Jeff Goldblum, playing mathematician Ian Malcolm in 1993’s Jurassic Park, delivered one of the films most central and memorable monologs as he lectures Hammond on the hubris and dangers of the dinosaur amusement park.

The problem with scientific power you’ve used is it didn’t require any discipline to attain it. You read what others had done, and you took the next step. You didn’t earn the knowledge yourselves, so you don’t take the responsibility for it.

It is also for my money the height of hypocrisy. What Malcolm is describing the process by which science advances. No one reinvents all of the processes, theories, and techniques that came before them All scientists stand on the shoulders of those that came before and if they are lucky add a bit of new knowledge, new understanding for those that come after. Malcolm as a mathematician did not reinvent calculus but learned what others had invented and discovered before adding his own discoveries in the field of chaos.

The questions should have Hammond recreated dinosaurs? Should he have proceeded more cautiously before turning it into a park? Are valid important questions but do not give me this crap that the science didn’t require discipline and it was somehow unearned.

Acclaimed French-Canadian director Denis Villeneuve, whose films include such diverse fare as Polytechnique, a film that explores the events of a mass shooting in Canada, to time-twisted SF film Arrivalhas directed his passion project, an adaptation of Frank Herbert’s 1965 SF novel, Dune.

Dune, set in the distant year 10191, tells the story of teenage Paul Atreides (Timothee Chalamet) the only son of Duke Leto Atreides (Oscar Isaac), a lord whose growing popularity with the galactic feudal empire threatens the reigning emperor and in engaged in a generations long feud with a rival noble house the Harkonnens, led by the evil Baron Harkonnen (Stellan Skarsgard.) Ordered to take possession of Baron Harkonnen’s prize planet, Dune, the sole source of a psychoactive substance, spice, that extents life, enhances mental capabilities, and makes faster-than-light travel possible. On Dune the Atreides hope to secure an alliance with its native populations, a stern, fierce people the Fremen, before coming war the Harkonnens erupts.

Dune is a deep and complex novel with extensive world building on the scale of Tolkien’s Lord of the Rings. Herbert crafted deep history which even in the novel is only lightly touched on that propels the cultures and characters of his story. Villeneuve serving not only as director but also as one of three credited writers on the screenplay manages this impressive feat of presenting this detailed setting enough that it is comprehensible but without ever letting the story drown in exposition. He has managed to visualize aspects of the novel, such as the Ornithopters, aircraft that fly by beating wings, that when I read the book I found difficult to picture. Because the novel is so long and so deep the story has been split into two movies and this one covers only the first half of the story, though the filmmakers found a logical and emotionally satisfying place to end this section. There is absolutely no doubt that there remains much story to tell but this film also ends at a point that can be an ending.

The production design and cinematography are excellent presenting a thoroughly realized lived-in universe and nearly every shot, every frame is a painting imbued with a deeper meaning that just stark visual information. Dune is an accomplishment well worth seeing on the big screen if you feel safe to do so but even on your home television it should be watched.

My SF/Noir Vulcan’s Forge is available from Amazon and all booksellers. The novel is dark, cynical, and packed with movie references.

Tomorrow I go to see the latest adaptation of Frank Herbert’s classic Sci-Fi novel Dune. This work has been adapted twice before in 1984 by idiosyncratic director David Lynch for Italian Producer Dino de Laurentiis. This version was a critical and financial failure. Rumor have reported that the first cut of this film was something like five hours long, but the theatrical release was just two hours and seventeen minutes and that the heavy use of voice over in the final cut was a product of this butchering. Whatever the reasons this film pleased neither those who were new to the story nor the fans of the novel.

In 2000 the Sci-Fi network aired a miniseries adaptation of the novel titled Frank Herbert’s Dune. The expanded time worked in this adaptation’s favor, but the limited budget and production restrictions held the final product back and while better received than Lynch’s strange yet unforgettable film this too failed to catch fire with fans.

Adaptations are tricky beasts. A novel or short story is a very different medium than a film. One of not inherently superior to the other, both have their strengths and their weaknesses, and it is foolish and unfair to expect an adaptation to be fully faithful to its source material. An adaptation can wildly deviate from the source material and still be a good or even great adaptation if it captures the tone, theme, and heart of the source. Sometimes it’s best to throws out the subplot that enrich a novel but only drag a film down to a slow death. The mafia sub-plot that explains why the mayor will not close Amity’s beaches in jaws is an excellent example. It makes the mayor’s actions more understandable, more like what a person who is facing harm or death might do to make sure they have the money the mob wants, but in a film, it would be too many scenes away from our central characters in which we spin wheels waiting for the plot to get moving again.

We shall have to wait and see if Dune captures the tone, theme, and heart of Herbert’s dense novel. We do know that this adaptation is incomplete, covering only about half the novel and if successful only then will we be allowed to have the whole story.