Movies you've just watched

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scrilla4rella
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Re: Movies you've just watched

Post by scrilla4rella »

Dude, how was Dune? I'm chomping at the bit to see it but prob wont be able to go for another week or so. Even though I have a pretty beefy sound system I refuse to watch it at home with HBO,
GaijinPunch wrote:So on that note, I kind of owe Japan an apology as I've always lambasted their website skills for so long. They still suck, really bad from what little J-surfing I still do, but the Germans and Dutch have shown me that it's not unique to Japan. America fucks almost everything up, but in terms of intuitive website design we win.
Reminds me of my last job where I had to use several intergovernmental websites such as ASEAN and so on. In my limited experience the European Commission's website was one of the worst. Tons of circular and broken links.
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Re: Movies you've just watched

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GaijinPunch wrote:I saw Dune in IMAX a few weeks ago in Germany. Was nice getting a jump on my US and Japan based friends. My friend who booked the tickets really fucked up... or should I saw was fucked by German intuition. We got 7th row (of 7) far right. Small theater, so we were like, okay, back row ain't bad. Then walked in and realized they count backwards! Why the fuck not?! So, front left corner. :|

So on that note, I kind of owe Japan an apology as I've always lambasted their website skills for so long. They still suck, really bad from what little J-surfing I still do, but the Germans and Dutch have shown me that it's not unique to Japan. America fucks almost everything up, but in terms of intuitive website design we win.
At least you managed to dodge the German dubbed version. :)
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Re: Movies you've just watched

Post by Vexorg »

Reserved tickets in movie theaters seem to be a relatively recent thing, mostly coinciding with the rise of the "recliner seat" theaters. A lot of the ticket buying apps (stuff like Atom, Fandango and the various theater chains own apps) tend to have confusing interfaces for selecting seats, but at the very least there is some indication of where the screen is located.
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Re: Movies you've just watched

Post by GaijinPunch »

scrilla4rella wrote:Dude, how was Dune? I'm chomping at the bit to see it but prob wont be able to go for another week or so. Even though I have a pretty beefy sound system I refuse to watch it at home with HBO,
It was dope! And I applaud you for going to the theater -- has to be done. Streaming? WTF.

At least you managed to dodge the German dubbed version. :)
Not exactly... the interface to pick seats was so bad, we had originally planned to see it on one night but realized there was only 1 seat left after clicking EVERY FUCKING SEAT on the map. Such a bad design. Then, I cracked it! Got us two seats! Yeah! Then realized I did for the German dub. I was so defeated by the website I refused to figure out if I even could get a refund and just wrote the 40 Euros off and went clubbing.
Vexorg wrote:Reserved tickets in movie theaters seem to be a relatively recent thing, mostly coinciding with the rise of the "recliner seat" theaters. A lot of the ticket buying apps (stuff like Atom, Fandango and the various theater chains own apps) tend to have confusing interfaces for selecting seats, but at the very least there is some indication of where the screen is located.
They are NOTHING compared to this one. At least I thought so. Try for yourself.
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Re: Movies you've just watched

Post by Vexorg »

Yes, that's pretty confusing, especially having two different colors of seats for no apparent reason. Since I knew what to look for (and can read at least some German) I could probably muddle through, but there's much better ways to do that.
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MOSQUITO FIGHTER
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Re: Movies you've just watched

Post by MOSQUITO FIGHTER »

Halloween Kills. Seems like this one is getting a lot of hate. Not that bad really. I enjoyed it.
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Re: Movies you've just watched

Post by xxx1993 »

Just saw the new Dune movie. Bring on Part 2.
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Re: Movies you've just watched

Post by neorichieb1971 »

Jungle Cruise

***/*****

I don't like the rock/Dwayne Johnson. It came highly recommended.

The journey was so so, the end was so so. It was better than Indiana Jones 4 though and it borrowed a few tidbits from the Indiana Jones franchise and had a Pirates of the Jungle Cruise theme about it.

I wouldn't highly recommend it. But its ok.


I hope the Eternals is better, but i've heard bad things already :x
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Mischief Maker
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Re: Movies you've just watched

Post by Mischief Maker »

Dune 2021 was much better than I expected based on the trailers, but I openly wonder how much people who haven't read the books are gonna be able to follow, so much gets glossed over so fast.

I've only seen trailers for Jodorowsky's Dune, but I recognized several designs.

