Dune

Rating:
Summary: most (but not all) the reviews are accurate
Review: The reviewer is right when he says it is a love-it or hate-it affair. If you like dark sci-fi movies (a la Bladerunner) you will probably enjoy it. Think of this as a vision movie. A lot is said in pictures, tone, and body language; not dialogue (much as Conan was told in music). Overall, it is better than the Sci Fi version, unless you are a FX junky, need dialogue driven storytelling, or were big on the book (as it does explain a lot more), in which case you will hate it. There are some major concerns. The effects are not great, but it was released in '84 with a budget nowhere near Return of the Jedi--come on. Remastering would probably help (as it did with Star Wars). Another concern of many is the constant whispering (to show the what the characters think). I personally loved this idea. But for those hard of hearing or easily annoyed, it can be aggravating. The story is fractured and syncopated. It was intended as such, to be told in dreams and windows to different characters. The one critical flaw (IMHO) is the breakdown of the story 3/4 way through (5 minutes was devoted to 2 years of time). I got the feeling that Lynch cut a bunch out right there. Also, the lack of expanation gets old. Whether or not these areas are the case with the 3+ hour TV version I can't recall as I have only seen it twice (the latest ~10 years ago). My suggestion: rent it and watch it, don't listen to us. You will like it or not, only you can decide.

Rating:
Summary: Heavens to Betsy, THIS is "Dune"!?
Review: In a lofty gesture, the Emperor of the Known Universe has granted sovereignty over Arrakis to Duke Leto Atreides. Little does Leto know, however, that the Emperor secretly conspires with Baron Harkonnen to wipe out House Atreides in a surprise attack. None suspect, though, that dessicated Arrakis - "Dune" - the sole source of the penultimate asset, "spice" - has its own legendary defender: the messianic leader of the desert-dwelling Fremen, Muad'Dib, Kwisatz Haderach - the Supreme Being.

Never having read "Dune" in the first place I was unsure whether I would be able to absorb the film properly. My worries were groundless: anyone with a pair of eyes and half a brain can see that this film adaptation is horrible. Lynch's "Dune" suffers from plasticky sets, make-up that makes every actor look sweaty, awful camerawork and lighting, and campy special effects. The overall impression of the plot is that the highlight scenes from the book were filmed and then strung together in the most inept way imaginable. Lynch attempts to give the viewers a feeling for the book's depth - by telegraphing and just plain telling everything that is about to happen, and then reiterating it by making us listen to what the characters are "thinking." The acting is even worse, if that is possible: everyone seems intent on stealing the scene, declamating and overdramatizing instead of acting well.

"Dune" does have a measure of raw, perverse power - though this is to be expected from a film with a lot of explosions, shouting, simulated sex and gallons of ketchup blood, swordfights, nasty grimaces and all sorts of slimy monsters. A good-enough incentive to read the actual book, this film's own merit is essentially nil.

Rating:
Summary: Great but Frank Herbert's is better.
Review: This was a good movie, don't get me wrong, but for the true dune fan you should deffinately go for Frank Herbert's Dune a version from the great Sci-Fi channel. Of course Herbert's is 6 hours long, so if you are not a fanatic see this one first.

Rating:
Summary: A feast for the senses and the mind
Review: David Lynch's "DUNE" is a feast for the mind and the senses. Using state of the art special effects (at the time) and pre- recorded inner dialog, Lynch's adaption of Frank Herbert's novel is an real treat. While some found it weird (and it is) the visuals should be enough to sustain the average movie-goer. Kyle MacLachlan is excellent as Paul Atreides in his first major film role. Using his powerful method acting to keep up with the screen presence of Patrick Stewart, Virginia Madsen, Max Von Sydow, and Linda Hunt, MacLachlan is dead on and always keeping his own. The other cast members are very good as well, especially Stewart and Von Sydow. The worms are wonderfully executed, and they don't look horribly fake because the film makers used puppets rather than stop motion animation to move them. Bottom line, for fun and thought from the master of bizzaro-world, look no further than David Lynch's "DUNE."

