nerrdrage

I knew this show was in trouble when they spent the first crucial minutes in a boring exposition dump, the most unengaging way to tell any story. The information should have been doled out within the story itself, via dialogue.

Do we really need Terminator-style visuals to understand what a war against thinking machines is like? It just made the show look boringly derivative, for no good reason.

Dune is a chilly, emotionally distant kind of franchise, so they should have made more effort to overcome that shortcoming. Villeneuve did this by jumping right into a story that puts Paul in the role of the underdog for us to cheer for, and making sure to cast a charming actor.

Trying to make us care about the Bene Gesserit "playing god" is never going to work, because even if we agree with what they are doing, it's not personal and emotional; it's impersonal and clinical.

They needed to slam on the brakes and rethink the whole premise.

Start with one young Bene Gesserit character, being sent into one of the Great Houses, as a concubine or spy, similar to Jessica's story. Have her be a Harkonnen and vengeful about her family's perceived wrongs. She is outwardly motivated by what the Bene Gesserit want, but her true motivations conflict with that. And make sure the actor cast is very charismatic.

That gives us one character to root for, whose motivations are personal and emotional. It puts us in some lively, colorful Great House, full of different personalities and motivations, all stabbing each other in the back, instead of stuck in the cold gray repressed world of the Bene Gesserit.

Oh well, HBO didn't succeed this time but I hope the mediocre ratings don't scare them off from trying another Dune spinoff because the franchise does have a ton of potential.

I love everything Walton Goggins does so even though this is hard to find (I finally located it on YouTube) I tracked it down and watched.

There are some fun gags. The one about "John Bronco"'s mishap in a giant character head which resulted in traumatizing the child actor who grew up to be Michael Chiklis. The "audio book" that was John Bronco's rambling attempt to recite Moby Dick from memory, getting it confused with Jaws.

Tim Baltz is also good as John Bronco's uber-fan but there were too few jokes that worked and when it fell flat, it was kinda painful.

I wonder why this is so low profile. Did they get in trouble from the Ford Motor Company for making this? It's certainly not a slam against the real life vehicles.