I expect there'll be an extended cut when the movie comes out on disk.
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Re: Movies you've just watched

Post by TransatlanticFoe »

Really? Given it's 2.5 hours and covers the portion which I didn't feel was horribly rushed and hacked up in Lynch's Dune, I was expecting this to be overly dragged out if anything. What are they skipping over too quickly?
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Re: Movies you've just watched

Post by Blackfielding »

Mischief Makr wrote:Dune 2021 was much better than I expected based on the trailers, but I openly wonder how much people who haven't read the books are gonna be able to follow, so much gets glossed over so fast.

I've only seen trailers for Jodorowsky's Dune, but I recognized several designs.

I expect there'll be an extended cut when the movie comes out on disk. I already know how I am going to modify the movie so that my gf likes it.
Dune is a masterpiece, indeed!
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Mischief Maker
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Re: Movies you've just watched

Post by Mischief Maker »

TransatlanticFoe wrote:Really? Given it's 2.5 hours and covers the portion which I didn't feel was horribly rushed and hacked up in Lynch's Dune, I was expecting this to be overly dragged out if anything. What are they skipping over too quickly?
Big ol' spoiler box for people who haven't read the book:
Spoiler
They leave out the explanation that Duke Leto's kindness to the people serves a military purpose: to attract the galaxy's best fighters, who in turn manage to train his armies within a hair as good as The Sardaukar; which is the Emperor's motivation for setting up the Duke's downfall in the first place. Leto knows he's stepping into a trap because his plan is to marry Atreides martial training with the toughness of the Fremen who arguably live in an environment tougher and more violent than the Sardaukar's home planet. (Warhammer 40k steals A LOT from this book).

They leave out the otherwise whip-smart Atreides staff knowing there's a traitor in their midst but dismissing Dr. Yueh out of hand because the "Imperial Conditioning" against doing harm, denoted by his forehead tattoo, was supposedly impossible to break.

Along those lines, you get no indication of the twisted intelligence of the Harkonens, like the fact that David Dastmalchian's "Piter DeVries" character was a mad genius who figured out how to break imperial conditioning. Nor do you even see Baron Harkonen's chosen heir Feyd Rautha or hear his plan to make Rautha an Atreides-tier beloved hero to the people of Arrakis by first oppressing them under the boot of Piter DeVries for several years, then letting Feyd Rautha "rescue" the populace.



On the flipside I DO like that, unlike the Lynch version, this movie makes very clear that the religious prophecy that Paul and Jessica use for their own protection was intentionally seeded in the population of Dune by Bene Gesserit imperialists.

And I like that Paul clearly has his "terrible purpose" foreshadowed.
Edit: Also a thing that threw off a friend of mine was they never explained that if a lasgun intersects with a shield, it causes a low-grade nuclear explosion killing both attacker and defender, which is why most fighting is done with blades.
Two working class dudes, one black one white, just baked a tray of ten cookies together.

An oligarch walks in and grabs nine cookies for himself.

Then he says to the white dude "Watch out for that black dude, he wants a piece of your cookie!"
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Re: Movies you've just watched

Post by TransatlanticFoe »

Oh balls, that's a shame to give with one hand and take with the other
Spoiler
The explanation of the Atreides army I can do without, it was glossed over in Lynch's adaptation too - and I think there it was Dr. Kynes that introduced the concept of allying with the Fremen? As long as it plays out fairly consistently within itself it's not bad - but does raise the question of why not do this when you've got 2 hours to do the setup. At least it expands on the prophecy, that mostly came out of nowhere in Lynch's film and you just kind of had to run with it

Shame it skips important bits around Dr. Yueh and Piter because again, it seems harder to leave it out and have it make sense than just include it. Having not read the book (yeah I know, I know), Feyd was completely nonsensical in Lynch's adaptation. His setup is literally "Sting in nothing but metal underpants" for the baron to get all weird incest pervy over, then he shows up to fight Paul at the end for no reason. I saw he wasn't cast in this one so assumed he'd be shunted into part 2... but maybe he's just been axed entirely?

Hopefully Duncan doesn't go down like a chump in this version? The shield was cool and literally all he did was bowl over some dudes and get shot in the head.
Still, fingers crossed it's still showing when I get a window later in the month because I've got a handful of free cinema tickets to use and my local cinema has been doing 1030 showings of this - which would hopefully be sparse on the people AND the covid. Part 2 is pretty much nailed on now, right?
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Re: Movies you've just watched

Post by Randorama »

I am going to watch Dune with a group of students who asked me to act as their SF mentor of sorts, for the occasion (context: I work at a big uni in Wuhan, China).
SF is generally getting very popular, the book was (re-)translated relatively recently, and big, epic stuff usually sells well, here.
I might re-read the book, as I remember very little at this point (read the first 4 books at 16, in 1996...).

