Trinh Hoang Phi

After all the hype has died down a short time from now, I think people will see the series for its true value: a meticulously crafted piece of entertainment, authentic and mesmerizing, but ultimately limited by its format and its source material. Others have said plenty about the good side of this series, and they're all true, so here I'd rather focus on the shortcomings. First, the format. I don't know the economics behind it, but all the series made nowadays are either in 8-episode-per-season form, or as 10-episode miniseries. Why? With a sprawling set of characters and factions, with so much interactions and potential for interactions among them, how can a 10-episode miniseries portray it in a satisfying way? Why not do the thing that Asian television channels have always been doing, which is to make 30- or 40-ep long sagas? It is really limiting in terms of what can be portrayed and what must be left out. Second, the novel itself. The biggest issue here is the lack of logical rules which govern the world building. Rules are either unclear or not well established, leading to a fictional world which feel like it could go anywhere by the arbitrary whims of the author. Episode 9 brought a glaring example. After publicly allowing Lady Mariko to depart for Edo with Toranaga's family to preserve his "honor" as a host, Lord Ishido at that very night sends assassins to kill her. There's nothing to be gained from it, since the whole point of not letting her go is to avoid the dilemma of dishonoring himself as a host or risking the great families' revolt. Now by killing Lady Mariko in this blatant and very-much-dishonorable way, Lord Ishido is getting both scenarios. So many other questions abounds: Why is Toranaga, being the president of the Regent Council, so powerless and clueless as to allow himself to be politically maneuvered into a corner by mere bureaucrats and lesser lords? Why are there great Lords with essentially no military or economic power to back them up? What roles do they play other than as talking heads? What is at first promised to be a multi-faction political struggle turns out to be a two-faction back-and-forth. What a letdown. Why does Toranaga bring his army to a small town of Anjin, which is then conveniently done away with by an earthquake (by the author)? Why is Ishido's political usurpation, so important to the plot, only portrayed by mere implication and not fleshed out, so that it is more believable? Is there really no other way that Toranaga could act without sacrificing his best friend and his son? It is never laid bare. Why is there no outside backlash to Sugiyama's assassination? What's the point of the character of Omi? So in short, a few problems seem hard to ignore: _Characters act in an illogical way with no good explanation _Things that should be fleshed out isn't. _The power dynamics is not made clear and the complexity is increasingly reduced towards the ends.

Apart from Tolkien, who had witnessed war firsthand, I have yet to see a fantasy/scifi writer who can write about war competently and believably, the least of whom are Hollywood screenwriters. Dune 2 is no exception. With regard to war it feels like the whole world building attempt has fallen short. The challenge about it is to create an opponent that is an intelligent, living, reacting force, and not just someone that looks menacing but does nothing and dies fast. Of course if the story is about the triumph of the underdogs, but the opposition is too competent, then the struggle is made infinitely harder. It would require much more detailing, to the point of feeling like a documentary. So it’s a paradox. War is always very multifront, contains both rational and irrational elements, and its scale often exceeds the mind’s imaginative capacity. The war in Dune is none of that. The fight, though persisting throughout the film, is only the backdrop to a political saga, a very intriguing and thought provoking one at that. It is hard not to be amused by a spacefaring species whose warmaking is the equivalent to that of a local trade company or a street gang. Hell, even the East India Co. was more sophisticated than that. There’s no hierarchical military structure, no ranks, no bureaucracy, no different branches and units. What kind of people possess spaceship and air force, but have neither intelligence and scouting, nor orbital strike capacity? Their entire goddamn air force is a few glorified helicopters. What might work in other aspects for Frank Hebert’s attempt to marry fantasy with science fiction does not work here; spacefaring empires should not fight like medieval armies. This is coming from someone who has read about Dune's lore extensively and understands its techno-political dynamic. The thread of the plot is spread too thin (probably in the book too) that I can’t help but feeling like it does not do justice to its massive world building. Other than that, Dune is visually beautiful. Timothy Chalamet appears sometimes brooding as if he's Batman, but some other time it feels like an impressionable twink. The casting choice is just not convincing.