you mean when you say stay true to the story?
Taylor: I think it means to try not to betray the, the vision that the author had when he wrote that story. If they, if they decided to have Frodo,. you know, use the ring of power and defeat Sauron because he became all powerful instead, then you've betrayed what the point of the story is, if you, and obviously that's not what they did, but they're there, you can make changes in between a good example is in captain America, Bucky was Captain America's like sidekick.
He was kind of like the Robin to captain America's Batman. And that is way, way less. Sort of engaging. I think then Bucky being the sort of older brother figure that always stuck up for Steve Rogers before he took the serum. [00:11:00] And then when they, then, then, then their relationship when they become sort of more equal partners, or I guess when captain American surpasses him, Has more impact because there's a changing of roles there.
So that's the kind of change you can make. And I guess if you really wanted to get nitpicky and be up in arms about changing, oh, well, Bucky wasn't this before. Well, listen, let's, let's make it work again for the movies. So I think, I think at the end of the day, you have to find. Well, you know, what's the, what is the, what's the point of the story?
What's the arc, what's the, what are the characters have to go through to get to where they're going? And the changes you make in between can be fine. As long as the yard, you aren't changing that overall arc too much.
Ryan: One of the things that I think about when it comes to adaptations, which is really tricky to nail down is how a story makes you feel.
And we can go to Lord of the rings as being an excellent [00:12:00] example of this. Because when I watch the movies, watching the movies makes me feel the same as when I'm reading the books. There is darkness and despair. There is hope, and there is wonder there is bravery and courage and perseverance. And I think that it is grabbing onto you that for lack of a better term, the heart of a story that makes an adaptation work.
And I think I feel the same way about dune watching dune made me feel the same way that reading the book made me feel. And I think that when you were transferring between one medium and another, that's no small feat.
Taylor: Nope.
Ryan: That's everything from the music to the dialogue, to you, the costume [00:13:00] choices, every detail feeds into that feeling and getting enough of it right, so that those feelings match one another between mediums is I think a very impressive and challenging feat.
Taylor: Agreed. Yeah. It's that tone. You got to find the tone of the book and make that the tone of the movie. And particularly when we're dealing with a pretty old book here, we're, we're dealing with a book that is a, you know, it's classic science fiction.
And some of the things actually I watched, I mentioned a buddy that I watched his name's Peter Ivy, and he's, he's also an author. Um, he wrote the Lost Tribe series. If anybody wants to check that out there, they're pretty fun read they're they're nicely written book books, but he's, he's a little older than Ryan and I, and he was a little more.
Probably present when that kind of thing was happening. And I talked to Ryan offline about him being, he, you know, he subscribed to if magazine and he read [00:14:00] short science fiction, short stories when they came out in magazines and he just came up sort of in a different time. And one of the nice things that he pointed out is that even the spaceship designs in, in dune kind of harken back to those magazines from the seventies, like basically from the seventies to eighties, And with authors like Asimov and Herbert and such, and it really hard and harken back to what you saw in those space designs from that time, which I didn't necessarily, it didn't clue into me, but it felt right.
And that's probably why it felt right, because it was, it was within that era that they had there. So it's a little things like that. And then, I mean, another thing I did want to talk about was casting and I think casting is still important when you're trying to capture a character and it's so hard. Uh, character is a character in an, in a person's head.
It's, you know what Paul Atreides looks like to me is different than what Paul Atreides look like to you probably. So you just got to hope that you cast somebody that is, that is close enough, that everyone kind of collectively agrees. Yeah. Oh yeah. Yeah. That works. That's Paul Atreides. [00:15:00]
Ryan: And how did you feel that dune succeeded in that regard or failed perhaps?
Taylor: No, I thought I thought they were off the charts. Good. I thought everybody was, was really, really well cast. Uh, you know, the beast where van was as about what about Tiesta was good. I thought if you wanted to get really Nick P picky Rabanne was a bit of, he was sort of a bit more of a brutish, you know, sort of out there, evil kind of guy and you, you know, Battista was a little bit subdued, but then Baron Harkonnen was as well.