The 40k mention did stir some teenager memories, though: I played a lot of it (=the miniatures and dice version) during those years, and the....conceptual lifts were ubiquitous (The first edition of WarHammer had a list of authors from whom the game designers admitted lifting stuff, eh!).

At some point or another, I should watch this with my father and stream on-line the inevitable post-movie rant marathon in which the man would complain about the adaptation being too imprecise (he is one of those guys, and the rants are generally hilariously pedantic).
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Re: Movies you've just watched

Post by PC Engine Fan X! »

The movie studio that recently released the 2021 Dune film (that clocks in at 155 minutes in overall duration) has officially "greenlit" the upcoming Dune Part II film that's slated for an October 2023 theatrical release indeed. We'll only have to wait a mere two years to find out what happens next.

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Re: Movies you've just watched

Post by Vexorg »

Once Upon a Crime: **

1992 Whodunnit starring John Candy and Jim Belushi where three dysfunctional couples get mixed up in the investigation into the murder of a wealthy woman in Monte Carlo (or at least the Hollywood sound stage version thereof) by somehow managing to act as suspiciously as they possibly can in every single instance. It's a remake of a 1960 Italian film, and oddly enough it got remade again a few years later as an Indian film. Lots of scenery chewing going on here, especially from Candy and Belushi. Ultimately it bombed in the theaters (not even grossing half its $18m production cost) and has the dubious distinctions of a 0% ratting on Rotten Tomatoes and a Razzie nomination.
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Re: Movies you've just watched

Post by Vexorg »

Black Widow: **1/2

While it's good to see Scarlett Johansson get her own movie, it's pretty average for a Marvel movie. Set after Civil War but before Infinity War, it has to add a bunch of extra characters and then somehow make them all completely disappear by the time Thanos shows up, so ultimately nothing in this film is of any consequence to anything else in the MCU. A few decent action scenes, but not much more of substance.
Spoiler
Also, if you're watching a Marvel movie and there's a giant flying fortress of some sort in it, you can pretty much guarantee that the thing is getting blown up some time before the movie is over.
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BIL
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Re: Movies you've just watched

Post by BIL »

Dune Part 1 (2021) Deftly done, thoroughly enjoyed. 2.5hrs could never contain the novel's exquisitely unhurried richness - it's impossible not to wish this had been a televised series - but it elides its essence more than gracefully, couched in satisfyingly heavy, dusty techno-medieval.

Oscar Isaac is a bit too young, and just a few asides would've largely patched the book-dependant narrative gaps MM pointed out. Still, very decent work overall; looking forward to Part 2.
Mischief Maker wrote:I expect there'll be an extended cut when the movie comes out on disk.
I hope so, it could genuinely benefit from a little added material. Not expecting a radically different film, just a sensibly filled-out one, to play better for viewers unfamiliar with the source. As-is, it feels like a film for existing fans of the novel - no complaints from me there, but it'd be nice to see a theatrical adaptation really stand on its own.
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Re: Movies you've just watched

Post by vol.2 »

Last week I saw 4 movies in the theater.

1. Possession (Andrzej Żuławski 1981)

Fukken slaps. Best psych-horror movie I've seen in a long time and in the rankings for best ever. Without ruining it for anyone, there are so many various interpretations to so many different parts of the movie that I am still thinking about exactly what happened and the timeline of events.. The creature effects were super cool and the direction of the movie was incredibly cohesive for the subject matter. The only weak link in the movie to me was Sam Neill who was sometimes just too hammy for the moment (an issue I am assured becomes less distracting upon subsequent viewings). This is a movie I am definitely going to watch again at least once and hopefully in the theater again

2. Poltergeist (S.S. 1982)

Meh. This was my first time watching it for some reason. It's boring and prosaic 80's family fair that I would have appreciated in the 80s as a kid. Maybe it's more interesting to a younger audience as a culture artifact but I didn't care. The creature effects are the only thing that redeemed the movie to me at all, but the direction and sequencing are a mess.
Spoiler
The double ending is annoying and unecessary and they just barely hinted at what could have been cool zombie stuff towards the end
Never going to watch it on purpose again.

3. Dune. Pt. 1

Yeah. This was a beautiful movie. I enjoyed it from the beginning to the end, in spite of being able to recognize some flaws along the way. I agree with BIL that the protagonist was too green for the role, and way too soft IMO. I thought that the
Spoiler
final encounter with the Fremen was pretty cheesy and the fight scene was silly and that took away from the end.
Another major issue for me is that I don't think they cut off the movie very well. I found myself very distracted by the last 30 minutes, always looking for the plot to be wrapped up and not feeling like they did a good job of encapsulating Part 1 in it's own clothes. "...Is this where they are going to end it?" was out front in my mind a lot.


