Really enjoying the episode right now. Not watching the movies just doing house work with friends in my head.

Listened to the whole Fellowship commentary again. Great work. I can't wait to revisit part two.

I saw the LOTR musical and it was pretty bad. The musical numbers were long and never advanced the plot or had decent choreography, just gave back story (Lothlorieeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeen sings Galadriel). They also combined a lot of characters in confusing ways and rushed a lot of the plot awkwardly. The single best part was the balrog. That was freaking amazing. They had Gandalf facing the back of the stage and had really bright floodlights outlining the balrog puppet. Then they blew a huge wind out at the audience with paper stuff in it. Threeee Deeeeeee!

To be fair, Dune was a botched production. The opening was supposed to have visuals and be a thing. The opening we got was only due to the studio getting cold feet halfway through and screwing the movie over. It's mildly better now, I think. I recall the last version I saw had cobbled together what would have been the intro in the form of unused matte paintings and elaborate storyboard / concept art. It was long, tho. The intro for that movie is like ten minutes, but it feels like three hours.

Lynch: I wanna make this movie based on the Dune novels
Studio: Well, what's this 'Dune' stuff all about, then?
Lynch: It's a sci-fi novel about people who live on a desert planet and some rebels who start a war...
Studio: Hey, that sounds a lot like Star Wars!
Lynch: ...Erm...  yeah...  it's kinda like star wars...
Studio: Here's a bunch of money!

18 Months Later:

Studio: Hey there, Dave! Let's see this Dune movie you've been working OH MY GOD WHAT THE FUCK IS THIS HOW DID YOU GET ME TO PAY FOR THIS YOU CRAZY FUCK!
Lynch: Trust me, you give me more money and another year and this movie will rock.
*Studio has kicked Lynch from the chat*
*Studio has banned Lynch*
*Alan Smithee has entered the chat*
Alan Smithee: You assholes!

In both cases, the universes both novels create is too elaborate for a conventional 2-3 hour movie, so you need lots of exposition.

You can almost work out mathematically what the maximum number of protagonists for a normal 2-hour movie should be. For movies which are NOT adaptations from novels, you don't want to go over about half a dozen. Too many characters and you need to spend too much screen time fleshing out each one with backstory and motivation and personalities (that pass the Plinkett test). If 5 minutes of screen time is enough to convey backstory, motivation, and personality, then six characters gives you 30 minutes of character development, which is 25% of your 2 hour movie, before you get to action, comedy, love, set-back, and finale.

Now for Dune or Lord of the Rings, the novels contain dozens of characters and complicated elaborate backstories, and it's just too much for a normal movie. Hence the prologue. Luckily Lord of the Rings is an 11 hour movie (I don't think of it as three movies). And Dune is every bit as rich and needed the 9-11 hour treatment as well, or a TV series.

Dune is one you might need the right mindset for. As a teen I had a rule that I would give any book 100 pages to suck me in, and seem to recall Dune had me from the start. I wasn't a big fan of the second and third books, but loved God Emperor of Dune and was enjoying the later ones when Herbert died. It was the first time an active writer I liked passed away (I've stayed away from the stuff his kid has been churning out).

That reminds me of something that came up at a conventions years ago. The panel speaker was asking why people kept reading stuff like the later Dune books, when they're clearly declining in quality. Someone replied that us readers have built up this knowledge base on these imaginary worlds, and WANT to be able to use it somehow. Reading another Dune, Pern, or Star Wars book lets us do that.

The Audiobook theatrical recording of Dune is quite excellent.

We're not all ring-bearers, besides, the spice must flow.