Why Dune's World Feels So Alive
336,121
Published 2024-03-19
Dune's world is uniquely immersive. In this video essay, I analyse how Dune created this effect, and how you can replicate it in your own work.
I----------------------------------------------------------------------------------I
My Discord Server: discord.com/invite/aJpYPQX
Support me on Patreon: www.patreon.com/henryboseley
Hate me on Twitter: twitter.com/HenryBoseley
I----------------------------------------------------------------------------------I
A massive thank you to my $10+ patrons:
Henrik Haugberg
Kyong Kim
Cameron Benson
Mike Schmidt
[OG]
Chefda
Peter Shukoff
I----------------------------------------------------------------------------------I
Written, narrated & produced by Henry Boseley
Edited by Brandon Reardin
Music provided by Epidemic Sound
All Comments (21)
-
If you'd like to join my Discord server where we chat about our writing, and generally discuss the movies/shows we love, here's a link. My Discord: discord.com/invite/aJpYPQX I'm really active there. If you have any questions you'd like to ask me, that's the place to go! Keep writing! - Henry
-
its not 8 thousend years in the future. its the year 10000 but they use a different calender. its actually way further in the future
-
I don’t remember who said it but I agree with “I don’t want my fantasy to be realistic, I want it to be convincing”
-
Dune nerd moment: 🤓 The Butlerian Jihad was not an AI uprising. It was in response to technology becoming so advanced that "men gave up their thinking to machines, believing it would set them free", enabling people who controlled the machines to practically enslave others. Basically, humanity had stagnated because we let tech do all the work for us, allowing those in power to puppeteer us. It wasn't a terminator-like event.
-
Actually the scene when Paul watches the videos about Arraks is a good example of how to deliver exposition becsuse he doesn't it know about it. It makes perfect sense for him to do research about his new home and so we're basically learning about it with him.
-
The exposition of Dune is top-notch. A breath of fresh air
-
I love how in the CG shots, the camera moves like it’s real. The show don’t tell, the lore from our POV character’s well, point of view. It’s masterful trickery, but I love it & it sucks me in ❤
-
I got a United States Postal Service ad right after you talked about wizards delivering mail by teleporting.
-
I love Dune, it's so fulfilling when the movie for a book you love actually does it justice
-
One minor point, perhaps, if I’m recalling my lore correctly. The Butlerian Jihad was a terminator-style war only in the Brian Herbert books, whereas Frank’s implied it to be more a philosophical struggle than a martial one.
-
I loved the brutalist, angular and functional aesthetic of the new Dune. Back when I was reading the books, its how I imagined the universe in my head, instead of the overly ornate look of Dune in the past
-
My favourite example of this is Bioshock. They propably just started with ADAM, Ayn Rand and underwater New York, and every other thing- location, science, characters, culture- exists as a natural cause of those 3 main ideas.
-
Probably the most awkward exposition in the 1984 Dune (besides all the internal whispering) was the Guild Navigator telling Emperor Shaddam that Ix makes many machines which are better than those on Richese. Not only is it irrelevant to the plot, it's already common knowledge in the Imperium. It's like telling a president that Microsoft makes many computers. So the line is only there to prove to book readers that the book was read.
-
Everything he explains about that style of limited exposition to very rich and deep lore is exactly why the Fromsoftware games have a unique way of getting into your brain. I absolutely adore when a piece of media asks interesting questions and trusts you to put some pieces together, instead of spoonfeeding every detail for the lowest common denominator. Thank you, creators who dare treat their audience like mature intelligent beings.
-
I think DUNE’s exposition is so good because: A. It has great material to deal with. B. The movie was given the time to be written carefully and edited into oblivion. C. The movies are long enough to tell their story.
-
This is what makes ASOIAF so great, you can feel the ramifications of every event rippling through every other characters story, even if that character does not realize it in their POV
-
Whenever I see a really great or a really bad film come out, I wait for one of these videos
-
6:35 As a Brazilian, you can imagine the jumpscare I got when I heard out of nowhere a very loud "CARALHO", a very bad curse word, on an English speaking video.
-
9:29 - The clip of Trey Parker has genuinely changed my life. Before seeing it, I couldn't always determine why I didn't like certain movies and shows. The first time I saw it, everything made sense; I could go back and look at the stuff I didn't like, and it was almost always "and then" storytelling. You are correct that this can also be applied to lore.
-
Nerd correction: 2:56 Dune actually takes place over 20,000 years in the future. 10,191 AG is only marked after the spacing guild is formed, which itself took a many number of millenia past modern day. Villeneuve actually had to present a world from tens of thousands of years in the future AND make it make sense in only a few introductory scenes.
