
David Lynch’s Dune – A sci-fi film by a director without much care for sci-fi - rbanffy
http://www.tor.com/2017/04/18/david-lynchs-dune-is-what-you-get-when-you-build-a-science-fictional-world-with-no-interest-in-science-fiction/
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zekevermillion
I for one love SF _and_ Lynch's Dune. Is this article just an excuse to show
us the awesome set art? Not being sarcastic here, I really wish I could see
the full uncut version, have only seen the heavily edited TV one that airs
every year or two. It's great far-future stuff, and I think more interesting
(if less successful) than Alien or other Geiger-inspired sets.

I've read elsewhere on the Internet that Dune the novel actually is an
inspiration for the Star Wars universe, even if the Star Wars cinematography
predates and must influence (even if through intentional avoidance of such
appearance) Lynch's treatment of Dune...

[edit: fixed typo of Dune, not Doom]

~~~
flanbiscuit
I also love Lynch's Dune. I've seen the extended version once a long time ago.
From what I remember there was scenes of voiceovers and art explaining more of
the universe and the houses and their relationships.

Have you seen the documentary "Jodorowsky's Dune"? If you're a Dune fan, or a
fan of 70's and 80's era sci-fi films, I highly recommend it. What I found
most interesting about that documentary is how the director created this
amazing team to work on his Dune project, which eventually failed, but ended
up influencing the style/art of so many subsequent Sci-fi films because that
team dispersed and they worked on so many prominent films.

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jg4OCeSTL08](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jg4OCeSTL08)
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jodorowsky%27s_Dune](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jodorowsky%27s_Dune)

~~~
lobster_johnson
As a big fan of Jodorowsky (L'Incal is one my favourite graphic novels ever),
I think we could also unequivocally say that whatever he had made would _not_
have been very faithful to the book. It's quite possible that Dune fans would
have been even less happy with Jodorowsky's film than Lynch's.

We also have to remember that this was before Star Wars and Alien. Most scifi
at the time was, with some honourable exceptions (2001: A Space Odyssey,
Silent Running, The Andromeda Strain, Solaris), pretty silly, childish, often
campy stuff: The Black Hole, Buck Rogers, Moonraker. Pulp origins aside, Star
Wars introduces a level of violence, maturity and realism to the genre that
stood out at the time, and closer to that of contemporary adult 1970s
productions like Apocalypse Now, Easy Rider and so on.

For all the considerable talent involved in the Dune adaptation, it's quite
possible — and this eases the pain over the loss of the project a bit — that
it would have been closer in tone to something like Zardoz or Flash Gordon,
i.e. a big, colourful, but ultimately also a bit silly extravaganza. Even
O'Bannon's Alien script was also pretty pulpy and silly until Ridley Scott,
David Giler and Walter Hill hammered it into shape.

~~~
crispyambulance
I think one of the reasons why "Jodorowsky's Dune" is such an amazing
documentary is that it describes an impossibly ambitious film, something so
awesome that you're drawn into believing in it with the director himself.

If it really _were_ made however, yeah, it could _only_ have be a
disappointment in comparison to what the documentary about it suggests.

Jodorowsky's version of Dune is perhaps the greatest film that was never made
and, ironically, it is better this way.

~~~
atombender
We'll never know. Another lost work I would kill to see is Tarkovsky's
original version of Stalker.

He spent an entire summer filming the Strugatskys' original screenplay, based
on their masterpiece Roadside Picnic. But he was using a type of American
Kodak film stock that was found to be out of date; he tried several times to
confirm the problem with the Soviet processing lab, but they were unfamiliar
with the stock, and only by the time he was done shooting did they realize
that the footage was in fact unusable.

At this point Tarkovsky had used too much money, and had no choice but to go
back to the Soviet film board to negotiate a new financing deal. At the same
time, he was deeply unhappy with what he'd filmed so far (he had also fired
his cinematographer), and was desperate to start over fresh. Helped by the
Strugatskys, he developed a new, miminalistic framework for the film that
eliminated most of the scifi trappings of the novel, and he reshot the film
almost without a script. (The whole story of Stalker is much more complicated,
of course. I recommend the book "The Films of Andrei Tarkovsky: A Visual
Fugue", by Johnson and Petrie, for more information.)

