An adaptation is not an exact copy of the book. Things change between adaptations. If there's nothing new then there's no point in even making it.
I really don't understand the level of objection here. How does Dr Kynes being a woman change the story and ruin it? Why is this so important? (other than "that's the text of the book")
I've explained this dozens of times here, on TrekBBS, and on several YouTube channels. Going over it
again would be a waste of my time, when I've already stated my case in this thread and in the Dune thread, and elsewhere. If you are really interested in my views on this, feel free to read my old posts. My views have not changed between then and now.
There's "new" and there's "completely out the window and to hell with the source material." Villeneuve chose the latter. No wonder he's cozy with KJA/BH with this "Sisterhood of Dune" thing. They don't care about the source material either.
It wasn't done to improve the story at all and it's trying to piggyback popular characters via genderswapping.
It's almost like saying women can't have great characters unless they genderswap.
Exactly. There are already plenty of strong women in Dune. Unfortunately, there aren't enough readers or viewers (or directors) who take the trouble to understand these characters.
Dune also has long term fans. I started in 1993 or so. I don't hate nu Dune as much as Valka but get where she's coming from.
The genderswap thing is being overdone as well, almost never improves the story. It wasn't really a negative in the Dune movie but didn't enhance it either imho.
Male or female or whatever you need well developed characters not just a checklist of tick boxes for a cardboard cutout (Star Wars says hi).
I thought the movie was great and I'm not a hardcore purist with adaptions but sometimes they barely use the source material eg Foundation.
I've heard nothing good about Foundation, that the only accurate thing about it is that Isaac Asimov wrote a book with that title and the rest of the movie is just made-up <stuff>.
This is why Robert Silverberg told us (those of us on his mailing list) that he has refused all offers/proposals to option
Lord Valentine's Castle (an epic novel that many consider his masterpiece). It would be an absolutely
glorious movie (series of movies, actually; there's far too much in the novel to cover in a single movie, so a high-budget TV series would be better)... but Silverberg has no faith in Hollywood's ability or even desire to do justice to the novel and characters and the interrelationships between the humans and aliens who inhabit Majipoor and the sheer scope of the planet itself. He would rather his book's integrity remain intact rather than watered-down or changed into something unrecognizable because of a director's whim or budgetary shenanigans (it would be an expensive work to produce properly) or mishandling of the characters or the themes of the book (it's not just a straightforward adventure story; I used this book as one of my sources for a sociology paper on racism in science fiction, as I realized that part of the story is a metaphor for how the Europeans treated the native North Americans).
Gender swap doesn't seem as big a change to me as making Kynes a Fremen. It was important to the story that they began as an outsider but either sex serves equally well as parent of Chani.
Pardot Kynes (Liet's father, who is not seen in Dune because he's dead many years before the opening events of the novel) was an Imperial civil servant. He was appointed Imperial Planetologist by Emperor Shaddam IV.
Pardot Kynes realized that his duties on Arrakis and his relations with the Fremen would be easier if he took a Fremen wife. That marriage produced a SON, named Liet. So Liet-Kynes was part-Fremen, part whatever Pardot's origins were in the Imperium. Liet-Kynes, in turn, married a Fremen WOMAN, named Faroula, and he inherited Pardot Kynes' position both in Shaddam's government and among the Fremen. So Kynes living as the Fremen live, praying to Shai-Hulud, etc. isn't the problem. Kynes is literally a child of both worlds. The issue is that Kynes as a man has privileges and authority that Kynes as a woman does not, due to the ways in which both the Imperial culture and the Fremen culture are constructed.
If the work was made before 2000 then future adaptations absolutely should have some gender swapping to improve female representation. These things are not the Sacred Canon of Maledom. These new adaptations do not in any way erase older versions.
"Sacred Canon of Maledom"?
I'm every bit as opposed to genderswapping in the other direction as in this direction.
