I tried watching "Children of Dune" from 2003.

Spoiler alert: ZZZZZzzzzzzz....

You know the drill with SyFy shows: low budget, low effort, grab a few big-name actors for bit parts, leave it at that. Such was the formula for Children of Dune, a miniseries that covers the events of DUNE: MESSIAH and CHILDREN OF DUNE by Frank Herbert.

These were the first two sequels he wrote to DUNE in the sixties. The series commands incredible loyalty among readers and always finds more fans in subsequent generations. It is utterly unique and quite compelling (with diminishing returns from each volume thereafter.)

SyFy must have had that in mind for this show, figuring that the readers would tune in and make it a financial success. I have no idea if it was or not, but I can tell you that if I hadn’t read the books, I would have absolutely zero clue WTF was going on in any of this, and that’s with the subtitles on.

To be honest I think that decision is bold and not altogether bad. Every time we get a new Batman or Spider-Man movie or show, they feel the need to remind us that the Waynes and Uncle Ben were murdered. Some properties are just so well-known even outside of their own fandoms that they don’t need a recap. You can pop in to a James Bond movie knowing he’s a British spy and he does generic spycraft. (Although the Craig movies were a reboot and a series all in one.)

However I’m not sure DUNE enjoys the necessary ubiquity to make this move successful. This series starts after the events of the first book with only the slightest recap of what went down. There’s already so much inside baseball in the book itself, if you try to skirt around any of the worldbuilding or the plot details and just throw random words into the script, the casuals aren’t going to understand what’s happening.

And that’s where Batman, Spider-Man, and James Bond diverge from Paul Muad’Dib: people don’t know who Paul is, because way more people read comics/watch cartoons/see movies than read books.

I started doing the fall-asleep-leg-jerk on the couch last night and I tapped out about halfway through the first of three episode/movies. The CGI was dated and the sets were…well, not terrible. The acting just above “soap opera” but still a little exhausting to watch. James McAvoy is in it, so is Susan Sarandon, and maybe one more big-ish name, but yeah. Don’t care.

I think my takeaway from this is that while it’s fun to have cool books adapted to the visual format, most of them can’t justify the expense, and so low-effort adaptations are really a test of fandom. And on this one, I’m out of the club. (The same can probably be said of the other Dune novels. I’m generally a fan of the core trilogy and I’ll stop the train there.)

Anyway. Back to work.