Watched the first episode last night, and was left underwhelmed. There's a lot of lore they pack into the first 5 minutes of exposition, which was fine, explaining the origins of the War against The Thinking Machines, and the Atredies/Harkonen feud.

But watching the show, a couple things struck me which took me out of the narrative they were trying to tell:

1. The CGI is just ok, and far more noticeable in the show than it was in the movies, and this is understandable given the difference in CGI budget, but it wasn't as immersive.
2. This story having taken place 10 THOUSAND years before the events of DUNE, humanity is already mining spice on Arakis? Already fighting the fremmen?, The Bene Gesserit is already in ALL the major houses in the galaxy after only 130 years? Valya has personally developed THE VOICE as "something I've been working on" lol? I'm sure this is all in service of how Herbert wrote the book (*edit: this just in, the writer has just learned that DUNE PROPHECY isn't actually based on a Frank Herbert book, witch makes a ton more sense as to why it's so disjointed narrative) , but I was stuck by how little the DUNE universe seems to have changed in 10 Millennia. Just seems like "hey folks you know all the stuff you loved about the DUNE movies, well, here's a TV show that's not meant to step on that cash cow's narrative, but it's the same, just you know 10 thousand years before, really ...... ta-da!"

As an aside I once saw a YouTube video, which tried to explain the lack of technological advancement in the Game of Thrones universe, due to the overwhelming threat Dragons posed, and how that affected the development of modern weaponry, and stymied almost all forward technical engineering progress. Also while I'm ranting, so "thinking machines" are out, to the point of almost publicly executing a little boy for playing with a transformer toy, but the Emperor has a 3D vid holo projector, how exactly does THAT work without thinking machines, i wonder.

Now lastly, and this is a personal preference, I've never been a Emily Watson fan, I find her difficult to watch.

I'll most likely keep watching every Sunday, because for all it's foibles, it's still top notch scifi, though not nearly on the same level as FOUNDATION or THE EXPANSE