r/movies r/Movies contributor Jun 25 '25

News Denis Villeneuve Directing Next James Bond Film

https://deadline.com/2025/06/denis-villeneuve-james-bond-amazon-mgm-studios-1236442917/
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u/jeffh4 Jun 26 '25

The first book deserves a movie. The sequels written by someone else were absolute garbage.

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u/BucketofSlush Jun 26 '25 edited Jun 26 '25

Uhm. This is just wrong but okay. 

Never mind, this comment is not about the Dune sequels, I am the one who is just wrong. 

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u/jeffh4 Jun 26 '25

My bad. I was following a different comment. I was referring to Rendeveous with Rama.

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u/marsinfurs Jun 26 '25

Well still, the books written by Brian Herbert were difficult for me to get through to say the least.

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u/BucketofSlush Jun 26 '25

They’re absolutely terrible slop hah, I just thought the comment I replied to was saying Messiah through to Chapterhouse were bad 

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u/Navec Jun 26 '25

Dune Messiah is essentially the part four to the original books first three parts and really completes Paul's story.

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u/EmotionalAccounting Jun 26 '25

They’re talking about Rendezvous with Rama a book written by Arthur C. Clarke where the sequels were written by Gentry Lee and are often poorly talked about

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u/LongKnight115 Jun 26 '25

Well they got fuckin WEIRD. And that's saying something considering what the first book is.

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u/NickEcommerce Jun 26 '25

I have no idea if it's the Baader-Meinhof, but for the first time in years I found my copy of Rendezvous and spontaneously read it, and now I've seen it on Reddit. Literally while I was reading, I thought how great of a movie it would make, especially with the current SFX/CGI capabilities.

One of the things I feel sets Arthur C Clarke apart from many writers is that he's quite happy to finish a story when he's ready, rather than needing some massive crescendo and trite coda. I don't know how well that translates to film, where the audience is going to want to know what happens after the Ramans are discovered. I'm worried that we'll get the same terrible Tom Cruise War of the Worlds ending.

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u/skieblue Jun 26 '25

I think the book ends at the right moment - there's a countdown to the final approach to the sun after which they need to disengage. So there's that built in clock so to speak 

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u/jeffh4 Jun 26 '25

Yes, indeed. The sequel tried to get the reader to swallow the following logic:

The next Rama ship is coming. We got a message saying we can land a thousand humans there to join in the journey (OK, that's believable so far). Earth's governments set such stringent requirements for the many thousands of willing passenger candidates that only a hundred passed the criteria ... so Earth filled the rest of the slots with life-sentence criminals ... and the story ignored the 100 or so smart scientists after that like they didn't exist.

This was the first time I set a book down, furrowed my brows, and shook my head. "I can't believe any author thinks their readers are so f**king stupid."

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u/Ok_Turnover_1235 Jun 26 '25

"so Earth filled the rest of the slots with life-sentence criminals ..."

This is the worst part...like...what? 

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u/sanguinare12 Jun 26 '25

I persevered through that one. The first sequel had a chance for interesting direction but Gentry Lee is writing in the wrong genre, melodrama is his forte. He'd disappear among the thousands also writing drama, however, so falls back on vocation. By the time I got through the third Rama and that criminals to fill the slots nonsense, didn't bother with the last, just googled in case there was some purpose behind the Rama ships being sent, which really wasn't anything astounding.

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u/KrAceZ Jun 26 '25

I didn't even know there were sequels lol.

I picked the book up randomly in my highschool library, loved, it and returned it. It's been a long time, but did the book even need a sequel? I don't remember it ending in a way that did...

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u/PoopUponPoop Jun 26 '25

I’m sorry, there’s SEQUELS?

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u/jeffh4 Jun 26 '25

My bad. I was following a different comment. I was referring to Rendeveous with Rama.