Welcome to Nice Ashes, I'm Mike. And I'm Nate. What are we smoking today, Nate? Well, I was trying to look at that and it's all backwards. It's mirror image. I'm just kidding. On the other side of it, it is under crown shade, I guess. And it looks to be a Connecticut wrapper. I'll tell you what. I put it in my mouth to wet the end and it was not a pleasant taste. You know, I was going to say the same thing. It is not. Oh no. I was going to say the same thing. Well, you know what?
We're going to do it for you, the listener, anyway. And we will see. We're both in our own home studios again, which is nice because I don't have to wear pants. Hell yeah. Not that Mike doesn't let me go pantless. It's just he can't keep his hands to himself if I do. Exactly. I am not rocking a proper shirt right now, just for all our listeners to know. That's the director's cut of the episode. You get to see Mike shirtless. Yeah. Sarah was making fun of me earlier today.
Okay. How about we light this thing up and we'll just kind of see where it goes. Absolutely. It doesn't smell very good either, dear listener. Oh God. I mean, great. I like this. It has a very strong flavor. It has something. Yes. In other news, I'm pairing this with a black Russian. Oh, hey. I figured I'd take the role of Mike in this one and come in hot with a cocktail. I am pairing it up with a big wave that I took from Rockfest because we got evacuated and a glass of Johnnie Walker black.
Nice. I was gifted a bottle of Kahlua or a mostly full bottle of Kahlua. I was like, what can I make? So I was looking up all these different recipes and it was of course mudslide and all this other stuff. Then it was black Russian. I had had white Russians before, but I've never had a black Russian before and they're quite nice. They are. Former guest Al has pretty much only drank black Russians for, oh, I don't know how many years, 15 years.
Okay. I don't think I've ever seen him drink anything else in 15 years. Wow. Yeah. He's got it down, man. He like tries different vodkas and Kahluas. Oh, okay. Nice. Yeah. Yeah. He like explores all the avenues of the black Russian. Yes. Well, before we get into our topic, I wanted to, and I put this in the notes of last episode, but I wanted to clarify something here from last episode with the Mandela effect, right? We were talking about Queens, we are the champions.
Well, it turns out that the greatest hits recording of the song does include of the world, but not the original vinyl pressing, not the original recording. So that was something that was added for like the greatest hits. So I just wanted to clarify, you may not be crazy on that one. We might've been gaslighting you. We were definitely gaslighting. And I did rewatch the end of Mighty Ducks and they use the greatest hits version. So of course, and there it is of the world. And you know what?
The Mighty Ducks might've come out when the greatest hits came out of Queens. So they probably use the newer version. So all of us younger generation are probably more used to of the world because that was what was popular at the time. And anyone older than us thinks that that's blasphemous. Oh, sure. That makes sense. Speaking of blasphemous, outside of this cigar here, I watched something else blasphemous. You already know what it is because we talked about it.
We do plan every once in a while, but I watched the 1984 version of Sting, I'm sorry, of Dune. And that was a little joke, right? Sting was huge in the eighties, I guess, but Patrick Stewart was also in it. And so I don't know why it's not called Patrick Stewart's Dune, except he was in like two scenes and spoke half a sentence. But I watched the whole thing all the way through. So that's what we're going to kind of work our way through this episode, right? Mike is the 1984 Dune.
Yes. So we do occasionally communicate and I rewatched it today before the show. While I was doing my notes for my version of the show, I was watching Dune 1984. Again, I've seen it now twice. So yeah. So let's just to clarify, like Mike's seen it fully twice. I've seen it fully once. I've tried to watch it three or four other times, but I've had to shut it off because it's just, it's not, it's not good. I, you know, I watched the whole thing.
There are things that I certainly enjoy and we'll kind of go through some of this stuff. There are a lot of things that I don't enjoy. I don't, do you want me to tell you my biggest problem with the whole thing just right up front? Or do you want to kind of go through it first or how do you want to dissect this film? You know what? Why don't we, you can tell me the worst thing about Dune in your opinion and then we can go through it, of course, because my notes are in order.
But my biggest issue came almost immediately. Yeah. So of course, like I, there's, there's very, there's a lot of artistic, I don't know if it's artistic is the right word, but there's a lot of liberties taken with the Dune storyline and who is and isn't kind of like a villain or a knowing person versus an unknown person. My biggest complaint against the whole film outside of all of the freaking narration and inner monologue stuff that happens. And I know why they did it.
So, you know, like we, we don't have to quick defend it from Nate, but I know why they did it is just, I didn't like that. But my biggest, biggest, biggest thing that I didn't like, and I kind of realized maybe halfway through was there aren't any establishing shots of anything.
So you're watching and there's some people in a room and they're talking and then you're at another scene and there's some more people in a room with the room looks kind of different, but you're not really sure if you're on Caladan or Arrakis or Jetty Prime or, you know, so there's not really much in the way of establishing shots to help the viewer get a feeling for where we are, who we're talking with, you know, and that's despite all the narration and kind of set up work at the beginning.
