Daily Duuuun
So today I just wanted to do a small editorial instead of my usual Music/Art/Fan-work copy/paste. I'm re-reading Dune again and I remember the first time I read it I was very confused about what exactly was happening in the first act. There was a big sense of Mystery associated with the Universe involving the spacing guild, the spice, Arrakis itself and the Empire. I recently watched the Dune Miniseries for the first time and I'm realizing something that I think both adoptions have missed in their translation of Dune is the sense that it is a mystery novel as well as scifi. When you are watching it, you should be thinking "what is going on, who is that, how will this play out?" The sense of suspense was something that I thought was so cool about the novel doesn't seem to exist in such a large extent in either adaptation. The Miniseries, of course, is a much better attempt at Dune then the Lynch film (although the Lynch film had so many elements that I think fit perfectly well into Dune Canon). But things such as the Spacing Guild Navigators and scenes featuring the Padishah Emperor distracted from the lost feelings you get when you read it, which I feel better cement your connection to Paul and Jessica as they are thrown into a world they know nothing about.
Of course, two of the brilliances of Dune that can't be translated to visual media as easily, the opening quotes from various In-universe novels (ala encyclopedia galactica) and the literal thesaurus at the end of the book. Even so, I think Dune is the best story when it is a mystery as well as an action/adventure messiah piece, and I really hope at some point we can get an adoption that does that.