Dune (1984)

David Lynch called... and he wants nothing to do with Dune. Diving into the 1984 adaptation this week, primarily from a comparative perspective to Dune parts I and II (2021,2024), with some light convo about the new HBO series Dune: Prophecy as well. So buckle into your stillsuit and dehydrate into the dunes of Arrkis this week with us.

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Transcript

The SWAMP (00:00.11)
Breaking news, Matthew McConaughey and Kylan McLaughlin have fused together to become Matthew McLaughlin, challenging John Krasinski for this year's People Sexiest Man. I imagine like, like at the substance in Alisa Sue, Alisa Sue of those two men being like, no, I'm the sexiest. I think those two would get along honestly very well. McConaughey and the McLaughlin? Yeah, yeah. Yeah, I don't see why not. It would seem, you know.

They seem to, they both seem like they're in their own worlds that I think that they could blend. I don't know too much about Matthew McConaughey, but I do know that he like wrote a memoir that every single middle-aged woman on the planet took out from the library. Yeah, because it just sounds sexy, right? I guess. I mean, the cover is like him looking really pensive. Of course. I mean, that was a selling point enough, I'm sure. Yeah. But we're not here to talk about the sexiest man of the year. it might have been.

Sexiest man of 1984? Might have been. The sexiest man of 1984, I'm gonna say it, has got to be the guild's navigator. That freaky little alien? Come my God. The weird little pussy lips for the mouth that shot lasers. Yeah, let me be clear. Can you do that, John Krasinski? No, I don't think so. Okay, Reed Richards. Okay, Office Jim. Come back when you can shoot lasers out of your pussy mouth. Come back.

when your mouth looks a little bit more like a vagina, all right? No, I would like to start off by saying that, Dune, 2000, what, 22? 21 was the first one, 24 was the second. lost a lot by not including the guild navigator. what were they thinking? Denine, how could you have cut the guild navigator? There are only so many things that this movie has.

over the new guys. I mean, undeniable. She started off real strong. Undeniably, starting off strong and then we get like a good montage in the middle where she just sort of floats around space and we get a nice montage of just- Pussy zapping. Pussy zapping planets. That is something that Denny's dude is missing. Yeah, she lacked. Yeah. Hi, welcome to the swamp. It's our podcast. It's an acronym.

The SWAMP (02:20.238)
Stands for some wack ass movie podcasting. Whack? Surely. Ass? Also surely. This month we're doing movies that are bad in just some capacity and to preface this I guess we are to 20, mid 20 year old. Why was I just nervous to say our age for a second? Yeah really is like coming out. Why am I trying to come out as a 25 year old right now? Like that's embarrassing. my god. But we both are.

of the generation that our closest dune, well, I don't want to make it an age thing. I guess more of a media consumption thing. Our two main dunes have been Denny's. Like I'm using that as my point of reference. So when talking about this one, even though we both did see this before Denny's, yes, I think, well, I think we did our homework before Denny's came out and we watched the only other movie that we had to go off of, which is this. Well, there is also the TV show, the 2003 TV show with James McAvoy.

I didn't know about this. I didn't know about this. Okay, well, so we'll get into that when we get into our little TV portion. I wanted to come here to say, although we will be talking about the 1984 David Lynch Dune today. We we'd round it out. We'll round it out because we'll be obviously making a lot of comparisons and references to Dune part one and two of the 2020s. just greenlit or just started casting or something or filming for Dune Messiah, which is not Dune 3. Don't get it twisted.

Don't call it Dune 3, it's Dune Messiah. She's her own self. Correct. And the HBO TV series, Dune Prophecy. Which just came out. Just came out. We both watched the first episode. So we're gonna talk about all of that a little bit, cause you know. Tire together a little Dune vibes. Put a bow on it. in order to fit it into our theme, yes, this movie is bad. Yeah. Yeah. Unfortunately. were originally this week going to do Constantine. We were gonna double Keanu it, but.

I watched it. I didn't think it was bad enough. I thought it was. Or it's like mid bad. Whereas at least this is like good bad, interesting, weird bad. Yeah. There's a story behind it. Yeah. The only thing about that that was really, what's the word? Like worth noting. Yeah, worth noting. It was how hot everyone was and how much non-binary tea Tilda was serving. my God. It was crazy. Gabriel tea. my God. Truly you don't. Non-binary angel.

The SWAMP (04:46.51)
You don't have to watch Constantine. You can just Google what Tilda Swinton looks like in Constantine and that can be the end of for you. Exactly. Exactly. Because I mean, it was just one of those things I was like, I'm just going to come on here and tell you to whack it to that movie. Because that's really all that's worth noting. Whereas I don't think I could whack it if I tried to this 1984 dude. Too many postulating boils. Jump scare fetus. my God. Too many interesting practical

sets that I'm too busy paying attention Yeah, in awe over. Right. The paintings, you called out the like flat matte paintings, very Star Wars. Yeah, I'm sure miniatures. very cool set design stuff. And I don't want a blanket statement and say this movie is bad because this movie has things that are good about it. Well, we actually made a list. So we will be referring back to the list as we go on. No, I mean, I think let's present the list up front because we sort of have.

we were sort of keeping tabs of if you were to keep a tally mark while watching simultaneously the Denisville new or Dune movies and this one, like who's winning, right? Like casting, directing, score, you know, it's an ungodly amount of check marks for Denis. But David Lynch gets a few and you think it would be none and it's not none. No, it's not. Hi there.

It's not worth noting all of the check marks that we even give Denny, but it is worth like going back and saying, here's what David gets. Right, right. And to start it off, guild's Navigator. Navigator. Obviously. Gets a point for the Guild Navigator. Obviously. Here's one thing with the Guild Navigator that we don't get almost any Guild Navigator content in any of Dune one or two. Well, none. So for those who don't know the name draw, for those who are close personal friends with the Guild Navigator.

He's sort of the weird, fleshy alien that they bring out in that big sort of black, like, cart at the very It's like a tank. Yeah, it's like a fish tank. Fish tank, and they wheel him out, and he basically does some exposition about spice and spice allocation. And he basically is in charge of, traveling through the universe. Yes. Well, the guild navigators, which there are many. Yeah, they're the guys that are in charge. Navigating the guild. Yeah, travel. Travel, is, of course, all, like, about spice, because without spice, you're not going nowhere.