I don't know what happened to the damaged footage, but I guess it must have
been destroyed. We'll never know what it was like. I don't think anyone except
a handful of people have seen the footage, and they are all dead.

~~~
crispyambulance
Stalker was a unforgettable mesmerizing, almost hypnotic film. I didn't know
there had been an earlier attempt! IMHO that Tarkovsky was able to make ANY
film at all in the hostile bureaucratic atmosphere in which he worked gives a
ray of hope to artists everywhere.

------
crdb
Alternative hypothesis: something set 21,000 years (edited - well spotted!)
into the future is going to be as impossible to imagine for us as today's
world was for Jules Vernes. As such gothic madness might be a more realistic
interpretation.

A lot of the criticism misses the mark. I can try and find alternative
explanations. The "outdated" computers? The Butlerian Jihad caused that future
world not to build anything more complicated than a light switch. The unique
worlds, monochromatic and with their odd uniqueness? Visible signalling of
these being different cultures that survived by virtue of their unique
characteristics. Unlike the "bugs vs Marines" of a lot of space opera, the
Tleilaxu, Guild, Bene Gesserit and Harkonnen are all fundamentally different,
their differences giving them a survival edge, influence and power. Black
desert suits? Maybe the filters need solar energy to run. Erotic Bene Gesserit
intonation? Have you read the later books?

This was the only depiction of Baron Harkonnen which I thought truly captured
his sadistic genius. And the blocky shields are so much cooler than the form
fitting transparent bubbles of later Hollywood SF (e.g. Star Wars), also
explaining the difficulty involved in going slow for so long when trying to
penetrate them (because the space between shield and human is so great). Or
what about the worms, which despite (or perhaps because of) the sorry state of
1984 CGI somehow were just as immense as I had imagined them reading the
words. There was this alien feel to all the vehicles, especially the
ornithopters and the harvester carrier, which has only been recently
replicated in the seemingly nonsensical vertical ovals of Arrival or the
glaring contrast between earth and ship in District 9. This was definitely the
artistic generation responsible for Brutalist architecture, which is not
always fun to live in, but has a thousand times more soul than the
International Style condos copy/pasted across all of the world's megacities
today.

Lynch's movie was glorious precisely because it freed itself from the
constraint of present day science and became a standalone creation from the
inspiration of the source material. The other interpretations did not create
that sense of awe. I found the miniseries particularly boring, a kind of BBC
period drama feel instead of being transported into a completely new, intense
world. What makes Dune great as a book and as a 1984 movie is precisely that
it frees itself from "realism" and suspends disbelief in just the right way
for telling a great story. Might as well complain about X-wings flying like
F-14s and making sound in vacuum...

~~~
TheOtherHobbes
The criticism reads like superficial snark, and misses the wood for the trees.

It's not a terrible film. Not by a long way.

It's a difficult film. It's risky. It's not entirely successful.

But terrible? Wisecracking CGI Superheroes Episode Number Actually I've Lost
Count Now is a terrible film. (One of a long, long series.)

Men With Guns and So Very Much Shooting is a terrible film.

Too Many Explosions Looking for a Plot That Isn't All About Running and
Shouting is a terrible film.

Dune was one of many drug-assisted weird things that fell out of the 1970s and
never quite left. It's not a terrible film - it's a museum piece.

~~~
gozur88
>But terrible? Wisecracking CGI Superheroes Episode Number Actually I've Lost
Count Now is a terrible film.

That's a really low bar. A better comparison would be the three-part Dune
miniseries that came out in 2000, one in which Lynch's version doesn't fare
very well.

~~~
crdb
I respectfully disagree and think the 2000 version has aged very badly
(artistically speaking, it also holds lower value for me).

For example, watch the harvester-eaten-by-worm scene [1] [2]. Which of the two
has stood the test of time? I could watch the 1984 version over and over
again. Everything about the 2000 version - even the timing of each shot - is
uninspired and dated, almost like a Westwood Command and Conquer in-game
video. Watch how much more engaging the storytelling is in 1984 in this
essentially dialogue-free chapter.

