Dune

Dune has -- in my opinion -- become a sort of cultural totem in the same way as Ishtar and Heaven's Gate -- a legendarily "awful" movie - irredeemably excessive, technically terrible, utterly unsalvageable Hollywood dreck etc, etc. The problem is that I suspect most of the people propagating that idea haven't actually seen it, or don't remember it, or worse, didn't get it. This happens all the time with Internet Elitism - pop into an audiophile forum and ask if you should buy Bose anything - headphones, speakers, soundbar etc. Watch the dogpile of prebaked opinions. Maybe some of those are even correct. But the vast majority will be from people who haven't tried them. It's a rite of entry into that fandom that you get in lockstep with the lore and mantra.David Lynch's movie is flawed. It's too short. There was interference from the studio. Some of the additive ideas don't work. Some of the (apparent) deletions should have been retained. The Weirding Way, for example, is switched from a Matrix-style super combat art, to a sci-fi sound cannon. But as a spectacle, and as a broad envisioning of Herbert's universe, it's astonishing and brave and in many ways successful. The costumes (with the exception of the "welding way" Sardaukar) are peerless. Set designs are intricately styled, instantly authentic to each world and create a powerful sense of place. VFX are limited by available tech, but often grand and spectacular. Casting is hard to beat - and all but a few players are absolutely blasting charisma - Duke Leto, Rev. Mother Mohiam, Lady Jessica, and yes, Baron Harkonnen by a brilliantly hammy Kenneth MacMillan, are viscerally memorable.Music is suitably epic, with clever little deviations from biblical scale strings and brass, to sneakily devious court intrigues via electronics and harpsichord, to machiavellian pipe organ sinister should but somehow don't rank among the classics of Williams, Horner and Zimmer's factory. That Prophecy Theme by Brian Eno was worth the pricetag and bickering.The story, famously "hard to parse" is remarkably straightforward and introduced by a useful and stylishly still modern looking prologue. The studio likely created this myth by panicking and sending out printed explanations - that basically underestimated the intelligence of the audience and put off a lot of folks who'd otherwise have sailed through it narratively. It's not confusing. If anything, a lot of it is dumbed down too far with inner monologues and painfully long exposition. And that affects the pace of the film negatively too.Anyway, it's a flawed masterpiece, and the unmade Jodorowski film would have been catastrophically unrelated to the source material, so at least book fans dodged a bullet there, even though I too would have loved to see its lurid insanity. Villeneuve to his credit isn't trying to avoid ideas from the Lynch film that are essential to the story, but the delayed release and box office uncertainty may already have sealed the fate for a potential sequel. His film will finish about halfway through the story of Lynch's version.

I first seen this movie in Christchurch, Nw Zealand in the early 1980’s. The actors were perfect for the roles. The premise of the movie was sound. Needless to say, I was intrigued. In my opinion, this is by far the best version of Dune. I am extremely glad that purchased it. I still watch it from time to time even though I have practically memorized it, like some one might memorize the Rocky Horror Picture Show.

Excellent Movie!! Great costumes, sets, I Soundtrack, plot, editing...all were awesome!.

I recently reread Dune (for the second time, about 15 years after reading it the first time), and I decided to watch David Lynch’s 1984 adaptation for the first time after that.So what did I think? MAYBE I don’t love it (it does have its issues), I liked it a LOT. In fact, I like it more than the book. It also looks GREAT on blu-ray.Alright, let’s get started.And…the movie is dropping a ton of stuff on us in the opening monologue that the book doesn’t reveal until end. Dune is, quite frankly, a damn fine successor to the original Star Wars trilogy, and the opening monologue is sort of the Star Wars opening scroll on drugs. It’s much longer, and Princess Iruna’s face, in a nice hat tip to the chapter openers in the book, fades in and out throughout.Some people insist that the movie is incomprehensible without having read the book. I’m not so sure. The movie goes to great lengths to lay out exposition very clearly (more than I think is strictly necessary).Some of the effects are hokey—the shields, for example—but in general they hold up pretty well. ESPECIALLY the worms.And I LOVE the set design. Every planet is so distinct and odd and cool. The whole thing is outlandish and super baroque and very H.R. Giger-esque. Some of it is just bizarre, sure—Baron Harkonnen flying, the wild Mentat hair and eyebrows—but weird is good.Perhaps taking a page from the book, the movie makes heavy use of internal monologue. Like, weirdly heavy. Characters frequently think that we they could easily say. It was probably necessary in parts, but Lynch uses it way too much.The romance with Chani could easily be cut entirely. It adds nothing and is hilariously underdeveloped.Alia provided the only real ‘Holy s___!’ moment for me reading the book. The weirdness of her character works because it isn’t simple weirdness but is instead a result of a child talking and acting like an adult when everyone expects otherwise. The more straightforward weirdness of movie Alia is meh.The fights scenes, and especially the final fight, are awful.Paul’s time with the Fremen is given short shrift. The climax is a bit abrupt as well, if not as bad as the book.The Dune movie works well enough—very well—but it cuts several plot threads to the bone or rejects them entirely. If Lord of the Rings gets nine hours stretched over three movies, then surely Dune deserved a full three hour movie. This blu-ray cut is a little over two hours, clocking in at 2 hours, 17 minutes according to the back cover. I understand there is a 3-hour cut, but I haven’t heard good things about it. Just because a movie deserves three hours doesn’t mean it benefits from the extra hour. The biggest part of the movie in need of more time and development is Paul’s time with the Fremen. It is maybe the best part of the book, and it gets short shrift here (heck, it gets short shrift in the book). The romance with Chani and the return of Gurney in particular would benefit from this.All in all, it is gorgeous and weird and epic and, you know what? I do love it—enough to overlook all the flaws.