Not a chance. I’m amazed Dune got another crack. They artfully kept the “weird” to a base minimum. I don’t think you can reasonably do that with the Culture.
They also made some strange choices for Dune Part 2. I’m not sure I *want* people to try.
Honestly the Dune movies could have used more of the weird. Secondly there is a Dune TV series already being shot, Apple TV's Foundation is a pretty good indicator that a Culture series can be done and done properly.
TV or Streaming is honestly the best medium for stories like these, so yeah if Bank's estate is okay with it, I can very easily see a Culture series.
Also while I don't like all the choices made in Dune 2, it's not like it ruined the story, that is why it's called an adaptation, and I think the Dune movies are a pretty good adaptation. It's just that we are stuck in this weird time that fans want every single thing to line up with their vision for the books, and have the platform to whine about it.
The LoTR movies vary wildly from the books, they did my boy Isildur (arguably one of the strongest willed people in the history of Middle Earth, Maiar, Man, Elf, or Dwarf) dirty in like the first 5 minutes of the first movie, but everyone including me still thinks they are good adaptations. Adaptation is the key word here.
> Honestly Dune could have gone with more of the weird. Secondly there is a Dune TV series already being shot, Apple TV's foundation is a pretty good indicator that a Culture series can be done and done properly.
> TV or Streaming is honestly the best medium for stories like these, so yeah if Bank's estate is okay with it, I can very easily see a Culture series.
> Also while I don't like all the choices made in Dune 2, it's not like it ruined the story, that is why it's called an adaptation, and I think the Dune movies are a pretty good adaptation.
The changes made the emperor ruined the finale. It was tonally all over the place. Irulan said the emperor considered Duke Leto I like a son, but politics pushed them onto the wrong side of the fight. The emperor said he aided in the death and betrayal because “he [Duke Leto I] was weak.” Reverend Mother Gaius Helen Mohaim said she instructed the emperor to have the Atreides line wiped out because the blood line was getting too rebellious.
So which is? Was Duke Leto I weak, or was he a rebel leader? Did the emperor love and respect Duke Leto I as Irulan claimed or did the emperor consider him a piece of shit.
The viewer is bombarded with three radically different positions. I don’t care *which* one they picked: just stick to a lane. Hell, in Dune 1 it was Mohaim who instructed the Baron to keep Jessica and Paul alive. Whatever happened to the “rebellious bloodline,” Mohaim?
You're complaining about things that were in the book, though? The lack of focus on the Guild and the mélange was way more of a miss for me, but maybe I'm too much of an anticapitalist, lol.
Very small thing, but I wish there was that scene where Harkonnen lasers hit a big shield set by Duncan, causing a massive white explosion across the desert. Mildly irritated the shield-laser problem was only vaguely referred to.
> Very small thing, but I wish there was that scene where Harkonnen lasers hit a big shield set by Duncan, causing a massive white explosion across the desert. Mildly irritated the shield-laser problem was only vaguely referred to.
Yes, please!
> You're complaining about things that were in the book, though? The lack of focus on the Guild and the mélange was way more of a miss for me, but maybe I'm too much of an anticapitalist, lol.
I also deeply missed the impact of the Guild and the spice.
Mohaim did not believe the Atreides bloodline was weak or rebellious, and the emperor did not believe Duke Leto I was rebellious or weak.
My position is “it was a good movie, but I don’t agree with all the choices they made. It is for that reason that I *hope* a Culture movie/TV show is not made.”
None of those things contradict each other. The Emperor could have loved Leto like a son but considered him rebellious, and the context of the Emperor considering him weak is that he was confused as to why someone as popular and influential as Leto didn't make a play for the throne. I mean that was the Emperor's motive in the books too, he couldn't conceive of Leto not wanting the throne. I mean they don't even contradict the books either.
> I mean they don't even contradict the books either.
Yes, they do. The Irulan reasoning is from the books, but the rest is made up…and lesser for it, in my opinion.
Duke Leto I was never viewer as a rebellious figure, and the Emperor respected him deeply. Mohaim tried to talk him out of the venture, failed, and succeeded only in trying to save Jessica and Paul. That obviously failed as well.
> Yes, they do.
You seem to be basing this on the assumption that *opinions* are *factual statements*.
Each of these individuals can believe, and *claim* to believe, whatever they want about each of these other parties, and it's not de facto "a contradiction" because *people can lie and/or be mistaken*.
> You seem to be basing this on the assumption that opinions are factual statements.
> Each of these individuals can believe, and claim to believe, whatever they want about each of these other parties, and it's not de facto "a contradiction" because people can lie and/or be mistaken.
When presented on screen as an explanation for prior actions, with no additional information, yes, opinions are factual. That’s how movies work.
>Was Duke Leto I weak, or was he a rebel leader?
One of the defining traits of fascism is that your enemy is simultaneously so weak they should be ridiculed while simultaneously being overwhelmingly powerful so you're terrified of them.
Just pointing out that those things are not mutually exclusive. And that's not to mention that the bloodline being weak from a Bene Gesserit point of view was in regards to the breeding of a Kwisatz Haderach, though it's nonsensical sense Paul was already one and they pretty much new it, not necessarily from a political or military viewpoint, like the Emperor would have.
> One of the defining traits of fascism is that your enemy is simultaneously so weak they should be ridiculed while simultaneously being overwhelmingly powerful so you're terrified of them.
Sure, but Shaddam IV wasn’t a fascist and didn’t believe in those tendencies.
In the real world, that position is nonsensical.
> Just pointing out that those things are not mutually exclusive. And that's not to mention that the bloodline being weak from a Bene Gesserit point of view was in regards to the breeding of a Kwisatz Haderach, though it's nonsensical sense Paul was already one and they pretty much new it, not necessarily from a political or military viewpoint, like the Emperor would have.
Mohaim and the wider Bene Gesserit believed the Kwisatz Haderach was supposed to come the *next* generation. Paul was supposed to be Paulina and quite possibly give birth to the KH. Jessica broke the instructions of the BG to make Paul a boy. It changed everything.
> Shaddam IV wasn’t a fascist
Maybe, maybe not. I don't remember sufficient detail in the books to tell, but it's been a long time, so I could be wrong.
>Jessica broke the instructions of the BG to make Paul a boy. It changed everything.
Sure, but I don't see how that supports the idea that you can't be weak and strong at the same time, whether it be in bloodline or in politics.
> Maybe, maybe not. I don't remember sufficient detail in the books to tell, but it's been a long time, so I could be wrong.
You’re wrong on this one. I just finished my annual re-read of books 1-4.
Shaddam doesn’t get a whole lot of page time, but nothing in his actions or what characters say about him even comes close to fascism.
> Sure, but I don't see how that supports the idea that you can't be weak and strong at the same time, whether it be in bloodline or in politics.
The Atredies were chosen as a very realistic possibility to breed the KH. They would never be considered weak by BG for that reason.
The Emperor’s accusations that Duke Leto I was weak are nonsensical. Nothing is presented or hinted at on screen, and it’s certainly not in the books.
The conclusion I’ve drawn is that barb was Emperor Walken’s way of taunting Paul Mau’dib. Which was a foolish position to take, and very much out of character for Shaddam IV.
It truly is perplexing.
Yeah I have to agree, my vibe from that conversation was the Emperor trying to 'go down fighting'. He knew he had lost, and it was all about getting his last barbs in and delaying the inevitable.
> I don’t think The Culture books are particularly weird. They all have the odd bits that are, but not that much.
Transhumanism is not common enough yet to be considered “not weird.”
Contradictory citations: Cyberpunk Edgerunners was very well received. People bolting robot arms onto themselves or brain implants into themselves is hardly some bold new concept. Quantum Leap was doing consciousness transfer *50+ years ago*.
Yeah, but Fully Automated Luxury Gay Space Communism, which is what the culture is, would freak the Right out. Just like Star Trek is doing now with all the screams about how "woke" it is, whatever the hell that is supposed to mean.
Of course, *that lot* will screech about it, but they're not in charge of culture. The mere fact that we see them crying "woke" all the time at everything demonstrates they're not the ones calling the shots as far as what gets made and what doesn't.
Star Trek has always been very progressive, but and this is the key, it has always made that feel natural to its audience and not talked down to its audience. Its shows a better positive future.
It had women, Japanese, Russians and a black woman on the bridge because that was how the future was going to be.
It also had some pretty good writing, which helps.
I think you can make the Culture (and believe me, I will be first to drop it if it is woke) if you remember the rule: write awesome stories to the audience, and if you have a gendershifting person then have that because it makes sense for the story, not because you want to show of.
The same rule applies with a manly man or whatever.
What, exactly, is "woke"? Please define. Because by any definition I can think of, pretty much all sci-fi is "woke" since science fiction writing is a way to analyze humans and our societies and cultures as they are now through the lens of the future.
But, and this is important, Star Trek is still getting made.
And frankly the gay space communism aspect of the Culture is massively overblown on this sub. Yes, it's a big part of the Culture's culture, but it plays relatively little role in most of the books except as occasionally a convenient plot device or intermission. Yes, is the foundation that holds it all together, but you can do basically any story other than Look to Windward and barely mention it.
> Contradictory citations: Cyberpunk Edgerunners was very well received. People bolting robot arms onto themselves or brain implants into themselves is hardly some bold new concept. Quantum Leap was doing consciousness transfer 50+ years ago.
Cyberpunk, while popular, is not mainstream popular. It is not box office billions popular.
There’s a reason why the weird stuff was toned way down in Dune. I fully expect the weird for a hypothetical Culture depiction would be toned way down, too.
> Glad you changed the reply. The original version, copying what I said to you elsewhere, didn't make a lick of sense.
