Dune 2
Sufficiently dull that I found myself wondering how any of it makes sense. Which it doesn't. How does the ecosystem support those giant worms? What do the Fremen eat? If they've got ornithopters and FRIKKIN LAZERS and unclear weapons and so on, why all the sword fighting? What's with all the BDSM gear and/or silly hats? etc. etc.
Barakta informs me that this is missing the point.
Yeah, there's quite a bit of that. The book does a lot of glossing over the ecology, but it does actually mention things like the whole 'what's happening in the worm-chemistry, and sand-plankton, and where does the oxygen come from if there's no significant plant life?' and suchlike. The fact that Herbert made up a combination of science, politics and religion to handwave away physical missile weapons
and energy weapons
and computers in one move, so that he could make everything dependent on personal negotiation up to and including combat was, I thought, the signature difference of the book when I first read it (about a thousand years ago). I know that the book had to be movie-ised and stuff will inevitably go missing, but the whole Holtzmann Effect and why you can't just use FRIKKIN LAZERS to shoot down the shielded ornithopters is actually a plot point of how Duncan escapes from the Harkonnen attack anyway, and I kind of thought that would have been kept.
Don't watch sci-fi movies expecting coherence, the USAnians won't stand for it. You wait until they need to adapt the Stone Burner in 'Messiah' for part three. I bet that makes even less sense, and the books get less and less adaptable the further you read.