The SWAMP (07:07.478)
So. But then we also get roughly at like the beginning of the third act, which just makes no sense. This like great little montage of the guild navigator just bopping around space. I Shoot lasers, blowing up planets. Just like throbbing mouth pussy. Checking back in with the guild navigator, really important stuff. He has weird little like tentacle arms. It's great. It's great design. And I looked up cause we were like, wait, who the fuck is that?

Cause to my, in my mind, I'm always like, okay, Patrick Stewart, that's Josh Brolin. I'm not going like to source material. I'm not like Patrick Stewart. that's what's his fucking name? Gurney. I'm like, no, that's Josh Brolin. I'm just equating it to the doing one. Cause I just know that. Cause that, yeah, that's your, that's your area of expertise. But this isn't in the Denny one. I was like, who's the Guild Navigator? So I looked it up and I guess this is supposed to be what humans look like.

they've been exposed to the spice melange for too long so it's like a post-human evolution that's what the guild master is, guild navigator, really interesting. Wish he had had that, mean. Yeah well that's one thing like we don't get it at all in Denny's but this tying into the new Dune Prophecy series is kind of going to give us a little more background because that series is like

10,000 years before Paul Atreides and all that, Which at the beginning of this movie, they say that the year is like 10,000 something something. So if that is correct with the book, which I have not read, then the Dune Prophecy show is like what, the year zero, the year 100? I'm sure they probably do like, you know, how we like BC'd, AD'd, everything like that. I'm sure it's like AC like after computers or some shit, you know?

Computer ATM, after thinking machines. Exactly, exactly. Which again, I feel like we don't get a lot of that in Denise Dune. We don't get a whole lot of the Computer Wars because it's so far in the past and so like off the radar. So an interesting thing that you bring up, if we want to get into the TV show a little bit. Yeah, we're jumping, we're gonna jump around here. That's fine, yeah. But so Dune Prophecy is a new show on HBO. Yes. And it's basically a prequel series about the Bene Gesserit. Yes. Who are like the pussy witches.

The SWAMP (09:21.166)
Which from the new Dune, you don't know, that would be like, you know, Rebecca Ferguson, Lady Jessica, Paul's mom. Yeah, Florence Pugh. Put your hand in the box, that whole thing. Put your hand in my box. But so the show is basically like an origin story, but it's not like an origin origin story because the first episode still did like an info dump at the beginning to be like, okay, this is where we just found it founded.

Let's go forward a few years, right? It's like they're still in beginnings, but they like have a fully running school. They're pretty established. They've got that. Yeah, they're like 50 years in maybe or something like that. They're like first leader had led them and passed. So I think it's more presumably. 100 years or On like the second leader.

or whatever. Some shit like that. I It's a first episode. We're really getting a lot of info. But I bring, I circle back to the TV show to bring it up because you mentioned the whole like machine war is not feeling sort of sudden and not really like something that gets brought up a lot. And I guess a main criticism of the show that I've seen so far from what little discussion I have seen. I just watched it last night. What little I have seen is a lot of people criticizing the lack of the word jihad.

like using that specific language because I guess in the books, because these are based off of books. And this show specifically is based off of some of the later books that were written by the Sun. Yes. So Frank Herbert wrote the Dune series, but then Frank Herbert had two sons who decided to keep the legacy going. Frank Herbert wrote, I believe it was six, right? Sure. Six books originally. And the sons wrote something like,

30 spin-offs. Yeah, there's like, you know, children of Dune, all these other Dune, schools of Dune. Yeah, there's one that's like Dune Sisterhood, which this is based off of. Right. Which is all the Benet-Jezzer Really loosely though, and I think that came out in like 2003 or something, honestly. Something like that. There's also like two more accompanying books, are like, I don't know the names for them. I'm not like really into it that much, but like the people computers.

The SWAMP (11:25.23)
there's a word for it. It's like the, you know, the priest from Lady Bird, you know him? You remember his character in Dune? Yes. Like him, his people basically because- What's his name? William McKinley? I can't remember. I think, just remember I was bummed that he wasn't in the second one. I know, exactly. But so like his people, essentially after the computer wars happened and all that, people, cause we're 10,000 years in the past, in the future.

essentially evolved to be like their own like thinking computers and everything like that. So he's basically a calculator. But so there's also two accompanying books for the people calculator, computer people, the flying purple calculator, people eaters, and then also the space, the traveling guilt people as well. Okay. So it's kind of like three books that really explain who these like main and like nobody fucking asked for this. No, no one asked.

for this at all, no, this is HBO just trying to get their money. Well, no, it's Frank Herbert's sons trying to get their money and then HBO trying to get their money. of course, of course. But I'm not too mad at it, but I guess people, the main thing that they're saying though is that the primary conflict in these books is, as it is in Dune, a conflict between people about resources and about race and living on land, right? I wonder what that could be a great idea for. But then when you just sort of introduce this

scapegoat enemy of like technology bad. It really takes a lot of that like true to life comparisons to be drawn. And specifically in that book, in the book, they use that word, right? They jihad. And for some reason we are just so trying to censor language so much these days that even that word can mean something in a context.

Right? But you just have to apply your brain and understand. But people are just scared of seeing things that they flag as being related to a certain subject. It's why, I mean, we use pretty foul language on here. And I understand why people do censor themselves in certain spaces for certain reasons, but the whole like censorship of certain words, specifically like on TikTok and stuff.

The SWAMP (13:36.856)
to not get content flagged. It's just like, it's incredibly concerning because language loses its power when we stuff. The unalive thing That's basically what I'm about. Yeah, the fact that we can't say the word kill, that's not okay. Yeah, or death, Yeah, unaliving. It's all quite odd. And the fact that we're now doing all these dramatic workarounds to avoid specific words is incredibly concerning.

Absolutely, A lot of people were like, interesting that word that probably appears a hundred plus times in the book. We're just gonna take that out and call it something else. Yeah, no need. But I don't know enough about Dune to actually have a commentary, but I could see how that could be sort of like, the scary lizard at the nine-year-old's wedding is the real enemy rather than like...

