The first time I saw Lynch’s *Dune *was midnight the night it opened. The expectation was that it was going to out-Star-Wars Star Wars. It didn’t. I hated it.
Then, later, as I became more of a Lynch fan, I revisited it, and loved it. It’s a David Lynch movie, not a rip-roaring space Western. It’s about atmosphere and tone and texture; it’s very dreamlike. Seen without scifi-blockbuster expectations, it’s something of a minor masterpiece.
This paper’s Dave Kehr got close to what I like about it:
Well, I agree it’s a Lynch movie with tone and atmsophere, it’s just not a Dune movie, he should have written his own story or read the damn book. Instead it seems like he skimmed it for a few quotes and stuck them in a mood piece
I was crazy about the first book (although I confess that I have not read it since the late 1960s). I found the David Lynch film somewhat entertaining, and the Sci-Fi Channel miniseries less so. Frankly (or Herbertly, if you prefer), I don’t think you’re missing much. If you have a few idle hours with nothing to do, you might check out the Lynch movie. Avoid at all costs the network TV version of Lynch’s Dune, which has a bunch of scenes with partially-finished special effects, edited back into the movie to pad it into a four-hour “event.”
I just think it’s awesome that an avant garde artist like David Lynch got such a huge budget to make the world’s most gigantic piece of avant garde art. Now, the fact that, in order to do so, he had to agree to throw in some similarities to Herbert’s Dune, doesn’t bother me one bit. The existence of this movie does not damage the books one whit. Look, there they are, still on your bookshelf, totally unLynched.
I mean, hell, someone even came along later and had another go at it, for the SciFi channel. Presumably, if someone else wanted to badly enough, eventually (if not sooner) the rights to do so will be purchasable yet again. See? All that, and David Lynch too.
I would rather live in a world with David Lynch’s *Dune *in it, than a world without it. But see, the choice is yours: if you’d rather live in a world without it, don’t watch it! Viola! Lynch-free world! I just will never understand the people who act like an unfaithful adaptation somehow harms the original. No, it just gives you something to choose to avoid, and double the art for the rest of us. Easy peasy!
I generally agree with this, but I can see a bit of harm: some people are leery of reading a book if they hated the movie. Twice, when I’ve recommended Frank Herbert’s Dune to online acquaintances, they were reluctant to even try it, since they thought the movie (I presume they saw the Lynch version) sucked.
Well, not everyone likes the books; it’s quite possible they might not have liked them anyway. Who knows? In any case, that’s just more closemindedness; judging one piece of art by another. It’s more of the same, only in reverse. Or something. Having Herbert’s *Dune *and Lynch’s *Dune *on the same planet just gives you more art to choose from; anyone who thinks differently is just limiting their own choices. (FWIW, my favorite, out of all the books, is the Appendices of the first book; the novel part is not NEARLY as creative. And the books that follow just got steadily worse.)
The sci-fi channel version was pretty true to the original, as was the dune messiah/children of dune that came next, honeslty I would love to see them do god emporer of dune.
that said I love the books, yes the first is an aboslute must read for anyone who like sci-fi and will always be one of my favorite books,
but I like the whole series.
the lynch flick? meh it was really weird…which since its a lynch flick is a redundant thing to say.
My favorite of the series was The Dune Encyclopedia. I can’t believe somebody hasn’t posted this one online in a PDF or something. The world eagerly awaits. (And I kick myself remorselessly as I remember selling mine to a used bookstore).
To me, the appeal of Dune is the appeal of reading Frank Herbert, a guy who had Deep Thoughts about a lot of things, so much so that he internalized it to a degree where he was able to create a believable alternate universe based upon those ideas, a universe obviously descended from this one… but different, very very different. There’s a maturity to the novel that is refreshing, especially to a high school kid growing away from the juvenilia.
I liked the sequels and find God: Emperor to be quite fascinating… Raguleader your travels have ended, for I, too, think it’s the most interesting of them all.
Gotcha back, Lissener. The Lynch movie was close enough to the ponderous feel of the book that I was able to overlook the changes to some of the tech. I didn’t like the Sci-Fi version because it was much further away from the feel of the original novel, it was more along the feel that his HACK SON MAKING A LIVING BY RIDING DAD’S CORPSE, er, Brian Herbert has brought to the Dune universe: more soap opera elements, less thought and intelligence, A COMPLETE AND UTTER DISDAIN FOR EVERYTHING THAT OCCURRED IN THE ORIGINAL SIX NOVELS, LIKELY BECAUSE HE HAD DADDY ISSUES.
Ahem.
Anyway, I agree: Lynch’s Dune rawks all over the sci-fi version.
And y’all don’t want to know what I think of Brian.
I loved the fleshed out universe as well, but I thought the dramatic elements really added to it. That’s why I actually prefer Dune to the Lord of the Rings trilogy (don’t tell anyone I said that). This is all concerning just the first book BTW.
I remember the bit with Duncan Idaho sacrificing himself for Paul and Jessica being very emotional.