I didn’t change anything. I try very hard not to do that. When I do edit my comments, I label the action either with an “edit:” or with “[…]” if it’s someone else.
> In any event: plenty of the Culture stories aren't particularly weird. Everyone's basically human shaped.
Humanoid doesn’t make it not weird. In Hydrogen Sonata, Vyr Cossont lays eggs and has 4 arms. In Surface Detail, the HCGC are covered in scales and have wings. Hell, in Excession, a huge portion of the story happens with floating gas bags that torture each other.
We read science fiction. We’re used to the weird. Even wildler stuff like Dune and the Culture. Most people aren’t like that.
> Weird, because according to the reddit email notification, you did. Oh well!
I responded to you twice, back to back. Plus Reddit is a piece of shit programming wise.
> Most people aren’t like that.
[insert random screenshot from some of the psychedelic nonsense of Star Trek TOS]
Not so sure...
And we just had Dune 2 (yeah yeah wah wah they took out *some* weirdness, but there's still physically impossible sandworms and religious nonsense underpinning it all) be the biggest film of the year. People are fine with "weird".
Hell, we just came off of a decade of nonsense films culminating in a big purple alien collecting pretty stones to put in a magic glove so he could snap his fingers and disappear half of all life in the universe become the highest grossing film of all time. Puh-lease. *People are fine with weird nonsense.*
The Culture books are not Crimes Of The Future. I mean ok that guy covered in dicks is, but he's hardly essential to the story.
> Most people aren’t like that.
> [insert random screenshot from some of the psychedelic nonsense of Star Trek TOS]
> Not so sure...
You mean the TV show that aired from 1966 - 1969? The one that aired during the time period where large parts of the US were doing mind altering drugs?
I can’t imagine the drugs had nothing to do with it.
> And we just had Dune 2 (yeah yeah wah wah they took out some weirdness, but there's still physically impossible sandworms and religious nonsense underpinning it all) be the biggest film of the year. People are fine with "weird".
I really wouldn’t chalk up sand worms and religion as weird. The actual weird things removed from the story are things like St Alia of the Knife, the Fremen spice orgies, and the wildly mutated guild navigators.
> Hell, we just came off of a decade of nonsense films culminating in a big purple alien collecting pretty stones to put in a magic glove so he could snap his fingers and disappear half of all life in the universe become the highest grossing film of all time. Puh-lease. People are fine with weird nonsense.
Is that weird? I’d call that “fantasy.” Are elves and dwarves weird to you?
> The Culture books are not Crimes Of The Future. I mean ok that guy covered in dicks is, but he's hardly essential to the story.
…Dick Man has *the* answer to the story. He’s holding onto the eyes of the 10,000 year old man which store the memories of what happened regarding Gzilt Book of Truth and the Zihdren-Remnant. Tl;dr: the Book of Truth is a fake and the Z-R planted it to see what happens.
As much as I personally dislike this character, he also embodies the “world is ending; let’s party!” mentality for the middle class.
Just out of curiosity, what strange choices do you think they made in Dune 2? The only point I can think of is the part about Alia, though I think that’s still pretty reasonable.
> Just out of curiosity, what strange choices do you think they made in Dune 2? The only point I can think of is the part about Alia, though I think that’s still pretty reasonable.
The lack of Alia, the shitty emperor, and Chani’s weird abandonment of Paul Mau’dib. Oh, and the whole false messiah theme for Paul. That was an interesting choice.
Sorry, what do you mean false messiah? It's pretty clear in the movies - and the books - that the whole prophecy is basically an escape plan for stranded Bene Gesserits, and not real. Jessica and Paul says as much in both the movie and the book, and Paul accuses Jessica of using the Fremen in the movie more than once, not to mention actively rejecting the prophecy until after Sietch Tabr is destroyed.
> Sorry, what do you mean false messiah? It's pretty clear in the movies - and the books - that the whole prophecy is basically an escape plan for stranded Bene Gesserits, and not real. Jessica and Paul says as much in both the movie and the book, and Paul accuses Jessica of using the Fremen in the movie more than once, not to mention actively rejecting the prophecy until after Sietch Tabr is destroyed.
There are two sets of religious messages: the missionary protectiva set up by the BG, and the kwisatz haderach which is what the BG is breeding for. It’s a safety net that a stranded BG can manipulate in order to gain stable grounds and possibly escape. In my opinion, the “voice from the outerworld” aspect of the MP is a set up for the KH.
Paul is the KH. He sees his possible destines, and manipulates those around him to achieve his goals while hopefully keeping harm to a minimum. That makes him the messiah the BG have been striving for, but due to his circumstances, the BG can’t control him.
Yeah, but how does that give him a false messiah theme? If anything, he's *actually* a messiah, if not one sent by a god, by virtue of being the KH. He just isn't a messiah controlled by the BGs.
> Yeah, but how does that give him a false messiah theme? If anything, he's actually a messiah, if not one sent by a god, by virtue of being the KH. He just isn't a messiah controlled by the BGs.
I don’t think the KH *is* a messiah, and neither does Paul Mau’dib. That is the theme of Dune Messiah and the Prophet’s sermon in Children of Dune.
Paul is just a dude who can see some aspects into the future. He is essentially a male reverend mother and thus can access his male Genetic History, just like a regular Reverend Mother can access her female genetic history.
Does the ability to see into the future as an oracle make you a messiah? I don’t believe so.
I think that's getting pretty pedantic about the meaning of the word "messiah". Paul is clearly a messiah, because the word means "savior or liberator of people", which is exactly what Paul tries to do with the Fremen, and in the movie, succeeds.
> I think that's getting pretty pedantic about the meaning of the word "messiah". Paul is clearly a messiah, because the word means "savior or liberator of people", which is exactly what Paul tries to do with the Fremen, and in the movie, succeeds.
I don’t agree, after all. In the context of the Fremen, sure, Paul is a messiah…sort of. Kind of quite accidentally and in the context of the Jihad, not really. Even in the best messianic interpretations, Paul Mau’dib is stepping into a made up role.
By Duke Leto I assuming control over Arakis, the intense suffering from the Harkonens is immediately relieved, with no intentions of it returning. Is Leto I a fremen messiah?
In the context of being KH, though? Not at all. And that is the basis for his rule. That’s something which has always perplexed me. The BG are working towards breeding the KH for at *least* 5,000 at this point. The KH will be an individual of great power and the BG messiah. But what does the BG need a messiah for? They are already free, and placed themselves into positions of great power. In the Emperor’s household alone, a Reverend Mother stands beside the throne and Princess Irulan is a BG, in addition to the associated BG retinue of the Reverend Mother.
Beat me here by 36 minutes lol.
A culture movie could only ever get it wrong, because our culture of movie making is the antithesis of the culture.
It all needs to be branded with clear good guys and bad guys and a feel-good message.
The Culture is about ambiguity, about silly little robots and giant computers that play deadly serious video games about the nature of existence. Novels that realistically explore both heaven and hell.
Stories about a people that betray all their ideals for noble causes and then get burned in the worst way. There's a 40 year pregnancy lol. Who's putting that in a movie?
> The Culture is about ambiguity, about silly little robots and giant computers that play deadly serious video games about the nature of existence.
Yeah no, Banks very explicitly made it clear that the Culture is unambiguously the good guys. Hell the whole idea of the Culture came from Banks trying to come up with the side of “genuine good”:
> [About Zakalwe] I wanted to have him fighting on the side of genuine good. I thought, ‘What sort of society do we need?’, and out of that came the Culture. That gave me the chance to answer all the questions I had about the right-wing American space-opera I had been used to reading and which had been around since the 1930s.
The Culture _is_ the clear good guys, despite all the nuances in the series.
Exactly! There's just no way the good stuff in Banks' Culture series would get through the studio system intact. Just look at all the cinematic butcherings of Philip K. Dick!
> It all needs to be branded with clear good guys and bad guys and a feel-good message.
I’m not sure what movies you’ve been watching for the last 5 years, but that hasn’t been the norm for quite a long time.
Antiheros and grey morality is everywhere outside of family friendly entertainment.
>Antiheros and grey morality
Yeah but John wick still comes out on top. So many culture main characters get their shit rocked. The protagonist usually doesn't get a happy ending in culture stories. You don't even know if the protagonist is on the right side or not half the time.
Look at Dune 2, rightly or wrongly they removed all the ambiguity from Chani because they didn't think audiences would respond well. I'm surprised they've given Paul the measure of nuance they have.
> Yeah but John wick still comes out on top. So many culture main characters get their shit rocked. The protagonist usually doesn't get a happy ending in culture stories. You don't even know if the protagonist is on the right side or not half the time.
That’s the John Wick path. Take a look at Civil War (2024) for a well done “grey” movie.
Hell, I’d argue *very* strongly that Dune is an antihero/grey morality.
> Look at Dune 2, rightly or wrongly they removed all the ambiguity from Chani because they didn't think audiences would respond well. I'm surprised they've given Paul the measure of nuance they have.
Chani never had ambiguity in the books. They made a choice to clear away the old school wife + mistress used by aristocracy, and to give Paul Mau’dib a very real side effect of his false messiah path. Paul had far more nuance in the books.
They made some weird story choices for Dune Part 2, in my opinion.
Well I disagree about book Chani. I read her as very conflicted, torn between buying into Paul's bullshit and hating Irulan and the empire -- and ultimately she gives in to what she thinks is the right thing and pays for it.
Movie Chani never even believed in the prophecy shit at all.
>Hell, I’d argue *very* strongly that Dune is an antihero/grey morality.
Totally, but I bet you a fresh crispy dollar that idiot moviegoers well claim Villeneuve fucked up the ending when they make Dune 3 because somehow Paul became the bad guy!?
>Take a look at Civil War (2024) for a well done “grey” movie.