I trust that the show will be like quote unquote woke enough to be using the metaphor of Dune to properly extrapolate the sort of political intrigue and real-to-life comparisons that viewers will still get out of that. just figure you're you're bearing it under more layers of metaphor rather than just being upfront. I don't know. But I did enjoy it. It clearly is. It's a TV version. It doesn't quite feel the same as the movie is. And it's a different it's a different writer, different production team, different actors.

Denny has no involvement as far as I'm aware of, other than the fact that they're clearly drawing from his movies as source inspiration. It's very similarly stylized. They use the same typeface in the captions, not to shout out, but we use the same font here at the swamp in our branding package as Denny uses in his captions. Yes, indeed. I'm feeling really good about my design choices on that. I do like a mindful subtitle.

when captions, know, mostly for like place locations or years or stuff in movies, but also specifically in movies when someone is speaking another language and they choose in movie to caption it, you know what I mean? And then sometimes it's annoying because you'll have your subtitles turned on and it'll double up. Do you know when that Yeah, that gets annoying. I do appreciate when someone presubtitles it. Yes. I always wish that there would be like a department in the movie production process. through and...

The SWAMP (15:54.914)
that goes through and does mindful correct subtitling for every scene so that when it's not up to the provider to do the subtitling, which is usually just auto-generated and not correct, but like a mindfully stylistically correct done subtitle package, my God, that's my dream for every movie to just like fully have that as an option to enable or disable. Yeah, well, we need more...

Accessibility in general in movie theaters, in movies in general, in any spaces. mean, theaters, entertainment venues all over. yeah, no, I totally agree with you on that. PDF forms even. Inaccessible, I know about that from my job.

Things are just not made easy for people. And it fucking sucks. But I'm like, come on, we put so much, we have a billion dollars, you couldn't pay one person to do some mindful subtitling? Jesus. Yeah, yeah. But yeah, I thought it was sort of like a CW show. Like, know, like The Flash and Supergirl and all the CWDC shows for a while. This was feeling kind of like HBO's CW.

of Dune where I was like, it's got the budget and it's got the better source material. at the end of the day, it still is just going to be like a TV, a TVified version. Yeah. It's kind of it's a little campier. It's a little lighter. The dialogue is a less stylized. would say it's more for mass consumption. Visually, it still looks great. yeah. Yeah. No offense to it. I'm not saying that's a bad thing, but it is. It's like, you know, deduced a little bit more for consumers. Yeah, it's not. It's not made by

Dene, you know? No, I am interested to see where it goes though. I mean, like it's a first episode. I mean, it ends on a bit of a cliffhanger, you know, there's, Dune has so much to it that there's plenty that I don't understand already. I will say though, I am really happy to see Jessie Bardin. Yes! Booked and busy because I loved, loved, loved her back in the day. The lobster?

The SWAMP (18:07.862)
End of the fucking world. The lobster end of the fucking world. I absolutely adored her in that show back in what 2017 long ass time ago. Fucking loved it. That was yeah, pretty iconic. So I'm glad to see her on my screen again. Love this diva and the old to young casting that they did. Yeah, yeah. Solid, solid. And from the like upcoming on this season little clip that they had at the very end of the episode that sort of showed it seems like we are going to get a fair amount of back and forth time jumping between.

the older and the younger to see how these two timelines are paralleled. which I'm excited to I'm glad she wasn't just a lore dump young actress choice that she'll actually be a major part of the show. I'm really excited to see. Because yeah, I like her a lot too. And dehydrated Stanley Tucci. Yes, yeah. Of course. I don't even know that man's name. No idea. whatever. It doesn't matter.

No, but I'm also really excited to see, because our main protagonist in that show is a Harkonnen. And she is regular degular. That's just a lady. That lady runs the front desk at your elementary school. Exactly, exactly. Yeah. So I'm excited to sort of hopefully get some more behind that and show us how they get to be freaks. So freaky because, okay, so going back to the movies, do you prefer the character design on the Harkonnens in

Denice version bald and scary or do you like the ginger freaky postulating boils of the David Lynch version? I think that, okay, I prefer Denice version. I think just stylistically for me it does it more, but I think Lynch's version does what it is supposed to better, being freaky and nasty and gross. Sure.

Sting also got to account for Sting. Got to account for Sting. wait, we added points for Sting. Yep, Sting was another one that yeah, we had to give points for Sting on this. Yeah, I don't know. I like the Harkonens in Denise. I wanted to see more of them. I thought their stylization was really interesting and I thought it was really fun. totally agree. I think that's what made Dune 2 such a...

The SWAMP (20:23.416)
like a prolific, amazing film was those specific scenes on Getty Prime with the shift to the black and white, the inverted colors. Absolutely. so cool. And because I mean, if you think about it, and we can talk about it in this movie, there's not a whole hell of a lot that happens in Dune 2, honestly. It's a lot of Paul acclimating and sort of the whispers about him being Mouad'Dib and everything like that and riding the worm and everything like that. like on the opposite. a lot happens. He starts a religion, changes.

into believers, rides the word, starts a terrorist organization, drinks the juice, goes to the city. Yes, yes. Well, because the first one, it's where the action is speaking in terms of part one and two, which I in the book, it is also divided in half. So this movie tries to do the entirety of Dune in a two hour and 15 minute film, whereas Denny split it into two parts. Yeah, which I mean.

But he didn't split it. The book exists in two sections. It's called book one and book two within. So it was a logical place to sort of end. David Lynn's trying to do the whole thing at once. It's way too much. It's a lot because it makes the sort of lore dropping of the first half, which is very busy, almost feel like we don't have enough time to sit with anything to find reason to care. To really understand it and like, it dropped to us and then bring it back.

and like show us, you know what I mean? Like for context, I believe that they gave people like info cheat sheets at the theater when this first came out. Really? That's interesting. like a, like like a infographic, a flow chart to be like, you know, who, if you're confused about this, here's, yeah, which is a movie you shouldn't have to have that. Well, which I, I brought this up while we were watching this because we don't get to watch movies together all the time, but we watched this one. is that

I wanna know if you think that this movie could exist in a successful way pre-internet, because this flopped in its time. I mean, it seems like it was made for a wide audience. It certainly was trying to be a blockbuster. This is post-Star Wars, you know? We're definitely trying to get on the sci-fi wave and keep the money rolling in. There's not a wide audience that has read Dune. Dune, think, is a kind of

The SWAMP (22:45.602)
I don't know if I would call it inaccessible. Well, yes, you have to be that kind of person. You have to be a sidebar fantasy It is not for everybody. And so I don't know if it was something that could exist like while people didn't have like internet knowledge and easy access to it and like a QuickBooks, not QuickBooks. QuickBooks. QuickBooks. But like a quick... Internet source. Yeah. Searching. Yeah. They didn't have Google AI.

