Yeah I generally hope that with this move away from Giz’ shite management and mandates that they at least bring in some quality writers, if not bring back some of the people the site has lost over the years.

Whoah now, didnt you get the memo?

Yeah I am not sure if it is a bad move for the AV Club, Mr. themok, but I dont get enough value out of the site as it is to pay for it.

I am sure when they integrate the kinja will be killed.

Interestingly this site is still linked to Giz because i got notice about your comment when i logged into i09!

Not a huge fan of Paste to begin with, though to be honest havent looked at anything from them in many many years.

Oh so you can see the content but can only comment on it fi you pay?

And hopefully Paste realizes that a really vibrant comments section is a valuable thing for  a content site.

And his choice was . . . Leave the incredibly corrupt and overtly evil Corrino Empire in place to opress the Fremen and basically everyone else in the known universe?

Messiah is the second book, before Children, and easily the smallest of the 3 by a HUGE margin.  Messiah is only like 250 pages long.

I dont think so, but maybe some. Mainly because there are a lot of interviews with Herbert where he is all in on “How did they not see this????” and I believe there is at least one where he is like “I totally wrote him to be the embodiement of this on purpose!”.   I beleive he said he wrote Messiah in a huff as a…

I can see a lot of people saying “He’s just a white savior” dismissively without having read it and not getting that it is part of the point and I am sure that gets old fast.

There are definitely threads, but to be honest they are all really easy to work around to make Messiah end well.

But Paul IS a white savior. It is 100% on purpose, both by Herbert’s intent and internally to the story.

I mean, aside from comparing himself to Hitler and noting he has a way larger body count, Paul actually doesnt do much to make you dislike him in Messiah, iirc.

To make Messiah he has to undo his changes to Chani, because Messiah totally doesnt work with Paul and Chani where they are at the end of Dune pt 2.

This could be a Black Mirror episode so easily!

Part of the problem is that to some degree this reflects the book. But the book balances the slow burn of the first half with a lot of palace intrigue regarding Jessica possibly being a traitor (which is why Thufir and Gurney miss Dr Yueh being compromised, they are sure it is Jessica), and the dinner party scene…

Overall I thought it was good, not great.   Pacing was a real problem, and with all that run time they really butchered some key plot elements and story beats from the novel.

While I agree about the quality of the movies being low, financially Sony’s move to “do the best with what we’ve got” had made them BANK.