Posted on 04/21/2020 2:57:04 PM PDT by nickcarraway
Spice! Sandworms! Sting! What's not to like about this 1984 sci-fi bomb?
Double the Dune, double the nightmare? Director Denis Villeneuve plans to release two films to fully encompass the knotty complexities of Frank Herbert’s epic 1965 sci-fi novel about the battle for control over production of ‘spice’ (essentially ultra-rare petrol, and just as mad to snort) on a desert planet called Arrakis infested with worms the size of tube trains. Much to the concern of anyone with any experience of previous efforts to bring the novel to screen.
Alejandro Jodorowsky aborted his early ‘70s vision of a psychedelic 10-hour version starring Mick Jagger and Salvador Dali and scored by Pink Floyd as its sheer scale and ambition terrified the money men, and David Lynch’s 1984 effort was derided by sci-fi fans and critics for its near comic incomprehensibility and a screenplay seemingly written by a million insane monkeys.
Read more: Dune: release date, plot details, cast and everything we know so far Plot-wise, it’s not easy to explain Dune, but we’ll give it a go. Duke Leto Atreides’ son Paul (a young Kyle MacLachlan) is part of a space-witch plot to create a super-being who can defeat Emperor Shaddam IV’s legions of Sardaukar troops by drinking some sacred water that turns his eyes bright blue and makes him the messiah of the lost tribes of the Fremen who… oh never mind.
Returning to Lynch’s Arrakis over 35 years on, though, hindsight is kind to it. Yes, its special effects struggle to match the grandeur and spectacle of The Adam And Joe Show, making it look – five years after Alien and sixteen after 2001: A Space Odyssey – like a low-budget homage to the Sinbad creature features of the mid-‘70s. Spaceships resemble cheap cigar cases or floating doorstops, personal force fields predict the graphics of Minecraft and there are surrealist dream sequences that look like the end segment of 2001 populated by planet-zapping space slugs. And that’s not to mention the poorly green-screened ‘gigantic’ sandworms with all the magnificent menace of a garden hose, and some of the most ridiculous eyebrows to be found in this or any other galaxy.
Add in one of the fastest on-screen romances this side of PornHub (nought to snog inside a few seconds of screen-time) and the mystical voiceovers trying – and often failing – to inject some sense into what’s going on and it’s enough to make Lynch’s Dune a cult curio in the same way that, say, Bowie’s Labyrinth is; a film to leave you chuckling in wonderment that something so expensive (it was a $10 million loss-maker on release) could look so cheap. With his original three-hour edit chopped and altered mercilessly, Lynch himself certainly wasn’t happy, disowning some versions of the film by having his name replaced with the nom de plume of disgraced legend Alan Smithee and refusing to discuss the film in interviews to this day.
But it has more value than as the comic interlude in a stoned Lynch marathon. It might highlight how clumsily Lynch could handle a straightforward blockbuster plot, back in the days when he indulged such outmoded concepts, but it’s also a notable example of his early surrealism too. If Eraserhead was overtly icky, Dune exemplified the more dream-like fantasy tones that would come to characterise Lynch’s work, as Paul became increasingly lost in metaphorical visions of moons, hands and prophesies. It acts almost as a mainstream dry run for the Wizard Of Oz scenes in 1990’s Wild At Heart, and the suffocating atmosphere of Twin Peaks.
Dune also upped the game for the sci-fi blockbuster, even if the film itself failed to realise its own possibilities. The original Star Wars trilogy opened the door for the creation of elaborate distant universes and successfully transposed simple Wild West narratives into this ultimate final frontier setting. But Dune, like Blade Runner and 2001, aimed at depth, intricacy and wider socio-political meaning in what was becoming a fairly shallow, effects-led cinematic genre; to use science fiction to echo the complexities of our world, not escape them. In that sense it helped pave the way for more thoughtful and ambitious sci-fi epics – Gravity, Interstellar, Arrival, films based on grand conceits rather than phaser-blasted action. It did what Herbert’s novel had intended it to do – it widened the sci-fi scope.