Yeah, Google it. Yeah, exactly. To tell the guilt and navigator was exactly. No, I'm just kidding. I actually skimmed through. I opened the wicker padaya, which is I will at least be doing that. You know, corroborate your sources. Don't trust the AI. But yeah, I totally agree that this is one of those things that is almost like destined to be a cult film or like destined to.

get better with time, the more people have resources. And even I found that I had seen this movie before I had watched the Denny Dunes. We just keep calling them the Denny Dunes. Denny Villeneuve is the director. But the two newer Dunes, just kept finding myself comparing it to them, but having a better understanding of the characters and enjoying it my second time around because I had more of the

knowledge of the actual story and reason to care. So I was like, like that movie informing my watch. Yeah, definitely made it better. So I'm like, the more I think people have access to resources, like you said, to sort of get it more or like, even seeing this in theaters versus like watching it in your home, you can pause and rewind. What was that again? What was that person saying? Subtitles like we were saying, right? Understand all these fake fucking made up words that they're saying all the time. my God. Like, let's figure that out, right?

huh. so yeah, I almost feel like movies like this are more popular now because we have all these sort of other resources to make sense of it. Where it's back then, I could understand because Star Wars is inspired by Dune, the books. Yeah. But George Lucas made his own thing and wasn't like, we're specifically using this word because on this page of this book, it says this thing where it's like,

The SWAMP (24:56.718)
we're just gonna start from scratch. Whereas I think this being rooted in something so prolifically known to be a beast. Yeah, it already drops you into something that is so foreign and so crazy and gives you nothing to really understand it, you know? I'll say though that I thought that David Lynch's Dune does feel a bit more alien and out of this world than Denny's.

Denny's is a little more grounded in real life and humanity and things that people who talk the way we are used to and people who look, this movie is a little bit absurd. It's like, yes, this is 10,000 years in the future where people will dress different, look different. Everything is alien and absurd and futuristic and nothing quite feels correct. Yeah, well, it also, I think, makes you feel that way because...

This one kind of talks to you like you're an idiot. Because it has to. We have to do 300 pages of book lore drop before we can really get into this. let's just, they literally do an infographic at one point where they pull up the planets and they name them and they tell you who lives there. Which I'm like, honestly, shouts out. I appreciate the visual guide, but also like maybe you could just show me and not tell me so much. Which that's the thing about this movie. And one of the things that makes it bad is because like,

As much as it's talking to me like I'm an idiot, it's still, the pacing is tough enough that it still loses me. Like blanking you miss something, especially once we get to the sort of part two of it. I mean, Paul becomes Jesus within five minutes, He drinks that blue Gatorade and it, genocide. Right. Yeah. Yeah. So, I don't know.

But I will say one thing that I will give this one a point for if we're keeping our tally is Kyle McLaughlin. Well, yes. Kyle McLaughlin. I love that song he sings in those dog commercials. What are we talking about? I'm talking about Sarah McLaughlin. shut the fuck up. Is it spelled the same way? it like McLaughlin? Kyle McLaughlin? Probably. McLaughlin. Probably. I wonder if they're related. Probably not. Hard to Where's he from? Is he Canadian?

The SWAMP (27:11.148)
I don't have to guess, he has that aura. He gives me like pleasant Canadian energy. Yeah, Or bet he's like a LA native, like a California, through and Where is Kyle McLaughlin from? Washington. I love that. That actually, so I, the first thing I ever saw him in really was he plays the mayor on Portlandia. my God, so good. So fucking friendly. I don't like, that's just such a random thing, but everything after that, I'm like watching Twin Peaks and I'm like, it's the mayor.

And everyone's like, that's not the order of operations. I'm like, doesn't matter, it's the mayor to me, it's the mayor. Yeah, I love that. But yeah, I love him in this. I he's a little cutie. I understand why Timmy was cast for Paul and I'm not mad about it. I think he does a great job, but I honestly think I prefer him as Paul. I like his naivety. Timmy doesn't feel like he has that.

Right. And you did mention something when we covered the first Doon, believe that it just like Timothy Chowme doesn't convincingly look like he could like take a hit. No, go into a battle in any capacity. Like, Kyle McLaughlin still has that sort of like skinny, young look about him. like, looks at least like his potential. I could have him fill up a weird

wheelbarrow and like push it around and like do some yard work, you know what I mean? Timothy Shalome, I don't think can move stones. Not a chance. I couldn't even burn him for firewood, let alone ask him to chop some down. Exactly. Yeah, that whole fight like that opens up or no, closes the first dune. Does it close the first dune or do we start with the fight of him? at the end, killing the Fremen. Killing the Fremen, yes. The very end of Himbron.

That is so that is the thing that is like the least believable for me. Really? Even though like I think the fight choreography is really good. I think they make convincing. It's just Timmy's. It is is funny in number two at that epic fight scene at the end where they put him against Fade Ratha, Austin Butler, and I'm just like truly one V one. This is not happening. This is no Jake Paul, Mike Tyson. Like it's not even going to be close. Yeah.

The SWAMP (29:22.974)
Why am I saying that like I know anything about that? just, the only thing I know is that Mike Tyson lost because I saw the meme of him next to Kamala. And I'm like, well, this can only mean one thing. Yes, yes. No, it was ridiculous. It was horrible. Of course. I mean, style, we already said that. I prefer that style on this one. No, I actually really do kind of like the crunchy eighties of it all. I think that there are moments when you can see David Lynch's like weirdness and vision kind of crack through.

just a little bit because the set design, the costumes, like some of the creative vision stuff, so fucking cool. That hallway with all the holes in the walls. Again, the guild navigator. The guild navigator being rolled out in his big matte black fish tank. I'm sorry, it was Cunt. Putting that little six year old girl in a full nun outfit, that was camp. I loved her. Do not get me started on his little witch sister.

