The first night of the Sci-Fi Channel’s “Children of Dune” was similar to the network’s earlier “Dune” miniseries: competently acted, atmospheric, but with little emotional weight. They both remind me of well-produced, well-intentioned junior high school productions of “Romeo and Juliet.” Or well-acted soap operas, an impression “Children” fosters by falling into that trap of “let’s make everyone seem pretty much the same age, so they can all interact on the same level.”
For all its many soul-crushing problems, David Lynch’s “Dune” had the juice, the soul, the life (as weird as it was) that these productions lack.
I’m sort of dreading the “we didn’t want the twins to be 9, so we made them 18 and cast 25-year-olds to play them” coming in the next two nights. And don’t even get me started on pronouncing Chani “Chaney.” Ever time they said that, I saw the round, bald head of the vice president, and my concentration was broken.