Dune (1984)

This Movie Can Only Be Described With One Word.

Fun premise, good actors, bad writing. This film seemed to have potential at the beginning but it quickly devolves into a trite action film. Ultimately it's very boring.

There is just so much movie here. For some it may be too much. But in the same secretly sarcastic way most telemarketers say the phrase, the title of this one is particularly apt.

A film of deceptively outspoken contemporary relevance, this is cinema at its most alert, alarming and alive.

Someone went through the book, picked out the most memorable lines, threw them in a blender and poured out a script. What a mess.

I had only seen David Lynch's 1984 production of Dune once before when I was much younger, so when I got the chance to see a midnight screening of it at my local theater, I jumped on it. Going into this screening I recalled the movie being somewhat goofy, probably because I had just read all six of the original Dune novels the first time I saw it and OF COURSE it didn't come close to holding up to that lengthy, legendary storyline.Frank Herbert's universe had seemingly endless plots, subplots, characters and themes. Dune has all the sex, violence and political machinations of Game of Thrones while also concentrating on much more weighty issues like technology, ecology, drug use, spirituality, the destiny of mankind, etc. The depth of Dune is too much for any movie to come close to capturing and that's the brick wall that David Lynch runs into. He can't possibly do the source material justice; not on a thematic level anyway. He can only capture the forms and some of the spectacle from the first book.That said, I did enjoy it slightly more this second time, probably because I was focusing on its artistic merit and what David Lynch does well rather than mercilessly comparing it to the scope of the books. The first half of the film is steady, well presented and follows the book fairly well but somewhere around the middle of the movie the pace dramatically speeds up and they start cramming way too much story into too little screen time as events hurtle toward a hasty, contrived conclusion.I wish that Lynch hadn't shoved so many of the characters thoughts into recorded voice overs. Apparently this was done because the studio demanded he cut his original 3 hour version of the film by 40 minutes. I get that anyone who hasn't read Dune would have a hard time comprehending what was going on without all that exposition, but I think the film would've benefited greatly by saying less. Let the mysterious remain mysterious and focus on those inspired visuals! If people want to unravel it all, they can go back and read the novel. What a torture, to have to read one of the most important works of science fiction ever!For all its flaws, the film nails quite a few elements of "Dune." It's very well cast and most of the costumes / sets are spot on. Even the pronunciations of Herbert's fictional terminology are mostly correct and Paul's dream sequences are splendid to behold, evoking the symbolism and artistry you expect to flow from the prose of the book.The film ends on a bit of an eye roll. Muad Dib and the Fremen win a crazy one-sided battle, he kills Feyd in the duel (Sting was surprisingly good in this role for someone who's not, primarily, an actor), Paul proclaims a new dawn of humanity and it suddenly rains for the first time on Dune. Really David? That rain wasn't in the book and you couldn't think of a better way to end it? How about after the proclamation we have a nice long zoom in on Paul transitioning into visions of the future from the subsequent five books? Muad Dib's fall, the trials of his children, the God Emperor and the rise of the Honored Matres! Paul is soaked in spice at this point so he's already getting glimpses of the future. Even just a brief montage eluding to those events with the dramatic score in the background would've made a great ending to your acid trip of a movie! But no, we get a sadly typical put-a-bow-on-it Hollywood ending and fade to credits.Despite its shortcomings, I'm not overly disappointed. Adapting Dune is too great a task for anyone and it was fun to see Lynch try. Although much of the substance is missing, he succeeded in capturing the dramatic weight of Dune and painting a dazzling silver screen portrait of my favorite novel. It will be interesting to see if Denis Villeneuve can do better.