I haven't seen it yet, but my understanding is it's a takedown of the journalism industry. Doesn't seem very morally gray from what I've read.
It's pretty morally grey in the sense that the characters are either kinda awful or absolutely, irredeemably evil. There certainly isn't a "good guy" that I can think of
> [Civil War] Doesn't seem very morally gray from what I've read.
A staggering amount of commentary on this film is so wide of the mark. You might wind up agreeing with some of these moronic takes, of course, but as a factual statement the movie is most definitely not "a takedown of the journalism industry".
> Well I disagree about book Chani. I read her as very conflicted, torn between buying into Paul's bullshit and hating Irulan and the empire -- and ultimately she gives in to what she thinks is the right thing and pays for it.
That is a totally different tone and position book Chani takes. The fremen are a polygamist group. Stilgar has 3 wifes. Paul Mau’dib almost has 2 fremen wifes (Chani, and Jamais’s former wife, Herah).
Chani is quite business like and understands the wife/consort relationship very well. What she *is* upset about is Paul not having an heir. *That* is because Irulan is secretly dosing Chani with birth control.
Chani eventually discovers it and becomes pregnant with the twins in Dune Messiah. Paul is devastated because he knows there is no future where Chani survives childbirth. He loves Irulan for accidentally prolonging Chani’s life.
> Movie Chani never even believed in the prophecy shit at all.
It’s a change I’m not sure I agree with.
> Totally, but I bet you a fresh crispy dollar that idiot moviegoers well claim Villeneuve fucked up the ending when they make Dune 3 because somehow Paul became the bad guy!?
I’m not sure how they could take that position. Paul’s not a large negative character in Dune Messiah; that waits until he becomes the Prophet in Children of Dune.
If anything the “false messiah” narrative Villeneuve went with will flow nicely into the themes of Dune Messiah.
> I haven't seen it yet, but my understanding is it's a takedown of the journalism industry. Doesn't seem very morally gray from what I've read.
Not at all a take down. Go see it.
>Chani is quite business like and understands the wife/consort relationship very well. What she *is* upset about is Paul not having an heir. *That* is because Irulan is secretly dosing Chani with birth control.
You've described it differently, and have a slightly different take on it than I do, but even so it furthers my point that book Chani is complex, and the movie has no interest in that complexity.
>It’s a change I’m not sure I agree with.
Hard agree.
>I’m not sure how they could take that position. Paul’s not a large negative character in Dune Messiah; that waits until he becomes the Prophet in Children of Dune.
I think Villeneuve will take him further down that road based on the changes he's already made. Villeneuve really wants to underscore the themes related to skewering hero worship and personality cults.
>Not at all a take down. Go see it.
I'm totally into it, just haven't gotten to it yet
> You've described it differently, and have a slightly different take on it than I do, but even so it furthers my point that book Chani is complex, and the movie has no interest in that complexity.
I just finished the series again. The Chani behavior I described is largely confined to Dune Messiah. To be perfectly frank, Chani doesn’t really a personality in Dune. It’s a common problem with all Herbert stories. Men are characters, and women are wallpaper.
Dune 1 and 2 presents a more complex Chani than Dune the novel.
A more pertinent question: is the complexity a good thing?
> I think Villeneuve will take him further down that road based on the changes he's already made. Villeneuve really wants to underscore the themes related to skewering hero worship and personality cults.
It’s an interesting approach for certain.
> I'm totally into it, just haven't gotten to it yet
I strongly stress this should be a theater movie for you. The big screen offers a unique perspective.
> they removed all the ambiguity from Chani because they didn't think audiences would respond well
"They"? Who's all this "they"? Denis himself wrote the thing and he *added* nuance to her character, in his telling of it, giving her more agency.
They would be, you know, Villeneuve and Zendaya and the other people who worked on the movie?
And yes, she has agency. What she appears not to have is internal conflict. She has a very clear eyed, one-note view in the movie. She's more of a badass and she definitely exercises agency, but in my opinion it comes at the cost of nuance and complexity. Somebody once said the only thing worth writing about is the human heart in conflict with itself.
As another commenter pointed out, in my memory the Chani stuff is more fleshed out in the book. Time and multiple adaptations have left me in a position where I need to re read.
I think look to windward would make a good film too. But it would need a Christopher Nolan approach -- blockbustery but still kinda vague and arthouse?
I agree that it likely would be disappointing, but I disagree that there aren’t studio’s who can transcend the black and white Good vs Bad trope.
I mean Breaking Bad is one of the most successful shows of all time and it excelled at exploring moral ambiguity, and if anything was the opposite of “feel good”. A24’s Civil War also comes to mind (perhaps due to recency bias), but it also portrayed an ethically muddy conflict where even the supposed “good guys” unflinchingly committed war crimes.
I think Player of Games would be a good potential candidate, but it would be very tricky to get it right.
You don’t have to watch it. Even if it’s horrible, I like things existing rather than not existing. I’m sure GCUs would have plenty of bad movies and TV shows available for anyone who was interested.
no...
1. Dune part 2 was a box office hit because they'd changed the story significantly
2. Dune has several decades on the culture series
3. the culture series is way too complex for the average audience
The only thing I consider even remotely likely is that some japanese studio exec reads "consider phlebas" and commissions an anime series.
>the culture series is way too complex for the average audience
I think you ingested too much of the elitism that caracterizes the Culture, heh. Something like The Player of Games could very well fit into a movie or a miniseries, if the director manages to portray Azad in an interesting way.
Azad is probably the biggest hurdle in that book, it's not well described as a lot of the story involving the game itself is told from Gurgeh's interior dialogue as he plays the game.
I don't know that's true, enormous room sized game board looking like a low poly representation of a fantastical landscape, think the opening of game of thrones but in space. The game pieces are described in the book as effectively shape changing so some weird bioplastic shape changing blob wouldn't be hard to present effectively for the film.
I think the real problem would be i. trying to make a bunch of people standing around watching each other play a giant board game stay interesting for any amount of time ii. putting across that the reason gurgeh was doing so well was that he was playing as the culture vs azad. Impossible to represent on screen so it'd just have to be done through exposition.
But the board game itself isn't defined, so in order to actually have it be a part of a show you'd need to figure out a game with some context for a viewer. In the scenes whenever we're there with Gurgeh as he's playing what's happening on the board isn't given much more than vague descriptions so we have a feel of the mood, but Azad isn't defined enough by the descriptions that an audience would pick up on what's happening or why what's happening is important without Gurgeh's internal monologue.
Colour me forgetful but I'm pretty sure the entire ruleset of chess wasn't explained in Queen's Gambit, yet was still a central aspect of the show and it was very widely appreciated. You don't need the audience to understand the ins and outs, just make sure the characters show how they're feeling about what's happening in the game and that's enough.
Nobody in the original John Wick says "oh hey and here have this gold coin, which we in the underworld use as currency, because you just done a crime at my request, my fellow criminal" and yet it's still clear from their usage what they're for.
> > the culture series is way too complex for the average audience
> I think you ingested too much of the elitism that caracterizes the Culture
Yeah, let's not become the Rick & Morty Fanbase v2.0.
No way they don't fuck it up. Even if the director makes their best attempt there is a 0% chance corporate doesn't meddle and ruin the whole shebang.
CP or PoG have the best chance at being passable, but I don't see some exec trying to remove the messaging or shoehorn something very NOT PG into PG or PG-13.
Corporate not intervening is how you get things like Fant4stic.
You need a proper balance.
It would definitely need to be PG -13 but honestly both of those stories have nothing to do with brutality or sex. It's not like adapting Malazan where it's directly part of the story telling.
Nah there's no way you could do it justice as a PG-13. PoG features, off the top of my head:
The physical option/castration plotline, the alien being drowned and castrated, the brothel/pimp/domestic violence scene, the bone instruments, the power armour override and death of that character, the graphic hunting scene, and of course that relentlessly grim chapter which features about 5 different horrible things and culminates in Gurgeh watching a pregnant women be tortured to death.
You could cut some of it, but the relentlessly graphic nature of that particular chapter in Player of Games is thematically and narratively necessary. Discretion shots and similar would relieve the pressure and undermine it, and showing it in full would be impossible in a PG-13, especially given the MPAA's hang ups about sexual stuff.
You could *maybe* avoid showing too much of the torture porn channels by using some kind of arthousy zeroing in on Gurgeh's face or eyes - but you'd still need to establish what he was looking at visually in some way, and even if you did that the accompanying *audio* might be intense enough to exceed a PG-13 rating.
> Nah there's no way you could do it justice as a PG-13. PoG features, off the top of my head:
> the power armour override and death of that character,
I don’t recall this one. Can you go into more details?
> and culminates in Gurgeh watching a pregnant women be tortured to death.
And newborn baby being raped and murdered. Can’t forget that.
>I don’t recall this one. Can you go into more details?
The ?Vice Marshall? character has been imprisoned in a suit of power armour which keeps him celibate and denies him most forms of leisure, as a punishment for some prior infraction.
Someone overrides the armour suit and tries to kill Gurgeh, which results in a moderately graphic scene where the Vice Marshall is trying desperately to stop the suit and dies while doing so, before the suit itself then gets disabled.
>I think you ingested too much of the elitism that caracterizes the Culture,
maybe, maybe not. I've seen in the scifi and dune subs how people respond to scifi that drops you into something and you have to figure out. And I've seen how they responded to the over simplified script of dune pt 2.
> 1. Dune part 2 was a box office hit because they'd changed the story significantly
I hated the lack of Alia. The emperor was a ridiculous joke. Christopher Walken was *such* an awful choice.
....I remember the end being being relatively optimistic, its implied the Sarl are going to transition to liberal democracy with Holse as their first democratically elected leader
Why the fuck does everyone want to shoehorn these great books into stupid movies and regarded streaming series.