Rating:
Summary: Legendary Movie. DVD is a letdown.
Review: As the Amazon review before so astutely pointed out, this is a "love-it" or "hate-it" kind of movie. The only comment I will make to that effect is that I recently read an interview with Lynch and Herbert (before Dune's theatrical release), in which both seemed very pleased with the final cut. Personally I feel that Dune's box office failure coupled with the universally poor reviews, led Lynch to practice some revisionist history and later admit that he was displeased with the result. To me this is similar to John Carpenter's scorn for Big Trouble in Little China (also a fine film which had poor critical acclaim and meager box office returns).

Anyway, regarding the Dune DVD... This DVD was made, as the DVD format was still relatively new. Perhaps because of this the sound and image fidelity is not up to par with more recent releases. And then there is the total lack of extras. If ever there was a film that needed a directors commentary, or behind the scenes video, concept art, matte paintings, or maybe an interactive "family tree" showing the relationship of all the characters, then this is it.

Film buffs should enjoy Dune, because in this day and age of targeted marketing never again will a movie such as this be made. Lynch is an academy award-nominated director (Blue Velvet) and in this film it shows. But the plot is just too complex, and the subject matter to dark for this movie to ever have been a mainstream success. But like all great movies, Dune seems to have found its niche and will continue to be a cult classic. Perhaps one day someone will do the DVD justice.

And for what its worth the movie is infinitely better (with the one exception of Barbara Kotedova as Chani) than the Sci-Fi miniseries.

Rating:
Summary: Not Too Long, But Too Short! (VHS version)
Review: When I heard that a "Dune" movie was coming out, I was highly skeptical. The story is too intricate, with too many interwoven plots and subplots ("a feint within a feint within a feint") to be done any justice in a movie. After seeing the "Shogun" miniseries, I knew that this was the format that fit a "Dune". A ten-hour miniseries on the small screen could have been infinitely better than anything on the wide screen.

After seeing "Dune", I knew I was right. They did what they could with the time limitations, but there was just too much to put into the movie. The soundtrack was good, the acting was good (although Kyle MacLachlan did not look tough enough to do what had to be done), and some scenes were memorable. The special effects varied greatly throughout the movie in their quality. Some reviewers have complained that the movie was weird. "Dune" IS weird. While these are humans, the setting is 9000 years in the future, and the society should be transformed almost beyond recognition. My complaint is that the time limitation (inevitably) resulted in a movie that came off like a very long trailer or preview. It hopped around like a rabbit, and it must have been nearly incomprehensible for anyone unfamiliar with the story. The result is nightmarish and surreal, but the story is almost absent.

The uncut version, which was hard to find until it came out on DVD, was definitely better. It's almost an hour longer and gives you enough meat to take you beyond the appetizer stage. I'd give the uncut version 3.5 stars, despite the annoying Japanese subtitles (which I assume are not on the DVD version, which I haven't seen).

Rating:
Summary: Great effects and costumes
Review: At least Lynch got the language and costumes correct. You will either love or hate this movie but you must respect the sets and speech patterns. Of course Lynch made wholesale changes to the story of Dune. There was no intention of making more movies, and Dune is a series of novels that is still growing today.