There are moments in it to savour too, most delivered by Kenneth McMillan’s brilliantly bubonic Baron Harkonnen, floating around smothered in blood and oil, as grotesque a villain as ever graced the multiplex. And there’s head-shaking pleasure to be found in a sneering Sting, playing the Baron’s most six-packed nephew, deciding that the best time to take someone on in an unnecessary knife fight is just after they’ve been widely accepted as an all-powerful superhuman deity.
It won’t be hard for Villeneuve’s Dune to improve on Lynch’s original, but it will be tough to match its buried root impact on sci-fi and cinema, which has been rumbling along beneath the sand for decades.
“Blue Velvet” has been one of my guilty pleasures for a long time. I also liked “Mulholland Drive” and - to a lesser extent - “Inland Empire.”
That trailer is apparently a fake
It looked fake...LOL
It’s the DVD version.
For people who haven’t read the book, the explanation at the beginning is very helpful.
Ah. I’d recorded it off TV on to VHS. Wasn’t an intro.
Yes, that was the theatre release.
That’s why people walked out of it saying, “What the hell was that about?” Hahahaha!
The book was better
I enjoyed Lynch’s Dune, then and now. But I am of the SciFi fan generation of the Fifties and Sixties, we took what we could get, and hoped for the best. Remember “War of the Worlds”, “Forbidden Planet”, “Robinson Crusoe on Mars”, then “2001 A Space Odyssey” etc.?
There were so few good Science Fiction movies then, and fewer excellent ones, that we overlooked the cheese. Just like we Sixties TV Star Trek fans had to overlook Hollywood sequin and latex costumes and plywood sets. Forget “Lost in Space”, I have.
Now, with effects so real they can depict almost anything, we have become jaded. If something is either fishy, or stupid looking, we laugh and post flaming criticisms. We wonder what happened to the Golden Age of Science Fiction, you know, back when Star Wars came out!
The problem is and always was the writing, the Fiction part of SciFi. Poor concepts, bad plot and character development, and lack of scientific plausibility, deep six so many attempts at the next SciFi Blockbuster.
“Valerian”, Disney’s attempt to bring Edgar Rice Burroughs back to the screen, Disney’s most recent Star Wars retreads, all lack something, a lot actually. Sometimes bad casting, awkward pacing, lack of coherent dialog, or thin plot lines, are flaws no longer overlooked. They not made up for by dazzling CGI explosions, spaceships, aliens and monsters. Shame.
We wait for the next big hope: the new “Dune”, “Azimov’s Foundation”, and occasional rumors about a film adaptation of Arthur C Clarke’s “Rendezvous with Rama” keep us on the hook. Til then we will think about the old days, and watch Lynch’s “Dune” again and again.
Klaatu barada nikto
Guilty. Although I may not have started reading the books until after I saw the movie.
One of my favorite 50s sci-fi movies is “Target Earth,” about a few people who are left behind after “the city” has been evacuated because of an alien invasion.
I love David Lynch.
But his DUNE was atrocious.
moa deeeeeeb
I’m the opposite of that. I had read the books and liked the movie. I figured it probably didn’t make much sense to people who hadn’t read the books.
Plus, Lady Jessica (Francesca Annis) was HOT!
The only worse adaptation of a great book was Starship Troopers.
I re-read the book after 911. I realized that all the pseudo-mystical gobbledygook suddenly seemed somehow familiar.
I’m done with Dune now.
No one talks about Sci Fi channel’s Dune series which actually blows away the 1984 film. Much deserved criticism regarding the Matte background work but the story layout and acting were great. William Hurt as Duke Atreides could have used a bit of spark.
OMG! The only highlight of that movie was Denise Richards’ cleavage!
Utter garbage - I loved it. Seen it 3 or 4 times. It’s so bad it’s good
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