Children of Dune

Tonight I watched the final part of the Children of Dune miniseries, having watched the Dune miniseries beforehand. I was really impressed with Dune. Bits were missed out, but it felt closer to the story than the 80s film. I wasn't keen on how Paul was portrayed as being moody and immature at the beginning, but other than that I thought the part was well cast. Jessica...not so much. She just never seemed sure of herself. She just was not like Jessica the Bene Gesserit.

The first part of Children of Dune was really good. Dune Messiah is an odd book, in that it takes a while to know where it's going. On TV, it was summarised well enough, covering everything, and it really felt like it was how the book should have been. Alice Krige should have been cast as Jessica from the start, and that guy who played Atherton in Firefly should have played Duncan Idaho from the start. I'm not too keen on the woman who played Alia, or how she was portrayed throughout Children of Dune. She seemed like a stroppy kid at times, and I don't think she's a great actress. Possibly chosen more for her appearance? The Atreides twins were well cast. James McAvoy was the stand out actor of the whole thing. However, while I understand why they decided to change the kids ages to young adults rather than 9 year olds, they might have done the same with the rest of the cast. Irulan didn't look any older than Ghanima. Alia hadn't aged a day in however many years it's supposed to have been, and neither had other young looking characters.

While part one was really great, and part two was pretty good, part three just didn't do the job. If I hadn't read the book, I'm not sure I'd really get what was going on with Leto at the end. The sand trout symbiosis thing wasn't well explained, and didn't look as it should have done. I sometimes wish they had a slightly bigger effects budget for things like that. I think the book has a weird end anyway, and it's certainly the weakest of the trilogy, but it was easier to understand what was going on than the film.

Farad'n wasn't as I thought he should have been. He was portrayed as week, up until he landed on Arrakis. That's not how I saw him. He was more intelligent than his mother, but naive. When he worked out what was going on, he bided his time, and made his move when he needed to. In the book that is, because TV Farad'n was a bit of a wimp until he realised he could do the Weirding stuff. Another thing I wasn't too happy with was Duncan's death. I think it was harder to understand why on TV. To be honest, the whole episode in the book was odd, and seemed a bit sudden, but it was more so on screen. That was a shame, because Duncan is one of my favourite characters.

In conclusion, the miniseries were both were watching, and the trilogy was worth reading. Dune was probably my favourite book, and although I can see that it wasn't finished and needed continuing, I think the story got progressively worse. Messiah was really interesting, Children of Dune started off really exciting, and then became even more complicated than it had been previously, and finished in a weird way.