4. Velvet Underground ( Todd Haynes 2021)

It was just okay. I liked the Velvet Underground 30 years ago and still think they were an important band, but this movie told me very little new and didn't really give me an experience that I felt moved by. It focuses on Lou Reed more than anything, and the story of how he alienated and forced other talents out of the band through his insecurity. That's the real story of the band, but it's not an especially entertaining one.

Going to see Uncut Gems tonight. Not really an Adam Sandler fan, but I'm being asked to keep an open mind by my friend.
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Re: Movies you've just watched

Post by Mischief Maker »

Adam Sandler is strange, he just constantly doles out shit film after shit film with steadily declining enthusiasm like a factory conveyor belt, and then once in a blue moon he puts out a great performance in a nuanced role and everyone thinks he's turned a new leaf and we're about to see dynamic actor Adam Sander... then back to the recycled shit.
Two working class dudes, one black one white, just baked a tray of ten cookies together.

An oligarch walks in and grabs nine cookies for himself.

Then he says to the white dude "Watch out for that black dude, he wants a piece of your cookie!"
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Re: Movies you've just watched

Post by MintyTheCat »

I just watched DUNE at the cinema in Berlin.

It was not too bad at all. Sticks for the most part to part of the first book.
A more subdued and gluttonous Baron, Rabban is not depicted as a half-wit like in the last film, violence is not over stated.
They managed to include the arabic references and I felt pulled off the implication that the military aspect may be all well and good but it served move-over as a 'reminder' and the real power was in the politics and the economics - like in the book.

Definitely not a vaccum-headed Hollywood tripe dump and not too bad at all.
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Re: Movies you've just watched

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TransatlanticFoe wrote:Really? Given it's 2.5 hours and covers the portion which I didn't feel was horribly rushed and hacked up in Lynch's Dune, I was expecting this to be overly dragged out if anything. What are they skipping over too quickly?
I agree: it does not gloss over much but has the policy of 'showing' instead of over-explaining every single last tiny, whiny, incey-whincey last detail for people who lack a brain.

It was fine pacing wise, and we have to consider that it's based on the Novel so we can assume that it will follow the plot and sequence of events - and in fact, I recall both the first Novel and the last film as I watched and in a way it was a bit too linear for my liking, but if you've read the books then it may have this effect, if you haven't then it gives enough on an impression to pass enough across.

They'd didn't really focus much on what the actual Spice/Melange actually is and nowhere to be seen were any Tradesguild Navigators - more in the next film perhaps.
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Re: Movies you've just watched

Post by MintyTheCat »

I shall not comment on your hidden text as we will be here forever discussing it ;)
Edit: Also a thing that threw off a friend of mine was they never explained that if a lasgun intersects with a shield, it causes a low-grade nuclear explosion killing both attacker and defender, which is why most fighting is done with blades.
Yes, and to be honest, I thought at the point at which Duncan sacrifices himself that he'd go all out and commit a sutemi and blow himself and the aggressors away at the last stand.
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Re: Movies you've just watched

Post by BIL »

IIRC, the book mentions the scale of nuke resulting from a Lasgun hitting a shield being notoriously unpredictable -
Spoiler
I'd guess Duncan would worry about it bringing the whole place down on Paul and Jessica.
Might've been in a later OG instalment, it's been a while... definitely not from the Brian Herbert / Kevin J. Anderson stuff. Never read those, though I do like reading diehards' outrage on 'em. :lol:

Spoilers for Book 3 / Children of Dune:
Spoiler
Image


^ spot the unhappy bunny with a Wikia account :mrgreen:
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Re: Movies you've just watched

Post by MintyTheCat »

BIL wrote:IIRC, the book mentions the scale of nuke resulting from a Lasgun hitting a shield being notoriously unpredictable -
Spoiler
I'd guess Duncan would worry about it bringing the whole place down on Paul and Jessica.
Might've been in a later OG instalment, it's been a while... definitely not from the Brian Herbert / Kevin J. Anderson stuff. Never read those, though I do like reading diehards' outrage on 'em. :lol:

Spoilers for Book 3 / Children of Dune:
Spoiler
Image


^ spot the unhappy bunny with a Wikia account :mrgreen:
Yes, just relying on memory: there is a very, very secure agreement on the use on nuclear weapons against humans and that would cause that to occur.

I dare say, given that we have localised, nuclear weapons these days that they'd have something more small scale, but....it is a practice that's been kind of thrown out and agreed by the various factions not to use them.

