Sci-fi(sorry, SYFY) channel tried to do the 2nd/3rd books but suffered from lack of budget, among other things.
I'm not sure you could do a big screen adaptation of Messiah either. There's just not a whole lot there. It's a lot of talking, then one explosion, then more talking, and then a 4 second fight sequence, roll credits. It serves as a great set-up for book 3, but it's very much a set-up and is ultimately unfulfilling. Interesting themes and some good character moments but there's a reason that the book was mostly considered disappointing until the rest of the series was done.
If I were to attempt to make a movie or miniseries of the books beyond Children of Dune, I'd simply summarize God Emperor as its important historical events and move on to Heretics and Chapterhouse.
Syfy's approach to Messiah was just to fold it into Children of Dune.
Movie seems like a bad medium for it.
God Emperor does suffer from being a lot of dialogue. It's a lot of political/philosophical text, setting up the dominoes that will fall over at the conclusion of the book. Which is fine in book form, as you can spend time with the inner dialogue of the characters, and really flesh out their motivations, rationale for their actions, etc. But in visual medium, that never translates well. The Lynch Dune film actually tried to do this, to include the inner monologuing for the characters, with the narration portions of the movie. And most people consider that aspect of the storytelling to be really bad. And while I love that film, I can't really disagree that it doesn't work that well, as narration over visual medium. Because often, if the inner dialogue is lengthy, you will have uncomfortably long scenes of the actor just....sitting there...doing basically nothing, while they think out their lines. So the workaround would be to shorten those lines...which kind of defeats the purpose of having the inner monologuing in the first place. To give the character time to explain (at least internally) their thought process about something.
Yeah the actual suits of armor do seem out of place to me, considering the setting and how poorly technology works on Arrakis. I'm thinking those are perhaps scenes either from his past before getting to Arrakis, or before he is exiled to the sands? When they're still trying to do things the Caladan way.
Hmm interesting. I have trouble imaging that scene would take place so early. My thought was that it's either a bookend sequence teasing part 2 or one of Paul's visions. Perhaps he is seeing him and the the Fedaykin taking on the Sardaukar. Or it's him getting a glimpse of the coming jihad.
Perhaps. I actually just went back and watched it and...yeah it seems to be after he's already part of the Fremen which...feels odd yes. The armor looks too much like "imperial" stuff, not the Fremen's stillsuit style equipment. So I don't know what it's supposed to be. Given who they are fighting, I suspect that particular clip is when they assault those spice smugglers and he finds Gurney among the crew, and brings him back to his service But yeah, the armor does look strange. But ....*shrugs* We'll see I guess.
For what it's worth, I actually like the armour.
For me it's mostly aesthetic really? I think the look just...well just isn't what I ever imagine for the Fremen. It feels too mechanical for their desert Bedouin theme, and always made me think someone clunking around in that kind of armor, would just be food for Shai-Hulud. It feels more like Sardaukar armor to me.
If we're talking aethetics, the hoods they're wearing don't make any sense to me. I always imagined the hoods of the stillsuits as sort of like the hoods in scub diving wetsuit. Something that seals and traps moisture. The hoods they're wearing in this movie are just cloth and would allow all of the sweat on your brow to evaporate. That's just bad water discipline.
Yes, EVERY film adaptation has made that change, so you can see the face of the actors. Per the books, yeah it would be like a full face mask. But, then everyone would look the same, and sound muffled, so they make that change. Which I'm fine with.
In the books it wasn't a full face mask. It was a hood, sort of like a wetsuit hood, a tube in the nostrils and a mask over the nose and mouth, with the eyes exposed.
Yeah sorry, the facemask with hood is mostly what I meant about full face mask. And yes, you are correct about the hair stuff. It's purely a visual aesthetic thing, to make things prettier, and more dramatic for the audience. The scifi mini series actually had probably the most book accurate suits. the face covering, with a close, skullcap style head covering. I think they had an actual hood over that, as shade IIRC, but it's been a while. But, they pretty much never stayed in that for long. If it was a dialogue heavy scene, they'd take them off quickly. It's a detail I'm fine with overlooking, as frankly I would much rather see Zendaya with her pretty hair, flowing around her as she smiles at the camera, with glowing blue eyes, than always seeing her in a hood and mask, anytime they are outside of a sietch, and thus can't relax water disciplines.