Rating:
Summary: Nice video, shame about the song
Review: It's best to think of this as more as an audio-visual feast than a proper film. 'Dune', the novel, is big and complex, requiring that the reader has an understanding of the far-future universe before he or she can grasp the complexities of the story (which, at heart, is an old-fashioned tale of feudal intrigue). Lynch adapts the book completely the wrong way - he stuffs in as many concepts and characters as he can, whilst removing large parts of the story. The upshot is that a lot of actors appear at the beginning of the film, introduce themselves, and then vanish, leaving us, the audience, wondering whether we were supposed to remember them, and wondering if they were important. Patrick Stewart, for example, appears for less than ten minutes, despite being quite a major character. But as something to look at and listen to it's superb. The production design is very reminiscent of the 1980 'Flash Gordon', but darker and more baroque, and is based in part on sketches by H R Giger (created for an aborted mid-70s version of the film), and the 'look' is almost uniformly perfect. The music, by arch-AOR session men Toto, is actually quite good, and there's a little bit of Brian Eno in there too. Patrick Stewart, Jurgen Prochnow and Francesca Annis (who looks very nice in a stillsuit) are pretty much definitive in their roles, whilst the rest of the actors range from good (McLachlan) to sort-of-okayish (Sting isn't all *that* bad, not that he has very much to do) to poor (Freddy Jones and that horrible little girl). Lynch himself was very disappointment with the result, and this might be the reason why the DVD itself doesn't have a great deal of extras (a trailer and some notes, essentially).

Rating:
Summary: BAD BAD BAD BAD BAD BAD BAD BAD!!
Review: I saw it a few months back to compare it with the recent "Frank Herbert's DUNE" miniseries. I was disgusted. More than that I was insulted. This has to be the worst movie I have ever seen (save "Mission to Mars").

It's not like there's just one nagging thing here or there, but THE ENTIRE MOVIE IS SCREWED UP! The acting is atrocious, the screenplay has the feel of a badly written 4th grade book report, the special effects for it's day are a joke (Return of the Jedi came out a year before this with superbly better effects, and Star Trek 3, with great effects for it's time, came out the same year), and the entire feel of the movie is wrong. The Baron Harkonnen is portrayed as a grotesque slob with nothing better to do than laugh and look stupid. Feyd (Sting) is shown as nothing more than a madman wearing a stupid H.R. Giger-esque suit (which is also what the stillsuits looked like. Yeah, really smart to wear all-black suits in the scorching deserts of Arrakis). Thufir Howat looks like a comatosed Dr. Who reject. Stilgar looks like a caveman......all the characters were portrayed like clowns or comic book characters! It's like Lynch ripped out every 20th page of the book, slapped it together, and made a script out of it. Oh yes, the script......... film students have failed courses and been kicked out of their colleges for writing scripts better than this. The music was good until they added that 80s pop crap to it. Shai-Hulud, the great sandworm of Arrakis, looked like a sock puppet. The ornithopters looked like magical flying cardboard boxes. The Spacing Guild Liner looked like a drawing cutout and literally faded into the space above Arrakis (the Romulan ships in Star Trek had an excuse for using such a simplistic effect, it was 1967. This was made in 1984). Alia, Paul's little sister, looked and sounded more like she was possessed by something out of Martha Stewart's nightmares than a child with a Reverend Mother's powers. Important characters like Fenring, Otheym, Jamis, and even the fact that Paul and Chani had a son who was killed in a Sardukar raid, were completely left out of the movie. And the thing with hearing the thoughts? AAAH! BAD LYNCH! BAD! NO SEQUEL RIGHTS FOR YOU! I seriously have to question the sanity and taste of the people who praised this film. Don't waste your money on this DVD or the VHS version. Heck, don't waste $... to rent it either, or the two hours to watch it. It's just not worth it. Few movies make me actually mad when I finish watching them. This one did. The miniseries was leaps and bounds better than this empty shell of a story that Lynch tried to call a movie....

Rating:
Summary: Lynch was true to the Herbert Novel
Review: In defense of Lynch's muddled masterpiece, I argue that it is ultimately faithful to Herbert's vision. For one thing, no less than the author, Frank Herbert himself, acted as consultant to the film, and Lynch took the trouble to actually film out in a real desert. The visual images are definitive and supportive of many of the concepts of Herbert's novel. For example, Lynch's Geidi Prime is a gritty industrial facility, visually conveying how the Harkonnens ruthlessly wring all economic value out of both the planets and people they control, just as they have tried to wrench as much spice as possible, legally and illegally, out of Arrakis.