[1]
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=P50b-19_j8c&t=18s](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=P50b-19_j8c&t=18s)

[2]
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jxDjnSnbNhw&t=1m30s](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jxDjnSnbNhw&t=1m30s)

~~~
the_af
The 2000 miniseries already looked awful and campy when it came out. I should
know -- as a Dune fan I bought it instantly, and was deeply disappointed.

Lynch's version, for all its flaws, is still watchable.

~~~
jandrese
The live play staging in the 2000 version looked really out of place on TV
when I watched it. Having everyone retire to a dramatic pose with dramatic
lighting at the end of a scene? It just looks amateurish on TV IMHO.

------
achompas
Very surprised to pop in and see discussion of Dune without mention that Denis
Villeneuve is rebooting Dune. [0] Villeneuve is also working on the Blade
Runner sequel scheduled for release in October.

For anyone who has seen Arrival, Sicario, or his other movies, I wonder if
you're on the same hype level as me. He's absolutely excellent. He also seems
to loves sci-fi, which can't hurt.

[0] [http://www.theverge.com/2017/2/1/14468876/dune-reboot-
denis-...](http://www.theverge.com/2017/2/1/14468876/dune-reboot-denis-
villeneuve-director-official)

~~~
crdb
I am happy and sad. Arrival and Sicario are precisely the kind of complex,
thoughtful directing that SF needs after years of Marvel movies.

On the other hand, why reboot Dune yet again? Nobody has given Asimov's
Foundation a try!

~~~
oblio
How do you make a movie out of Asimov's books? There's hardly any action,
Asimov said so himself.

~~~
jerf
The original "Foundation Trilogy" is actually a series of short stories bound
together. In a perfect world, I'd suggest taking each story, expanding it into
a full movie, and adding such action as is necessary. If my memory serves me
(as it often doesn't), the Foundation Trilogy still has some action as quite a
lot of it takes place during war, and as a consequence of that, could easily
be expanded to have a bit more "action". (I wouldn't want to focus on that
necessarily, as the Foundation series has always been cerebral, but we would
like to avoid Star Wars: The Phantom Tax Dispute Menace, too.)

In reality I have little confidence in either Hollywood to pull that off, nor
the stories to carry movies. Personally I think both Bicentennial Man and I,
Robot were both quite accurate, loving adaptations of his work (almost
everyone seems to miss that I, Robot was a pitch-perfect Zeroth Law story and
fits in quite well to at least the tone, if not the literal timeline), and
what they showed is, yeah, don't try to adapt Asimov to the screen. There is
an immense wealth of other great science fiction from that era that would do
better in adaptation.

~~~
the_af
"I, Robot" wasn't an Asimov adaptation, which is why it seems so off. It was
actually developed from a script titled _Hardwired_ , with very tenuous links
to anything by Asimov, and later re-written with references to the Three Laws.
Thematically it's unlike anything Asimov wrote. It directly contradicts most
characterizations in Asimov stories, including -- but not limited to -- a
direct contradiction of the character of Susan Calvin and everything she stood
for in the stories. Old, ugly, cerebral but misanthropic woman turned into a
young pretty girl/damsel in distress who's also the hero's romantic interest.
Ugh.

It's also an awful, awful movie. (also see: the obnoxious product placement,
with Will Smith selling you sneakers at a random point in the movie).

~~~
jerf
"Thematically it's unlike anything Asimov wrote."

Again, as everyone seems to miss, it is a pitch-perfect Zeroth Law story, and
to my mind fits in squarely into his Robot stories about the perils and
limitations of the entire idea of the Three Laws. It is definitely an
alternate timeline from the other ones, but that's not hard to believe. I find
myself wondering if everybody read the same Asimov as I did. Or have only I
read the later Asimov stories? If it was so accurate by accident, then they
did a good job being so accidentally accurate.

Yes, Susan Calvin is wrong, but by adaptation standards that's nothing, and
Asimov's characterizations were always paper-thin anyhow. I guess I find it
less horrifying that Susan Calvin is wrong than some fans because "old, ugly,
cerebral, and misanthropic" is pretty much her _entire_ character. It's not
like she's some fully-fleshed out character masterpiece with a multi-story
arc, reasons for her characteristics, relationships with other characters in
the universe, stories of her own, foibles and weaknesses to match her quirks
and strengths... she just... likes robots, hates people. Asimov doesn't do
characters.

I really feel like for both movies I mentioned, that's it. That's what an
Asimov adaptation is going to look like. Those are the best you can possibly
hope for. To the extent you still don't like them, a perfectly viable opinion
as I do not deny my tastes can be a bit quirky even by HN standards (I like
both the Tron movies and Star Trek: The Motion Picture too), then I would
therefore not suggest agitating for Hollywood to dip into Asimov's works any
more, because it's not going to get any better than that.