And so it really helps. Like I wouldn't show this movie. I wouldn't show this movie to somebody who's casually interested in Dune. I would say, look, if you want to watch the 1984 version of Dune, like read the book so you know what's going on. And then you can watch the movie to see some like 80s hokeyness. Well, you hit one of my complaints, I guess. I have moans and niggles and I, as the movie went through, I kind of just wrote things that I liked and things that I didn't like.
Yeah. Let's, let's talk about some of the things or what's your biggest thing. You do your biggest thing you dislike. And then let's talk about some of the stuff that we do like. And then we can kind of talk about what, what differs from the, the Canon or the actual storyline. I didn't, I agree with you. The level of narration is absurd and there is a very good reason why they have to have so much narration.
Yeah. I mean, they're basically cutting, cutting down a full book to a brisk two hours and maybe three minutes, you know, and that's less than part one was, you know, if Denis and whose part one was almost three hours long, right? Yeah, it's right. I mean, the new version is going to be twice as long easily for the same story. So they just didn't have time.
You know, they tried to cover too much material, so they had to talk through it, which kind of sucks, but as petty as it is, my biggest issue was the shields, the body shields, dude, those are square body shields. I couldn't even for 1984, man, it was wretched. They could have done something better than that. I mean, they could have had them wear mosquito netting or something easily. There could have been something. It was very, very bad for as good as the guild navigators were.
They could have done some, yeah, the guild navigators were money. I really liked their portrayal of the navigators for sure. Yeah, they were good. The worms were good. Yep. The worms are in a 1980s kind of way. Right. Well, it's very 1980s. Like, yeah, what Sarah and I watched it for the first time, she mentioned like, holy shit, this is like totally 80s tastic, like UPN 9 1994 at night TV type stuff. You know what I mean? Like this comes right on before purple rain. Yeah, for sure.
So, yeah, and I, you know, like I really enjoy 80s movies in general. I thought the score by Toto at the end there, I mean, because I don't really feel I didn't feel they use any Toto tracks until the very end. But, you know, kind of the instrumental like 80s power rock stuff was really nice.
I thought like, I wasn't really sure what to expect because a lot of times when you're like an 80s movie and score by Toto, you're like, okay, are they like going to be singing a song called Paul, the Trades of Dune, you know, and like some hokey lyrics put in or that, you know, what, how are they going to do this? But it was all instrumental. And so I thought it was well done. I think my favorite thing from Dune, the movie in 1984 was probably the map paintings.
The background map paintings were just gorgeous. Oh, sure. They were nice. I liked the Emperor's Castle or his like, oh, yeah, all the weird gold and like the detailed like three dimensional backgrounds that they built. Yeah, that was very over the top, which is supposed to be. Yeah. But I want to talk real quick about casting. Yes. I really, I really liked the actor. They got to play Duncan Idaho in this one. It felt to me like the Duncan felt to me in the books.
Sure. You know, where, where Jason Momoa is a little more quirky, right. In the new one, I really felt that, that this Duncan just kind of was what I expected the character to be. If I, if I could clear my brain out of everything. I was not really a fan of the actor that played Paul. I know he did some stuff in the eighties and that's fine. And I really was not a fan of who they cast as the Emperor. The Emperor seemed kind of like meek and mildish compared to how he was in the book.
Yeah. He was a little too competent really, when you think about it. I mean, you know what I mean? Like, yeah, I'm supposed to kind of be a nitwit a little bit. Yeah. He didn't really give like nitwit vibes because he was almost playing it too nice. Like, like a, like a elderly grandfather who's just trying to be nice. And I really kind of felt like he was supposed to be kind of a giant asshole. Right. Not an overstated asshole, but you know, like definitely kind of that evil streak. Right.
Like stab you in the back, but also a puppet of everybody else. Yeah. The Benet Jezre hair cut threw me off for sure. Yeah. That so all the Benet Jezret are bald. The other thing that I didn't like happened almost immediately where the navigators come in and they say, we're not the navigators. The navigator comes in and is like, we want Paul Atreides dead. He's going to screw up the whack of the universe or some shit.
And the Benet Jezret are like, the emperor's like, okay, Benet Jezret, you got to go. And I want full telepathy here in this. And I'm like, okay, so one, Benet Jezret don't have telepathy at all. They can read, you know, people and they have truth sayers and stuff, but like calling it telepathy is kind of a mockery of the entire Benet Jezret order. And then two, like the navigators don't know jack shit about anything.
It takes them like seven books for the navigators to finally be like, oh, something's going on here because their precedence only lets them fold space. Like it's not seeing visions of the future of people and players. And the fact that the Benet Jezret after that meeting, when they were listening in, they said, we have to go find out about Paul. Well, they knew about Paul because they know about Jessica because Jessica is a Reverend mother. So like, it just kind of took.
It took all of the wind out of the Benet Jezret sail in a way that like modern movies do nowadays to like any male character almost. Right. So this was them doing it to the female characters, like making them kind of like charlatans and like we're behind on everything when really they were eons ahead of the game, you know? Right. I mean, the Benet Jezret in the books were kind of the real power behind the universe. Them and the guildsmen.
