Dune (1984). Directed by David Lynch. Written by David Lynch, based on the novel by Frank Herbert. Starring Kyle MacLachlan, Francesca Annis, and Kenneth McMillan.
Here’s the thing: My father read Frank Herbert’s Dune to me and my siblings as a bedtime story. He read several of his favorite books to us over the years, and Dune was one. Even now, every time we walk on sand dunes or beaches, we remind each other not to walk with a steady rhythm. Then, of course, we stomp with a steady rhythm right next to a sibling, to lure the worms to come eat them first. We still tell each other to stick our hands into open boxes under threat of the Gom Jabbar. In fact, we sometimes use “gom jabbar” the same way people use words like doohickey or thingamabob, as a catch-all for an object: “Pass me that thing there, no, not the screwdriver, the gom jabbar.”
None of this makes me a Dune expert. Compared to the average readership of this site, I barely know anything about Dune.
Sure, I can’t remember a time when I didn’t know Dune, but I also haven’t read the novel since I was young enough to have it read to me. I never read any of the other books in Herbert’s series. I’ve never seen any adaptation except David Lynch’s, and prior to this month the last time I watched it was probably about thirty years ago. (Yes, Dad, I will watch Denis Villeneuve’s films at some point, stop pestering me about them. I might also reread the book some day.)
My point is: If you want a write-up about this movie from somebody who knows the ins and outs of Herbert’s novel in great detail, there are many to choose from, including several on this very site. I am not that person. I am just somebody who has been rooting for the giant worms since childhood. I love the giant worms.
So let’s talk about how the movie Dune (1984) came about.
Frank Herbert’s novel Dune was published in 1965, and it has been widely read and beloved ever since. The first producer to acquire rights to adapt Dune into a film was Arthur P. Jacobs, the man behind The Planet of the Apes (1968) and the franchise it spawned. Jacobs bought the rights to the novel in 1971, and that’s where we begin our brief tour of “Directors Who Didn’t Make Dune (But Whose Versions of Dune I Would So Totally Watch If I Had the Chance).”
First on that list is Sir David Lean, director of a few films you might have heard of: Great Expectations (1946), The Bridge on the River Kwai (1957), Lawrence of Arabia (1962), Doctor Zhivago (1965). Yes, Lean seems like an odd choice for a sci fi epic about people doing psychedelic drugs to travel through space. But you can appreciate what Jacobs envisioned, because if somebody can adapt Charles Dickens and Boris Pasternak, they can handle a complex story with a cast of thousands. Lean was, alas, not interested, so we’ll never know what his version of Dune might have looked like. Jacobs approached a few other directors, but he didn’t find anybody before his death in 1973.
The film rights were then purchased from Jacobs’ production company by what every article amusingly refers to as a “French consortium.” That’s where Alejandro Jodorowsky comes into the story. His long, involved, ambitious, and ultimately doomed attempt to make the movie has been told in the award-winning documentary Jodorowsky’s Dune (2013). The film was eventually abandoned because it would have been much too long (10-14 hours of film were storyboarded) and much, much too expensive. The production’s imagination was, alas, bigger than its available resources.
The Dune that Jodorowsky never made would have been fascinating and strange. I know we all want to visit a parallel universe where it came to fruition. Even without actually existing as a film it has managed to be impressively influential on sci fi cinema, although in a somewhat indirect way, as several people involved with the project would go to work on Ridley Scott’s Alien (1979)—including artist H.R. Giger and Alien screenwriter Dan O’Bannon.
The owners of the film rights sold them on again, this time to Dino De Laurentiis, the producer behind a vast and eclectic assortment of movies ranging from Federico Fellini’s La Strada (1954) to Roger Vadim’s Barbarella (1968) to Sidney Lumet’s Serpico (1973). De Laurentiis first got Herbert to write the screenplay, but Herbert himself described his effort to compress the book into a film as a failure.
That’s when De Laurentiis brought on the third and final of the “Directors Who Didn’t Make Dune (But Whose Versions of Dune I Would So Totally Watch If I Had the Chance).” Ridley Scott had just finished with Alien, and he spent several months working with yet another Dune screenplay, this one by author Rudy Wurlitzer. Scott soon came to the conclusion that the story would take two movies to tell, and that would require more time than he was willing to put into it.
So we’ll never know what Ridley Scott’s Dune would have looked like, which is unfortunate, because I bet it would have been really cool. But I’m also glad he didn’t do it, because he went on to make Blade Runner (1982) instead, and we know how I feel about Blade Runner.
You have probably noticed the pattern by now: Everybody who looked at Dune knew that it would take more than two hours to tell the story properly.
There are very few universal truths when it comes to Hollywood and adaptation, but this is one of them. Everybody knew this story required more than a single movie. Directors knew it, screenwriters knew it, even the producers knew it, although they probably lied to the money people about it. Everybody knew it.
