Colouring Book Theatre: Dune
It’s been entirely too long since I’ve done Colouring Book Theatre but I finally found one at a flea market last week that seemed fitting.
Dune is possibly the worst colouring book I’ve ever reviewed, not because it’s badly done but because it has no freaking business being a colouring book!
This is Hollywood ignorance at it’s finest, a respected science fiction novel, Dune was sold as the next Star Wars when it’s just too complicated and dark to be popular for children.
The best comparision I can make is it’s like seeing a Watchmen colouring book at Target.
This page is one of the reasons I had trouble with the movie itself, waaaaaay too much dialouge setting up the movie. I mean, when has a colouring book ever had this much to say?
“Can I borrow your white crayon Sally? I need to make Puss” Here’s the darkness I told you about, who in hell thought it was a good idea to have the “boil picking scene” in a colouring book? The Baron is not a character that should have been marketed to children, he’s just gross and not in a “Garbage Pail Kids” kind of way more of a “Gee, I hope he doesn’t sit next to me on the bus” thing.
In the common sense department, we’re somehow spared an image of Sting in that stupid metal G String. Although, this piece advertises several activity books in this series so I’m gonna go ahead and assume you get to connect the dots on his crotch somewhere….
Another winning picture for children to colour. 
Sting’s over acting shines in this book, anyway, he gets stabbed and the good guys win, I think. Everybody still looks unhappy and drab, the kid who coloured this would be out of all earth tones and red by the end.Normally I give my kids the used books but in this case, this one will hit the recycle bin.
Maybe this was made for the same reasons you now see Freud and Einstein action figures.
And if you are serious about tossing this, I’ll totally take it off your hands!
it’s all yours my man.
Rats! I’m too late. I was going
to suggest a contest for those
who want the coloring book.
I’m glad it will be with someone
who wants it.
The line, “Duke Leto and Piter die.”
makes me laugh. Maybe I’m an
insensitive doof, but that page
in the coloring book looks like
something a comedian would try
to pull off.
I don’t have much to add than A Dune coloring book?!?
I think that has to be the most deaths ever in a coloring book.
Who they hell thought that anyone under 18 would go see Dune?
Since there’s a page showing Duke Leto and Piter dead, I’m curious if there’s one showing Sting’s character dead, with the knife sticking out of his throat.
I saw Dune in the theater, and I knew I was in trouble when the ushers handed me a two-sided page of character names and a glossary of terms.
The only thing that made it bearable was watching a middle-aged couple bicker about who was who and what was what, shaking and pointing at their papers as proof that they each were right. Classic.
Oh man! That page with
both Duke Leto and Piter
dead keeps making me laugh.
Yet it's still a worthier addition to the franchise than Kevin J Anderson's prequel novels.
Sorry, sorry, couldn't resist. Thanks for a great laugh. This made my morning.
Ah yes, there was som much wrong with so much about this movie: thinking that an"quirky genius" whgo had never directed anything with more than five dollars and five actors (brilliant though his previous films were) should be the one to make the most expensive movie to date, a galazy-spanning epic, the decision to edit it down to 2 hours and 17 minutes from its potential 3 and a half hours to get more butts in seats per day, the Groucho Marx nose pieces, the cheezy bluescreen effects, the confusing battle scenes,Virgina Madsen's deadpan narration, etc, etc, etc…
But let's give it its due, the production design was fantastic, and in moments when David Lynch's vision was most clear, it was actually pretty cool. By comparison, try on the 3 hhour TV version with the anonymous male narrator, iullustrated prologue, extra footage (without the appropriate special effects) etc. Man, it's almost as good a stoner movie as "Dark Star."
But yes, they tried to market it as the "next Star Wars," with trading cards, action figures, and a comic adaptation by Marvel (which, drawn my Seinkowicz, was better than the movie). But between the non-kid-friendly themes and images in this movie and the monochromatic pallete, a coloring book is not the first thing I would think of as an ideal tie in. However, those pictures look like they would be awful fun to creatively color! Heck with being faithful to the movie, let's use every crayon in the box on Sting's leather suit!
Thanks to this movie coming out the year before I was born and my parents being rather obsessed by it I am named Alia and my brother is Paul. Yay for him being the saviour and me being abomination – thanks parents! My middle name is even Francesca after Francesca Annis. Oh the joy…