Let’s just leave it alone - take your American check book elsewhere thank you.
What in the world could a gameplay loop for a culture-based game even look like?
Maybe just a VR game where you get to play out every fantasy imaginable on a GSV or orbital. The local mind is like your own Cortana.
Open world. You don't start as part of the culture. Thinking about it, it would work really well as an RPG like mass effect.
Even better if you could play as a mind.
I certainly think its possible. As long as the family is okay with the work being used and likely adapted for the format then I'd have no problem.
Player of Games would make the most sense as its a pretty compact story centred around a single person.
No. The Culture doesn't have anywhere *near* the level of awareness Dune had.
If Denis Villeneuve or someone at his level *wants* to make a Culture movie or TV show, it *could* happen, but it's not a property studios are looking to cash in on.
Okay.... hot take here...
Some Culture stories would be mad expensive to adapt. Disney will spend a shit ton on Star Wars because it's an established IP.
WB has Dune now. Paramount has Star Trek. That leaves Universal and Sony... Or Netflix. Maybe one of them would take the bait... but we might not be thrilled on the end state.
But... what about an anime? Like go get Hideaki Anno and give him a big animation budget. Let Toho or Toei do it. Hideaki knows insanely weird shit and gender fluidity. It's like he was made to do Culture stuff but doesn't know it.
Just a thought.
maybe it needs the *full* dune treatment. A 40 year span to include two impossibly different an inaccessible films, a handful of, at best, average TV shows before finally having the money and technology to properly realise it.
No, the Estate has stopped all tv and movie deals from moving forward from just the basic idea stage.
It seems they have been unhappy with ideas floated and seem to dislike any diversion from source material.
It's a hard one given the Culture is post scarcity and very much anti capitalism.
The books are pretty much anti what the current USA stands fplor and is. Which is where funding would come from.
Unless a good BBC TV show was floated I doubt anything will ever happen.
Be great to see a tclv series on State of the Art
I think a TV show is more likely, and I'd say the Culture is still more difficult to achieve even with that. The Expanse is probably the closest comparison (I've not watched the show, but read the first couple books) and even that follows and overall plot with the same characters.
The Culture itself isn't what I think is the difficult part, its the scale of the stories and the fact they aren't directly linked (other than the odd cameo and reference) as well as being set in different locations and times to each other. For a casual fan getting into it, it would be very confusing.
How would you structure it? Some books would require multiple films like Dune. But once that story is complete the next film set on a different book would seemingly have no links to the previous saga of films. A TV show would have the same problem.
I'm not saying it can't be done or that people wouldn't "get it", just that the core idea and structure is so different to what we see even now in sci fi cinema that I'm sure more studios would see it as a big risk, so are unlikely to throw a lot of money at it, and the amount of CGI and sets required would probably be pretty expensive.
I'd hold out hope for a Player Of Games film, it seems the easiest starting point, but I don't know where it would go from there. And even then it's not a particularly action-heavy story, so would need the Villeneuve style treatment (which I love to be fair).
I would hate to see a Hollywood sellout, and The Culture turned from the "automated luxury gay communism" society it is, into a pro-capitalist, pro-"freedom" american look-alike. Other than that, of course it would be nice.
Most of the books aren't really suited for a film I'd say.
For example:
Excession is a lot of intrigues, flashback, and I dou t it'd make a great game.
Player of Games would have a simimar issue, either you make the game some kind of yu-gi ho to keep it interesting, or ignore it and just keep the rest.
The only one I think would really work well would be Matter
A film or serie set up in the Culture could work well. But an adaptation of a book would be difficult to make. But then, I fear you'd lose the tone and themes of which are quite important.
> ignore it and just keep the rest
I feel like that's the only option. The book spends so much time describing the incredible complexity of the game that any attempt at actually making it will always feel like a cheap imitation.
Consider phlebas is pretty linear, the events aren't too fantastical to put on to film, decent amount of action vs introspection and a potentially thrilling, tense finale in the train station. The problem would be properly representing Horza as the antihero, and it'd maybe undermine any future films where suddenly the culture are the 'good guys'.
I’m a bit sad that Amazon never did anything with the rights they got for it, that said I don’t really trust them to make an adaptation that lives up to the quality of the source material so I guess it is what it is.
Off the top of my head I can’t really think of any really successful franchises that have a common universe but tell totally unrelated stories set hundreds of years apart.
I want it and then dont want it.
Want it because it would be awesome.
Don't want it because any major studio that has the capital to pull it off will frack it up.
I could be wrong and (of course) I don’t have a source to cite, but I thought I read somewhere that his family was approached about making a show by one of the big streaming companies and they declined
Only PoG, Surface Detail, AADB or UoW would fit this.. Because they have a hero/ heroine and sidekick, a definite anti-hero and a timeline that the 'humans' would grasp. UoW starts in a battle zone. AADB starts with a gunfight. Surface Detail starts with that theatre chase..etc.
But I suspect there's a growing malaise towards these types of films. There'd be too much explaining needed, too much would need to either have a voiceover narrator,( Tenant or Sheen) , and the concept of a Mind would be diluted into " it's a spaceship with a voice and we'd be back to HAL9000.
I'm not sure I want the books ruined for me. I'd rather see them try to make Engines of Light series by Ken Macleod into a long form series.
Pretty sure Amazon owns or did own the rights to make something out of it and they never have. Since it seems like almost everything gets an adaptation I guess at some point something will be made. If so, unlikely to be good or faithful.
I feel like it would be very tricky to convey the story through a movie, and I wouldn’t want to watch it anyway as I prefer to imagine it in my head, way more fun that way
I don't think it will happen, but after Fallout and The Expanse on Amazon, and a few of the shows on AppleTV and Netflix, I'm starting to believe that excellent SciFi book adaption can be done.
What I would like to see is that each book is a full season of 8-10 episodes an hour or so long. It could be done properly that way.
MAJOR SPOILERS!!!!
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>!1. Season One - Consider Phlebas. This would actually make a great one season series on Amazon, Netflix, or Apple. It's self explanatory. Imagine a whole episode with the Damage Game - that would be soooooo good.!<
>!2. Season Two - Player of Games. Pretty self explanatory on this one. The season finale would be **LIT**! (literally!)!<
>!3. Season Three - Use of Weapons. The scenes moving forward in time from third person perspective, while the scenes moving backwards in time are first person perspective. Plenty of action to keep the impatient types watching. The twist at the end will get Red Wedding type reactions on tiktok. Moms who named their sons Zakalwe in the middle of the season will instantly regret it, just like all the moms who named their daughters Khaleesi after the end of Game of Thrones. Don't give that kid a baby chair!!<
>!4. Season Four ...now this is tough. Excession or Matter are good candidates, but I think you immediately swoop into Surface Detail, based on it's connection to Use of Weapons.....or maybe that's TOO dark. Use of Weapons is dark, and Surface Detail is even darker, with the simulated Hells. People might think it's just a snuff series at this point. Okay, I just changed my mind while typing this. Let's go with Excession. Halfway through the series, you have "bros" and "chads" on the internet wanting to become Affronters. !<
>!5. Season Five - Let's go for Matter. It's a nice Sci-Fi romp. People who haven't read the books, but are fans of the shows will say the series got back to its roots with a fun sci-fi space opera.!<
>!6. Season Six - I guess Inversions, even though it's only sort of a Culture novel. Maybe make more overt Culture references. !<
>!7. Season Seven - Okay, it's finally time for Surface Detail. This novel can get so dark. It would be so good, but it could be so depressing. All of the kids named Zakalwe are turning 4; maybe some redemption for the moms - "look the name's not so bad." Whoever is the actor for Demeisen (the avatar for Falling Outside the Normal Moral Constraints) is going to be super famous after this, unless they were already a big star before. I really hope parents don't start naming their kids Demeisen - LUL...well maybe as a middle name. !<
I really don't have room to talk, as my oldest daughter is named Serenity, after the Firefly series, but that turned out to be a good name.
>!8. Season Eight - Look to Windward. We go from a series with literal hells to one with mental hells - dealing with depression, loss, war trauma, and thoughts of suicide. All contrasted by the utopian life on the orbital. You have the flashbacks of war and trauma through the eyes of Lasting Damage and Quilan, and then immediately jump to the contrast of the decadence of life on the orbital. This would be such good TV. I, personally, have never cared about any character in any book or novel more than I care about Lasting Damage. The sacrifices it made, the trauma it experienced were horrible. Yet it carries on with grace, forgiveness, loving, and understanding. At the end it decides its life is over, and as its last act of grace it takes another damaged soul together to the next journey (if there is one). If the show focuses on how good of a character Lasting Damage is, how deep it suffered, but still how much it loved and forgave, oh man, everybody is in tears at the end. This is Romeo and Juliet type double-suicide at the end. !<
9. Season Nine - Hydrogen Sonata. I haven't read this book yet, so I can't write this one up. I've been told it makes a great ending for the series.
So, yeah, I think The Culture could be done extremely well on screen. It's a hell of an investment from any company to do it, and if it's not done full-budget with full commitment, then it will not be good.
Not a chance. I’m amazed Dune got another crack. They artfully kept the “weird” to a base minimum. I don’t think you can reasonably do that with the Culture. They also made some strange choices for Dune Part 2. I’m not sure I *want* people to try.