Yeah, the voiceover that they gave her. Which it was that little girl. So I actually looked into it because I was like, they got an adult woman to do a little girl voice. I totally thought I was like, that's an adult woman pretending to be a little girl and they're dubbing it. So it sounds weird. It's like the voice, but it's that little girl dubbing her own voice to make it sound eerie. So it is like a dub. is like, but it's herself, but it's herself. that's so sad. It's not really cool. I found her on TikTok. She does videos where she, as an adult, does the lip syncing.

to the old and she can like still talk like that. It's very funny. I'll link it in the description. felt. my God. Yeah. She was another check mark for David. We'll see what Miss Anya Taylor Joy. We were joking about like, are they going to do like a mid age, like a young casting for what's her name? Aaliyah? Or are they just going to straight up give Anya Taylor Joy the bangs they gave her in the Queen's Gambit? And they're like, she's 11. No, no, no, don't worry. Don't worry. She's 11. No, she's 11. Don't worry about it, guys.

Yeah, points for creepy sister, points for practical fetus. Right, right. The fetus shots, again, comparing them to the like realistic scan fetus shots we get with Anya Taylor Joy voiceover in June 2, like whack as fuck. These were like weird, bubbly, practical, goopy, medical effects, practical effects that I just think serve as a more interesting to look at.

The SWAMP (31:41.934)
thing to look at in a movie. Certainly creepier, certainly more gross. But like, unfortunately, I think we're all a little too familiar with what a scan of a fetus looks like as it's fucking clustered. I'm bored. I'm like, yeah, dude, let's spice it up. don't know if she's Yeah, no. It was literally like a fetus in a pool of blood. was a bit like... But it was also like this weird, like stylized puppet baby that had like a huge head. Yeah. It was weird. I was into it. was weird. Typical David Lynch, you know.

a little bit of this, a little bit of that. Exactly, he is no stranger to the weird puppet baby. We did learn that this was his third full length feature film. ma'am. And because we were sort of curious timeline wise because this came out in 84 and I think Lynch is more associated with his work he did in the 90s. Yeah, Or more blew up, I don't know. He was yet to be a household name. Sure. But he had done Eraserhead and The Elephant Man before this.

That's it, like no blue velvet. Which that's kind of crazy. Mulholland Drive. What was the budget for this, do you know? It was for like 40 million, which back then that's That's lot money. And it did not make it back. I think it only made 30 something. Yeah. But big budget. And I do think one of the main reasons why this flopped, I don't have the full deets of the backstory. Sure. expect in some capacity that this is why the movie got such a big budget because it was associated with this production studio.

and the producer's name was Dino De Laurentiis. And he really took a very hands-on producer role as in like micromanaging every little thing. I wonder if it was for financial reasons or if I wonder if it was just they had something in mind and David Lynch had a...

more creative out of the box vision and they wanted it to be like a more consumer friendly Star Wars type. Sure. Science fiction thing. But David Lynch was like, you don't get it, which is why to this day, David Lynch really does not like to talk about Dune. says it's like the failure of his career. He doesn't want to do like they've offered for him to do like director's cuts or like whatever. And he's like, I'm just not interested because basically of all the pushback he got on the set, he's like, even when shooting, I never got to do anything the way I wanted to do it. Because this guy was like,

The SWAMP (33:54.53)
micromanaging every little thing. So I think that's like the main producer intervention and like, you know, the big money people intervening a little bit too much on the creative decisions is probably why this movie is less successful. But I do think that David Lynch should be a little easier on himself, you know? He shouldn't say that this is the failure of his career. No, it's not bad. I still have fun watching this. And I almost want to say like without this movie, we don't get Denis Villeneuve's Dune, right?

You can see so many moments where he clearly drew inspiration from what was going on, or at least the building blocks of the hype to get people to find Dune to be palatable. Like that is going to take a long time. So let's slowly pepper throughout, you know, a little TV series in the early 2000s that no one watched. sure. Why not? McAvoy. Why not? Susan Sarandon, isn't it? Really? Wild. Yeah. Impressive. Children of Dune. OK.

Okay, fair enough. What you think? else? Practical effects, really appreciated that. Practical effects, but I actually also liked some of the chunky CG. The shields? The shield, yes. Points for the shield CGI. Points for the shields. I actually, I like the way they look in the new Dune. It's like sort of this radio static that comes off of your body that flickers and blue. This was like literally they outlined, they used the pen tool.

They used the pen tool to outline a box around a person and then hit like opacity down to like blur it out a little bit. Yeah. These huge weird blocking shields that sort of just cover the people. But it's you can tell because they didn't have the technology to make it anything sophisticated that they leaned into the very chunky geometric. Which perfect. I kind of liked how it looked. If you're going to do it like you might as well go all out.

in one way, which I appreciate that- stylistic vision. Yes, I appreciate doing that more than trying to like pass off some half-ass shit. Right. I loved these, the shields. It just reminded me and made me think of the sort of like AI character robots from Interstellar. Do you know what I'm talking about? They're like on the spaceship with them, like they save Anne Hathaway from like drowning on the planet.

The SWAMP (36:11.406)
It's very like foxy and like, I don't know. It just looked like so on par with it. But I just love to see those two sort of things like intertwined. Maybe that's just in my brain though. No, I like, we were talking about the, that new fuck ass AI Coke commercial where they're like, we made a Coke commercial using generative AI. And I was like, literally I would rather it be the chunky shields from David Lynch's 1984 Dune.

unrendered ass fucking 80s CG, please. Please. Anything else. Other than these fucking polar bears that are so dead behind the ass. No spark. Any spark that's there was actually manually added by a designer in post. Exactly. that commercial is not fully generated by AI. There are plenty of animators who had to work on it. that's also false advertising. I've been getting hated on the internet about the...

the fucking AI commercial. As somebody who, don't care about advertising, but I should, you know. You did go to school for it. Yeah. It's like, I can't help, but sort of keep up on it in some capacity, especially considering I don't watch cable. So I don't ever see ads like that. then when one is getting a lot of traction on the internet, I'm like, I gotta, I gotta see who the next flop is. Who's flopping? Who's flopping? Yes, yes, yes. Speaking of AI, this movie is,

the thing that I would say, if you had to train an AI, like to put an 80s filter on something, you know, I feel like like six months ago or something like that, there was a lot of TikToks blowing up of being like, if you put, me by your name through an 80s filter, what would it look like? Like 80s fantasy. Exactly, something like that. this movie is the perfect thing to train it. In my opinion. get it to look like interesting practical sets.

