I just saw various parts of the Children of Dune series on the Sci Fi Channel. The series wasn't sufficiently interesting to watch every single part of it but I saw enough to get the gist of it. It seemed pretentious and contrived.
How could Paul "Muadīdib" Atreides have the ability to see the future so well and then get the idea into his head that turning Arrakis into a green planet was a good idea? If the worms can survive only in desert conditions then of course getting rid of the desert will bring catastrophe. One doesn't have to have super powers to see that. So a basic premise of Children of Dune seems stupid from the very beginning. Also, Alia had to see that it was a bad idea - unless she was dumb before she went mad.
The handling of Alia's possession by a spirit is not done well either. If Leto and Ghanima are so incredibly talented about seeing the future and sensing energy flows (or whatever they can sense) then they should have been able to notice Auntie's problem with the voices in her head. Also, if I was hearing voices in my head I think I'd tell close family members of enormous talent and ask if said family members could lend some help to vanquish the voices before things got out of control. Couldn't Mom or Leto have drugged her and then done an exorcism or something else?
Also, if Alia is going mad due to an exposure to spice while she was a developing fetus in Lady Jessica's womb then is this an unexpected effect of the spice? I got the impression from some comments made by Alice Krige's Jessica that this was not entirely unexpected. If that is the case then wasn't it stupid to put someone on the throne as Regent if that person was in serious danger of eventually going completely bonkers?
Leto's trip down the Golden Path seems unnecessary. What did he accomplish by letting the worms merge with him to start converting his skin to worm skin? He gained the ability to run incredibly quickly over the sand dunes. He could have stopped Alia without going that far. After all, he had himself, his sister, his grandmother, and eventually his father (at least until his father had himself killed off - and Paul must have seen it coming) to help him against his aunt. Surely if Paul showed up with his son and said "I reclaim my throne" this would have put Alia out of power rather quickly.
Paul's obvious self-sacrifice similarly seemed unnecessary. What's the point of dying? Did he think that by physically dying while lots of people were looking he was going to undermine his diety status among the Fremen? If so, why did he think that? And why did he exile himself out into the middle of nowhere after he was blinded when his children were born? What was gained by doing this? So much of what the characters do in the movie we are supposed to understand to be the result of their insights into the future. But then they just make inexplicable moves and it all seems terribly contrived. Paul has to dramatically die so lets have him decide it makes future history better somehow. Did he die out of self-pity because he was too famous to wander around in public? Its hard to tell. Did he die because the nature of his death would cause people not to worship him? Hard to see how that would be the case. Jesus died on a cross after all.
Why should Paul's blindness have been an irreversible fate that he had to live with? A civilization that can travel between stars would be a civilization that could, say, grow new eyeballs or fix the ones that someone has. Grown replacement parts are going to be feasible in the 21st century on Earth and so why not in some distant future?
Some people think that the Dune series is like deep and stuff. But the Children of Dune movie comes across to me as a series of contrived events that reflect a script with delusions of grandeur.