Yeah, the Benet Jezret were kind of like the engine, the motor that ran the universe because it was their whole plan and breeding program that led to all these arranged marriages, even if people didn't know they were arranged.
And you know, they kind of controlled who got born and who didn't, you know, because they got so mad at Jessica for carrying a male full term because the Benet Jezret have such control over the bodies that they know the gender of the child without having any kind of like blood tests or ultrasounds or anything like that, you know?
So Jessica would have known right away and then the other Reverend Mothers would have known right away too, because you know, you can't really hide stuff from the Benet Jezret. No, they see everything through their network of spies. Yeah. And you can later on, you know, in the series and we talked about that, but at this early in the storyline, you know, the Benet Jezret are fully kind of in control and you're supposed to hate them in the first couple of books. Oh, for sure.
So they're not necessarily the heroes, but they're not necessarily the villains, you know, that you kind of think they are in the first part of the book. But they're certainly not mindless charlatans, you know, trying to sell snake oil and telepathy down at the carnival. Right. Yeah, that wasn't very nice, I guess. I, I, there were like, there were visual aspects where I didn't agree with.
I understood a lot of the story shorthand they did because they were trying to put so much into it that they had to make shortcuts. Yeah. But the visuals kind of, some of it really threw me off. Right, some of the stuff was spot on and some of the stuff was like way out in left field. Right. Like the still suits were stupid. Why would you have your whole head exposed to the desert when you're losing, you know, how much moisture out of your fucking head?
Yeah, you know, not as much as Duncan Idaho after the spinner bullet, but you know, other people are still losing moisture out of their, out of their heads. You know, I thought, I thought the still suits were fine. If anything, a little bit puffy and almost like ski vests, you know, but for the eighties, I thought it was a fairly restrained take on still suits.
I mean, they could have come out like in a David Bowie ask type outfit and said, these are our still suits and they're fabulous or whatever. So I didn't have as much of an issue with that, but yeah, it makes sense. Like you should have your head covered. Right. They should have their head covered in. I don't know why they have such ridiculously huge beards. That's not going to be a good seal. Yeah. I don't care about the beards. How about, so like at the very beginning.
Yeah. When Princess Irulin is talking and then they kind of ignore her until the very, very end, but then they still kind of like, okay, I'm getting ahead of myself because we'll talk about the end later. And they're talking like, and the Mentats, they're the human computer machines that have red lips. And then every Mentat you see has like normal colored lips, but huge fucking eyebrows, like ginormous eyebrows. And I'm like, why not?
You know, like I understand the book says they have red lips, but if you're going to give them giant eyebrows, don't tell us they have red lips. Say you could tell them by their ginormous freaking eyebrows. Sarah was thrown off by that. Like, I mean, like honestly, at that point, you don't need to mince words. If you're changing it, just, just own up to it. Yeah. We know the book says red lips, but fuck you. We want these giant eyebrows. The eyebrow guy said there's a two for one sale.
So everybody's getting big eyebrows. Yeah. The Raccoon that they painted or painted that they glued onto Brad Durif's forehead will let you know that he is in fact, Piter De Vries. Yes. I actually wrote down some of the casting that I really liked because I liked Brad Durif as Piter De Vries. Yep. I'm a big fan. And I actually like Patrick Stewart as Gurney Halleck. He wasn't in the movie enough. Yeah. He wasn't in the movie enough.
I felt like Patrick Stewart wasn't, I don't know, wasn't, I mean, Patrick Stewart's not really a funny guy. I'm sure he is. I'm sure he is, but like he doesn't usually play funny guys and not that Gurney Halleck is super funny, but Gurney Halleck is supposed to play some of these kind of like tongue in cheek songs, right? And that's kind of his humorous outlet or his like venting or whatever it might be. And he plays the older songs and stuff.
And so they had Patrick Stewart carry this ginormous, I guess they imagine a balisette to be unless that is a real balisette. I don't know. Then that's too big for an instrument. Like have Gurney play like a ukulele or something else. But it was like the largest thing ever and had like all these balls and bulbs and stuff. And it's like, it was a six foot long lute. Yeah. It's like a siege. It's a siege weapon is what it is.
I thought they I thought Paul was going to ride his his balisette through the shield wall at the end instead of the worm. Is that shy Halu? No, no, that's that's Gurney Halleck's balisette. Yeah. How is that supposed to be a mobile thing that you can take with you into the battlefield and shit? Because yeah, it was when I when I thought balisette, I thought like half the size of the guitar with more strings.
Yeah, I thought somewhere somewhere between like a lute, a ukulele, like certainly smaller than a full blown guitar. But this thing was, you know, like you might as well just carry a stand up bass, dude. Right. Yeah. Like mandolin size is what I was thinking. Something like that. So like an auto harp or something, you know, a keytar. Like I don't why didn't they do a keytar? It was the 80s. That would have been sweet.
By the way, I'm about an inch in maybe a little longer and it has mellowed out. I'm not saying that it's great. Yeah, it's not it's not as bad as it initially was. The first quarter inch was vile. It was terrible. And like the the flavor on the cap when I wet it was was worse than the sourness from some of those Gurkas we smoked. Like it was I was like, did they did they like dip this in like their nutsack sweat before they wrapped it up and sent it out?