Honestly, nowadays, if you could get the CG to look more like miniatures and paintings, I would have more respect for that. Yeah, truly. Let's move back in the other direction. Please, please. my God. The other thing that I will say that I think I preferred about this movie is that the worms had a roar. Yes! I loved, they were like, you know, kind of like getting up on their hind legs and like...

The SWAMP (38:34.644)
moving around like wiggling around. I'm whoa, that girl. Yeah. Like she's winning. She like she is making noise. I would say the comparable thing in the new Dune movies is the far superior score, which has the haaa, like the You do it really well. I just think about Kurt Hummel. I just think about the video Kurt Hummel. I just harness my Kurt energy. Right. Chris Colfer.

runs through me. Yeah, I mean, we had such a connection with Glee. I feel like this is like the least that it should have been able to give us. And that's one of those things that like once you hear it and you see that meme, you just can't unhear it. It's so funny. But I feel like that in the soundtrack is what Deni was giving us for the worm scream. It's more of a metaphorical worm scream. But I like that these worms were

Barkin. Yeah. Yeah, they were getting up. They had a deep roar. A deep roar, which you would expect to come out of such a vessel. Yeah. The worm design also didn't hate. They were putting it under a lot of shields of blurry CG so that you never really looked at it for too long. I thought the worms were a lot of fun. Yeah, the worms were a lot of fun. They were very much to me reminiscent of, I forget what it is, but it's in the last Star Wars movie, what is it? Return of the Jedi?

It starts off in the desert in the sand pit. right. The sarlacc pit. The sarlacc pit. Yeah, it's got that trifold mouth and everything like that and all the teeth inside of it, which I mean, there's only so many designs for worms at that point. Right. So you can't really blame them. But there's the very popular

author Sarah J Maas, she writes like horny fantasy books. They're like not even actually that horny, but they're like suggestive fantasy books, you know, targeted at women. But one of the like main beasts this fairy has to defeat is a fucking- are these the ones that everyone reads nowadays? Yeah, yeah, yeah. the Court of- Court of Thorns and Roses. Yeah, these are the Court of books. okay, okay. Got it. And it's called the Midengard Worm, and it's spelled W-Y-R-M, like the worm.

The SWAMP (40:45.774)
and she defeats the worm and everyone's like gassing it up. like, have you bitches heard of dune? I'm like, wait, I think you would actually love this thing called dune. Let me tell you about dune.

But no, this, I was cracking up that this movie was reminding me of a Sarah J Maas book and the fact that they're like, this huge war, we're gonna wage a holy war. my And then you're starting it when there's 20 minutes left in the bell. Literally, like, we checked it. stamp. Yeah, time stamp, it's like 25 minutes or something like that. It's hysterical, the third act. Which, of course, the intrigue of Dune is that, you know, the political wheel will always continue to turn and that the wars will always evolve and adapt to the players.

whatever, it's like the war is never really over, of course, but it is just sort of like, okay, and we got to, and we got to. It's always literally you have 10 pages left of a Sarah J. Maas book and they're like, all right, we're stepping into battle. And you're like, well, and she always resolves it by the end too. I'm like, you couldn't even continue this into the, I'm like, know there's six more of these. There's six more of these. What do you mean they're ending the 100 years war at the end of book one? Sure, Whatever you say, lady.

my God. The one thing I will say, the strike that I'll put against this. Sure. And the thing that is at least believable to me is the healthy looking pug that is featured in this movie. You were like, what is wrong with this?

and I was like, it looks healthy. It can actually breathe through its nose. Yeah, right. The audio isn't just like huffing and puffing and weird pug snorting noises. It was like a slim pug. Yeah, you don't see a slim pug every day. Never in my life have I seen a pug that I was like, you don't need to be taken to a vet stat. Yeah, I think the last 40, 50 years is when... We got a little too creative. Yeah, exactly. With those dog breathes.

The SWAMP (42:37.72)
breeding-wise and evolutionary-wise, they've really gone over the brink and there's no coming back. I think this was one of the last examples of a healthy pug in media that Yeah, like a normal, this was the representation of what an average adult pug looked like. And we're looking back being like, there's not a pug alive today healthier than that. Exactly, exactly. Right, or as healthy as that. Yeah. Does not check. No, it does not exist. Yeah, they're gonna be looking back at that one for scientific data.

wish they had Oscar Isaac carry around a cunty little pug. my Or like a really fucked up, like a really fucked up a puggle. my God. I wish they put him with like a pit bull or some shit like that. But it needs to be like a little inbred dog you can hold. Cause that's a sign of wealth, right? Yeah, guess. Wealthy people love fucked gotta be fucked up, yeah. Yeah, to pie today's standards, I believe that would be the French bulldog is currently the highest market value desirable dog.

Yeah, that's a maxed out dog. What's the max? Like we're maxing out its stats. Like, it doesn't have to eat, doesn't have to run, doesn't have to... Do you think of like one of those like, those body proportion like makers? know what I mean? all the way down. Yeah, that's what I'm thinking, like maxed out in that sense. Because this is a style, this is a maxed out movie stylistically. Right.

That's a maxed out thing. That's a maxed out animal to be putting. Just maxed out in general. Well, you as talking about stylization, maxed out, we were trying to come up with some movies from like the past 10 to 20 years that feel as intentionally highly stylized as most movies in the 80s. Yeah. Honestly, but we're specifically looking at this one and obviously comparing like sci-fi fantasy stuff to more.

know, realistic stories is kind of hard because the amount of whimsy in your screenplay can really determine the amount of, you know, stylization and like cinematography and stuff. like other than the other than the obvious, you know, Wes Anderson, very practical set design kind of guy. Right. Call me by your name. think you said it by your name. It's like a vision. Certainly the most, I think, out of all of his stuff. Right. Everything is taken to the nth degree of what the vision demands for.