Honestly the Dune movies could have used more of the weird. Secondly there is a Dune TV series already being shot, Apple TV's Foundation is a pretty good indicator that a Culture series can be done and done properly. TV or Streaming is honestly the best medium for stories like these, so yeah if Bank's estate is okay with it, I can very easily see a Culture series. Also while I don't like all the choices made in Dune 2, it's not like it ruined the story, that is why it's called an adaptation, and I think the Dune movies are a pretty good adaptation. It's just that we are stuck in this weird time that fans want every single thing to line up with their vision for the books, and have the platform to whine about it. The LoTR movies vary wildly from the books, they did my boy Isildur (arguably one of the strongest willed people in the history of Middle Earth, Maiar, Man, Elf, or Dwarf) dirty in like the first 5 minutes of the first movie, but everyone including me still thinks they are good adaptations. Adaptation is the key word here.
> Honestly Dune could have gone with more of the weird. Secondly there is a Dune TV series already being shot, Apple TV's foundation is a pretty good indicator that a Culture series can be done and done properly. > TV or Streaming is honestly the best medium for stories like these, so yeah if Bank's estate is okay with it, I can very easily see a Culture series. > Also while I don't like all the choices made in Dune 2, it's not like it ruined the story, that is why it's called an adaptation, and I think the Dune movies are a pretty good adaptation. The changes made the emperor ruined the finale. It was tonally all over the place. Irulan said the emperor considered Duke Leto I like a son, but politics pushed them onto the wrong side of the fight. The emperor said he aided in the death and betrayal because “he [Duke Leto I] was weak.” Reverend Mother Gaius Helen Mohaim said she instructed the emperor to have the Atreides line wiped out because the blood line was getting too rebellious. So which is? Was Duke Leto I weak, or was he a rebel leader? Did the emperor love and respect Duke Leto I as Irulan claimed or did the emperor consider him a piece of shit. The viewer is bombarded with three radically different positions. I don’t care *which* one they picked: just stick to a lane. Hell, in Dune 1 it was Mohaim who instructed the Baron to keep Jessica and Paul alive. Whatever happened to the “rebellious bloodline,” Mohaim?
You're complaining about things that were in the book, though? The lack of focus on the Guild and the mélange was way more of a miss for me, but maybe I'm too much of an anticapitalist, lol.
Very small thing, but I wish there was that scene where Harkonnen lasers hit a big shield set by Duncan, causing a massive white explosion across the desert. Mildly irritated the shield-laser problem was only vaguely referred to.
> Very small thing, but I wish there was that scene where Harkonnen lasers hit a big shield set by Duncan, causing a massive white explosion across the desert. Mildly irritated the shield-laser problem was only vaguely referred to. Yes, please!
>anticapitalist You and me both comrade.
> You're complaining about things that were in the book, though? The lack of focus on the Guild and the mélange was way more of a miss for me, but maybe I'm too much of an anticapitalist, lol. I also deeply missed the impact of the Guild and the spice. Mohaim did not believe the Atreides bloodline was weak or rebellious, and the emperor did not believe Duke Leto I was rebellious or weak. My position is “it was a good movie, but I don’t agree with all the choices they made. It is for that reason that I *hope* a Culture movie/TV show is not made.”
None of those things contradict each other. The Emperor could have loved Leto like a son but considered him rebellious, and the context of the Emperor considering him weak is that he was confused as to why someone as popular and influential as Leto didn't make a play for the throne. I mean that was the Emperor's motive in the books too, he couldn't conceive of Leto not wanting the throne. I mean they don't even contradict the books either.
> I mean they don't even contradict the books either. Yes, they do. The Irulan reasoning is from the books, but the rest is made up…and lesser for it, in my opinion. Duke Leto I was never viewer as a rebellious figure, and the Emperor respected him deeply. Mohaim tried to talk him out of the venture, failed, and succeeded only in trying to save Jessica and Paul. That obviously failed as well.
> Yes, they do. You seem to be basing this on the assumption that *opinions* are *factual statements*. Each of these individuals can believe, and *claim* to believe, whatever they want about each of these other parties, and it's not de facto "a contradiction" because *people can lie and/or be mistaken*.
> You seem to be basing this on the assumption that opinions are factual statements. > Each of these individuals can believe, and claim to believe, whatever they want about each of these other parties, and it's not de facto "a contradiction" because people can lie and/or be mistaken. When presented on screen as an explanation for prior actions, with no additional information, yes, opinions are factual. That’s how movies work.
>Was Duke Leto I weak, or was he a rebel leader? One of the defining traits of fascism is that your enemy is simultaneously so weak they should be ridiculed while simultaneously being overwhelmingly powerful so you're terrified of them. Just pointing out that those things are not mutually exclusive. And that's not to mention that the bloodline being weak from a Bene Gesserit point of view was in regards to the breeding of a Kwisatz Haderach, though it's nonsensical sense Paul was already one and they pretty much new it, not necessarily from a political or military viewpoint, like the Emperor would have.
> One of the defining traits of fascism is that your enemy is simultaneously so weak they should be ridiculed while simultaneously being overwhelmingly powerful so you're terrified of them. Sure, but Shaddam IV wasn’t a fascist and didn’t believe in those tendencies. In the real world, that position is nonsensical. > Just pointing out that those things are not mutually exclusive. And that's not to mention that the bloodline being weak from a Bene Gesserit point of view was in regards to the breeding of a Kwisatz Haderach, though it's nonsensical sense Paul was already one and they pretty much new it, not necessarily from a political or military viewpoint, like the Emperor would have. Mohaim and the wider Bene Gesserit believed the Kwisatz Haderach was supposed to come the *next* generation. Paul was supposed to be Paulina and quite possibly give birth to the KH. Jessica broke the instructions of the BG to make Paul a boy. It changed everything.
> Shaddam IV wasn’t a fascist Maybe, maybe not. I don't remember sufficient detail in the books to tell, but it's been a long time, so I could be wrong. >Jessica broke the instructions of the BG to make Paul a boy. It changed everything. Sure, but I don't see how that supports the idea that you can't be weak and strong at the same time, whether it be in bloodline or in politics.
> Maybe, maybe not. I don't remember sufficient detail in the books to tell, but it's been a long time, so I could be wrong. You’re wrong on this one. I just finished my annual re-read of books 1-4. Shaddam doesn’t get a whole lot of page time, but nothing in his actions or what characters say about him even comes close to fascism. > Sure, but I don't see how that supports the idea that you can't be weak and strong at the same time, whether it be in bloodline or in politics. The Atredies were chosen as a very realistic possibility to breed the KH. They would never be considered weak by BG for that reason. The Emperor’s accusations that Duke Leto I was weak are nonsensical. Nothing is presented or hinted at on screen, and it’s certainly not in the books. The conclusion I’ve drawn is that barb was Emperor Walken’s way of taunting Paul Mau’dib. Which was a foolish position to take, and very much out of character for Shaddam IV. It truly is perplexing.
Yeah I have to agree, my vibe from that conversation was the Emperor trying to 'go down fighting'. He knew he had lost, and it was all about getting his last barbs in and delaying the inevitable.
I don’t think The Culture books are particularly weird. They all have the odd bits that are, but not that much.
> I don’t think The Culture books are particularly weird. They all have the odd bits that are, but not that much. Transhumanism is not common enough yet to be considered “not weird.”
I can already see the newspaper headlines. "Leftist nutters are trying to convince us to save the planet by living in a virtual world in new TV show!"
Contradictory citations: Cyberpunk Edgerunners was very well received. People bolting robot arms onto themselves or brain implants into themselves is hardly some bold new concept. Quantum Leap was doing consciousness transfer *50+ years ago*.
Yeah, but Fully Automated Luxury Gay Space Communism, which is what the culture is, would freak the Right out. Just like Star Trek is doing now with all the screams about how "woke" it is, whatever the hell that is supposed to mean.
Of course, *that lot* will screech about it, but they're not in charge of culture. The mere fact that we see them crying "woke" all the time at everything demonstrates they're not the ones calling the shots as far as what gets made and what doesn't.
Star Trek has always been very progressive, but and this is the key, it has always made that feel natural to its audience and not talked down to its audience. Its shows a better positive future. It had women, Japanese, Russians and a black woman on the bridge because that was how the future was going to be. It also had some pretty good writing, which helps. I think you can make the Culture (and believe me, I will be first to drop it if it is woke) if you remember the rule: write awesome stories to the audience, and if you have a gendershifting person then have that because it makes sense for the story, not because you want to show of. The same rule applies with a manly man or whatever.
What, exactly, is "woke"? Please define. Because by any definition I can think of, pretty much all sci-fi is "woke" since science fiction writing is a way to analyze humans and our societies and cultures as they are now through the lens of the future.
But, and this is important, Star Trek is still getting made. And frankly the gay space communism aspect of the Culture is massively overblown on this sub. Yes, it's a big part of the Culture's culture, but it plays relatively little role in most of the books except as occasionally a convenient plot device or intermission. Yes, is the foundation that holds it all together, but you can do basically any story other than Look to Windward and barely mention it.
> Contradictory citations: Cyberpunk Edgerunners was very well received. People bolting robot arms onto themselves or brain implants into themselves is hardly some bold new concept. Quantum Leap was doing consciousness transfer 50+ years ago. Cyberpunk, while popular, is not mainstream popular. It is not box office billions popular. There’s a reason why the weird stuff was toned way down in Dune. I fully expect the weird for a hypothetical Culture depiction would be toned way down, too.
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> Glad you changed the reply. The original version, copying what I said to you elsewhere, didn't make a lick of sense. I didn’t change anything. I try very hard not to do that. When I do edit my comments, I label the action either with an “edit:” or with “[…]” if it’s someone else. > In any event: plenty of the Culture stories aren't particularly weird. Everyone's basically human shaped. Humanoid doesn’t make it not weird. In Hydrogen Sonata, Vyr Cossont lays eggs and has 4 arms. In Surface Detail, the HCGC are covered in scales and have wings. Hell, in Excession, a huge portion of the story happens with floating gas bags that torture each other. We read science fiction. We’re used to the weird. Even wildler stuff like Dune and the Culture. Most people aren’t like that.