Dunno if you recall what I mentioned about this long writing project I've been doing for the past 3 years... you gave me invaluable feedback that sent me in directions with some of the characters I never expected to go, but none of them included genderswapping. This is definitely a situation where the source material didn't include enough women, so rather than genderswap Sir Edmund into Lady Edwina, I just left him as he was created, and created more original characters to flesh out the family, the court, and the rest of the city. But as the story takes place in the 11th century, I'm not having anyone stepping out of their proper gender-dictated roles.
David Lynch created a female character who wasn't in Herbert's book - he decided that some of the Atreides' soldiers were female. I didn't get upset about that, since Alia has some female bodyguards in one of the later books (I'm blanking at the moment whether it's in
Dune Messiah or
Children of Dune; the specific character's name is Zia, their leader).
What's so magical about the year 2000? Some stories require that specific characters be a specific gender. Or are you advocating that some new version of Star Wars feature the adventures of Lucy Skywalker, Hannah Solo, and Prince Leo Organa?
(actually, it wouldn't surprise me if some fanfic author has already done that; there are probably thousands, at least)
Or how about genderswapping even older movies?
The Ten Commandments - the story of Molly, Princess of Egypt, leading her people to freedom - maybe it won't take 40 years, since women seem to be less averse to asking directions than men do (stereotypically speaking). Maybe some female descendent or other relative of Charlton Heston can star in it. It sounds ridiculous to me and I wouldn't bother seeing it myself, but I guess that's what modern audiences want.
If they want better representation write something new and let it stand on its own merits.
Originality is a dirty word now though. These toxic male writers at least could craft an original story.
Hollywood hacks can't hence genderswapping.
I should think a strong
original female character would be more appreciated than one who is just given a male character's traits.
I wonder if Villeneuve will actually bother to use Margot, Lady Fenring in the second movie. She's Bene Gesserit and tends to get overlooked, even though she's also an integral part of both the Bene Gesserit's and the Emperor's plans.
Or will he just once more whine that there "aren't enough women" and genderswap yet another male character? Considering that Margot's assignment from the Bene Gesserit is to seduce Feyd-Rautha and conceive a daughter, that could be a problem if a man is cast in the role or if Feyd is genderswapped "because there aren't enough women."
For all that I loathe the nuDune books, at least KJA/BH used this character appropriately.
You don't get to make that call. If you want to watch your old movies no one is stopping you or forcing you to see the remakes. There's literally no skin off your back.
But others want them, and the movies are being made for those people. There's room for everyone.
Literally
nobody was clamoring for Liet-Kynes to be genderswapped before Villeneuve did it.
The only concession I'm willing to make regarding inappropriate casting for this character is Max von Sydow, in the Lynch movie. He was a terrific actor in general and played the part well, but he was several decades too old when you delve into Liet-Kynes' background.
More movies doing it have crashed and burned than dine well at the box office.
There's very little reasons to do it from a creative or financial pov. It's ideological.
Worked well in Battlestar Galactica, ok in Dune most of the time it's bad to terrible.
Genderswapping in nuBSG is one of the main reasons why I didn't even finish watching the pilot. It just got ridiculous.
Star Trek TNG, DS 9 and Voyager were all successful and had women and ethnic minorities in much more prominent roles than the original series.
This seems to me an odd thing to get hung up on. Plots, settings etc get changed all the time but people are far more upset by changes in ethnicity and gender.
I'm much more upset by something like the Amazon adaption of The Man in the High Castle that butchered the plot but didn't make any changes to sex or ethnicity of major characters.
The thing about the subsequent Trek spinoff series is that while there were many female and ethnic minorities in prominent roles, none of them were genderswapped.
There are plenty of fanfic stories where Kirk and/or Spock are genderswapped. But fanfic isn't material that can legally make a profit, and as much as I wish some fanfic could be declared canon because it's
that much better than some of the pro stuff, it's safe to say that the closest Kirk ever got to being genderswapped was in "Turnabout Intruder." And even then Kirk didn't literally become a woman.