And I mean, Skarsgaard has Harkonnen. And also if you'd like, I could do anything, so no worries there, but he was always sort of like, I always. Pictured or thought of Emma? He he's like flamboyantly evil, H his, his, he revels in being malicious and. You know, nasty to people. And I just didn't get that sense from him.
You know, he was kind of intimidating and he looked odd and [00:16:00] the way Skarsgard played him was off kilter. So it certainly made you feel uneasy around him. But the, Harkonnen in the books to me was always, he was sort of almost like super-villain quality of, of a, of a nasty guy. And that I didn't feel that came through as well, but otherwise I was I'm I, you know, Oscar, Isaac incredible timid me that Charlemagne incredible Zendaya as Chari was, was great.
Uh, for the record, anyone that's picked up path yet, uh, my vote for playing shin is Zendaya. So we'll, we'll work on that for you guys if we can. Uh, but yeah.
Ryan: Sorry. I was just going to say, I, the one thing that I'm taking away from all of that is I need to write the phrase, flamboyantly, evil into one of my next stories. I'm not sure I've ever heard those two words put side-by-side and I really like it.
Taylor: It doesn't that describe Harkonnen. Well, like he's like, he is very [00:17:00] much like he's a, he's kind of like this, like flouncy aristocrat that.
That is pure evil and, you know, he indulges and he's yeah, he's a nasty guy, but yes. So overall I would say casting's great. Uh, the, and definitely not a casting issue, I guess a good example of, we were talking about finding the heart of the story and translating it between mediums and on a more micro scale, I would say.
Finding the heart of the characters and translating them through mediums, the important, and a really wonderful example of that I thought was Leah kines, who they switched both gender and, um, race, but it didn't matter because the actor was, she was phenomenal and she embodied Leah kines so well, which is a tough role because Leah kines plays this.
[00:18:00] Imperial appointed, uh, imperially appointed, uh, I guess scientist, whatever, but she basically has a foot in both camps in terms of she's reporting to the emperor, but she's is very much a Fremen. And they show her walking those worlds so well, would you?
And they do it really well because they cut out a really pivotal scene from the book with her, where they're having dinner. They're having this big dinner and there's, um, you know, it's, uh, it's a really. Sort of aristocratic sort of double-talk kind of dinner and she kind of does, or I guess he in the book, but really shows there that football who are there, they just, they scrapped that.
She's got to show that in three or four scenes. And, and nails it. So it's that idea of tone. And then the other one that originally I thought they were doing an injustice to was, was Jessica was the, was the bene gesserit at consort of duke Leto. And the whole thing with the bene gesserit is that they are just river, this, this [00:19:00] seed of calm in the raging rivers of emotions around them.
And it seemed to me like every other scene. Jessica was like breaking down and having to compose herself. And I, and at first, my first watch through, I was like, I don't know if I liked that. Like, I'm not going to let it ruin the movie, but she supposed to be this really composed person. And then I realized that in the books, yeah, she's super composed, but her whole, the whole first act is her struggling with her son being her son and her aunt and her, you know, not husband, but, and the duke son.
As well as being part of a prophecy that the bene gesserit at one, or like he's, he's stuck in all these different worlds as well. And so she's really, but her, all of her turmoil, his internal monologue and what are you going to do and what you can't show that in a movie. So what do they do? They have her poised and composed, and then she closes the door and she breaks down for a second.
And then when she has to go see somebody else, she composes herself. And I thought that was great. It's great. She's still she's. It allows [00:20:00] us to see how much she's struggling with the two different ways that she's being pulled. And, and it lets us show that yeah, she is this bene gesserit and she is mastering her emotions.
So I thought that was a really well done too. And it just, it speaks to how important, that tone thing that you talked about is.