At this point, it was 1981 and the nine-year film option was about to expire. (Shocked professional aside: Nine years? Good lord.) But letting go of a hugely popular sci fi property right smack in the middle of the “hugely popular sci fi movies are making bank” era was not the plan, so De Laurentiis negotiated a new agreement with Herbert. And at some point De Laurentiis’ daughter, producer Raffaella De Laurentiis, took over the project. With the money coming from Universal Studios, she was the one who brought David Lynch into the fold.
Lynch was still a pretty new director, but his reputation was experiencing a meteoric rise at the time. After Eraserhead (1977) enjoyed its indie success as a midnight movie and arthouse darling, Lynch made The Elephant Man (1980), which is loosely based on the life of Joseph Merrick. The Elephant Man was a tremendous success both commercially and critically. It was nominated for a pile of awards, including several Academy Awards. (The film also led to an organized push in Hollywood to demand the Academy recognize the work of makeup artists, which led to the creation of the Academy Award for Best Makeup.)
As Lynch’s star was rising, so too was Hollywood’s demand for big, flashy sci fi movies, thanks to the wild success of Star Wars (1977). Lynch was also offered a chance to direct Return of the Jedi (1983), because everybody and their brother was offered a chance to direct Return of the Jedi, but he declined. (Aside: I maintain that of all the directors who didn’t direct Return of the Jedi, Lynch was in fact not the strangest possibility. That honor belongs to David Cronenberg. Imagine a Cronenberg Return of the Jedi… Imagine Cronenberg Ewoks.)
Lynch didn’t know Dune before Raffaella De Laurentiis approached him, but he read it, liked it, and set to work writing his own screenplay. At first he was working with his cowriters from The Elephant Man, Eric Bergren and Christopher De Vore, but they left the project after some time. Lynch wrote several drafts of the screenplay. He wanted to tell the story across two movies, just like everybody else who had tried to adapt it, but Universal disagreed. They wanted a standard two-hour movie. They wanted a big, flashy, popular space opera that would launch a new series or trilogy.
To address the obvious question: I don’t know if any of the people in charge at Universal had read Dune. I may not know Dune that well, but even I know that you don’t look at Dune if you want another Star Wars.
That’s not what they got. What they got is… well.
The most frustrating thing about David Lynch’s Dune is that it could have been so fucking good. It’s not a good movie, but the elements are there. There are glimmers of beauty and possibility all over the place. It’s so easy to imagine what it might have been, but the film aggressively compresses a story that needs time to breathe. And, as Jill Krajewski wrote in Vulture last year, “It’s also a shame to watch Lynch’s special-effects budget run out in real time….”
I think that’s even more disappointing than a film that has no potential.
That’s not mere speculation about the time and budget problems; the production of the film was thoroughly documented and reported while it was happening. See, for example, a 1983 New York Times article on the production, or the on-set diary from journalist and filmmaker Paul M. Sammon that was published in Cinefantasique in 1984.
The movie was filmed at Churubusco Studios in Mexico City, largely because Dino De Laurentiis thought it would save money. It’s unclear if the benefits outweighed the problems. From basic issues like not always having reliable electricity to more complex geopolitical issues like not being able to acquire certain equipment due to import embargos and weeks-long delivery delays—or even relying on crew members to bring supplies in their personal luggage when they arrived—one has to wonder if the choice caused more problems than it solved.
In any case, the production was massive and constantly in need of more time and more money. In one interview, model unit supervisor Brian Smithies recalls arriving at the studio to find Raffaella De Laurentiis going through the script page by page and tearing out things she knew they wouldn’t have the money to film. And that wasn’t at the beginning of the production—that was several months in, after one effects crew had already left and others had been brought in to do a huge amount of work in a very short amount of time.
I always watch the movies for this column before I do any reading or research. And when I sat down to watch Dune, not having seen the movie since I was a kid, at first I was thinking, “Why does everybody hate this? It’s not nearly as bad as they make it sound.”
That feeling did not last. But the film really does begin with promise! The first third is quite good! Sure, the voiceovers are annoying and unnecessary, but that’s the kind of thing where you can practically hear the confused memos from studio execs forcing awkwardness onto the film. The cast is strong, with a few standouts, such as Kyle MacLachlan as Paul Atreides and Brad Dourif as Piter De Vries, and while the Baron Harkonnen character has some, uh, problems (to put it mildly), those problems aren’t with Kenneth McMillan’s performance.