~~~
RangerScience
> it is a pitch-perfect Zeroth Law story

100% agree. It also mostly follows the Three Laws, with one egregious failure
(but it was a set up so he could snipe the robots using uzis after jumping the
motorcycle so.....?)

It actually makes a good example of the sort dangers of AI that people like
Eliezer Yudkowsky like to point out.

I would agree with you that by adaptation standards, it's in-tone with the
bulk of the Asimov robot novels, although there are some definite parts where
the Hollywood breaks out of the basement.

~~~
jerf
"although there are some definite parts where the Hollywood breaks out of the
basement."

Yes... I'm not saying it was a _great_ movie or anything. I'm just saying A:
it was a Zeroth-Law story and B: It is probably about all we can hope for from
an Asimov adaptation from Hollywood.

The inference you can draw from the combination of "it was not a great movie"
and "it is about all we can hope for from an Asimov adaptation" is fully
intentional.

------
bane
Lynch's Dune does have many problems, but I still enjoy it. The set design and
world that the film describes is often quite beautiful and has in many ways
set the tone for all depictions of the universe after. The books don't offer
much in the way of visual specificity, so even the later Scifi Channel's mini
series took on various inspirations from the Lynch film.

I think the real hatred for the movie comes from not just cutting down the
original material to fit within a film, but then needlessly adding new
material that wasn't at all in keeping with the book, so it loses "trueness"
from both ends. There's also some unevenness in the pacing and gravity the
movie tries to get across. Dune is by no means an action story, but the movie
can be a bit plodding at points that don't call for it, and faster paced parts
sometimes don't work or come off poorly or cheesy.

I think also there's an unnecessary attempt at adding mystery to a story that
didn't really have or need it. The book explains many of the strange parts of
the universe quite well, but the movie has characters uttering odd phrases and
strange events happening without comment or description -- reading the book
fills in most of this strangeness, but it shouldn't be necessary as the film
should stand on its own.

Still, the new cuts of the film are good watches and make for an entry into a
nice thoughtful sci-fi weekend that might include movies like Bladerunner.

------
brandonmenc
Has the author even read Dune? Like, really read it?

One caption reads:

> This looks like a future computer, I’m pretty sure.

Obviously suggesting it's not science-fictioney enough, but _there are no
computers in Dune_ \- everything doing data storage and retrieval in that
universe is understood to be a very complicated mechanical machine.

Dune is more steampunk than laser beams, and Lynch brilliantly captured that
aesthetic.

~~~
nkrisc
I can't remember if this is established in Frank's books or instead retconned
by his son, that all AI and computerization was banned after the Butlerian
Jihad.

~~~
dllthomas
My recollection - and I admit it's been a while - is that the events _of_ the
Jihad were expanded on in some of the Brian Herbert / Kevin J Anderson works,
but that the basic notion (electronic computation forbidden, and why) was well
established in the very first book.

~~~
taejo
"Thou shalt not make a machine in the likeness of a man's mind" is cited by
Paul from the OC Bible in _Dune_.

------
matthewmacleod
Lynch's Dune is so weird – It's deeply, irredeemably flawed, from the
perspective of someone who started with the rich world of the novels. But it's
paradoxically beautiful and I can't help but enjoy it.

------
johan_larson
It's hard to squeeze Dune into a single movie. The book is a good 500 pages
long, which fits better into one three movies than into one.

