Dune

I must not fear Lynch, Lynch is the script killer

Frank Herbert's Dune is a massive series of massive books of science-fiction style feudalism, space magic and space jihads. It is also possibly one of the more cursed book to screen adaptations ever to be attempted. The failure of Alejandro Jodorowsky's adaptation to even take off past pre-production is an epic on par with the production of Apocalypse Now (and also has a documentary in the same style as Hearts of Darkness). The first book in the series is so vast that trying to fit it all into one movie of any acceptable length seemed impossible, but ever so tempting, maddening even. And eventually, out came David Lynch's Dune in 1984. And I have some gripes with it.

I love Dune. The book, that is. I read it over the summer holiday a few years ago and I loved every single page, including the long winded pages explain how the universal government worked (or perhaps more accurately, didn't). And then, during my second year of university, I sat down and watched the movie. And I HATED it. I hated the passing, I hated the casting, I hated the editing, I hated (most) of the Toto written score. I hate hate hate hated it. But whilst rewatching it for this review, I began to realise something. That for a movie given a near impossible task, it really wasn't that bad. It didn't appeal the book fan part of me, but the part of me that really likes movies? Kinda liked it, despite its faults.

It follows the book's story quite well, but gives away one of the book's big twist within the first ten minutes, thus spoiling the political conspiracy plot thread. But it follows the journey of Paul Atriedes faithfully enough despite skimming over some major character development moments, such as the fight with Jamis (and his subsistent crying scene), and just kinda jumps forward with very little warning. But the book does that as well so what can you do? But the bits of the book that are left in are portrayed with excellent accuracy, if a little rushed to stop the movie from being 5 hours long. And all this plot buggery is due to the six drafts of the script which Lynch wrote himself, despite having never read the book, and getting into arguments with other writers who tried to make it more plot accurate. But the failed. Weirding is not a form of sound gun (more over using guns is liable to kill and anyone within a few miles if it hits a shield), Gurney Halleck is a scarred grumpy old sod and Vladimir Harkonnen can't fly, hell he can't even walk. But arguing with Lynch is probably like trying to beat an over-caffeinated octopus in a knife fight. Pointless and incredibly dangerous, so who can blame them for giving up.

The only part of this movie I cannot poke a hole in is the production design. Every single piece of this movie looks staggering from the sets to the costumes and the props. The stillsuits look exactly how I imagined them, and the Fremen water caches and cave cities are all wonderfully imposing. And the worms, oh the worms are staggering! Love me some Shai-Hulud.

Whilst I cannot in truly recommend this movie to book fans, I can happily recommend to anyone who wants some great 80's high budget sci-fi. This film had to do battle with the Star Wars, and it did so by being its own thing. And it is an epic, in the truest sense of the word. But watch it before Denis Villeneuve comes in a blows it out the water. If he does the book justice, then I will never recommend this movie ever again. Seeing Sting in a plastic man-thong is only funny so many times.