One aspect of Lynch’s Dune that remains impressive is the art and production design. For all of the film’s problems, the work overseen by production designer Anthony Masters (who also worked on 2001: A Space Odyssey) and art director Benjamín Fernández is incredible. Especially in the first half of the movie, the combination of wonderfully unique design, extensive use of miniatures and matte paintings, and the construction of elaborate sets do so much work in establishing this film’s different settings. The overall design is maximalist and baroque, and each setting has an immediately identifiable look and feel: the dark wooden rooms on Caladan contrasted with the garish gold around the emperor, or the nauseating industrialism of Giedi Prime versus the cramped underground warrens of Arrakeen.
Even though it’s a scene that some reviews—both contemporary and retrospective—call out as a bit too much, I completely adore the scene where the Spacing Guild comes to call on Emperor Shaddam IV (José Ferrer). I love everything about it: the fuss and anxiety of the emperor and his court in that gilded hall, the unsettling demeanor of the Navigator’s attendants and the jarring language translation, the Navigator arriving in that tank that looks like a combination of an art deco train engine and a steampunk contraption, and the lumpy design of the Navigator themself and the constant focus on that spice-breathing sphincter-like mouth. I even love the small detail that there are attendants mopping the floor as the Navigator arrives and leaves.
I know the scene exists to provide exposition—to explain the film’s entire plot, really—but it also serves to demonstrate just how weird the universe of Dune really is.
Unfortunately, it also emphasizes just how poorly later scenes in the film hold up, particularly those that are supposed to show Paul and Jessica’s (played by Francesa Annis) time with the Fremen. We see and feel places where massive chunks of the story were cut out or abbreviated; Universal insisted on editing Lynch’s first rough cut of three to four hours down to two hours, which is why there are all those time skips and voiceovers. That’s a problem for any film, but it’s especially a problem for a film that is supposed to show a young man’s transformation from feudal heir to messianic cult leader. That’s the kind of story that needs to show its work, because the themes of politics and religion and rebellion and power are really very complicated.
To clarify something that is sometimes misreported: Lynch had nothing to do with the longer television version that came out in 1988, nor with any of the other re-edits and versions that have come out since. When he did speak about Dune, which was rarely, he was openly bitter about how it had gone. He once said, “Don’t make a film if it can’t be the film you want to make. It’s a sick joke, and it’ll kill you.” Only after decades had passed did he express interest in a director’s cut but, tragically, it’s too late now.
It’s not that I think all of Dune’s problems would have been solved with more time and more money. More time and more money would not have solved the problem of the almost childishly over-the-top Harkonnen characters. It wasn’t a lack of time or money that had them bringing Toto on to do the soundtrack—which is fine in some places, but laughable in others. And nothing can explain Sting and his winged codpiece. Why is Sting even there? Some things only make sense in the ’80s.
In a larger sense, the adaptation was always going to be complicated by the fact that in Herbert’s novel, Paul Atreides is very much not a Hollywood-style heroic figure. That’s kinda the whole point of the story. And as we have previously discussed, Hollywood in the early 1980s was not terribly favorable toward sci fi films without heroic plotlines. There was always a fundamental disconnect between what the studio wanted and what Dune actually is, and that’s not something that would go away even with all the time and money in the world.
Even so, I would have liked to see it. I wish we had a chance to watch the version of Dune that existed in David Lynch’s screenplay and imagination. I would love to see the full version of Dune that Lynch tried to make, flaws and all. There is enough that is weird and dark and wonderful in the movie to hint at what could have been.
It wouldn’t have been perfect. Maybe it wouldn’t even have been good. But I bet it would have been glorious.
What do you think about Dune? I didn’t even talk about the worms. I have no complaints about the worms. I think they’re cute and very large and they can chomp anything they want. I’m always cheering for the worms.
Next week: It’s hard for me to articulate just how formative Twin Peaks was for me as an impressionable tween who suspected the world was so much more fucked up than adults were telling us. Watch Twin Peaks: Fire Walk With Me on Max, Criterion, Amazon, Apple, or Fandango.
“Some things only make sense in the ’80s.” Also true of the 70’s, and for that matter the 90’s. Probably every decade.
You should check out the SciFi miniseries of Dune, and especially Children of Dune.
I saw Lynch’s Dune in the theater and since I’d read the book I could follow along, but no one who hadn’t read the book had any idea what was happening.
I liked the SciFi version of Dune, but really, really liked the sequel Children of Dune. And I cannot explain why, other than an over-reliance on Paul’s interior monologues/LSD trips in the first mini-series seemed to muddle the story and the pacing.
Of course, I should add that I am one of those annoying readers who tells everyone that the story does not conclude until you go through Dune Messiah and Children of Dune.
As I was writing I was trying to remember if I’d seen any of the SciFi miniseries. I think I watched part of it, but not enough for me to remember more.
There are so many places in the film where it’s obvious somebody sent the production notes telling them to explain things more clearly, but I feel like some of those actually make the problem worse. A dense story is still a dense story even when the characters tell us what’s going on.