Or dude, I know what nutsack sweat tastes like. But if I had to imagine era like horrid vibes off of it, I'm like, oh, Jesus, this is why they drink whiskey with cigars. Yeah, this is the cigar that somebody put in their in their wool vest pocket before walking across the United States of America to get to the West Coast. Something like that. Yeah. I don't know if this is the worst one we've ever smoked on the show, but it's in the running, I tell you. Oh, it's worst five.
It's not as bad as the blood red moon for sure. Something's that bad. But no, this is just the initial shock of this one was enough for me to be kind of like, well, this might be a 10 minute episode. I don't know. We'll see. We'll see. I thought so. Let's go. Let's go through some more of your notes and then we'll just keep smoking. And I guess when we're done talking about doing we can be done with the cigar maybe unless there's like a mid stick flavor change.
But there might have to be it would have to be something quite phenomenal. It's not that bad right now. It's fine. It's not the best. I agree to disagree, I guess. So casting, I did make notice of casting. I liked Sting. I thought he was great. I had no problem with Sting whatsoever. I thought he was great. I thought that Linda Hunt was good. Yeah. As the shout out mapes. I like I don't know what actor played Baron Harkonnen, but I thought that his makeup was great.
Yeah, I didn't I didn't like the doctor like, oh, you're so beautiful. Like as he's popping like these giant cysts, but I'm not into the like Dr. Pimple pop proper thing either. So right. And I like a gross, you know, they can't have them and it's working. He really gross. Yeah, they can't have them be the fat pedophile from the book. Right. Right. So I can. So like, mapes was fine.
I wish they just kind of would have cut her out of the whole thing because like they never mentioned Chris Knife's at all and then she was like there and then the giant floating dildo came in and Paul was like, holy shit, that's a giant floating dildo. And then he saved mapes from being penetrated by the giant floating dildo, aka the hunter seeker. Yep. And for a minute, I thought and we were watching it on Amazon, I think. And for a minute, I thought, have they put in porn on Amazon now?
Like, what's this dildo doing floating through the air? Like, is this the wrong the wrong 1984 dune? And I watch, am I watching dune it instead of dune? But no, it was, it was dune. But counterpoint to the giant floating dildo, I did like how they did the gom jibor in this one. Oh, sure. As the little finger cap with the needle instead of the full, full like pin thing or whatever. Sure. Yeah, it was nice.
At times it was really accurate to the book to almost to it was like for somebody who hasn't read it, it probably isn't the best story because they're so accurate to the book. And that's only because they skip all the buildup to that point. You know, they really choppy with the information. So that's kind of the thing is like, there's there accurate and certain scenes.
And then the scenes that they change to cut stuff for time doesn't really make sense as to why they cut the scenes or the plot points that they did. When it's like, then there was that there's a was it Paul's spice induced stream sequence or something like they and they and they really didn't put much emphasis on the spice either in this one, it felt really like it was like secondary or tertiary to the kind of the plot of the emperor and the Harkonnens trying to fuck over the Atreides.
And then the spice just kind of happened to be there, you know. Yeah, the spices kind of the whole point. Yeah, the spice is the whole point. Yeah. It's integral to the story. Yeah. So I felt like they didn't really put enough emphasis on that. And then I felt really as big a disservice as they did to the Bennett Jesuit, I felt they this movie did an even bigger disservice to the Fremen because they didn't really talk about much Fremen stuff.
You got to see the the underground reservoir of water. And then that was kind of about it. And you didn't really ever get into any of the cool stuff that the Fremen do only in passing, like, you know, only in passing and the architecture I thought was really out of place. Like, yeah, I always envisioned from an architecture being more natural than these crazy, like black lines, like you're not in Mordor, you know. Yeah. And you're not like post-industrial or something like that.
Like I was expecting something more like what is that temple at Petra or Petra? Or is it carved into the cliff face or something? You know, something like that. Right. And they weren't Middle Eastern enough. Yeah. There's also as far as I'm concerned. Their eyebrows are an appropriate size. So that was good. Yeah, it sounds crazy maybe to the listener, but the fact that everybody was pasty pale white really threw me off on a desert planet.
Yeah. You know, at the very least, there should have been some tan people, you know. Yeah, and that's how they are in the book. They're white, but they're not. They're like dark and brown. You know what I mean? Like, yeah, theoretically, they're a mono race in the sky. You know what I mean? Like, they've all kind of evolved past having genetic differences on that level. The fact that nobody was tan really threw me off. Yeah. Especially since they had no head covering of any kind.
Yeah, one of you has a sunburn. I know it. Right. Exactly. Like, you should at least have a suntan. Yeah. And for a multimillion dollar movie, details matter. Yeah. So the other thing I want to talk about real quick was the end, which is kind of like, quick remember, I don't know if it was an episode of it was an episode or a movie of Family Guy. It might have been the movie when Stewie and Brian go traveling, but they go and take like an open air bus tour in Germany.