Ryan: I think about the difficulty of adapting, something very complex. I think I still think there is no better format for a deeply complex story than the novel. We just don't have anything for it quite yet. Um, even an enormous show that ran for. Hundreds of hours, like game of Thrones still needs to cut out a lot of the world building to fit on the screen.
And so I think of what you're talking [00:21:00]about there. How do you adapt? Well, a person's inner monologue. To the screen. It's a challenging process.
Taylor: Yeah. And, and it, and it just goes to show how much we take for granted. What actors do you don't even think about? Why you like an actor? Here's I really like everything that actors in there.
Good. That's the kind of thing you say, but it's an art form that I have no idea. I don't know. I've never acted a day in my life. So it's an art form that I don't really understand, but like you said, like, you know, it, it took me a second, but I think for someone who hadn't watched the movie before, they would see, oh, okay.
She composes herself. Gotcha. Like if like, that's, you know, that's sort of the thing, which is a whole other part of this is my, my, another friend of mine watched the movie and hadn't read the books and I had kind of said to him, he said, you know, how was it the second time? And I said, ah, you know, it's a very good movie, but I don't know how rewatchable it is.
I don't know [00:22:00] that it's necessarily something that I could just put on. And so he got back to me and he said, I would say it's very rewatchable, but only because I have to watch it again to find out who everyone is talking about, because there's no handholding, which is, I mean, there's no hand holding in the book either.
So. So he, so I said, yeah, and, but he, he said the same thing I did. He said the, well, he called it the Precog stuff. But, uh, he was talking about, uh, Paul's spice visions that he, that he thought, but he said that he, that was a bit of a slog and it felt like it bogged down a little bit. And I said, I said, yeah, man.
Imagine if you know all of that and imagine if you already know what his visions are. Oh, on top of that, you know, where they lead. That's where I found myself looking down and kind of getting, you know, taken out was, was the, was where those spice visions. But also they're a key part of the story. You need to have them.
Ryan: I think playing off of that, you're actually starting to touch on. [00:23:00]What I think is one of the key aspects to a good adaptation. And I think another, one of the reasons why maybe doing an adaptation is almost harder than simply writing something original. And that is that an adaptation to be successful in this day and age has to both be able to please a majority of the fans while at the same time entertaining people who are new to the world.
And this is one of the reasons that I thought dune was very successful in a way it's almost what makes a adaptation and maybe it's even the root of what makes it makes an adaptation successful today is that it appeals both to fans and to newcomers. When I first watched you and it was with a. Group of friends and family.
And it was almost a 50 50 split. I [00:24:00]think about half of us had read the books. Half of them had not, but when the movie finished, everybody had enjoyed their time watching, which is again, no small feat and. I think that there is a skill. And I think that this is something that dune does really well. Uh, shields are the example that I keep thinking of in the movie.
The shields are never really explained, you know, they're there, you can see them. They're visual. They're very pretty, they're never really explained, but there are so integral. To the fighting and the story in the novel that if you're a newcomer to the world, you see the shields and say, Hey, cool shields.
But when you're a fan in your reader and you're looking at the shields daily, yeah. Shields. [00:25:00]
Taylor: Yeah, absolutely. And I do have a note on that that, you know, he, he taps it on his, the first scene with Paul and the shield. He taps the knife on his hand twice, and then he, and it flashes blue and then he slowly places it on his Palm and it goes red and gurney does have a line that says the slow blade passes through the shield in, in the, in the movie.
I'm not a hundred percent sure if that's in the book. It's smacked of Hollywood producer. To me, it just, as a note, it sounded someone along the line said, Hey, I don't know if we're making this shield thing obvious enough. Maybe have somebody say something again, nitpicky and not, not a problem. And for all I know it is in the book, so whatever, but yeah, I just, the one thing about the shit, I don't know.