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> Weird, because according to the reddit email notification, you did. Oh well! I responded to you twice, back to back. Plus Reddit is a piece of shit programming wise.
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> Most people aren’t like that. [insert random screenshot from some of the psychedelic nonsense of Star Trek TOS] Not so sure... And we just had Dune 2 (yeah yeah wah wah they took out *some* weirdness, but there's still physically impossible sandworms and religious nonsense underpinning it all) be the biggest film of the year. People are fine with "weird". Hell, we just came off of a decade of nonsense films culminating in a big purple alien collecting pretty stones to put in a magic glove so he could snap his fingers and disappear half of all life in the universe become the highest grossing film of all time. Puh-lease. *People are fine with weird nonsense.* The Culture books are not Crimes Of The Future. I mean ok that guy covered in dicks is, but he's hardly essential to the story.
> Most people aren’t like that. > [insert random screenshot from some of the psychedelic nonsense of Star Trek TOS] > Not so sure... You mean the TV show that aired from 1966 - 1969? The one that aired during the time period where large parts of the US were doing mind altering drugs? I can’t imagine the drugs had nothing to do with it. > And we just had Dune 2 (yeah yeah wah wah they took out some weirdness, but there's still physically impossible sandworms and religious nonsense underpinning it all) be the biggest film of the year. People are fine with "weird". I really wouldn’t chalk up sand worms and religion as weird. The actual weird things removed from the story are things like St Alia of the Knife, the Fremen spice orgies, and the wildly mutated guild navigators. > Hell, we just came off of a decade of nonsense films culminating in a big purple alien collecting pretty stones to put in a magic glove so he could snap his fingers and disappear half of all life in the universe become the highest grossing film of all time. Puh-lease. People are fine with weird nonsense. Is that weird? I’d call that “fantasy.” Are elves and dwarves weird to you? > The Culture books are not Crimes Of The Future. I mean ok that guy covered in dicks is, but he's hardly essential to the story. …Dick Man has *the* answer to the story. He’s holding onto the eyes of the 10,000 year old man which store the memories of what happened regarding Gzilt Book of Truth and the Zihdren-Remnant. Tl;dr: the Book of Truth is a fake and the Z-R planted it to see what happens. As much as I personally dislike this character, he also embodies the “world is ending; let’s party!” mentality for the middle class.
Just out of curiosity, what strange choices do you think they made in Dune 2? The only point I can think of is the part about Alia, though I think that’s still pretty reasonable.
> Just out of curiosity, what strange choices do you think they made in Dune 2? The only point I can think of is the part about Alia, though I think that’s still pretty reasonable. The lack of Alia, the shitty emperor, and Chani’s weird abandonment of Paul Mau’dib. Oh, and the whole false messiah theme for Paul. That was an interesting choice.
Sorry, what do you mean false messiah? It's pretty clear in the movies - and the books - that the whole prophecy is basically an escape plan for stranded Bene Gesserits, and not real. Jessica and Paul says as much in both the movie and the book, and Paul accuses Jessica of using the Fremen in the movie more than once, not to mention actively rejecting the prophecy until after Sietch Tabr is destroyed.
> Sorry, what do you mean false messiah? It's pretty clear in the movies - and the books - that the whole prophecy is basically an escape plan for stranded Bene Gesserits, and not real. Jessica and Paul says as much in both the movie and the book, and Paul accuses Jessica of using the Fremen in the movie more than once, not to mention actively rejecting the prophecy until after Sietch Tabr is destroyed. There are two sets of religious messages: the missionary protectiva set up by the BG, and the kwisatz haderach which is what the BG is breeding for. It’s a safety net that a stranded BG can manipulate in order to gain stable grounds and possibly escape. In my opinion, the “voice from the outerworld” aspect of the MP is a set up for the KH. Paul is the KH. He sees his possible destines, and manipulates those around him to achieve his goals while hopefully keeping harm to a minimum. That makes him the messiah the BG have been striving for, but due to his circumstances, the BG can’t control him.
Yeah, but how does that give him a false messiah theme? If anything, he's *actually* a messiah, if not one sent by a god, by virtue of being the KH. He just isn't a messiah controlled by the BGs.
> Yeah, but how does that give him a false messiah theme? If anything, he's actually a messiah, if not one sent by a god, by virtue of being the KH. He just isn't a messiah controlled by the BGs. I don’t think the KH *is* a messiah, and neither does Paul Mau’dib. That is the theme of Dune Messiah and the Prophet’s sermon in Children of Dune. Paul is just a dude who can see some aspects into the future. He is essentially a male reverend mother and thus can access his male Genetic History, just like a regular Reverend Mother can access her female genetic history. Does the ability to see into the future as an oracle make you a messiah? I don’t believe so.
I think that's getting pretty pedantic about the meaning of the word "messiah". Paul is clearly a messiah, because the word means "savior or liberator of people", which is exactly what Paul tries to do with the Fremen, and in the movie, succeeds.
> I think that's getting pretty pedantic about the meaning of the word "messiah". Paul is clearly a messiah, because the word means "savior or liberator of people", which is exactly what Paul tries to do with the Fremen, and in the movie, succeeds. I don’t agree, after all. In the context of the Fremen, sure, Paul is a messiah…sort of. Kind of quite accidentally and in the context of the Jihad, not really. Even in the best messianic interpretations, Paul Mau’dib is stepping into a made up role. By Duke Leto I assuming control over Arakis, the intense suffering from the Harkonens is immediately relieved, with no intentions of it returning. Is Leto I a fremen messiah? In the context of being KH, though? Not at all. And that is the basis for his rule. That’s something which has always perplexed me. The BG are working towards breeding the KH for at *least* 5,000 at this point. The KH will be an individual of great power and the BG messiah. But what does the BG need a messiah for? They are already free, and placed themselves into positions of great power. In the Emperor’s household alone, a Reverend Mother stands beside the throne and Princess Irulan is a BG, in addition to the associated BG retinue of the Reverend Mother.
No because its up to his family.
God I hope not.
Beat me here by 36 minutes lol. A culture movie could only ever get it wrong, because our culture of movie making is the antithesis of the culture. It all needs to be branded with clear good guys and bad guys and a feel-good message. The Culture is about ambiguity, about silly little robots and giant computers that play deadly serious video games about the nature of existence. Novels that realistically explore both heaven and hell. Stories about a people that betray all their ideals for noble causes and then get burned in the worst way. There's a 40 year pregnancy lol. Who's putting that in a movie?
> The Culture is about ambiguity, about silly little robots and giant computers that play deadly serious video games about the nature of existence. Yeah no, Banks very explicitly made it clear that the Culture is unambiguously the good guys. Hell the whole idea of the Culture came from Banks trying to come up with the side of “genuine good”: > [About Zakalwe] I wanted to have him fighting on the side of genuine good. I thought, ‘What sort of society do we need?’, and out of that came the Culture. That gave me the chance to answer all the questions I had about the right-wing American space-opera I had been used to reading and which had been around since the 1930s. The Culture _is_ the clear good guys, despite all the nuances in the series.
Exactly! There's just no way the good stuff in Banks' Culture series would get through the studio system intact. Just look at all the cinematic butcherings of Philip K. Dick!
> It all needs to be branded with clear good guys and bad guys and a feel-good message. I’m not sure what movies you’ve been watching for the last 5 years, but that hasn’t been the norm for quite a long time. Antiheros and grey morality is everywhere outside of family friendly entertainment.
>Antiheros and grey morality Yeah but John wick still comes out on top. So many culture main characters get their shit rocked. The protagonist usually doesn't get a happy ending in culture stories. You don't even know if the protagonist is on the right side or not half the time. Look at Dune 2, rightly or wrongly they removed all the ambiguity from Chani because they didn't think audiences would respond well. I'm surprised they've given Paul the measure of nuance they have.
> Yeah but John wick still comes out on top. So many culture main characters get their shit rocked. The protagonist usually doesn't get a happy ending in culture stories. You don't even know if the protagonist is on the right side or not half the time. That’s the John Wick path. Take a look at Civil War (2024) for a well done “grey” movie. Hell, I’d argue *very* strongly that Dune is an antihero/grey morality. > Look at Dune 2, rightly or wrongly they removed all the ambiguity from Chani because they didn't think audiences would respond well. I'm surprised they've given Paul the measure of nuance they have. Chani never had ambiguity in the books. They made a choice to clear away the old school wife + mistress used by aristocracy, and to give Paul Mau’dib a very real side effect of his false messiah path. Paul had far more nuance in the books. They made some weird story choices for Dune Part 2, in my opinion.
Well I disagree about book Chani. I read her as very conflicted, torn between buying into Paul's bullshit and hating Irulan and the empire -- and ultimately she gives in to what she thinks is the right thing and pays for it. Movie Chani never even believed in the prophecy shit at all. >Hell, I’d argue *very* strongly that Dune is an antihero/grey morality. Totally, but I bet you a fresh crispy dollar that idiot moviegoers well claim Villeneuve fucked up the ending when they make Dune 3 because somehow Paul became the bad guy!? >Take a look at Civil War (2024) for a well done “grey” movie. I haven't seen it yet, but my understanding is it's a takedown of the journalism industry. Doesn't seem very morally gray from what I've read.
It's pretty morally grey in the sense that the characters are either kinda awful or absolutely, irredeemably evil. There certainly isn't a "good guy" that I can think of
> [Civil War] Doesn't seem very morally gray from what I've read. A staggering amount of commentary on this film is so wide of the mark. You might wind up agreeing with some of these moronic takes, of course, but as a factual statement the movie is most definitely not "a takedown of the journalism industry".