The miniseries does an excellent job of condensing the book, if “condensing” is the right word for a 6-hour presentation. I particularly like how it expands the role of Princess Irulan to an active participant.
They even reputedly gave out glossaries to audience members, which really says something.
I had forgotten that glossary. I think I had one. I definitely had the t-shirt they gave out. Since I was rereading the book while I stood in line for opening night, I was disappointed in the movie, although I have always blamed the weirdness on Lynch. He wants to make his movie, saying what he wants to say, not adapt someone else’s story. It made me very wary of movie adaptations of books I liked for a long time.
I had not realized quite how many movies Sting was in during the 80’s. Wikipedia says 12, many of which would be appropriate for this site.
IMDB says eight. They are:
Artemis 81 (TV movie)
Brimstone & Treacle
Dune
The Bride
Plenty
Julia and Julia
Stormy Monday
The Adventures of Baron Munchausen
I remember catching the TV version at like 2am on some random channel (I want to say Disney but that couldn’t possibly be right) in the mid-to-late 90s. I was completely entranced by how beautiful and expansive the design and worldbuilding was, but also shocked at how bad the pacing and storytelling was. I didn’t even know there WAS a shorter version for a few years, I thought the TV version was the original (I still prefer the opening with the illustrations to the on-screen narrator). My parents had hardcovers of all the novels sitting on a shelf in our living room, so I was aware of it, but didn’t know anything about it until I saw the movie. This was at a time in my life (just starting high school) when I was really beginning to discover the vast world of science fiction and fantasy, so even though it’s not great, this version of Dune really holds a special place in my heart and I’m always drawn to it.
Same! Except my parents had mass markets haha.
Yes! The art design is SO GOOD. It’s beautiful and weird and evocative, and the locations all have that lived-in feel that sci fi was finally figuring out through the 70s and 80s. They really did have a vision for creating the worlds in the story.
I have a soft spot for this film. I saw it fairly soon after I read the novel for the first time. My (first) copy of the novel had the tie-in cover art and included some stills from the film. The visual design of this film (which I tend to agree is the best part of it) influenced my minds’ eye view of the characters and settings before I had seen it. So it feels right to me. But I also had the benefit of reading the novel before seeing it, so I didn’t have to struggle to make sense of the plot – I just had to reconcile how it was different.
I haven’t re-watched it in a long time, but from what I recall, I agree that it starts off well and it is sort of tantalizing to imagine what might have been if the last third of the film wasn’t rushed, confused mess. But I also agree that there is a deeper problem in the adaptation that couldn’t have been fixed with more time or money: this film not only misses the point of the novel, it actually ends up celebrating, or at least recapitulating, the very notions that the novel questions and criticizes. As you rightly point out, you can’t change Dune into a straightforward hero’s journey without creating a fundamental disconnect.
However, my understanding is that Herbert himself was fine with the film’s take on the themes, although he seems to have been a bit cagey about his opinion of the ending in the quotes I have read.
Yes, that’s an interesting aspect. From what I found, Herbert seems to have been pretty understanding of the gargantuan task of adapting Dune to screen, and appreciative of the people who tried, and was therefore pretty philosophical about any changes. Maybe he was being diplomatic, maybe those were his genuine thoughts, but he seems to have had a pretty evenhanded view on source material versus adaptation, at least in public.
Some side notes on who could have directed Return of the Jedi: Lucas didn’t ask just anyone; his list of candidates was eclectic in part because, due to his rift with the Director’s Guild, he needed a non-union hand. Spielberg was receptive but would have had to quit the Guild.
As for Lynch, he expressed interest but wanted to be able to use his own people for FX and sound. Imagine a Star War without ILM or Ben Burtt? (Or Stuart Freeborn, for that matter? I assume Lynch would have wanted his own makeup department too.) This all may have been a bluff, a way of turning down the job without offending Lucas, but we’ll probably never know.
Yes, the story of getting Return of the Jedi into production is an interesting one
And, yeah, Lynch said in a few interviews over the years what everybody who turned down Return of the Jedi was thinking: no matter who came on as director, it was going to be Lucas’s film, and he didn’t want to work like that. It really is hard to imagine the movie without ILM et al.
I saw the 1984 version when it came out and have rewatched it many times. I read all the Dune books at the time they came out. (Excluding, of course, the Brian Herbert & Kevin Anderson prequel/postquels – what dreck!)
I was incredibly disappointed in the new movie. The only good thing in it was the ornithopters. The ending of the new one, with no Alia and the incredibly wooden actress Zendaya pouting, was horrible.
I can understand how working with child actors can be seen as a nuisance. However, the act of excising Alia from Dune 2: Wormsign Boogaloo is sure to bite them in the hinder when adapting Dune Messiah.
