The Grok

My first encounter with Dune was due to my introduction to the real time strategy gaming genre by Westwood's less known game called Dune: Battle for Arrakis. The atmospheric intro to the game introduced the planet Arrakis, the spice Melange and the war of the three houses of the Dune world - the noble Atriedes, evil Harkonnen and the insidious Ordos. The entire world of Dune portrayed in the game was fascinating - the cool weaponary, the irritating sandworms, the twisting plot and the mysterious Fremen got me hooked into the Dune world.

Later on, I managed to watch David Lynch's movie version of the first book 'Dune'. Although I didn't exactly like the movie, mainly because it felt like a big disjoint movie trying to cram a lot of content into limited movie time, I could see the problem. There is no way to compress 600 pages of literature into two and half hours of movie.

After that came the Dune mini series which was produced by the Sci Fi channel. I had heard that it had received rave reviews and was being hailed as the best Dune small screen adaption. After watching the three part mini series, I had to agree. Dune's plot involves political intrigue, sci fi elements, relegion and weird family trees. Much of what interests Dune fans is the amazing detail of the Dune world. It is also interesting to note the Islamic influence overall! The faithful adaption of the book into the movie series is one of the high points of the series.

While the world wasn't waiting for a Dune follow up, the brilliant big screen adaptation of Lord of the Rings set a benchmark for epic book adaptions. In comparison to LoTR, the Dune mini series doesn't even come close. The primary reason why LoTR is so good is not just the visual imagery and details, but the simple fact that the dialogues and screenplay has been knitted together into perfection, never allowing the viewer to get bored by story content that are hard to portay in movies when adapted from a book. I'm guessing this has something to do with Peter Jackson being a genious and if anyone else had done a LoTR movie it would have turned into a farce. Dune is still an above the par series, but don't try to compare it with LoTR!

Finally we come to the important part of the review, how does Children of Dune mini series rate? It is brilliant and surpasses the first series! The visuals, the sets, the new characters, a much more interesting plotline and an amazing soundtrack are the key points of the series. Be warned though that you might not understand what is going on if you haven't seen the original Dune series. As I mentioned earlier, Dune relies on intricate characters and detailed history which influence the whole plot line, so be prepared for a high learning curve when you start watching the sequel series! The mini series covers the second and third book the series - Dune Messiah and Children of Dune. The acting is a bit stiff and dialogues are very Shakesperian like, which might put off some people. The sets are beautiful and the special effects are much better (but there is room for improvement). Don't expect large scale wars as that is not going to happen, although it might have been interesting and would have captivated a larger audience had they pulled one off!

The soundtrack has been highly rated and I particularly enjoyed the ethnic tunes of 'Inama Nushif'. I initially thought that it was a Hindi song, but apparently the composer went into great depths to research Fremen language from the book to come up with the enchanting vocals. Kudos to Brian Tyler! Did you know that LoTR's soundtrack also has a chorus sung in Entish, Hobbit and languages from the book?

You can listen to real audio clip of Inama Nushif here.

There are two more books to go - God Emperor and Heretics of Dune, but I believe these are difficult to adapt into a movie... so don't get too excited :-)

Rating: 4.0 / 5.0