Quote Originally Posted by Crowe Diddly View Post
Quote Originally Posted by Kalam View Post

SPOILERS

You are ok with Kynes being a woman? Dune isn't Lord of the Rings, where the female characters really are only accessory, and it makes sense to plump them up a little. There are plenty of important female characters. That seemed completely unnecessary to me, and doesn't fit at all with the patriarchal structure of the Imperium and Fremen society.

Also, the lack of internal dialogue really does cause a lot of value to be lost IMO. For example, I thought the old version with the internal dialogue did a lot better job of recreating the experience of the Jam Gabbar than this version did.
I don't think it makes a hair's of difference in the end that Kynes was a woman in the movie, tbh. So she maybe ends up being revealed as Chani's mother instead of father at some point, if they even decide to tell that part of the tale, but they also might not even delve into that at all, and she's already dead anyway. Short of that, the rest of the story holds up just fine regardless of gender. You could swap out her for him in the movie, and change no dialogue at all, and everything is fine. As it turns out, the lady who played Kynes did an awesome job, I thought. Was it a necessary change? No. Was it a detrimental change? No. Is it likely to be consequential in any way down the line? No. After seeing it, I have no complaints at all about it.

As for the gom jabbar scene, I think the new version is very much superior. First off, Paul resisting the Voice in the old one as opposed to his immediate uncontrolled reaction to it in the new one is night and day difference, with the new one a LOT better IMO. Not even close. As for internal dialogue, in the old gom jabbar scene, its only Paul reciting the Litany of Fear, something his mother does outside the door in the new one with Paul clearly thinking and reciting it in his mind at the same time. This shared internal dialogue is vastly superior to the old version as it shows clearly the connection between Paul and Jessica. There's no extra explanation at all in the old one as you claim, no needed exposition that the old one had that the new one needed, so I'm not sure how that internal dialogue made the old one better than the new one.

Last gom jabbar thoughts: in the old one, the Rev Mother stopped the test when Paul yelled out about the pain and it seemed he could take no more. That's not the feel of the book at all. In the new one, Paul screams, is told to stfu, then has to endure and then, somehow, DEFEAT the pain and the box, and the Rev Mother stops the test when it becomes clear to her that Paul is frightfully powerful and may very well be The One, despite being tested more than anyone else has ever lived thru.
As written the fremen were a very patriarchal culture. There is a reason that Kynes father raised him to follow in his work and lead the Fremen, and Chani was raised by Kynes to be a concubine (I am exaggerating, she wasn’t raised specifically to be a concubine, but she also wasn’t being raised to take on a “male” role and take over her fathers work).

Making the character female makes no sense at all in context of how the society was designed by Herbert and the story was written. If that doesn’t bother you that is fine.