But if you are determined to fit it into a single movie, it should be
possible. Here's the outline I came up with:

ACT 1 (30 min) Start in Arrakeen, with the Atreides already in charge. Leto is
the kind master, Paul his formidable young son. Their rivals are the
Harkonnen, a nasty bunch (they abuse servants). Introduce Arrakis as the
source of the Spice, possibly as part of Jessica's training of Paul in
esoteric disciplines. The Fremen are mentioned, but as a minor impoverished
rabble. Meanwhile, the Emperor, the Space Guild, and the Harkonnen meet and
agree to replace the Atreides, together to maintain control of the Spice. The
Harkonnen attack, Leto dies, and Paul and his mother flee to the desert. End
with Paul looking back and vowing revenge.

ACT 2 (30 min) Paul and Jessica encounter the Fremen, and are taken in by
them. Paul tests himself against young Fremen fighters and is impressed; they
are very good, but he is better. He accompanies them on a raid against the
Harkonnen, and is again impressed. He joins the Fremen, and becomes a worm-
rider. He learns the true size of the Fremen from seeing one of their secret
meetings. At Jessica's urgings, he decides to lead the Fremen against the
Harkonnen. Meanwhile, the Harkonnen are making a cruel mess of Arrakis.

ACT 3 (30 min) Paul campaigns to become the Fremen war-leader; this is shown
as a montage of public speaking to increasingly large gatherings and knife
fighting. Harkonnen cruelties continue; the Emperor announces plans for a
visit. Jessica speaks of the Voice from the Outer World prophesy. Paul,
Jessica and Stilgar begin training the troops, incorporating her and Paul's
esoteric training. They wait for a sandstorm, and attack in force with
wormriders. Fight scenes between Fremen and Hakonnen. The fight goes to the
Fremen. The Emperor flees in a ship. Paul addresses the crowds of Arrakeen
from a balcony proclaiming a new day of Arrakis, with the natives in charge.

I think that could work. But some stuff did get left out: the spice as a
mutagen, the nature of the Bene Gesserit and their goals, the Kwisatz
Haderach, Paul's Harkonnen heritage, Paul's duel with Feyd-Rautha, and
everything about Liet-Kynes.

~~~
Tloewald
Lynch in a nutshell: created on drugs; best consumed on drugs.

The problem with Lynch's _Dune_ is that it seems not to have been planned
properly (at all?); i can only assume they started shooting with what they
thought was a half-finished script which turned out to be a 1/10 finished
script.

This lines up with everything else David Lynch has done (e.g. _Twin Peaks_
loses the plot 3/4 of the way through the first season and never recovers,
Mark Frost -- his co-creator -- has said in interviews they had no plan as to
how the story was going to resolve and that certainly gels with my viewing of
the show and my reaction to rabid fan explanations of how it all makes sense
and _Fire Walk With Me_ is a work of genius).

 _Dune_ starts out at a deliberate pace, covering stuff in the first 100 pages
or so quite nicely. I love the look and design of everything, and the first
fight with shield effects was awesome for the time. But then most of the
running time and budget are gone and whoops, need to cram in the rest. Because
the shield effect was too expensive they introduce the "weirding way" b.s. to
eliminate the need for all that fancy knife-fighting, shields, etc.

So the last 45 minutes is just a montage of silliness.

~~~
krylon
> Lynch in a nutshell: created on drugs; best consumed on drugs.

I am not sure if Lynch draws his inspiration from drugs; I cannot rule it out,
but it feels unlikely somehow. (Although it would explain _Inland Empire_...)

The second part is true, though. ;-)

As for the pacing, I read somewhere that the first version of the movie was
about four hours long, but the studio made him cut it down to two-ish hours
(or maybe they did it for him).

------
elcapitan
Did Stanley Kubrick have an "interest in SF"? I think as a director you should
have an interest in making a good movie that is somehow coherent for the
audience that watches it. Which is also the reason why computers are almost
always absurd in movies. They're mysteries that need to be represented
differently than just their correct technological side.

~~~
kabdib
Kubrick worked pretty closely with Arthur C Clarke.

IIRC Clarke wasn't happy with the result. The film would probably not have
been as good without his help, however.

~~~
the_af
Is there a source for this? I always thought Clarke was so satisfied with the
movie that he actually wrote his book sequels to better match the movie rather
than the first book!