What, what do you do with it's already a long movie, as I said before, I don't think that. Impress upon the audience, just how [00:26:00] much the shield has impacted combat in this world. There is, it has created an entire new fighting system around these things and, and eliminated, uh, projectile weapons, essentially.
So, but again, it's along with a few other things that I, that I love and hold dear in the movie. I do understand that that. Inter integral leg. It's it's it's okay. So, but yes, they, I thought they handled the shields well, too. And I thought it was interesting on the, the, the Harkonnen attack when they're blowing up their ships, they, they dropped the.
Bombs that land on the shields and then spin slowly through them, which were not part of the book that was its own thing. But it was a cool concept that it was, it was an, it makes more sense than, oh, these shields black projectiles, I guess projectiles are over. Like, that's less likely, it's far more likely that gun manufacturers are going to find a way to make guns work.
So that was interesting. But again, not, not, [00:27:00]
Ryan: well, don't you find that to be. Such a key aspect to the adaptation of dune is the focus and love on the details that is there. And you're just watching the movie for enjoyment. Bombs are dropping. It's cool, but when you're a reader and you see the bombs dropping, slowing, spinning, you know, what's happening.
And so whether you're a newcomer or a veteran, either way that scene has something to offer.
Taylor: That's right. Absolutely. And it's that, it's like, you talked about it's that accessibility to both camps and that they, that they really nailed. There's a couple of things and I don't know how you feel about these ones, but I would say there's two things, two big things that were not addressed that I missed.
And I don't know if it's hard to say, because I can't ask you as somebody who didn't watch. I didn't read the books cause you've already read the books and I can't, I don't know when it would be like. So the one, the [00:28:00] one thing was with Dr. Yueh, they don't talk at all about his Imperial conditioning and what a crazy situation it was that the Harkonnens were able to break that Imperial conditioning so that he would become.
'cause he's a suk doctor is what they call it. And they don't mention that at all. He's just a doctor and they say that he has his wife. And again, for the, for the sake of the movie, I understand why I get that. That is a more streamlined way to do it. But the impact on me as a reader, when I found out that they had broken that conditioning, it was, was far greater than the impact of, oh, they got his wife.
So he's a traitor. So, I don't know. I don't know if that made you feel any way in particular or if you recall. Well,
Ryan: I think that you have the advantage of talking to somebody who hasn't read the book in nearly a decade.
Taylor: Fair enough.
Ryan: Yeah. And so, [00:29:00] to me that was not a problem because as you're talking about the, the important thing is, is that he needs a motivation to act and the movie provides it. And even though it isn't as complex or perhaps as surprising as the novel, the result is the same.
Taylor: Right. And, and the reason that works is that. Uh, the role of like food for how it, their mastery of assassins and just, just how prevalent it is in this book that people try and assassinate you, and you have to have systems in place to prevent it.
It's crazy how careful they are. And they make a point of that in the book. And the Imperial conditioning of the suk doctor is one of those things. So then to have ages, it really adds to the, the, the, the sort of cascading collapse that happens to the Atreides. In that, in that sort of one horrible night.
And, but again, unless they [00:30:00]were touching on all those things in the movie, it is a lot less important, which brings me to my next thing and this, and I realized, as I'm saying these, these are very much world-building things, which is my wheelhouse. So I, that's why I'm so attached to them, but they don't mention that, um, for, for how it or Petra DeVeres are mentats.
They don't mention mentats. And I thought that the mentats were one of the coolest things in this book, because essentially what happens for anyone that's not familiar or doesn't remember at some point they mentioned in the book that there was essentially an AI uprising that had to be put down and that threatened the emperor empire as a whole.
And in order to prevent that they basically, they don't have, we're not going to use computers anymore. So they started conditioning humans to be able to make calculations at the same level as computers. And so that's what twofer is. And that's what Petra DeVeres is. So when they just kind of wash over that, and the only thing they kind of really like nod that they give [00:31:00] to it is that when Paul, after Paul is being tested by the Reverend mother, she says, A farewell human or good luck human or something along those lines.