As a curious fact, much of the material used in Dune remained at Churubusco studios and was used in very bad and funny B-movies like the iconic and ridiculous “2 Nacos on the Planet of Women”
“a combination of an art deco train and a steampunk contraption”
Ah, that is what has been bothering me about Dune since watching it in 1984 — it is steampunk before steampunk. Which design choice is probably the only one that could make any sense out of Mr. Herbert’s ornithopters. But it was a bit too soon for me, struggling to handle the idea that the far future would be steam-driven.
“It wasn’t a lack of time or money that had them bringing Toto on to do the soundtrack—which is fine in some places, but laughable in others. “
For me, the soundtrack was the best part of the movie. Apart from the worms, of course.
I felt like at times the soundtrack was amazing, but at times I was like “Oh, right, Toto.” A mixed bag for me–but definitely not all terrible. I have a fondness for the most extravagantly 1980s film soundtracks.
I unapologetically love this film. Yes, structurally it’s the first half of a longer movie with a brief coda tacked on to the end. But I think if you come into it accepting it as the first half of a Dune film it becomes easier to appreciate.
Lynch is an exceptional choice to make a science fiction film because he can make a science fiction film that is just pervasively weird.
The reality is the future is alien—if you took a Sumerian peasant and dropped them into, say, Akihabara Tokyo I don’t think they’d have the mental framework to process the experience. And Dune exists in a future far more removed from the present than our poor Sumerian with their handful of idol flyers is from us.
Villeneuve’s Dune is good, but it’s not distinctive in the way Lynch’s is. In 40 years I think a viewer is going to be hard pressed to recall specifics of Villeneuve’s Dune beyond the casting.
As an aside they actually licensed Lynch’s Dune to toy companies to tie into the movie. I had a little electric sand buggy running about the living room and had the Parker Brothers board game on the shelf.
Yes! The pervasive weirdness and alieness of the future is exactly what I find so compelling! And I love the juxtaposition between a feudal political structure–which *should* feel familiar–and so much that is not remotely familiar at all.
It’s one of the reasons I love it – in fact, it’s my favourite ever film, despite all it’s faults. It’s one of the few science fiction films where you genuinely get the sense that the people depicted are in no sense living in a society like ours. They just don’t act like it. Almost everything is off. It’s an alien society of the future – isn’t that something to strive to depict. And it’s almost like it came about by accident!
I saw it when it first came out. I was a big fan of the book and I absolutely hated the movie. I would have struggled to articulate why, but I would also have struggled to find a single redeeming feature.
Much more recently, and aware that there’s a significant (if select) band who think it’s a masterpiece, I summoned up the courage to watch it again. I still didn’t much like it, but I couldn’t quite recapture the visceral disgust I felt on first viewing. It’s not good, but it’s not cringe-inducingly bad (not like Vertical Limit, which as a climber is my benchmark for just how awful a high-concept movie can be).
Partly that’s because I’m not quite so besotted with the book as I was forty years ago (and we don’t even talk about the sequels, do we?). Then, I’d have called it an unqualified masterpiece; now I think it’s still a masterwork, but a deeply flawed one. And it’s possible that some of the things that unsettled me with the movie unsettled me precisely because they were intimations of some of the things I’d come to see as flaws with the book. The voiceovers are bad in every way, but they do echo the obsessive way the book harps on phrases like terrible purpose… I’m clear now, I don’t buy this portentous prophecy stuff in the book, and maybe it’s the movie that kindled my realisation.
On the other hand, one of the great strengths of the book is its sensitivity to ecological issues, and this is one of the things the movie criminally underplayed. It also seemed to almost wilfully misinterpret what Herbert had in mind when he wrote about Voice.
But I can also see that many of its problems would stem from the budget and production difficulties, and a studio that wanted a Star Wars clone (now that would have been a mind-killer).
So I’ve softened towards it, somewhat, but I don’t suppose I’ll ever be tempted to watch it again.
And, yes, you’re right, Sting was miscast.
I appreciate your thoughts on Dune, but also I have to tell you I laughed out loud at the Vertical Limit mention. TRULY A SHOCKINGLY BAD FILM. I had forgotten it existed until now. Wow.
I didn’t get into the prophecy stuff re: Dune, because it’s been so long since I’ve read the book and don’t recall how it compares, but man, does my mind struggle with stories built on prophesies. even weird eugenics breeding prophesies. The movie’s constant reminders that come without any sort of worldbuilding depth did not help.
I always think of this movie as “the one with the Atreides battle pug”. Would love to have seen the expression on Sir Pat’s face when it was handed to him for their charge.
Without reservation, I love the David Lynch version of Dune!