And so the tour guide is like talking all the way up to like, you know, 1920. And then he's like, yeah, and then so like 1950, we did this. And they kind of skipped over the whole like World War Two unpleasantness. And so Brian was like, wait, what happened here in like the 30s and 40s? The tour guide is like, we're all on vacation. So I felt like the ending was kind of like that where Princess Erulin came on and was like, and then Paul saved the Fremen and made it rain.
And there was peace forever as if he doesn't launch his own jihad immediately after this book ends. You know? Right. Yeah. It is it was all over the place. It could have been three movies and better, but one was just too short. You know, they just. Yeah. They didn't really. In the 80s, they didn't really do part one, part twos. You know what I mean? No, no, they would do. They would do sequels for sure, but they would be based on a different book or well actually Never Ending Story from the 80s.
The first one is based on the first half of the book and then Never Ending Story two is based on the second half of the book. So they kind of did that, but they didn't really call it part one, part two. And you know, there's different actors and stuff in the second one. But, you know, so it wasn't unheard of to do kind of like a part one, part two, but I think all the good Dune titles were taken. So they'd have to do it.
But Deneve Vienvue is doing right now with Dune part one, Dune part two, because you've already got Dune, Children of Dune, Dune Messiah, Chapter House Dune. Like you've got all these names out there already. So you can't just be like a sand worm crashing through shield wall on Dune. That's the name of your movie. That's the name of my movie. That's what you would call like a impressionist painting of Dune. You would call it sand worm crashing through shield wall. Oh, my.
And if you sit far enough away, it looked like a giant dookie. Did you notice the Ornithopters? Yeah, they were not very impressive. No, they were kind of. Oh, and here's the other thing about the Ornithopters. So when they go and oh, oh, man, this is OK. So I laughed so hard at this. So you've got Duke, Duke Leto Atreides and Paul and some other fucking you've got I think Lietkeens, Lietkynes in the in the Thopter.
This is like the first time they go out and they see the the spice harvester and the carry all and all that stuff. And they're they're flying out and like this giant fucking lightning bolt comes and like blasts the sand worm. And then Duke, Duke Leto Atreides goes, worm sign. And then the fucking Fremen dude is like, you've got good eyes, my lord, or something. It's like, yeah, a giant fucking lightning bolt came out of the sky and pointed to the fucking worm.
Like, of course, he's got good eyes for that. It was a giant lightning bolt. So I thought that was that was hilarious because like up to that point, it was fairly like serious and not super hokey like 80s movies can tend to be. And then it was like, here's a giant lightning bolt. Oh, that's how you know where the worms are. I suppose it's easier to do that than make sand vibrate, I guess. But you know, whatever. Oh, yeah.
And then the second and then and then the second thing of that scene is the same scene, right? It's like the the spice harvester and they're like, oh, they do this weird like radio, like some kind of weird like playing the stranger or like the circle jerk or whatever it is. And they're like, we have worm sign coming your way. And they're like, who is it? And then like Duke Leto is like, don't tell them who it is. And they're like, oh, just a concerned party or something. Right.
And it's like super like awkward and weird. And then and then they're like, well, we don't believe you. And then he's like, this is Duke Leto Atreides. And so like, why even bother with the with the subterfuge? Like, just tell him who it is, like who gives a fuck? And then they're like, you're not going to have time to evacuate. How many people are on there? And the guy's like, oh, we got like 28 people on board.
And they take this ornithopter that's the size of my Honda Civic down to the planet surface. And they're like, everybody get on board. We've already got six people in that thing. How are you going to fit 28 more? And then like two dudes hop on board and they take off like they saved everybody. And I was like, that's not how does how does that work? They made weird shortcuts that they're supposed to be several ornithopters there. You know what I mean?
Like, obviously, you remember the for those who don't remember, there's like a are not a armada, but there's several ornithopters going together to protect the Duke in case there's trouble as they take over this planet from their enemies and they have to empty all their shit out, you know, to get to save these people. Yeah. So they have actively have to abandon parts of the planes to get them or ornithopters. Yeah. It kind of diminishes the goodness of the good Duke or whatever.
Goodness of the Red Duke. Yeah, it diminishes that. And then it kind of diminishes like it really kind of makes the Atreides as like like, I don't know if this is the right way to phrase it, but kind of like, you know, like the trailer park Duke or something, right? Like they they're like the emperor's like, hey, my man, Lado Atreides, why don't you go take over all the spice production? Okay, you're bringing everybody right? And Duke Lado is like, I'm bringing everyone.
And Emperor's like, okay, so you got what, like 60,000 people or something? And Duke Lado in this movie is like, I got eight, eight people. And you know, and then it's like, okay, you're going out into the desert and a hostile planet. How many ornithopters are you going to bring? One, 100. Excellent, Duke. Excellent. No, no, I didn't say 100. I said one. You know, it's kind of like, you know, like this guy's a Duke of a major family. Like he's the head of a major family.
He's got his own signet ring. He's a member of everything. Like he's he's not just some some dude, you know, pretending to be a Duke, right? He's a member of the royal family. Yeah, he's got all the resources all the other people do. He might not be as rich as the Harkonnens having run the spice production for the past, however many years or decades, but he's not a chump. He's able to host lavish dinner parties on Caladan.