And that, that term to call someone a human is, is directly related to the AIS. Like you're not, you, you are a human you're, you you're sort of ascendant to, to what was what the turmoil was. So, but again, I, you know, even as I'm saying it, I know it's, it's a world-building thing that I loved about dune about the dune universe, but that is, it's probably not that important.
I mean, Yeah, I guess it's not that important. I didn't know. You could have made some mention of him being a mentat. I thought that would have been cool, but what'd you got to do
Ryan: You bring up though something that one of my friends who had never seen or read the book, something they noticed was what is the Sci-fi story without computers?
Um, and [00:32:00] so I think that it's interesting that even though it's not explicit, it's not talked about, and it's not mentioned in regards to the characters that even a newcomer to the story, notices that the computers aren't present in this world.
Taylor: Yeah, yeah, exactly. Which touches on the third thing that I feel like they might get into in the next, like in the second part of the movie, which is the navigator.
And how they fold space and how they use the spice to navigate between the stars. It just there's a whole political storyline there. So I don't know if that gets touched on in the next one or not, but that, it, again, it just, it was noticeably absent for me, but again, not. Not a nitpick more than, more than anything, not, not a criticism necessarily, and still shows.
I think the discussion that we're having here shows the necessity of what needs to be cut when you are adapting,
Ryan: which I want [00:33:00] to, uh, you touch on the second movie a little bit. We know that this is in theory part one of two, I believe only two.
Taylor: Okay. I mean, it's gotta be, unless they start pulling in stuff from the other.
But they're there. I mean, that's just the halfway point of the book really, or right around it. So I, I would say two, I would say two. And
Ryan: as you've talked about that, perhaps some of the greatest edits, the story have come in, what aspects of the world building have been shared and what have been cut. So as you were looking ahead to the second film, What is either your greatest hopes for the second film and what it accomplishes.
And do you have any fears having seen the first half of what might happen in the second?
Taylor: No, I'm pretty confident. I think it seems as though they've got the right vision in place and are executing properly. I also don't [00:34:00]know if they film this all as one and then, and then just. I, I don't, I don't have that information.
Ryan: No, I do. I do know that one. That is everything that has been filmed has been shown.
Taylor: Oh, okay. Okay. So yeah. So then they have to film again. So at any rate, I'm confident that they'll they'll they'll do, they'll continue to do a good job. I guess that my biggest fear and my biggest hope are kind of rolled into one.
It's how they represent the, like the weirding way, the, the special skills. Paul teaches the fremen that sets them, you know, above the sardaukar, they're already a match for the sardaukar, but sort of motivates the whole sort of the crux of the climax is that he's able to teach the fremen, these things.
So that was handled interestingly in all the previous, the it's just, it's always, when I think the Lynch one, they have like, it's like, represented that way. It's very odd. What I get, [00:35:00]I get, it's a difficult tickets. But by that being said, they, the world of film right now is handling a lot of, sort of ineffable skillsets that you see and things like MCU and, and other places.
So I'm confident in that. The one thing I'm very curious about is Paul's sister that has not been mentioned in the first one, but you know, his mom is pregnant with the sister right now. I'm blanking on exactly what the circumstances are that cause this fetus to be to, to, to grow mentally exponentially.
But basically when she, she gives birth to a fully formed brain in this, in this child and in the book it's off-putting because. Of what it is, but I mean, it's going to be very odd to have the, I don't know what they're going to do. I don't know how they're going to handle it. I don't know if the character is going to exist at all.
That would be a mistake in my mind. I think she's important, but you know, I think most of the book occurs. She's a three-year-old I think [00:36:00] she's a three-year-old and she, and people talk about how off putting she is because she's a fully formed. She has like all of the knowledge, not only is she a fully formed brain of an adult, she has all the knowledge of like previous bene gesserit in her head, or it's something along those lines.
