Childless Children of Dune?

I think that the miniseries' twins are supposed to be fifteen or sixteen.

The decision to age the children up was to make them more accessible to the television audience, I think. This audience couldn't be expected to have read the novels or to recognize and understand the significance of the prepubescent characters. So something was lost in the hope that something might be gained. They risked sacrificing a part of the story and alienating a portion of the audience so that they could make the broader story comprehensible to the larger audience.

Then, too, there's the challenge of finding very young performers who could deliver the roles that Herbert wrote. It's tough enough for a very young actor to play his own age (which is why so many juvenile roles are assigned to slightly older and more experienced actors), but in this case the actor would have to convincingly inhabit a character who is brilliant, visionary, and ancient in his or her soul. That's a tall order for an adult. And if the child actor can't pull it off, then the main character falls apart and - with him - absolutely everything else.

So they aged the characters up and prayed it would work. I think it did, for the most part. Thanks to James McAvoy. McAvoy was in his twenties when he played the fifteen year old version of the nine year old Leto, but I do think he sold it. There's a scene in which Leto and his grandmother Jessica (beautifully inhabited by Alice Krige - I really loved that casting) square off against one another in an intellectual sparring match. The chemistry between the two actors and their combined charisma was transformative. After that point, I fully accepted and was invested in both characters, their complicated relationship, and the premise of the story.

Casting, and the careful risks that go into calculated story or character changes, are so crucial.

Speaking of which - not all the casting worked for me in either series. Alec Newman is a fine actor, but I could never accept him as Paul in the first series. Blame at least part of that on the decision to write Paul as a moody teenager. That didn't work. William Hurt was IMHO completely miscast as Duke Leto, and I could take or leave Saskia Reeves as Jessica. I can't remember who played Duncan Idaho in either series (two different actors), but I do remember that Duncan was miscast. Alia never worked for me.

I did like the sandworms, most of the sets and camera work, most of the special effects. I would like to know how the CGI sabre-tooth desert cats made it onto the screen, however. Some reviewer said they could be given a pass "because, simply, there are no sabre-tooth available for filming." Gack. The problem wasn't their sabre teeth. The problem was that the guy responsible for designing them had no idea of how living animals are put together or how they move. He had never studied the anatomy, mobility, or behaviour of big cats from life. And he took pride in that. He actually bragged about not needing to observe actual big cats because he thought he could get everything he needed from watching a video. The result was the most embarrassingly amateurish and downright awful CGI imaginable. That arrogance and sloppiness should have earned him a quick firing. Really. I guess they didn't have the budget to fix it. So a really terrible CGI made it onto screen and dragged down the quality of the whole production. It's been a few years since I've watched Children of Dune, but those ridiculously awful animations still haunt me.

I think it's time to take all the lessons from Lynch's film and these miniseries, and use them to inform a new, definitive film. Or a series of films.