I first saw it as a late night movie some late 80’s summer weekend in High School. I’d set the VCR to tape it because I’d missed it in the theatres a few years prior, and I was adding any sci-fi/fantasy films I could to my growing VCR movie collection at the time. And in the semi-fuge state of watching a movie at 2AM on a Saturday, the movie drilled it’s bizarre qualities straight into my brain.
With no attachment to the books (which I wouldn’t read for a few years yet), I just let the strangeness of Lynch’s Dune wash over me. As a huge fan of Heavy Metal Magazine at the time, this film had all the hallmarks of their best stories; strange settings, stilted and arch characters, positively wild visuals and production design and a soundtrack that could only have happened in 1984. The scenes of the film filled my head for weeks. Shield belts. Weirding Modules. Still Suits. Royal telepaths and Walking Without Rhythm. The Gom Jabbar and the Litany Against Fear.
I know that the movie was considered a flop at the time, but I thought it was the closest thing to a Sc-Fi Art Film made by the Metal Hurlant crew I’d ever seen. Or ever get. I probably watched that tape 2 dozen times that year. One of the first CD’s I ever bought years later was the soundtrack. It became one of my Foundational Favourite films. I didn’t care what anyone said.
Yes, I did eventually read the book. And while I liked the book, and understood why it was one of the fundamental texts of modern Sc-Fi, I felt like the two experiences weren’t mutually exclusive. Sure, the book evokes a far more complicated and vast universe with depth and nuance that would never have made it to the screen. And that was fine with me. I can understand why invested fans would be unhappy with what they got. But as a kid and a sci-fi fan still learning about the scene, the 1984 Dune film offered ideas and concepts that no other project would even dream of at the time. Sure, they tried to turn it into Star Wars, but the depth of Herbet’s creation and Lynch’s strong stylized vision still survives in the final product, no matter how maligned it might be.
Adapting literary works between mediums is always a balance of sacrifice and revelation. Weather as a tv miniseries or polished Hollywood blockbuster, nothing can ever compete with the story we see in our heads as we read someone like Dune. And for me, the Lynch Dune will always be where my experience with the story starts. It still got me to read the books. I can do both and enjoy them for different reasons.
But I’ll die on the hill that the Shield Fight scene in 1984 Dune is far better than the boring re/blue glimmers of the Villineuve movies, and that the Weirding Module is one of the most unique weapons in science fiction anywhere. ;)
Seconded! Special effects will never look like that again. I don’t think anything will ever look like this film again!
The weirding module was the thing I loathed most about the film… but full explanation needs a full comment, upcoming. ^^;;
Oh, yeah. I’m glad you mentioned that. I think it was when I saw the shield effects in Villeneuve’s Dune that started to get distracted comparing it to the 1984 film. Not in a “holy writ shalt not be changed” way but in a “huh, that’s a bit dull” way. Or that might have been strike two. I can’t recall off the top of my head if the Guild navigator meets the emperor scene happens before the training scene.
The ornithopters were cool though. And the floaty gravity pack stuff.
I tell you what else was dull (at least in the first new film) – The Harkonnens.
I really like the new films, and they do get the book better. However, for me Dune is like Dickens or something – they can make as many adaptations as they like, and I’ll like something about every one and be glad they all exist.
However, Dune 1984 will always be my favourite film…
I like to chime in on 1984 Dune discussions as an outlier perspective; I hadn’t read the book when I saw it and I loved it. People who had read the book asked me, “But how could you understand it?”, which I thought was demeaning. I appreciated the voiceovers as useful storytelling, which mimicked Irulan’s chapter openings. I do recognize that a book fan was not going to forgive the superficial treatment of so many characters and plot points, but coming in blind I found it enchanting.
I remember, as a kid, seeing all the toys and wanting a sandworm, so the film did play a significant part in my awareness of this thing called Dune, and the first copy of the book I got was from a secondhand book shop and was the movie tie in version with pictures on the back.
I will admit that I struggled with the book on my first reading, so if Lynch was new to it I can understand him not taking everything in, or focussing more on some elements, along with all the interference. Plus I’ve never minded a film deviating from a book if it does so in an interesting way, so I don’t mark him down for that. I have since reread and enjoyed the book and gone on to the sequels that do so much work dismantling all the prophecies.
The film I only saw a few years ago when I went out of my way to procure a blu ray of it from another region. Like others, I really like the design of the piece, and the way the Voice is realised works really well as this awesome terrible thing. Patrick Stewart in a big science fiction role is another draw. The shields are a bit hokey nowadays but I would have been obsessed by the visualisation as a kid. But it is totally the fact that the last half hour is just a thing happening after another thing happening so that we can get to the end that is the biggest failure for me. It does sit for me as a relentlessly 80s mainstream sci-fi, so fits alongside things like the Last Starfighter as something that I can watch and feel like it’s in my comfort zone even if I know it’s not great.