(Personally, I think Kubrick's movie is a masterpiece and far superior to
Clarke's first book, which is an ok but entirely forgettable and minor work of
SF).

~~~
kabdib
I recalled incorrectly; Clarke was apparently pretty happy with it. I must
have been thinking of some other SF film. . .

------
tschellenbach
If you haven't done so yet, buy the book, read all 900 pages of it, it's
amazing! The first game about Dune with it's combination of adventure and
strategy is also very nice.
[http://gamesnostalgia.com/en/game/dune](http://gamesnostalgia.com/en/game/dune)

------
scandox
Three words: Dino De Laurentiis

Lynch is very circumspect when talking about him (at least in the Lynch on
Lynch book I read), but it's likely Dino had him under massive pressure to
make various schlocky compromises.

Despite many of the impressive titles in among De Laurentiis' filmography as a
producer, it should be recalled he made over 500 films and was very (even
purely) commercial in outlook. He was definitely also a "hands-on" producer.

------
yunolisten
I enjoy Lynch's Dune. There are some great fan edits, the 'Third stage
navigator' edits that add in a fair amount of the cut scenes. The longer cut
is a great improvement.

------
lxa2
If you enjoy listening to podcasts, Unjustly Maligned has a pretty good
appreciation of that movie:
[https://www.theincomparable.com/ump/37/](https://www.theincomparable.com/ump/37/)

Recommended.

------
Eric_WVGG
fun little anecdote: Lucas asked Lynch to direct Return of the Jedi. The mind
reels… [http://www.slashfilm.com/david-lynch-talks-about-not-
directi...](http://www.slashfilm.com/david-lynch-talks-about-not-directing-
return-of-the-jedi/)

------
camus2
The visual were great. It looked better than the 2000's mini series. The story
failed to capture the book, but it's not like a lot of stuff happen in the
book itself, since it's more a description of the ecology and culture of a
planet.

I've heard they are doing yet another movie, but they should go for a TV show,
game of throne style, not a movie.

------
mathw
Lynch's Dune shares some names of people and places, and some basic concepts
with the book. Very little else. There's a lot of change for change's sake in
it and most of that is in illogical ways (some of which are pointed out in the
article).

I've seen it a couple of times, but I see no reason to do so again. I can just
read the books again!

------
partiallypro
Dune is a beautiful film by Lynch, but the story pacing and deadpan-ish acting
really hurts it. Lynch sometimes needs to be reined in. A reined in Lynch can
make the difference between an amazing "Elephant Man" or weird as hell
"Rabbits."

~~~
fnord123
Reign - to control as a monarch.

Rein - the straps used to control a horse.

Lynch needs to be reined in.

~~~
hanoz
No rein on Dune.

------
dublin
I saw Dune on the big screen when it first came out, and it is unquestionably
the second-worst SF movie I've ever seen - so bad it put this formerly avid SF
fan off the genre for years...

~~~
padseeker
Name the worst as well as as your top 3. I need some context here.

~~~
douche
I'd have to put the two Kevin Costner post-apocalyptic flops on the list -
Waterworld and The Postman.

The Postman rankles especially, since it was a pretty decent book that was
butchered badly
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Postman](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Postman)

------
api
I loved Lynch's Dune. Whatever the cause, the end result was a film that felt
as weird and surreal and alien as Dune itself. The retro-futurist aspect of
the tech only added to this.

------
saturdaysaint
So the creator of Eraserhead, Twin Peaks and Blue Velvet is being lectured to
about world building? Dune is one of the few Lynch works I haven't seen, but
given his oeuvre I'm willing to chalk up any lapse to him not being on his
game for a moment.

As far as the title of this article is concerned, I doubt that Lynch is overly
concerned with any genre so much as the ineffable, ill-defined language of
human dreams and desires.

------
defen
I mostly agree with the premise that it's a deeply flawed film that fails to
capture many parts of what makes _Dune_ such a masterpiece. That said, the
scene where Paul calls his first sandworm is one of my favorites (the great
Toto score certainly helps)
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Bj7R_2WWdKs](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Bj7R_2WWdKs)

------
Pigo
This reminds me of JJ Abrams and his 'I never got Star Trek' comment. To this
day it's like a jock giving a wedgie to the geeky kid in me.

------
anonymous_iam
I think the author never read Frank Herbert's book, but only saw the movie.
Most people who hate the movie have never read the book.