I guess I'm assuming CGI is going to be involved here, but it's going to be an interesting, that's my biggest curiosity, I'd say.
Ryan: Yeah, I think that the one thing that gets lost sometimes in dune is just how bizarre the story can get.
Taylor: Yeah. Yeah. Which is, I mean, I didn't read past the first one. I think I got part way through the second one.
And I said, no, I'm I'm good. Like I liked what was happening over here. I'm just going to stay there.
Ryan: Sounds good. Well, sir, this has been very interesting. Uh, do you have any final notes? Thoughts, comments?
Taylor: Yeah. I kind of want to zoom back quickly and I just, as a general statement, w how do [00:37:00] you, how do you feel about adaptations, about movie adaptations of books, generally speaking?
Is it something that you look forward to? Are you excited about, is it, do you roll your eyes a little bit?
Ryan: No, uh, it is actually a little bit of a pet peeve of mine. I did love the adaptation of dune, but I am starting to fall in the camp of, I want movies to be written for our scripts to be written for movies that are completely original.
I want books to be their own thing. Um, that's a great question, but I, I understand the economics of doing adaptations cause your fan base is already built in. Yeah. But I. I just like original stories. And I think that all of these formats are growing and diverging in so many different and interesting ways that I would just love to see things written for each [00:38:00] format specifically that just makes full use of technology, voice acting advances in AI, you name it to create experiences that are specific to that medium.
Taylor: Yeah. Yeah.
Ryan: I bet you, what about you? I know you like adaptations more than I do.
Taylor: I mean, you have probably, but I didn't, I, I would've said the same thing as you, I don't know, 15 years ago, I probably would have been, I would have been less, but it's just
Ryan: But then I grew up and I grew out of that sort of phase.
Taylor: I didn't grow up They grew up. I just think, you know, and. I think you and I sort of differ in our opinions on the Marvel stuff, but I just, I think the Marvel stuff is it's it's been such a great, it's been such, it's been so enjoyable for me to see all these stories that I've always loved get treated so well on the screen, but I can fully understand why, and I'm not saying [00:39:00]this is you, but I can fully understand why somebody who is maybe not a Marvel fan.
It could be like, Hey, can we have a movie with all these amazing actors that is not about comic books? Can we do something different, which I could get? I would understand that I would get that too. And I think there's a. It's the usual danger of capitalism, where obviously if it's making money, they're going to, everyone's going to run to it.
You know, you see, you saw DCE fumble the ball when they tried to do that with their DCU. And it just doesn't, maybe it's because they didn't take the same time to cultivate it. But the point is somebody else saw a similar property and said, good, we can make money, just throw money at it and we'll make money.
And that's that I think therein lies the danger, but that's the tough thing about art, right? Like we're artists who want to make money with our art, but we don't want the money to define what our art is. So where do you end up? You got to hope that it kind of balances itself out. At some point,
Ryan: I actually just saw a really funny tweet this morning. Um, one of [00:40:00]my favorite authors shout out, it's Fonda Lee. And she was saying that she is convinced that Hollywood is filled with people who are making money. Who just wants to get to the point where they can tell the story that they want to. And the publishing industry is filled with people who are telling the stories that they want to, who are dreaming of the day, where they can make money.
Taylor: Just trying to get the point of their point of, yeah, well maybe there'll be some middle ground one day, but yeah, that's interesting.
Ryan: Well, sir, this has been a super fun. I enjoy it. And you are making me want to rewatch, dune so bad. I've only seen that the one time and I have to go see that. So
Taylor: yeah, it's worth the rewatch for sure. For sure. All right. Well, thanks for chatting and we'll see you again soon.
Ryan: Anytime. Yeah, you take it easy and everybody else. Thanks for watching, uh, links for everything that we've talked about will be in the show notes, um, as well as the [00:41:00] transcriptions on the website. So thank you very much.
Perfect.