He's able to like uproot his entire estate and people and bring them to Arrakis. So you know, the movie really kind of made them like, well, we're just kind of here hoping we get our shot at, you know, being something, but they were already something, you know, like they should have just shown them as a class act, which is what they were. Right. Yeah. He's supposed to be the Red Duke because he's apparently very proficient at battles.
And that is why they had to plan so carefully to fight against him because he is well known for being proficient at killing people. Yes. So, yeah, they definitely made some odd choices, you know, like I said, and like you said, like some of the casting was great, but I don't I don't I feel like they really kind of like hamstrung the Atreides, the Fremen and the Bene Gesserit by cutting out things, you know, for time.
And like, I understand you're making a two hour movie out of a book that, you know, should be six hours minimum. Easily, easily. And it's not broken up like Lord of the Rings is where you can just cut out a massive part of the story that takes up a huge part of the book, but it's not important to the overall, you know, storyline. Yeah. And Lord of the Rings is like the right way to do that because they're still long movies, right?
And the director's cuts are even longer or the extended editions is what they call them. But you still lose you lose stuff from the book, of course, but you get the overall and this is maybe the most important thing you get the overall feel of the book, right? The book is like an epic the trilogy, you know, is like an epic thing, like is an epic adventure journey. And that's what you get in the movies, even if you cut out like Tom Bombadil and some other stuff in the return to the Shire.
Yeah. And you cut all this stuff out and it's okay because it's a long ass movie as it is and you want to keep the spirit or the intent of it there. And with this one, it kind of felt like they took all all the parts out that kind of give it life and make it different than other kind of like schlocky 80s sci fi films. Right. Yeah, it's it's fine for an 80s shit movie, but it's not exactly great. I wouldn't call it a masterpiece. No, there's good parts.
There's things to enjoy, especially if you like Dune. It's not it's not the first one I'd recommend watching. You know, I'd recommend the Frank Herbert's Dune miniseries first. Well, probably probably the new Dine Villenevue's, you know, part one and two. I haven't seen part two yet because it's not out, but you know, I felt like that was and we talked about that one. We don't have to go into it here, but that one was very book faithful for the most part. Yeah, I thought it was a new one.
And the miniseries is good. It's been many, many years since I've watched that. So as long as nobody is sick of hearing about Dune stuff, maybe Mike and I'll watch the miniseries. And then there's a sequel miniseries with the same actors, Children of Dune, which combines Dune Messiah and Children of Dune into another miniseries. So and I've never seen that. So we should do both of those miniseries and then do our thoughts on that. Oh yeah, I think I have them at the house. Al barred them to me.
Oh yeah, yeah. He barred it to me when I had to take off like three months off of work and I watched him. Yeah. So I feel like I'm I don't know. Let me compare to this other one here. I'm about I'm a little, little less than halfway through this stick. I guess like acrid is kind of like how I would kind of describe the taste, the flavor. So I have to be 100 percent honest with you.
OK, I don't know exactly what it tastes like, because every time I start to taste the badness, I just take a little sip of Johnny Walker Black and then all it tastes is Johnny Walker Black while I smoke it. OK, so I was I was doing that, but I only have had the one black Russian out here. So I'm out because, you know, that's that's all I brought out. And it's not like an overpowering taste that lingers like whiskey is, you know. Yeah. So this doesn't taste great at all.
And I would do you know anything about this? I've never heard of this brand, Undercrowned, Undercrowned. What I know is that it was in the right price frame. OK, is it? I've never heard of it. I was it was in the the five dollar online range, which is why I got it. And that is it. There we go. So it's it's called a premium handmade cigar by. Oh, no way, dude. Hold on. Let's see if this is the same one. I want a picture. Oh, OK. This is OK.
Oh, my God. I just found out something that will shake you to the core. Oh, no. This underground shade is made by Drew Estate. Really? Really? Shame on them. This is and they've got. Well, OK. So they've got actually decent ratings on this. J.R. Cigars.com, it looks like. So I don't know. It's not good, though. I would. Yes, it's good. This is what this one says. So this is the the Drew Estate underground Maduro, which oh yeah, which we have. This is the next one we'll do.
But it says a high end cigar for the working man. Ah, OK. And so what this one, the Drew Estate underground, it says it received a well deserved ninety one rating. The Maduro. The Maduro. So I don't know about this other one, but this other one is the shade grown Connecticut is not what is is its absolute hogwash is what it is. I made it over halfway. I can I can recommend you a hundred cigars better than this for the everyday working man.
If it's not as good as a mummy dick, it's not worth smoking, I guess. Like mummy dicks are shrews. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah, you know, like I really enjoy the shrews, but I also enjoy I'd rather have a nub Connecticut. Right. Like you want something similar price range by a similar cigar company of esteem or whatever prestige. I just get a nub Connecticut or something like there's no reason to get. These are cheap. Yeah, they're so cheap.