Lynch prefaces our first view of Baron Harkonnen, by showing us the twisted mentat, DeVries,(the real brains behind behind the baron's plans to become emperor) commuting in, nervously (he's as disposable as any Harkonnen minion, and knows it) taking a quick slug of his sapho juice brain booster (an explanation of the "red stained lips"), before presenting the baron with the message tube we earlier saw Leto seal with the ducal signet ring back on Caladan, during a foreboding storm. The volatile baron is in the middle of getting his repulsive pustules treated by a fawning doctor (accurate, as I recall, to the book), while surgically mutilated workers stand mutely by. The obscene heart plugs and mutilated flunkies convey graphically, the technically loathsome and unconstrained exploitation exercised by the Harkonnens. The shocking image of the "heart plug" is a metaphor for the dehumanizing way the Harkonnens, as ABSOLUTE rulers view and use their people: people exist merely to suit their (not necessarily rational) whims which are unrestrained by any compassion, let alone moral law. When it suits the baron, he pulls the plug on any slave....literally, and the anti-gravity suit he wears is not only accurate to the book, but also visually conveys the no limits, out of control power lust of the character.

The Bene Gesserit sisterhood has been meddling in human affairs and manipulating bloodlines of the various houses, behind the scenes, for centuries, but it is ambiguous as to whether they are good or evil, progressive or reactionary, in Herbert's novel. The somber, nun-like, bald, women mystics of Lynch's film, who double as 'impartial' "truth-sayers," as Reverend Mother Mohaim is for the emperor in one of the earliest scenes of the Lynch film, exemplify the religious adage, that 'you cannot serve two masters,' and suggests the byzantine maneuverings they exercise behind all the events to come, which will eventually careen out of their control.

I felt that Kyle MacLachlan's young Paul was problematic, but that he improved during the course of the film. Jurgan Prochow was regal as the doomed charismatic Duke Leto, and we can sense the coming tragedy, as he and Jessica leave Caladan visually looking much like the Tsar Nicolas and Tsarina Alexandra of Russia, going off to be shot by the Bolsheviks. In the Lynch film, you also see the Suk doctor Yueh's mark of imperial conditioning, and the tragedy of his pitiable position as pawn of the Harkonnens, forced to betray the duke he serves. The royal planetologist Keynes, played by Max Von Sydow, perfectly conveys the scholarly recluse who has gone native as portrayed in Herbert's novel. The still suits of the Lynch movie have an authentic crafted look. The baroque look of the huge galactic transports and throne room on Kaitain, had a decadent and futuristic feel unlike anything I have ever seen, and I felt that they perfectly suggested an advanced society that once fought a war over "thinking machines," and now is uneasy with its technology. The zombie like guild members who must use a translating speaker to communicate because they are in one of the lesser stages of drug induced mutation, was also feels very true to Herbert's navigator's guild. The ornithopters where great on the inside, put poorly realized on the outside. It's too bad Lynch was not allowed to expand his movie. Herbert's book is full of intriguing and unsettling concepts and opposites, begging for explanation: "zen-suni" and "orange-catholic" religions; the political troika between 3 uneasy and very different groups with very different goals, not to mention a whole society totally dependant on and obsessed with, a mysterious drug, melange, that oddly, no one really knows much about; the mixture of mysticism, industrial technology and a ludite like fear of "thinking machines"; ruthless economical exploitation vs. a harsh ecology; planetary rulers running the gamut between patriarchical monarchy (Atreides) and ruthless, utterly selfish despotism (Haarkonens)-- with no trace of our much glorified democracy anywhere in sight; and complex personalities we want to know more about. In some ways, it may be futile to attempt to film such a complex novel, but Lynch made a decidedly powerful effort, hampered by lack of time to really develop the story.