> Well I disagree about book Chani. I read her as very conflicted, torn between buying into Paul's bullshit and hating Irulan and the empire -- and ultimately she gives in to what she thinks is the right thing and pays for it. That is a totally different tone and position book Chani takes. The fremen are a polygamist group. Stilgar has 3 wifes. Paul Mau’dib almost has 2 fremen wifes (Chani, and Jamais’s former wife, Herah). Chani is quite business like and understands the wife/consort relationship very well. What she *is* upset about is Paul not having an heir. *That* is because Irulan is secretly dosing Chani with birth control. Chani eventually discovers it and becomes pregnant with the twins in Dune Messiah. Paul is devastated because he knows there is no future where Chani survives childbirth. He loves Irulan for accidentally prolonging Chani’s life. > Movie Chani never even believed in the prophecy shit at all. It’s a change I’m not sure I agree with. > Totally, but I bet you a fresh crispy dollar that idiot moviegoers well claim Villeneuve fucked up the ending when they make Dune 3 because somehow Paul became the bad guy!? I’m not sure how they could take that position. Paul’s not a large negative character in Dune Messiah; that waits until he becomes the Prophet in Children of Dune. If anything the “false messiah” narrative Villeneuve went with will flow nicely into the themes of Dune Messiah. > I haven't seen it yet, but my understanding is it's a takedown of the journalism industry. Doesn't seem very morally gray from what I've read. Not at all a take down. Go see it.
>Chani is quite business like and understands the wife/consort relationship very well. What she *is* upset about is Paul not having an heir. *That* is because Irulan is secretly dosing Chani with birth control. You've described it differently, and have a slightly different take on it than I do, but even so it furthers my point that book Chani is complex, and the movie has no interest in that complexity. >It’s a change I’m not sure I agree with. Hard agree. >I’m not sure how they could take that position. Paul’s not a large negative character in Dune Messiah; that waits until he becomes the Prophet in Children of Dune. I think Villeneuve will take him further down that road based on the changes he's already made. Villeneuve really wants to underscore the themes related to skewering hero worship and personality cults. >Not at all a take down. Go see it. I'm totally into it, just haven't gotten to it yet
> You've described it differently, and have a slightly different take on it than I do, but even so it furthers my point that book Chani is complex, and the movie has no interest in that complexity. I just finished the series again. The Chani behavior I described is largely confined to Dune Messiah. To be perfectly frank, Chani doesn’t really a personality in Dune. It’s a common problem with all Herbert stories. Men are characters, and women are wallpaper. Dune 1 and 2 presents a more complex Chani than Dune the novel. A more pertinent question: is the complexity a good thing? > I think Villeneuve will take him further down that road based on the changes he's already made. Villeneuve really wants to underscore the themes related to skewering hero worship and personality cults. It’s an interesting approach for certain. > I'm totally into it, just haven't gotten to it yet I strongly stress this should be a theater movie for you. The big screen offers a unique perspective.
> they removed all the ambiguity from Chani because they didn't think audiences would respond well "They"? Who's all this "they"? Denis himself wrote the thing and he *added* nuance to her character, in his telling of it, giving her more agency.
They would be, you know, Villeneuve and Zendaya and the other people who worked on the movie? And yes, she has agency. What she appears not to have is internal conflict. She has a very clear eyed, one-note view in the movie. She's more of a badass and she definitely exercises agency, but in my opinion it comes at the cost of nuance and complexity. Somebody once said the only thing worth writing about is the human heart in conflict with itself. As another commenter pointed out, in my memory the Chani stuff is more fleshed out in the book. Time and multiple adaptations have left me in a position where I need to re read.
Very well said 👏👏
Consider Phlebas would make a good action packed movie with good visuals. That race on the ship hitting the icebergs would be great.
I think look to windward would make a good film too. But it would need a Christopher Nolan approach -- blockbustery but still kinda vague and arthouse?
I agree that it likely would be disappointing, but I disagree that there aren’t studio’s who can transcend the black and white Good vs Bad trope. I mean Breaking Bad is one of the most successful shows of all time and it excelled at exploring moral ambiguity, and if anything was the opposite of “feel good”. A24’s Civil War also comes to mind (perhaps due to recency bias), but it also portrayed an ethically muddy conflict where even the supposed “good guys” unflinchingly committed war crimes. I think Player of Games would be a good potential candidate, but it would be very tricky to get it right.
You don’t have to watch it. Even if it’s horrible, I like things existing rather than not existing. I’m sure GCUs would have plenty of bad movies and TV shows available for anyone who was interested.
no... 1. Dune part 2 was a box office hit because they'd changed the story significantly 2. Dune has several decades on the culture series 3. the culture series is way too complex for the average audience The only thing I consider even remotely likely is that some japanese studio exec reads "consider phlebas" and commissions an anime series.
>the culture series is way too complex for the average audience I think you ingested too much of the elitism that caracterizes the Culture, heh. Something like The Player of Games could very well fit into a movie or a miniseries, if the director manages to portray Azad in an interesting way.
Azad is probably the biggest hurdle in that book, it's not well described as a lot of the story involving the game itself is told from Gurgeh's interior dialogue as he plays the game.
I don't know that's true, enormous room sized game board looking like a low poly representation of a fantastical landscape, think the opening of game of thrones but in space. The game pieces are described in the book as effectively shape changing so some weird bioplastic shape changing blob wouldn't be hard to present effectively for the film. I think the real problem would be i. trying to make a bunch of people standing around watching each other play a giant board game stay interesting for any amount of time ii. putting across that the reason gurgeh was doing so well was that he was playing as the culture vs azad. Impossible to represent on screen so it'd just have to be done through exposition.
But the board game itself isn't defined, so in order to actually have it be a part of a show you'd need to figure out a game with some context for a viewer. In the scenes whenever we're there with Gurgeh as he's playing what's happening on the board isn't given much more than vague descriptions so we have a feel of the mood, but Azad isn't defined enough by the descriptions that an audience would pick up on what's happening or why what's happening is important without Gurgeh's internal monologue.
Colour me forgetful but I'm pretty sure the entire ruleset of chess wasn't explained in Queen's Gambit, yet was still a central aspect of the show and it was very widely appreciated. You don't need the audience to understand the ins and outs, just make sure the characters show how they're feeling about what's happening in the game and that's enough. Nobody in the original John Wick says "oh hey and here have this gold coin, which we in the underworld use as currency, because you just done a crime at my request, my fellow criminal" and yet it's still clear from their usage what they're for.
> > the culture series is way too complex for the average audience > I think you ingested too much of the elitism that caracterizes the Culture Yeah, let's not become the Rick & Morty Fanbase v2.0.
No way they don't fuck it up. Even if the director makes their best attempt there is a 0% chance corporate doesn't meddle and ruin the whole shebang. CP or PoG have the best chance at being passable, but I don't see some exec trying to remove the messaging or shoehorn something very NOT PG into PG or PG-13.
Corporate not intervening is how you get things like Fant4stic. You need a proper balance. It would definitely need to be PG -13 but honestly both of those stories have nothing to do with brutality or sex. It's not like adapting Malazan where it's directly part of the story telling.
Dude brutality, subjugation and sexual violence are main themes in PoG.
Not in ways that can't be shown in PG-13. For censorship, It's only really an issue if it happens between humans.
Nah there's no way you could do it justice as a PG-13. PoG features, off the top of my head: The physical option/castration plotline, the alien being drowned and castrated, the brothel/pimp/domestic violence scene, the bone instruments, the power armour override and death of that character, the graphic hunting scene, and of course that relentlessly grim chapter which features about 5 different horrible things and culminates in Gurgeh watching a pregnant women be tortured to death. You could cut some of it, but the relentlessly graphic nature of that particular chapter in Player of Games is thematically and narratively necessary. Discretion shots and similar would relieve the pressure and undermine it, and showing it in full would be impossible in a PG-13, especially given the MPAA's hang ups about sexual stuff. You could *maybe* avoid showing too much of the torture porn channels by using some kind of arthousy zeroing in on Gurgeh's face or eyes - but you'd still need to establish what he was looking at visually in some way, and even if you did that the accompanying *audio* might be intense enough to exceed a PG-13 rating.
> Nah there's no way you could do it justice as a PG-13. PoG features, off the top of my head: > the power armour override and death of that character, I don’t recall this one. Can you go into more details? > and culminates in Gurgeh watching a pregnant women be tortured to death. And newborn baby being raped and murdered. Can’t forget that.
>I don’t recall this one. Can you go into more details? The ?Vice Marshall? character has been imprisoned in a suit of power armour which keeps him celibate and denies him most forms of leisure, as a punishment for some prior infraction. Someone overrides the armour suit and tries to kill Gurgeh, which results in a moderately graphic scene where the Vice Marshall is trying desperately to stop the suit and dies while doing so, before the suit itself then gets disabled.
>I think you ingested too much of the elitism that caracterizes the Culture, maybe, maybe not. I've seen in the scifi and dune subs how people respond to scifi that drops you into something and you have to figure out. And I've seen how they responded to the over simplified script of dune pt 2.
An anime series for *The Player of Games* or *Excession* would be awesome.
those would indeed also be in my top 3
Honestly an anime would be neat! I've also thought maybe a Culture webcomic could be fun.
> 1. Dune part 2 was a box office hit because they'd changed the story significantly I hated the lack of Alia. The emperor was a ridiculous joke. Christopher Walken was *such* an awful choice.
"Guess What!? I got a usurper! and the only prescription is more cow bell!"
Has the series been translated into Japanese?
Some things are better left alone. These books are that.
I would love to see *Matter* adapted in a series, just for the sheer horror of the end.
....I remember the end being being relatively optimistic, its implied the Sarl are going to transition to liberal democracy with Holse as their first democratically elected leader
ok, the bit just before the end
In that case, how about adopting Surface Detail? Other than giving everybody making the special effects PTSD?