You can get what the hell is like 25 cigars for one hundred and thirty bucks when they go on sale. Yeah. And they're good. And the same with the LaGloria Cubano's, you know, like any one of those on sale in a pack smoked that before even thinking about looking at this one. I don't think it's as bad as Nate says it is. It's just not good. It's my man. I don't think it's the job. That's the Johnny Walker talking.
Yeah. I mean, I haven't had that much Johnny Walker, but I'm definitely letting it sit in my tongue. You're using it. Yeah, you're using it to get through the cigar. So let's just call it for what it is. Just like we said earlier, if you're going to make the men tats not have red lips and give them giant freaking eyebrows, don't tell us at the beginning that men tats have red lips. We can just say they have giant eyebrows. Yeah. Brand new. Call it out as a squirrel glued to his forehead.
Those were two squirrel tails glued to his forehead. And Thufir had two skunk tails. Oh, yeah. Glued to his, those were massively bushy. And at first I was like, because I watched it with Luke, right? So I was like, Luke, are those this guy's like honest to goodness real life eyebrows? And Luke's like, I don't think so. But then I saw Peter DeVries and I was like, oh, okay, that's how they're designating men tats in this movie.
But at first I was like, there's no reason to give them that big of eyebrows if they're not his like true eyebrows. But then later it was revealed that that was their stylistic choice. It's bizarre. It's well, it's 80s, very 80s. It's yeah. And not in a good way. Why were the benedicts are bald? They're supposed to be hot ladies. Yeah, yeah. I guess maybe in what 21 whatever the fuck bald ladies are the hottest thing ever. But they've never in the books, they were never described as being bald.
No, no. They're like extremely attractive weapons, physical weapons, you know? Yeah, yeah. Yeah, it's bizarre. Very, very strange. Very strange. Well, and it's even weirder because they, so they made all the benedicts bald except for Jessica, right? Jessica wasn't bald. And Princess Irulan. Yeah, Princess Irulan wasn't bald. But Princess Irulan never went through the spice agony. So she's not a full Reverend Mother. Jessica didn't go through the spice agony at the start of the book.
She went through. Oh, very true. Very true. So, but she was still not bald at the end, I think of the movie anyway. You know what I mean? I mean, I can kind of like make her bald then at the end. But the point is that not only is it weird that they made them bald, which is one thing. It's one choice and that's fine. But then they gave them these really like ornate headdress things that kind of hid the baldness. So if you're giving them these giant ornate headdresses, why make them bald?
Just like if you're going to give the Mentats giant bushy eyebrows, why would you mention that their lips are red? They should not have like a huge stain on their face. Like, yeah, they should have stained lips, maybe. Yep. Yep. And potentially some some interesting stylistic choices, but not as bad as I was initially thinking. But it still only got a five out of 10 on IMDB from me. All right. It's did an alien come out in like 1980? The original.
Yeah. I mean, by comparison to a two or a three or something. Yeah. The thing is, and you would think because up until like there was no alien IP before alien came out. Right. Right. Like there was a whole unique thing that came out. Well, Dune was already an established book and bestselling book at that when this movie came out. And so it's like you've got alien and then aliens shortly thereafter. You've got this like phenomenal like brand new IP that they're creating.
And then you take something that's an established IP or at least at the height of its popularity right after the books came out and kind of do what they did with it, which is didn't really do it a whole lot of justice. I mean, there are certainly good things about the movie, like we said, but in comparison, this would be like, oh, I don't know, maybe a major studio remaking one of their animated classics and just completely flubbing it and losing tons of money at the box office.
But I don't know who that would be. I have no idea. It would be akin to a story that has a character whose physical characteristics are the name of the story and then changing the physical characteristics of that character and the sidekicks as well. Yes. The title of the story is what these individuals look like physically. And you change what they look like physically.
When it was funny that Peter Dinklage came out against them being dwarves when he made a crap ton of money playing a legitimate dwarf in Game of Thrones. It's humorous that he took offense at it. And then it's even more humorous that people took him seriously because the dwarves are like magical dwarves that mine for gold in the delving deep. They're not like people. They're not human beings. They're people, but they're not human beings. They're mythical creatures.
Yeah. And it's the same as like giants, right? So like Jack and the Beanstalk. He goes up the Beanstalk is a giant up there. Well, what now? The giants are taking offense to there being a mystical being that's 17 feet tall or something. Right. Like there's nobody that's 17 feet tall. Well, even and then what the hobbits are the hobbits dwarves. Right. Yeah. Yeah. You know, so it's like, where does it end? I guess.
But yeah, it's a story about semi-mythical creatures, all of whom are semi-mythical, even though it's let's call it. Let's call it what it is. It's fictional stories about fictional beings and fictional lands doing fictional things. And yes, you know, it's like, I don't, I really don't care if, if the little mermaid is black, white, whatever, because it's a fictional person, you know, as a fictional thing, mermaids don't exist. I don't have like a moral issue with it or anything.
You know, Ariel is white in the animated one and black in the live action. And that's fine. You know, Snow White being Hispanic or whatever is a little different because she's called Snow White for a reason. Yeah. Like her physical characteristics are magical. In the fairy tale. Yeah. Skin white as snow. In the fairy tale. Hair black as cold. Red, lips red as a rose. Right? Like this is a semi-mythical characteristic. Yeah. Like people don't typically look like that.
