![the godfather epic hbo max the godfather epic hbo max](http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-IX0uyIYDheY/T4HRRppZ_7I/AAAAAAAAAAk/13BPSRW-_xo/s1600/GFS.jpg)
The SyFy Channel version of Dune in 2000 was more faithful, but even less accessible to the layperson.ĭune is the anti-Star Wars because it’s going to make you work really hard to understand what’s going on, and even harder to figure out what it’s supposed to mean.
#The godfather epic hbo max movie#
To his credit, Lynch knew this and tried to make his movie as weird as possible. It’s being marketed, even if on accident, as a Star Wars-y thing.ĭune presents itself as a Hero’s Journey narrative, but the trick is, it’s not. Dune isn’t being marketed as “The Godfather in Space,” even though it totally should be. And because most mainstream moviegoers don’t like muddled ethical messages in their epics, that makes Dune a hard sell at the box office. Unlike Lord of the Rings, there’s not a real clear “good versus evil” message here. But the ethical message of Dune makes the supposedly gritty Thrones look like a bedtime story. Everyone is addicted to a space drug called “the Spice,” which also helps with space travel.įor those who loved the shades of grey in Game of Thrones, this all might sound appealing and familiar. Dune has several characters with concubines, but also political spouses who they do not love. Star Wars goes big by being really easy to like. Paul Atreides begins his adventure on a backward desert planet and doesn’t really mess around with space much after that. Luke Skywalker leaves a desert planet to go on to a great adventure. The point is, Dune is a big-ass space movie that posits itself as the anti-Star Wars. I mean, can you imagine if The Mandalorian had been a one-off movie like Solo? Even Star Wars suffers from its own success, which is probably why being on streaming right now is so good for the galaxy far, far away. Sci-fi/fantasy movies can often crush at the box office ( Lord of the Rings, Marvel) but if your movie is an epic set in space, you’re kind of working with a popularity deficit. Avatar (2009) might be the outlier here, but let’s face it, it really is an outlier. From cult-classics like The Last Starfighter (1984) to mainstream hits like Starship Troopers (1997), living in the shadow of Star Wars is tough. Lynch’s Dune is no exception, and other than the relative scrappiness of the Trek franchise (which predated Star Wars) it’s really tough to point to an outer-space-heavy, big sci-fi movie that was ridiculously popular and somehow wasn’t compared favorably to Star Wars. This isn’t fair, and certainly doesn’t represent the entire spectrum of good science fiction films, but if we’re only talking about Marvel-level mainstream appeal, science fiction movies set-in-space and released after 1977 are kind of already playing behind the 8-ball. Abrams Star Trek) or actively know your movie will be perceived as anti-Star Wars ( Arrival, Prometheus). When it comes to mainstream outer space sci-fi movies, you kind of either have to embrace the Star Wars comparison ( Guardian of the Galaxy, the J.J. Gettyįorty years later, this is oddly still true. Guardians of the Galaxy’s spaceship design was an outgrowth of Foss’ influence. Foss was a concept artist on the Jodorowsky Dune that was never complete. After Star Wars, anything that wasn’t Star Wars, but felt a little bit like Star Wars, nearly always failed to live up to Star Wars.Ĭhris Foss science fiction artwork.
![the godfather epic hbo max the godfather epic hbo max](https://tilt.goombastomp.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/11/many-saints-sopranos-funeral-1014x570-1.jpeg)
For all its popularity with a certain type of audience, Dune is extremely weird and hard to explain, making its mass cultural appeal pretty hard to predict.ĭavid Lynch’s Dune was certainly marketed as a mainstream sci-fi/fantasy epic, but in 1984, it’s not like there’s really an established audience for that kind of thing. Dune.Here’s why the Snyder Cut sets up the new Dune for mainstream dominance.Įven before Covid-19, nobody believed that Denis Villeneuve’s new version of Dune was destined to be a blockbuster slam-dunk. The fact that this overly long, tricky epic - streaming on a B-list platform - connected with mass culture is a good sign for another big sci-fi epic.
![the godfather epic hbo max the godfather epic hbo max](https://i.ytimg.com/vi/gsB9ZPO4ipA/sddefault.jpg)
Zack Snyder’s Justice League is a difficult pop science fiction movie that actually came out at the perfect time and in the perfect way. Regardless of the film’s merits (or unique triumphs relative to public revisionism), it’s impossible to imagine the film getting this big of a reaction if it had premiered in theaters instead. Without a doubt, the Snyder Cut benefited from its straight-to-streaming release on HBO Max. The biggest shock about Zack Snyder’s Justice League wasn’t that that it was actually kind of good, it was that over a million people watched the Snyder Cut in its first weekend - and some of them even finished the 4-hour epic.