Avoid Brian Herbert: both his parents were writers but Brian is a total waste of space. I literally threw a book across the room in disgust at one point it was that shockingly poor. Frank Herbert could write but Brian is a poor writer.

Edit: it is coming back..... Brian literally wrote something along the lines of :
"I shall use the principles of the Golden-Mean Φ " to design a spaceship I think he was babbling on about
Instantly launched the book across the room. He had been annoying me with his bollocks along the way but that was the last straw.

It does annoy me when writers try to bullshit their way through concepts and Mathematics and come up looking like total dicks.

Sadly, Brian has written far, far, far more than Frank which perhaps would serve better as toilet paper than as reading material :)
The man is shockingly poor :D
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Re: Movies you've just watched

Post by vol.2 »

Mischief Maker wrote:Adam Sandler is strange, he just constantly doles out shit film after shit film with steadily declining enthusiasm like a factory conveyor belt, and then once in a blue moon he puts out a great performance in a nuanced role and everyone thinks he's turned a new leaf and we're about to see dynamic actor Adam Sander... then back to the recycled shit.
We missed the show. The website had it at 7:30, but they showed it at 7 and we decided not to go in 20 minutes late. First time I've ever been screwed over by a theater's website.
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Re: Movies you've just watched

Post by Randorama »

I will go this week-end and watch the movie.

Re: the series in general. I consider this a tetralogy in intention, and the rest is milking nerds who just need to spend money in inappropriate ways.
I remember a friend of mine literally crying after reading no more than 2 chapters of the first Brian Herbert book.

I can pre-emptively agree on the format comment: the books are really dense with detail and information, so a "tv series" format would have allowed the adaptation team to cut out less detail (...or so I guess).
Anyway, to Sunday.
Chomsky, Buckminster Fuller, Yunus and Glass would have played Battle Garegga, for sure.
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Re: Movies you've just watched

Post by MintyTheCat »

Randorama wrote:
I can pre-emptively agree on the format comment: the books are really dense with detail and information, so a "tv series" format would have allowed the adaptation team to cut out less detail (...or so I guess).
Anyway, to Sunday.
In fact, a few people have noted that the TV series from the early 2000s was the most accurate thus far.
I have seen it and own the series myself and felt particularly the Baron was well casted and portrayed.
The Bene Gesserit were more toned down though I felt in the series.
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Re: Movies you've just watched

Post by Sumez »

Mischief Maker wrote:Dune 2021 was much better than I expected based on the trailers, but I openly wonder how much people who haven't read the books are gonna be able to follow, so much gets glossed over so fast.
I have never read the book, and I feel like everything was well explained in the movie. I think it hit a really fine balance between the things it needed to kinda outright tell us, and the things which impact the story and the world but don't necessarily need to be stated, or work fine left to the audience figuring out on their own. It never really feels pandering, which by itself is a virtue for a hollywood movie of this budget scope.

It was actually kinda amazing watching this with my only direct "dune experience" previously being the 1984 movie, because there was really a surprisingly high amount of scenes that I recognized well, but in that movie you never really know who the people really are, where they are, what they are doing, and why. The new movie provides all that much needed context, and suddenly I understand why people love Dune.

I think it is fine if some central things are glossed over for the scope of the movie. Based on the things you mentioned it seemed like none of them are downright denied by the movie, they just aren't covered. In general the movie felt to me like a really compelling front view of the novel, advertising reading it to people who are curious to know more about the universe.
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Re: Movies you've just watched

Post by Randorama »

MintyTheCat wrote: In fact, a few people have noted that the TV series from the early 2000s was the most accurate thus far.
I have seen it and own the series myself and felt particularly the Baron was well casted and portrayed.
The Bene Gesserit were more toned down though I felt in the series.
Ah, I forgot of its existence, though! I only have vague memories about Leto's "second form", for obvious reasons, and that the adaptation was fairly thorough though not perfect.
Your comment on the Bene Gesserit rings a bell and drunken memories of geek-talk in the wee hours of the night, ironically.

...but yes, my two cents on these matters are simple: long sagas with very complex world-building aspects can only benefit from the longer time frames that tv series involve, though they may still face problems.
Authors often spend pages describing some aspects of a fictional world, and readers can spend minutes digesting all the information (and re-read, figure out opaque terms, and so on).
Even very detailed and slow-paced adaptations may still face "adaptation problems" that may prove very hard to solve.

Anyway, to Sunday, promised.
Chomsky, Buckminster Fuller, Yunus and Glass would have played Battle Garegga, for sure.
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