Dune II vs. The Empire Strikes Back: The Movie ‘Experience’

DISCLAIMER: I haven’t seen the movie Dune II. I have, however, read the novel Dune by Frank Herbert (plus the book came out the year that I was born), so I know almost everything that happens in Dune II. I also saw the movie The Empire Strikes Back the day it was released, so that gives me more credibility than the common movie/book critic. 

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A lot of movie critics and sci-fi geeks are comparing Dune II and The Empire Strikes Back because both movies are high quality sequels in the sci-fi genre, and I’m sure there are some other reasons too. Both Dune and The Empire Strikes Back are are/were movies that are/were supposedly best ‘experienced’ in a theater, and, yeah, I’d love to ‘experience’ a movie like Dune II in a theater, but somebody else in the theater would probably ruin the ‘experience’ for me.  If not, then I’d have to go to the bathroom at a bad time (and probably more than once).

The best movie ‘experience’ for me nowadays is hitting pause whenever I feel like it.  

We didn’t have the option of ‘experiencing’ The Empire Strikes Back at home when it came out.  We had to ‘experience’ it at a theater, a really crowded theater filled with loud, smelly people.  Theaters have always kind of sucked, but we put up with the other loud, smelly people back then because we had to.  Now we don’t have to.

If the loud, smelly people stayed home, I might go ‘experience’ movies at the theater more often.  But I’d still have to go to the bathroom at a bad time, and I wouldn’t be able to hit pause.

As far as the movies go, Dune II was necessary and expected as a movie.  Almost everybody who viewed Dune I knew there was going to be another Dune.  On the other hand, The Empire Strikes Back was almost seen as a bonus movie after the original Star Wars.  When Star Wars first came out in the late 1970s, it was seen as a stand alone movie.  Yes, fans were excited at the prospect of a sequel, but if there hadn’t been a follow up, everyone would have understood (with great disappointment).  Star Wars could have been a stand alone movie.

Just like everybody else, I really liked The Empire Strikes Back when it came out.  I think I saw it three times.  That wasn’t many times compared to other comic book sci-fi geeks at the time, but it’s still more times than I saw most other movies.  Maybe I’ll watch Dune II more than once.  If not, I’ll probably watch the really good scenes more than once on various video platforms.  

You couldn’t watch clips of The Empire Strikes Back on social media or video platforms because they didn’t exist.  The idea of smart phones and video platforms would have been seen as science fiction.  The technology for such devices was so advanced that it didn’t even exist in the Star Wars universe.  How differently would the movies have turned out if all the characters in the Star Wars films had been addicted to their phones?

Could Jedi Knights have had cool lightsaber duels if they all were afflicted with tech-neck?

In Dune II, could Paul have ridden the sand worms if he had kept checking his phone notifications?

Even though both Dune II and The Empire Strikes Back were sequel blockbusters, not everybody was sure how Dune II would perform at the box office.  The Empire Strikes Back was pretty much a sure thing.  Fans made plans to see the movie multiple times.  They would have planned to see it multiple times on the same day, but that would have required planning because lines went out the movie theater doors out onto the sidewalk into the parking lots and sometimes on to the streets (if the theater was big enough to seat that many people).

If you want to see Dune II, you can probably just walk right up to the theater and go in (if the theater still exists when you read this).

If you like Dune II and you can’t wait for the next Dune movie to find out what happens, you can read the next Dune book.  If you saw The Empire Strikes Back and wanted to find out what happened next, you were screwed; you were going to have to wait three years for Return of the Jedi.  There were other Star Wars books coming out, but none of them covered Return of the Jedi. 

At least, if there were books with SPOILERS (they weren’t called SPOILERS in the 1980s), I didn’t know about them.  If I remember correctly, the events in The Empire Strikes Back and Return of the Jedi contradicted some stuff that had been published in the books before them, but I don’t remember what those events were (I stopped caring about those things once I got a girlfriend).

The point is that you could only watch The Empire Strikes Back once at a time non-stop.  When I watch the Dunes, I’ll probably watch them at home by myself… and hit the pause button whenever I want to.