The SWAMP (44:56.654)
Maybe not Yorgo's generally, but Poor Things, obviously, is absolutely maxed out. The substance, for sure. Babylon, maybe? I think it could maybe do a bit more. I don't know that we're totally maxed out. Yeah, I feel like things are just not...

saturated anymore and like there's a lack of brightness and depth and contrast and interesting visual choices being made and just like the closer we get to this fucking wicked movie I wanna just keep complaining about I'm like how does everything look like a capital one credit card commercial like the new how I train how to train your dragon live action first of all already perfect as an animated movie we did not need that to be redone at all

even a little bit, but then also like, why does it literally look like, you know, fucking someone's about to step out and the Geico Gecko is selling me insurance all of a sudden. It's so horrible. Washed out, no shadows, looks like ass. It's I mean, and John Waters can't even get enough fucking money to make a movie with Aubrey Plaza in it. You know about this? dude. It's yeah. my God. Literally like, well, just, know, John Waters had a pitch to make a movie. I think the script was written.

Aubrey Plaza was going to star in it. It was this collaborative creative project that was brought to, I'm sure a number of studios and no one would fund it. I'm like, literally, can we start a Kickstarter or something? Yeah, honestly. To John Waters, one of the greatest filmmakers of all time, wants to make a movie and not a person will drop a dime. I cannot believe it. Yeah, which...

Heads up for the girls in the Boston area. The Coolidge Corner Theater is doing a celebration for John Waters. I think they're giving him some sort of award. Cool. And he's gonna be there and there's gonna be some screenings and stuff like that. So. Yeah, I love the Coolidge Theater. Independent movie theater is cool as hell. Yeah, we are here for community and we are here for, yeah, independent cinema. Even though we are. theaters.

The SWAMP (46:59.662)
AMC, Stubbs, and even though I do support the big guys too, I try to get out to the smaller theaters when I can, because they often are showing movies that I'm like, I didn't even know about this, or like, this is so much more interesting. I'm why are there 900 showings of the fucking Venom movie? I'm exhausted. But I can't find a decent time to see Conclave. Like, are you kidding me? So I love that usually smaller theaters will cater to be like, people want to see arthouse movies, not in the middle of the day on a Tuesday.

We'll do a showing at a normal time. my God, who would think? Thank God. mean, yeah. I love a matinee on a Tuesday as much as the next girl. Yes, of course. We can't always afford that, though, can we? I gotta fucking work. You know who else has to work? Patrick Stewart's mullet. my God, his clippings. That's the last point that I had for this movie. Patrick Stewart has just always looked like that, huh? Yeah, the whole time. Hot.

Yeah, consistent. Yeah, so hot. hot. He's always like looked 50. Like he's always looked just like an abode. Speaking of, should we get into our regularly sketch? Well, Fuck Mary Kill. mean, I've got to kind of like look at the cast, Because the hands of them all look the same, really. And honestly, like, Paul's parents, like, don't have quite as real, like Lady Jessica and Duke Leto, like, don't really show up quite as much in this one.

I would consider them to be way less big players than they are in the dune, the newer dune. But we could maybe pick a representative. could do like Sting can represent the Harkonnens. Sting. Like Kyle McLaughlin can represent the Atreides. And then do we want to throw in the bald Bene Gesserit lady, the high priestess?

No, she's freaky. She's scary. She's too scary. I love the commitment to the snatch ball No, who's, Fremen? Stilgar? Yeah, what does he look like? Chani, Chani also was pretty not of note. Really, this story has far too many characters for them to be like really packing them all in like that. God, yeah. I'm like, I really don't, hold on. What the fuck does Everett McGill look like?

The SWAMP (49:20.844)
I would say we could do Patrick Stewart, Sting and Kyle McLaughlin. Okay. Yeah. Those are the three most famous people in this movie I would say. Here's the guy that plays. Hot though. That's Duflito though, right? No, that's Stilgar. Stilgar, ooh, Stilgar Okay, let's do Stilgar, Paul and Sting. Sure. Okay. but we're kicking out Patrick Stewart? Yeah. Okay, that's fine. Cause we're all gonna fuck him.

Right? No, I think I would maybe marry him. You'd marry him? Well, okay, I have to think of the characters. Okay. Because I will have to kill Sting. Right? Because I don't Do you want to do Patrick Stewart, Kyle McLaughlin and... Stilgar? Stilgar? Sure. Okay. I'll fuck Stilgar. I'll kill Kyle McLaughlin. I'll marry Patrick Stewart. Yeah, guess that's the right And then if we're throwing Sting in the mix, I think I'm still going to swap out and kill Sting.

Even though he was supposed to be naked when he steps out in his cuntier. I wish. my god. was supposed to be a buck naked but then at the last minute they were like this might be too risque. Get him a little Harkonnen looking thong. But I was like damn. Full cock from Sting. If I could have gotten Sting cock.

There's this funny IMDB fact story that's pretty popular about this movie that John Stewart, Patrick Stewart, Patrick Stewart did not know who Sting was. I love that. Why do I not? That doesn't shock me the slightest. He's trying to make small talk with them and he's like, you're like a, you're musician. Yeah, what do you do? a solo act? And he's like, no, I'm in a band called The Police. And so from that conversation, Patrick Stewart thought that he was a cop.

who was in a police band. Shut up. Like he and his buddies from work like did a band. He's like, yeah, a band of police officers. my God. Literally hilarious. him. Protect Patrick Stewart. Right at all costs. And what are you going to eat and drink with this? So I feel like I went classic when we covered Dune in the past. So I don't want to repeat and say that you should have sand. I always say to eat the sand.

The SWAMP (51:32.014)
I went for the blue cocktail. blue cocktail. was like, we gotta think of something else. So I was like, what is like a worm? And then I was like, this movie has a lot of like nasty skin conditions, which kind of reminds me of like the bubbly cheese on a pizza. Okay. And what reminds me of a worm is maybe a nice long tubular calzone. So I think you should make a worm calzone with like a lot of like

cheese and pepperoni in there to like emulate the nasty skin of the Harkinens but make it worm shaped. And then I was also trying to think about what drink reminds me of a worm. Then I started thinking more about straws and less about drinks. And I was thinking about the worm is kind of a straw in a sense that it's tubular and the best kind of straw is a boba straw. So I think you should, I think I would want to suck some boba up through the sand worm.

