Exterminate all rational spice.

I approve of this experiment wholeheartedly. Dune would be much better with no dialog at all. Dune Without Words:

(Apparently embedding is disabled because Youtube won't allow it to be embedded, rather than the uploader. Insert formless obscenities here.)

In fact, I think there are probably a lot of movies that would be better without dialog. Off the top of my head, I'll nominate: Ken Russell's Salome, which is gorgous to look at but absolutely intolerable to listen to, and The Cell. I guess 2001 would work pretty well too, since it's almost silent already. I think you could make a pretty good go of Bill and Ted this way, too.

Previously, previously.

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17 Responses:

  1. I've filed a 'fair use' statement with YouTube to get it unlocked. Vimeo seems to be OK with it: http://vimeo.com/26554326

    • Jon says:

      Why not link to the boing boing article with commentary from the youtube description? I'd post a comment to that effect there, but…

      • jwz says:

        When I posted this, it wasn't on Boing Boing yet. I saw it in the Boing Boing RSS feed, but the URL was 404. I guess he was still in process and posted it early or something.

        • It went up, YouTube blocked it entirely because of its pattern matching copyrightatron thing, so I took down the post while I filled out their "this is fair use, put it back up" form. You must have spotted it after they'd fixed it but before I republished the post!

          It's good to have commentary in lots of places though, so long as none of them include YouTube.

  2. Mike says:

    The downside to Dune Without Words? You'll be listening to a lot of Toto.

  3. gfish says:

    If you don't like words, maybe Dune isn't the best media for you.

  4. Patrick says:

    I'm trying to decide if it feels threatening because I know there should be dialog, or if the editing is subverting the pacing that I'm used to. So many scenes that look like they build up to dialog or are reaction shots, but without the fulfillment. I applaud the idea, but I don't know that I could get through the full movie without dialog.

  5. Injector says:

    After getting home late one night with a friend, we found the TV was left on by one of my brothers. Dune was on, we're both fans, so we sat down to watch a bit.

    A little context: I had the TV/VCR/stereo in a pretty complicated arrangement that no one in my family could fix if a part got set into the wrong state.

    So we're listening to the dialog, and something doesn't seem right. Couldn't exactly put our finger on it--in our current state--but it was odd. It wasn't until someone called out for Trixie, that I realized that the VCR was tuned to MTV and was sending the sound of Speed Racer to the stereo, while the TV was on Disney showing the picture of Dune.

  6. patyeon says:

    Tron: Legacy would be much improved by method.

  7. 2001 is good without sound at about 8x speed. There's a lot of eating in that film...

  8. Prestemon says:

    The Fall is by the director of The Cell and has amazing visuals but, unlike The Cell, does not suck.

    • jwz says:

      The Fall is fantastic! Though I don't think The Cell "sucked" -- its visuals go a long way toward redeeming everything else.

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