I do think if you could take the weird from this film and mash it up with the space and budget available from Villeneuve’s films you might get something great. (I will say I watched the new films and just went “OK, it’s fine”, without ever feeling it was a masterpiece, but also recognising that we rarely get science fiction films of that sort!)
“I will admit that I struggled with the book on my first reading, so if Lynch was new to it I can understand him not taking everything in…”
That doesn’t follow. Anyone adapting a book into a movie is sure to read it multiple times, to study and analyze it much more closely than a recreational reader needs to. Lynch and his collaborators took six months to write the first couple of drafts.
It doesn’t matter whether a writer has prior familiarity with a concept before getting assigned to write it, because research is an intrinsic part of the job. Just as with any other job, if you’re hired to do it, then you do the necessary training to learn the knowledge and skills required for the task. Harve Bennett and Nicholas Meyer were unfamiliar with Star Trek when they were hired to do The Wrath of Khan, but they sat down and watched the entire series a couple of times and got to know it well enough to make a movie about it, one that most Trek fans adore (though I have no clue why). When I was hired to write a Spider-Man novel, I knew the character only from TV and from recent comics, but I read the entire run of The Amazing Spider-Man and as many other Spidey comics as I could get my hands on, and reviewers praised my novel for its encyclopedic grasp of series continuity. Cramming the entire series in a matter of weeks probably gave me a better understanding of it than I’d have if I’d been casually reading it my entire life, because study for a job is a different thing from reading for recreation.
“Anyone adapting a book into a movie is sure to read it multiple times, to study and analyze it much more closely than a recreational reader needs to.”
Not necessarily. I believe there have been instances where the assigned screenwriter gives up partway through and just makes up stuff (the film version of Howl’s Moving Castle certainly gives that impression). Or a previously submitted screenplay moldering in the files that kind of sort of resembles the novel in question if you squint hard and perhaps partake in certain narcotics gets used.
Sorry, that doesn’t make sense. “Gives up partway through?” That’s not how writing works. Nothing is written in a single draft. You outline, you revise the outline, you write the manuscript, you rewrite it, you rewrite it again and again, and if it doesn’t work, you go back and write a new outline and start over. Screenwriting is even more complicated, since most movies employ multiple writers to work on multiple separate drafts, then cut and paste bits of various different drafts together. If a film’s script diverges from the novel it’s based on, that’s not because they stopped reading the novel — it’s because they read the whole thing and decided what parts to keep and what parts to change.
I think you misread the comment – it was meant give up on reading the whole book and just finish the story however they felt.
Yes, I know that’s what was meant, and my point is that it makes no sense. It is illogical to assume that the only reason a screenwriter wouldn’t use material from the book is because they didn’t read it. As I said, they’d have to read the whole thing first before deciding what parts they would or wouldn’t use.
Also, of course, no major motion picture has only one person involved in crafting the script. Again, most Hollywood movies have many writers, most of them uncredited. And even if, by some miracle, a film only had one screenwriter, they’d be working for the producer(s) and director. Presumably they’d all have read the book and would have conversations about what to use or not use. Even if one party “gave up” and didn’t complete reading the source material, presumably the other parties would’ve done their due diligence.
Apologies, I was just reflecting on my own experience, not trying to shine a light on how cinema works.
You have nothing to apologize for. We enjoy hearing everyone’s experiences and perspectives. There’s no one right opinion. You’re certainly not alone in struggling with that book. It’s not necessarily an easy read. I appreciate the comments of people who were able to see the movie with fresh eyes.
At the time it came out, I liked to compare it to the 2010 movie, because they came out around the same time and provided a useful contrast. Both showed that it was almost impossible to be literally faithful to a book… but it was possible for a movie adaptation to be faithful to the spirit of the book, and I thought 2010 worked while Dune failed.
One of the big themes I took out of 2010 the book is the camaraderie between spacefarers and international cooperation in the face of the universe, much larger than mankind. The Chinese tried to go it alone and failed; the Americans and Soviets worked together and succeeded, The movie ramped Cold War tensions up to 1000, but the basic message still worked.
Dune, however… aside from the feudalistic machinations and exploration of prophecy, one of the big themes I saw was the enhancement and honing of human potential, and its superiority over the machine. The Butlerian Jihad and the Bene Gesserit breeding program. Mentats and Guild Navigators. The meta purpose of shields, to eliminate all ranged combat and bring it back into the purely human hand-to-hand realm. (Even a little thing like both major House heirs, Paul and Feyd, being trained to the highest potential as fighters.) How the Emperor’s feared Sardaukar were a product of harsh Salusa Secundus, and the potential Duke Leto saw – and Paul realized – for turning the Fremen into a similar force, with Arrakis being an even harsher environment. And then the movie introduced the plot gimmick of the weirding device, which spat on all of that – what mattered wasn’t training and human potential, but a magic technical gizmo. There were things I liked about the movie, and other things I hated (the grotesque fixations, Baron Harkonen – he should be a blob spilling over in a chair, as in that memorable bit of art, not a balloon zipping around the room! Another twisting of the spirit of the story, because it countered his characterization as slow, ponderous, but thorough.) But the weirding device is a good symbol for how the movie missed the spirit of the book.