Cause I honestly, the spines would break it up a little bit maybe, it could be nice. I love when we get a guide through your mind map. My mind palette. So I'm like, you should have a tubular calzone and some boba. I'll tell you what, you better have multiple bathrooms at your party if this is what we're having. I went classic.

You drink the blue goo. In this case, it's a blue lagoon is what I found. Okay. Which is just vodka, lime, blue curacao and some Sprite. Call it a day. Love that. Nothing crazy. personally, I'd add a dash of pineapple juice. Also a good call. I think I would sub the Sprite for some pineapple juice. Pineapple juice, but I think you need like some sparkling water to cut through it. yeah. Because that's all sugar. That's Unless.

Yeah, I think sparkling water instead of Sprite, absolutely. And then I think honestly, this is a dip party. I think you have all of your guests bring a different dip and you just go to town with some chips. Love that. You actually have to suck the dip up just with your mouth like the worms. Because the food has to be about the worms for some reason this time around. I'm like, how do we make this more worm-like? you can get like a three pronged little tongue.

The SWAMP (53:55.83)
Yeah, that's true. And then to follow this up, this is tough because I think it depends on where you are in your Dune journey, right? Because if you haven't seen the new show, I think you should go watch Dune Prophecy, right? Check in with that. But if you haven't seen the 2003 Children of Dune, have not with James McAvoy. I haven't either. But I'm like, maybe that would be an interesting thing to dip my toes into after this. How much worse could a Dune adaptation be? Yeah.

Let's see, because people say that that one is also awful. And this one at least has some- You could also watch the documentary, God, what is it about? it's a Dune movie that never got made. Do you know what I'm talking about? No, interesting. Hold on. I mean, I believe that that exists. What's it called? Jordowski's Dune.

Yeah, that's what it was. When was it supposed to be a thing before this or after this? It explores the cult film director's unsuccessful attempt to adapt the novel in the mid 70s. so yeah, interesting. So I wonder if any picked up pieces of that project made its way into this, right? If there was any migration of like people working on it or something. Interesting. Well, I have to see it.

But then ultimately what I really want to turn on after this is an episode of Twin Peaks. Because I'm watching Kyle McLaughlin and I'm like, Diane, it's 904. That's what I want from Nothing wrong with that. So I'm like, just honestly, the Twin Peaks pilot after this could go hard. What about you? I think that right now to me, Yorgos Lanthimos is probably pretty parallel with David Lynch.

in terms of, mean- Been a weird guy? Weird guy, weird movies. Like I see those two just in the same category. And I think right now, going off of the style maxing, I think you watch Poor Things. Yeah. That's all Is Poor Things still on fucking Disney Plus? Probably, it's fucked cracking me up. That was cracking me when they were doing ads for Disney Plus. It's fucking insane. It's so stupid. I'm like, speaking of full cough.

The SWAMP (56:14.72)
Yeah. Poor things on Disney Plus. things on Disney Plus. I mean, they have the rights to Rocky Horror Picture Show. Like, it's just- I guess. But- Maddening. HBO seems to have rights to most Dune because you can watch this and Dune 102 and the TV show all on HBO. They're Dune Maxing. If you're Dune Maxing, get on HBO. Yeah. And then, out of 10, I'm gonna give this like a four. I'm gonna give it a five. Mm-hmm. Yeah. Yeah. I- I- Dead middle.

It's like unfortunate, because it's almost like the parts of it that are good are also disappointing because it's like there was potential there almost, right? Like it's like, it could have been good and look what they took from us, but it just isn't working. It's not weird enough to be David Lynch. this being his third movie and looking at his first two, like Jesus Christ, they really put a lid on him. Yeah.

Could you imagine? It's good to see that this wasn't the career killer though. No, God. I'm like creatively, I'm sure he felt just like decimated after I know that's got to be so heartbreaking to have to do a movie like that where you can't make what you actually have in mind. And when you actually have like really cool source material that is like weird and corked up and you can do some kind of crazy shit with it. Bummer. But glad to see that we got, I got to get more into later David Lynch's because I haven't seen

a lot of his work to be frank. It's mostly twin peaks for me as far as my like impression of him. gotta get into that. yeah, 1984 Dune shouts out if you watch Dune Prophecy, if you wanna message us and let us know what you think.

I'm curious. I think episodes are coming out Sunday nights, right? Yeah, they got that good time slot. I love a Sunday night HBO show, very House of the Dragon. Of course, yeah. Like filling my Twitter feed with a good political intrigue discussion. Yeah, we're kind of in our off season right now. We're working with like Dune Prophecy and like Penguin and all that shit. it's not our hard hitters.

The SWAMP (58:18.69)
at the moment, but I'll take it. I'll take what I because we're entering like film season, right? Yeah, Oscar. Yeah, we're in. We're headed into Oscar season. I we were talking to you. We were talking earlier about potential best actor nominations because whatever production studio or whatever, they nominated Timmy to be for both Bob Dylan and Paul Maldini Petrides. Timmy Maxing. Timmy. They're Timmy Maxing over at Universal Studios. So we'll see how that goes.

But yeah, cause who did we say was his probably most likely competition at the moment? Like maybe Achillean Murphy, but maybe. I would say, I would guess so at the moment. Like a distant Paul Maskell. I think Paul will get it. I know. Well, I mean, that's the thing that fucking what's his name? Original Gladiator. Russell Crowe. That's the thing he has his Oscar for. So I think it would make sense.

But you also read a review that said he's an actor, not a movie star. Well, mean, that's Oscar wise. That's not a bad thing. That is true as well. Yeah, we're really excited for Gladiator. We'll probably do a Patreon episode on that once it comes out and all that shit. You can find the links in the description below. Thank you for listening here at the swamp. You know, we're all doing not great right now, but we're still going to talk about movies when we can. Do what you can. Yeah, we're going to try and have a special guest on.

to round out the month. Well, yes, a very special guest. So as far as chaotic and bad as a movie theme, I think that this person only knows how to adhere to that. Only know, yeah, that's all that, yeah. So love that. But speaking of other guests, if you have other podcasts you listen to that you think are similar to ours, and you would want me to like after two glasses of wine slide into their DMs and be like, hey, I have no money, but do you want to hang out on a Zoom call?

Yeah, that's basically how all my pitches start and end, right there. But thank you. Yeah, thank you for listening. Goodbye and good night. And we'll see you next week.