It doesn't make it, it doesn't make it right to have that, have that person be white all the time because you can, I mean, like, look at Santa Claus, right? Santa Claus has always been whatever color the people in the population have been. Right? Oh, sure. In America, well, yeah, in America, Santa Claus is predominantly white. But if you go into Mexico, they're not, they're not putting out statues of a Caucasian Santa Claus.
And there's other like in the Krampus and like all these other iterations of this character. So that's not to say that you have to have Snow White be white. I don't know how we got here from Dune. Well, I mean, the Middle Eastern thing or the Spice. I actually have more of a problem with the Snow White thing because the name of the story is Snow White and the seven dwarves. It's supposed to be the Snow White mythical being and the seven dwarves mythical beings. Like, that's the story.
Yeah. You know what I mean? Like it's in the name. It's not the same. I mean, Santa Claus is Santa Claus as long as he's, you know, Santa Claus and wearing the red suit. Yeah. It's more about the red, the red suit and delivering toys. Maybe it's even less about the suit and just more about the toys, you know, and doing it all night. But basically. Yeah. I guess like what Santa Claus looks like is kind of irrelevant to an extent. It's not like his descriptor is his name. True. Right.
Yeah. Little Mermaid. If Little Mermaid wasn't a mermaid, then that'd be a problem. Yeah. Right. If Little Mermaid was like a fucking unicorn, then it wouldn't be the Little Mermaid anymore, would it? No, it would not. I suppose they can't call it the ugly duckling anymore either. It's got to be the, I don't know, something else. Like ugly duckling has kind of like a bad connotation, I guess. Right. But then that's the point of the story.
But that's the point of the story is you're not supposed to judge people based on their looks. Right. And it's a geese or a goose or a swan or something like that. Yeah. It's a swan that falls in, a baby swan that falls in with the ducklings. Right. It looks way different. So they're making fun of him, but then he turns into this beautiful swan or he or she, whatever. I'm sure the gender of birds doesn't really matter. Yeah, I don't even know. It's not important. No, it's a kid's story.
It's a kid's story. So. Right. Yeah. I don't know. That's like having a Daffodil Duck story and then having Bugs Bunny as the main character. Right. Yeah. Which happens quite frequently because Bugs is the star of anything he's ever in. So. Right. That's also true. That's also true. Yep. Do you want to keep on keeping on with this stick or? Well, I already know that you don't want to keep on keeping on. Whatever gave you that idea?
I'm trying to be open and receptive to new thoughts and perspectives in my life. I have about two and a half inches left. Maybe three. Maybe three inches left. And it is sour for sure. I just hit. I just hit the halfway point and I just, you know, I don't think I'm going to do it. Yeah, it's sour. It's not. It's. It's almost giving you a headache. It's a thing you shouldn't put in your mouth. So yeah, the inside of the band says Drew Estates right on it. Oh, OK.
Yeah. I took the band off and God, that's disappointing. Yeah. I don't want to do a spoiler alert, but I hope the Maduro is better next episode. If it's not, my episode is going to be very short. I have two pages worth of notes. OK. Well, there's plenty of stuff to talk about. I just I can't with this under crown shade Connecticut. Yeah. We do a little bit of vamping, but this is. Yeah. And there's more doing stuff we could talk about.
But I, you know, like the cigar is bad and the Dune movie was bad. So I don't really, you know, like I just have a bad feeling. I just let's let's go happy and let's be happy. Yeah. So I guess that'll be all I'm putting it down. Yeah. Let's we're going to put this thing out of its misery and out of our lives for forever. If anyone offers you an underground Connecticut shade Connecticut, tell them no and then cease to be friends with them.
You know, maybe if you put tequila on it, but other than that, yeah, we should try this as a tequila cigar because we did the the bin Maduro and we've done some off, not on the show, but it would be very interesting to do one. And I don't want to do the the what is it that the blood red moon cigar because I don't think a flavor it might be an interesting like scientific experiment, but we should do a tequila cigar on a cigar that we both dislike.
Like we didn't dislike the bin Maduro, but it was just meh. This one, like I actively hate. I actively hate this cigar. So maybe we should try this. You said you have another one in your box, don't you? Yeah. The longer one. Thank God it's longer. I can't wait to smoke more of this. I'll have to look and see if I have one. If you have one, let's do the long one as a tequila cigar. OK. OK. Otherwise, I'm not even looking forward to it, to be honest. No, avoid this stick at all costs.
I am putting this is like my second least favorite cigar after the blood red moon. Yeah, I think that's the only one we quit early, isn't it? We quit another one. One of the girls, I think one of the girls. But even that was better than this because this is just sour all the way through. And the girls, you can at least smoke slower and it tastes better. But this one I'm smoking super slow because I'm only halfway through and it's still sour and accurate and gross.
And yeah, the first quarter is rough. I was. That was we powered through to get more worse stuff. So yeah. Anyway, thanks for listening. Enjoy 1984 Dune with a nice under crown shade Connecticut. Be safe. "...