While your points about how the weirding modules fly in the face of the themes of the novel are correct, I don’t think you really capture the stupidity of them. They are dumb. They make no sense in terms of weaponry (how are they better than the blasters that everyone uses?) They make no sense as a “secret weapon” that justifies the Emperor’s betrayal of House Atreides. They haven almost no function in the plot whatsoever. What are they even doing in the movie?
People complain about the voiceovers, but that’s a pleasant narrative device compared to the insult of the weirding modules.
But then, I actually like the visualization of the personal shields in this version, so what do I know.
I felt that 2010 was pretty close to the book. It streamlined a lot, left out major subplots and story threads to trim it down to movie length, but aside from tacking on the heightened Cold War tension (which made the film feel really dated after 1991 or so) — and aside from the whitewashed casting of Dr. Chandra — it stayed quite faithful to the key plot and character points. And it was impressively faithful where the science was concerned, aside from occasionally having people standing and walking in portions of the Discovery that should’ve been in free fall. (The movie actually improved on the book’s depiction of the Leonov‘s aerobraking maneuver, thanks to the research Hyams, Clarke, and their scientific consultants did in planning the sequence.)
Eh, I think it’s hard to call it literally faithful to the book if they cut out that much – like I said, the Tsien serves an important thematic point, and it does it without demonizing the Chinese, which is a nice needle to thread. :) And I think the Cold War tensions really change the tone of the story – the book treats the Soviets as friendly and fairly trustworthy from the start, which was an even bigger thing when it was written, and I missed that in the movie.
But that’s kind of the point for me – you can do those kind of major changes to the story and still stay true to the heart of it. As 2010 did, and I greatly like and respect it for that. Dune also made major changes, but in ways that cut directly against one of the major themes of the original story – and in the dumb-action-movie direction, to boot.
“Eh, I think it’s hard to call it literally faithful to the book if they cut out that much”
You can’t make a movie out of a novel without cutting out a huge amount, unless the movie’s 5-6 hours long. So the cutting was inevitable. Given that, by the standards of movie adaptations of novels in general, 2010 stayed closer to the general outline and events of the story than a lot of other films have. The parts it did leave in were pretty much the same as in the book, aside from the added Cold War tension. Though I share your dislike for that element of the movie. Clarke understood that American and Soviet scientists and astro/cosmonauts tended to get along much better than their respective governments did, because of their shared commitment to science and discovery over politics. So having the two crews be as hostile to each other as the movie depicted them seemed unrealistic to me.
I think you’re missing my point. I agree you can’t fit the text of a typical novel into the space of a movie; that’s why I called it almost impossible to be literally faithful to a novel, because there’s no way to fit the whole of the book- the literal text – into a movie. You’re going to have to cut and compress at a minimum, and that means it can’t be literally faithful by definition. You have to adapt, cutting out subplots, streamlining action, interpolating transitional material to cover what was cut. Like replacing the Tsien subplot with the Leonov detecting chlorophyll and sending a probe down. That’s not being literally faithful to the text, even if it’s necessary.
So the question is not whether you adapt, it’s whether the adaptations are true to the spirit of the story. For example, I think something is lost by replacing the Tsien with the probe (quite a bit, in fact), but it doesn’t actively contradict the themes of the story and functionally moves the plot along while putting in the hint of life on Europa, so I’ll call it workable and move on.
Dune did things that didn’t just compress and rejigger, but actively changed the story in bad ways. (There’s the whole Aylia “he is the chosen one” moment at the end, for another example, which was played completely straight instead of sardonically.) That’s why 2010 was the better adaptation.
I think you’re defining it on too granular a level. Yes, the details and subplots are changed, but the overall outline of the story in 2010 is mostly faithful to the book, or at least more so than a lot of movie adaptations of novels. Aside from the increased Cold War tension, the removal of the Tsien subplot, and a few other minor tweaks, all the major events and characters of the film come from the novel, rather than being invented from whole cloth. That’s what I mean by fidelity. The movie tells the same story as the novel, it just tells it with some differences.
Thank you for not rehashing every review of Dune ever. As for my thoughts? Enjoyed the movie when I first saw it but luckily I had read the book beforehand. I cannot imagine the WTF-ness of seeing it cold. So many good actors (and also Sting), so much potential, so little sense as an end product barfed out by the studio system. What was David Lynch thinking?