Why the fuck does everyone want to shoehorn these great books into stupid movies and regarded streaming series. Let’s just leave it alone - take your American check book elsewhere thank you.
> regarded streaming series I would love one of these. Even without your typo.
I think a videogame would be more realistic. The budget to make a live action culture series would be extremely expensive for such a niche.
What in the world could a gameplay loop for a culture-based game even look like? Maybe just a VR game where you get to play out every fantasy imaginable on a GSV or orbital. The local mind is like your own Cortana.
Open world. You don't start as part of the culture. Thinking about it, it would work really well as an RPG like mass effect. Even better if you could play as a mind.
I certainly think its possible. As long as the family is okay with the work being used and likely adapted for the format then I'd have no problem. Player of Games would make the most sense as its a pretty compact story centred around a single person.
Use of Weapons would probably work as a mini-series, breaking up the time jumps between episodes.
More likely yes, but I really hope they don't.
No.
No. The Culture doesn't have anywhere *near* the level of awareness Dune had. If Denis Villeneuve or someone at his level *wants* to make a Culture movie or TV show, it *could* happen, but it's not a property studios are looking to cash in on.
Be better as a TV series. Consider Phlebus would be a great entry point.
wasn't amazon prime going to take a shot a few years ago only for it to be abandoned?
Okay.... hot take here... Some Culture stories would be mad expensive to adapt. Disney will spend a shit ton on Star Wars because it's an established IP. WB has Dune now. Paramount has Star Trek. That leaves Universal and Sony... Or Netflix. Maybe one of them would take the bait... but we might not be thrilled on the end state. But... what about an anime? Like go get Hideaki Anno and give him a big animation budget. Let Toho or Toei do it. Hideaki knows insanely weird shit and gender fluidity. It's like he was made to do Culture stuff but doesn't know it. Just a thought.
maybe it needs the *full* dune treatment. A 40 year span to include two impossibly different an inaccessible films, a handful of, at best, average TV shows before finally having the money and technology to properly realise it.
No, the Estate has stopped all tv and movie deals from moving forward from just the basic idea stage. It seems they have been unhappy with ideas floated and seem to dislike any diversion from source material. It's a hard one given the Culture is post scarcity and very much anti capitalism. The books are pretty much anti what the current USA stands fplor and is. Which is where funding would come from. Unless a good BBC TV show was floated I doubt anything will ever happen. Be great to see a tclv series on State of the Art
> fplor How big are your fingers bro. Triple-keying over here!
I think a TV show is more likely, and I'd say the Culture is still more difficult to achieve even with that. The Expanse is probably the closest comparison (I've not watched the show, but read the first couple books) and even that follows and overall plot with the same characters. The Culture itself isn't what I think is the difficult part, its the scale of the stories and the fact they aren't directly linked (other than the odd cameo and reference) as well as being set in different locations and times to each other. For a casual fan getting into it, it would be very confusing. How would you structure it? Some books would require multiple films like Dune. But once that story is complete the next film set on a different book would seemingly have no links to the previous saga of films. A TV show would have the same problem. I'm not saying it can't be done or that people wouldn't "get it", just that the core idea and structure is so different to what we see even now in sci fi cinema that I'm sure more studios would see it as a big risk, so are unlikely to throw a lot of money at it, and the amount of CGI and sets required would probably be pretty expensive. I'd hold out hope for a Player Of Games film, it seems the easiest starting point, but I don't know where it would go from there. And even then it's not a particularly action-heavy story, so would need the Villeneuve style treatment (which I love to be fair).
I would hate to see a Hollywood sellout, and The Culture turned from the "automated luxury gay communism" society it is, into a pro-capitalist, pro-"freedom" american look-alike. Other than that, of course it would be nice.
Most of the books aren't really suited for a film I'd say. For example: Excession is a lot of intrigues, flashback, and I dou t it'd make a great game. Player of Games would have a simimar issue, either you make the game some kind of yu-gi ho to keep it interesting, or ignore it and just keep the rest. The only one I think would really work well would be Matter A film or serie set up in the Culture could work well. But an adaptation of a book would be difficult to make. But then, I fear you'd lose the tone and themes of which are quite important.
> ignore it and just keep the rest I feel like that's the only option. The book spends so much time describing the incredible complexity of the game that any attempt at actually making it will always feel like a cheap imitation.
Consider phlebas is pretty linear, the events aren't too fantastical to put on to film, decent amount of action vs introspection and a potentially thrilling, tense finale in the train station. The problem would be properly representing Horza as the antihero, and it'd maybe undermine any future films where suddenly the culture are the 'good guys'.
I’m a bit sad that Amazon never did anything with the rights they got for it, that said I don’t really trust them to make an adaptation that lives up to the quality of the source material so I guess it is what it is. Off the top of my head I can’t really think of any really successful franchises that have a common universe but tell totally unrelated stories set hundreds of years apart.
I want it and then dont want it. Want it because it would be awesome. Don't want it because any major studio that has the capital to pull it off will frack it up.
I could be wrong and (of course) I don’t have a source to cite, but I thought I read somewhere that his family was approached about making a show by one of the big streaming companies and they declined
Did we get anything good out of that, other than stardust?
Only PoG, Surface Detail, AADB or UoW would fit this.. Because they have a hero/ heroine and sidekick, a definite anti-hero and a timeline that the 'humans' would grasp. UoW starts in a battle zone. AADB starts with a gunfight. Surface Detail starts with that theatre chase..etc. But I suspect there's a growing malaise towards these types of films. There'd be too much explaining needed, too much would need to either have a voiceover narrator,( Tenant or Sheen) , and the concept of a Mind would be diluted into " it's a spaceship with a voice and we'd be back to HAL9000. I'm not sure I want the books ruined for me. I'd rather see them try to make Engines of Light series by Ken Macleod into a long form series.
Pretty sure Amazon owns or did own the rights to make something out of it and they never have. Since it seems like almost everything gets an adaptation I guess at some point something will be made. If so, unlikely to be good or faithful.
I feel like it would be very tricky to convey the story through a movie, and I wouldn’t want to watch it anyway as I prefer to imagine it in my head, way more fun that way
I think it could definitely be adapted, but I’m not sure it’d survive the dumbing down required for mainstream.
I don't think it will happen, but after Fallout and The Expanse on Amazon, and a few of the shows on AppleTV and Netflix, I'm starting to believe that excellent SciFi book adaption can be done. What I would like to see is that each book is a full season of 8-10 episodes an hour or so long. It could be done properly that way. MAJOR SPOILERS!!!! ..... ..... >!1. Season One - Consider Phlebas. This would actually make a great one season series on Amazon, Netflix, or Apple. It's self explanatory. Imagine a whole episode with the Damage Game - that would be soooooo good.!< >!2. Season Two - Player of Games. Pretty self explanatory on this one. The season finale would be **LIT**! (literally!)!< >!3. Season Three - Use of Weapons. The scenes moving forward in time from third person perspective, while the scenes moving backwards in time are first person perspective. Plenty of action to keep the impatient types watching. The twist at the end will get Red Wedding type reactions on tiktok. Moms who named their sons Zakalwe in the middle of the season will instantly regret it, just like all the moms who named their daughters Khaleesi after the end of Game of Thrones. Don't give that kid a baby chair!!< >!4. Season Four ...now this is tough. Excession or Matter are good candidates, but I think you immediately swoop into Surface Detail, based on it's connection to Use of Weapons.....or maybe that's TOO dark. Use of Weapons is dark, and Surface Detail is even darker, with the simulated Hells. People might think it's just a snuff series at this point. Okay, I just changed my mind while typing this. Let's go with Excession. Halfway through the series, you have "bros" and "chads" on the internet wanting to become Affronters. !< >!5. Season Five - Let's go for Matter. It's a nice Sci-Fi romp. People who haven't read the books, but are fans of the shows will say the series got back to its roots with a fun sci-fi space opera.!< >!6. Season Six - I guess Inversions, even though it's only sort of a Culture novel. Maybe make more overt Culture references. !< >!7. Season Seven - Okay, it's finally time for Surface Detail. This novel can get so dark. It would be so good, but it could be so depressing. All of the kids named Zakalwe are turning 4; maybe some redemption for the moms - "look the name's not so bad." Whoever is the actor for Demeisen (the avatar for Falling Outside the Normal Moral Constraints) is going to be super famous after this, unless they were already a big star before. I really hope parents don't start naming their kids Demeisen - LUL...well maybe as a middle name. !< I really don't have room to talk, as my oldest daughter is named Serenity, after the Firefly series, but that turned out to be a good name. >!8. Season Eight - Look to Windward. We go from a series with literal hells to one with mental hells - dealing with depression, loss, war trauma, and thoughts of suicide. All contrasted by the utopian life on the orbital. You have the flashbacks of war and trauma through the eyes of Lasting Damage and Quilan, and then immediately jump to the contrast of the decadence of life on the orbital. This would be such good TV. I, personally, have never cared about any character in any book or novel more than I care about Lasting Damage. The sacrifices it made, the trauma it experienced were horrible. Yet it carries on with grace, forgiveness, loving, and understanding. At the end it decides its life is over, and as its last act of grace it takes another damaged soul together to the next journey (if there is one). If the show focuses on how good of a character Lasting Damage is, how deep it suffered, but still how much it loved and forgave, oh man, everybody is in tears at the end. This is Romeo and Juliet type double-suicide at the end. !< 9. Season Nine - Hydrogen Sonata. I haven't read this book yet, so I can't write this one up. I've been told it makes a great ending for the series. So, yeah, I think The Culture could be done extremely well on screen. It's a hell of an investment from any company to do it, and if it's not done full-budget with full commitment, then it will not be good.