~~~
nikdaheratik
The writer just finished a _reread_ of the first book. The link to the series
of articles is literally right at the top of the page above the title. And
there were a number of fans of the books who hated the movie when it came out
in 1984. It's an interesting take, or we wouldn't be talking about it still,
but kind of divisive and not a great adaptation of the novel IMO.

------
YeGoblynQueenne
Wow. A whole article, an entire HN thread- and not a single mention of poor
old Sting?

------
jbmorgado
Look, I'm a big fan of the original Dune series (not of the mess Frank
Herbert's son did after his death in order to make money out of his father
vision - those books actually ruined a bit of the originals for me, I actually
suggest that you don't read those).

Anyway, first time I saw Lynch's Dune I didn't really liked it because it was
too different from the books. But after some years (and reading the all series
from Frank Herbert) I actually started to like the film.

See, for me, Lynch's film, was the best _possible_ one. A lot of Dune is about
thoughts, mental plans, counter plans. A mental chess game that goes on the
mind of all the main characters and I don't think you can actually put all
that on screen (at lest not without extending the film for several hours).

Sure you could have a grander vision of the books with better SciFi and a lot
more money, but other than visually for an higher budget, I don't think any
director can really do much better than Lynch.

Well, it's my take at least. I might be wrong (and would like to be proven
wrong by a new Dune movie that exceeds my expectations) but until I see a
movie that does better, I actually vouch for Lynch's Dune.

~~~
howard941
_Look, I 'm a big fan of the original Dune series (not of the mess Frank
Herbert's son did after his death in order to make money out of his father
vision - those books actually ruined a bit of the originals for me, I actually
suggest that you don't read those)._

I tried to love the son's prequels but couldn't and therefore I second your
comments. There were many mysteries within mysteries in Frank H's series that
weren't present in the followons.

~~~
nikdaheratik
I feel like the prequels don't fit with the rest of the series, which got
weirder and weirder as they went further into the future timeline. The
prequels, etc. kind of just got bland and pedestrian. But some of the
characters were interesting and it wasn't a completely terrible read. Just not
as good as what Frank Herbert would have done.

~~~
flukus
I didn't mind the House * prequels, but the ones covering the butlerian jihad
were pretty awful.

The sequels were ok, I was just happy to have closure.

------
camperman
"The movie also has the distinction of branding the character in an explicitly
homophobic light by heightening the Baron’s actions and displaying them all at
once:"

Hmmm. I don't think you've read the book.

------
BeetleB
s/Lynch/Herbert/

I remember as a teenager eagerly anticipating reading Dune. And was totally
disappointed. There's nothing SF about it.

~~~
cafebabbe
Mind reading, Personal shields, planetary nukes, FTL travel, cyborgs, history
of AI war vs humans...

~~~
Houshalter
Dune's setting feels almost medieval instead of futuristic. Some futuristic
technologies exist. But in many ways it shows how humanity has regressed
rather than advanced.

A lot of it feels an awful lot more like magic than science. Like the mind
reading and prophecy stuff. The more interesting technology, personal shields,
is just an excuse to explain why people fight with swords instead of modern
weapons. Which lends to the medieval feel thing. And an awful lot of
technology is missing, like anything remotely like a computer. The robot wars
happened in the distant past and aren't part of the story. Just an explanation
for why there aren't any computers. It's barely mentioned in the book at all
actually.

~~~
Jtsummers
Mindreading? Was that in the books, have I forgotten it? I believe it's in the
movie, sort of, but in the book the Bene Gesserit were trained to communicate
with covert hand signals while simultaneously carrying on a verbal
conversation. I think they conveyed this in the movie as mindreading, but it's
been years since I watched it.

~~~
howard941
s/mindreading/truthseeing/

~~~
Jtsummers
Ah, yeah, forgot about that. Reminds me a bit of _Lie to Me_ taken to an
extreme.