This could have been a great movie! The beginning and really, all of the footage up until the Baron is introduced, even the poor casting of Piter, is really great. The movie went completely downhill for me with the introduction of the Baron Harkonnen. In the book he is hugely obese and requires the suspensors to hold up his weight as his legs can no longer carry his weight. He is described in the book as: "grossly and immensely fat' with a "basso voice." He is ruthless and cruel, but also extremely intelligent and cunning and talented at manipulating others and exploiting their weaknesses. In this movie, for some unknown reason, he is given these horrific sores and a character called 'the doctor' added to disgustingly pick at and suck out the nastiness, which the Baron then flies up to the holding tank of this and lets the contents of his sores pore over his face. GAH!! WTF?? I didn't know those terms when I saw this movie when it first came out. But wished that I had. I saw absolutely NO reason for what they did to the character of the Baron. It was one of the things that really went a long way toward ruining the film. Things that saved it were some of the scenes that so closely followed the book...like the desert scenes with the worms. I was so excited to see the movie because I had read the book in high school and was so anxious to see it brought to life. Then they added the 'heart plug' nonsense. It is like they thought us so stupid that we couldn't accept the fact that he was a horrible person without giving him sores. I don't know if this is what people have called a homophobic attempt to make him disgusting because he was homosexual, or if it was simply an attempt to make him even more disgusting than weighing 1000 pounds or so would make him, but both his character and Beast Rabban were made so ridiculous, that when they are plotting together and the Baron tells him to squeeze the population of Dune, he says, "yes, Baron" almost like they are villains on a very poorly written episode of the original Batman TV show complete with BooHooWaaahahahaha laughter. Also, the casting of Sting was ridiculous. We got no background on his character at all other than what the Baron wanted for him. None of the scenes that showed him to be a flawed but important adversary for Paul. They are supposed to be approximately the same age. In the book, Paul is 15 at the beginning of the story, 17 by the end and Feyd is approx. the same age. They were supposed to be a mated pair in the Bene Gesserit breeding program and would have been if Jessica had not had a male baby instead of a female as directed. I didn't care for the 'weirding modules' either. Once again another attempt at complicated simplification because the weirding way described in the book is more a form of martial arts and David Lynch didn't want 'Kung Fu' on the sands. Still, that was another thing that I could overlook. However...the ending. Paul making it rain...PLEASE! Especially when I learned that the ending had been filmed as written...with Paul marrying the Princess Irulan (only in name, as Chani was still Paul's mate and became his 'concubine' as Jessica had been his father's true love, but not his wife), the Emperor exiled to his own prison planet, and Paul becoming the new Emperor of the known universe. It sets up the next chapter in the series and is so important. Paul did fulfill the Fremen's prophecy, but he was not a God. He couldn't make it rain. He fulfilled the prophecy, because it had been implanted in the Fremen culture by the Bene Gesserit generations earlier just in case the Kwizatz Haderach (sp) appeared somewhere down the line. The missionaria protectiva as it was called in the book. It was Bene Gesserit practice to create religions to suit their own ends and the Fremen were set up to receive a 'super being.' His ability to see into the future was his power. He was genetically manipulated to be able to do this. All of this being ignored and the ridiculous scene of it raining at the end. I wanted to throw my popcorn at the screen!! All that aside, when I saw the extended version on television the first time it was run, I was stunned by how much better it made the movie. So many things that had been left out, making the movie that much more confusing. The fact that all of these scenes were shot, and then cut tells us that those in charge of cutting the final film weren't interested in telling the best version of the story, but in time constraints. I don't blame Lynch for being absolutely appalled at the final cut of the movie and the betrayal of any vision or collaboration between him and Frank Herbert. Frank Herbert was mostly just satisfied to see his creation brought to life, but was dismayed mostly by the same things that I was...especially the ending. When you consider all of the money spent to make this movie and all of the sets and a fine cast (who did a really good job with what they were given), it is just appalling that the final cut is what it is. So many of the important scenes that were left out, were shot!! That is the thing that is the most distressing. I wish that Lynch would make a directors cut. I would watch a 4 hour version. Happily! I would love to see the correct ending restored. I know that there wasn't an alternate Baron shot, but I could get past that. One other scene always makes me mad. The scene where Paul and Jessica are getting out of the crashed 'thopter' in the desert and Jessica says, completely randomly and having no relationship to anything happening, "A million deaths are not enough for Yueh!" That line actually comes from one of the little poems or short references to one of Irulan's future history books as introductions to each chapter in the book. So to insert that dialogue completely out of any context was another WTF moment! Also, making Jessica so whiny. She was Bene Gesserit and although distraught at the death of the Duke, she holds it together until she and Paul are in the tent after they are relatively 'safe' for a brief time before they meet the Fremen. Then she lets her grief out, but her stumbling after Paul was just infuriating. Her character was so much more complex than they made her. Paul was, too. So much potential...it could have been a great movie! As is it is only mediocre. I still always watch it if I stumble across it and reading that there has been an extended version released on DVD, I will probably buy it and just skip over the scenes with the Baron, as I always do when I watch it. I usually turn if off after the Baron is sucked into the worm as well. Not in the book, but fitting...especially the changed Baron as depicted in the film. .

When you begin to look for movies in every crack of the wall you get to see strange movies like this, which is supposed to be based on a famous source material that I have not read yet. This film is really good because of the fact that it's incredibly bizarre and follows a pure Twin Peaks sort of style to it, and beware bland normal "good popcorn fun" blockbuster fans, this is not a normal fantasy film like how apparently it's source material is. It's incredibly weird, and that is what is so good about it, and it contains surrealist visual effects and picture-perfect cinematography, holding some of the most memorably weird moments in a movie I've seen in a long time. The special effects are brilliant yet strange, and although they may be a bit too weird for some I think others looking for a mind screw will love the uniqueness of this movie. It's a surreal space epic with an 80's soundtrack and an imagination that'll leave you gasping; I watch movies specifically to see weird things like this that I wouldn't see in real life and to be captivated into such a strange world like this is really interesting. Before I think I complimented on the picture-perfect cinematography too minor and I'd say that it has some great movement and angles with the camera photography, so I recommend you analyze that if you give this a watch. You want escapism? This is the real deal.