I just saw the first movie with a friend and the thought went through my mind. I’m not really sure what something being derivative means, so I looked it up and apparently it’s more subjective than I realized.
What are your thoughts?
I still reference this Penny Arcade strip 15 years later:
I mostly agree with the sentiment, people say something is derivative when they dislike it and it’s an homage or a reference when they do
For you to say it’s derivative it needs to be a derivation of something else, I would like to ask you what exactly would that be?
Someone who grew up playing D&D and similar might watch Lord of the Rings and say it’s derivative, without understanding that everything he knows is a derivation of it. There’s a quote from Sir Terry Pratchett about it:
J.R.R. Tolkien has become a sort of mountain, appearing in all subsequent fantasy in the way that Mt. Fuji appears so often in Japanese prints. Sometimes it’s big and up close. Sometimes it’s a shape on the horizon. Sometimes it’s not there at all, which means that the artist either has made a deliberate decision against the mountain, which is interesting in itself, or is in fact standing on Mt. Fuji.
And Dune is exactly the same except about space empires.
So, when talking about a film adaptation of a 60 year old book being derivative, remember that even though you are only experiencing it now, Dune has been around for a long time. It has inspired other creators, and their work has inspired yet more creators, and you have likely consumed much of these other inspired works before consuming the originator. The order you experience it in may make it seem derived by the other works you already enjoyed, but the opposite may in fact be true.
That being said, no work is created in a vacuum, and all works are derivative to some degree. Dune is no different. It is inspired by sci-fi pulp fiction and even fantasy works that came before it too.
Furthermore, the film is not an entirely faithful adaptation and brings its own interpretations, additions, and other alterations to the story. Those, likewise, are not always wholly novel ideas and share DNA with other works, novels and film, the creators enjoyed. They did plenty of unique things, particularly with the cinematography and aesthetics of the peoples and environments, but the story structure, superhuman abilities and political intrigue will still share a lot of commonalities with other works.
None of that makes Dune bad or lesser. There is nothing wrong with putting a new twist on a a tried and true formula or story element to make it your own.
Everything has always been derivative of smth. We all stand on the shoulders of those before us.
Having said that, the Dennis Villeneuve dune does not overrely on previous adaptations like the lynch dune.
But guess what, plot comes from the book, themes come from the book. That is just being loyal to the source material since the medium in which the story is now being told is different.
As a whole the film has enough soul and individuality to stand out. You wouldn’t watch it and think, ah a vague action movie with Arab inspired music.
Film is also a collaborative medium, one man doesn’t decide what it is, many have influenced it and hence influences have come in from all over the place.
But Dennis Villeneuve as a director has left his imprint on this movie. If you’ve seen 2 or 3 of his movies you can watch dune without knowing he made it, you can guess it was him.
The way he works with light and dialogue specifically is individual enough for dune to be a unique movie.
(The general idea of an auteur in cinema is what I’m talking about)
Modern sci-fi is pretty much all derivative of Dune. So if you look at a modern adaptation of Dune today you might think “this is just Star Wars/Star Trek/Warhammer 40K/etc.” But it’s in fact the other way around, Dune doesn’t take from Star Wars, Star Wars takes from Dune.
It depends. What do you find it derivative of?
Obviously Tremors. Dune is just Tremors in space and being a book it just happened to get released before the Kevin Bacon classic.
This is sort of like calling the Beatles derivative since everything they have has also been done better by other bands.
It is based on a book. Does it have elements of the other Dune Adaptations that came before it, I am sure it does.
It is unique enough to me to not label it derivative.
Everything is derivative
I can see where he’s coming from, since it deals with the usual “chosen one, prophecies etc” stuff. What I liked about dune was that the visions aren’t of the actual future, just possible ones. From what I’ve read on the plots to come, it gets more and more bizzarre, which probably won’t feel very derivative.
I was disappointed with the directing in the sequel though.