Yes. Lynch’s Dune is one of a very, very small list of movies that is capable of completely overwhelming and engulfing you in the depths of its textures. Hell, it comes close to *Ugetsu *on that count. That experience is so unique and, well, just cool, that I totally don’t mind that in order to achieve that, Lynch had to play fast and loose–or rather, slow and deep–with the plot details of the book.
It’s kind of like how the ending of Primer, one of the best time travel movies ever made, gets so utterly convoluted and confusing that you eventually realize that that’s the point: traveling through time can only lead you to a spaghetti bowl of insanely tangled timelines. The confusion is itself the point.
As far as people avoiding a book because they didn’t like the movie, I’d point out that it’s pretty rare for a derivative movie to be representative of the source material in any case. I can think of maybe two or three movies off the top of my head that are based on entire books and still have the plots directly correlate. There’s Fight Club, Flight of the Intruder, and maybe Lord of the Rings.
Fact is, the format of movies (a 90 minute to 3 hour long visual presentation where, by modern tastes, narration is kept to a minimum) doesn’t really translate well from books (which can be as long as they need to be, and often rely almost entirely on narration) or video games (where the story is arguably not even important, witness Super Mario Brothers and the first Wing Commander game which was the very loose basis of the movie of the same name.
So yeah, people shy away from books cause they didn’t like the movie, but I think that’s silly. Of course, if the book has nothing but seethingly negative reviews, or regularly comes with bird flu-tipped razor blades taped to the inside of the cover, or says “Kevin J. Anderson” on the cover, then yeah, you can shy away from it, guilt free.
Precisely. One of the alltime greatest directors, John Ford, didn’t like working from novels; he preferred short stories. It just makes more sense, to start with something that’s complete, and just needs some visual stuff added to bring it to life on the screen.
I like, in descending order, the book Dune, The Dune Encyclopedia (I have a copy and reread it often), the SciFi miniseries of that book, the Lynch movie (not much less than the series, but a little - mostly I hate Kyle McClach-a-face which spoils my enjoyment of a few Lynch works), then the other Frank Herbert books. I too, Raguleader, rate God-Emperor quite high (but less than *Dune *itself).
I haven’t read the prequels/extra sequels by Herbert/Anderson. This makes me a happy man.
Dune: Seminal SF Classic Or Pompous Tosh? Pompous tosh. I note with amusement that most of the problems with George Lucas’ catastrophic Star Wars prequels sprang from him attempting to remake the more turgid bits of Dune rather than the fun bits of Flash Gordon.
Dammit, I like Dune because it has such a completely imagined alien culture. It was a big hit back in the 60s, when it was first serialized in analog, in part because its concern with the environment and the proper care of same fitting in with the rising environmental awareness, or so I’ve been told. Its vision of a future Galactic Empire full of Machiavellian scheming and cut-throat politics was original and interesting.
I thought the David Lynch movie was overly ambitious, but far better than people gave it credit for. He kept illustrator John Schoenherr (who did the original illustrations in the magazines, and whose calendars on this were big sellers), rather than using the Giger nightmares that Jodorowski was planning on using. The Imperial style used throughout was highly neat and inventive – the dark wood style of the palace on Caladan, the floating slave lights, the impressively ornamented GuildShips, the rock style of architecture on Arrakis. It was light-years from the sterile clean white futures that had previously been used in science fiction film civilizations, for the most part. It indicated that these were people who’d had this technology long enough to ornament it and cover it up and take it for granted.
I wasn’t too fond of some of the vision (why the hell were the Sardaukar fighting in 1950s-style radiation suits? wasn’t that unfomfortable, and hard to see out of? Weirding modules??? And the whole Harkonnen thing was way too far over the top.), but it was visually arresting and challenging
Later on, a lot of Herbert’s original vision bothered me. Why the hell had hard-core-sf editor John Campbell bought into a series with so much mysticism in it. (Oracular Vision?) The ecology of Arrakis may have been elaborate and thought out, but it made no sense. What the hell were those gigantic sandworms eating all the time? There arre only so many people to go around. How the hell can even a Galactic civilization have a planet with apparently no vegetation or water supporting so many people and giant worms? We should’ve seen more of those damned Muad’dib sand mice in both the books and the films.
Still, it was interesting and, i think, highly influential. There would’ve been a lot less texture to the Future withiout Herbert’s books.
For much the same reason as many people (including me) like Lord of the Rings, Dune is a large comprehensive look at a universe far from our own, complete with appendices etc
The Lynch film has an appeal too, a friend of a reviewer described it as a film best allowed to flow over you, in that regard, I agree
I have a vague recollection of reading something, somewhere, long ago, where Frank Herbert said to Lynch after watching the premiere of Dune saying that: "You got it.”
I didn’t find that quote but found this commentary instead:
Add me to that list. God Emperor was much better written than the Dune trilogy – Herbert was much more deftly in control of his interweaving plotlines, and had a much clearer vision of what he was going for. Dune itself is as much a complete book as Fellowship of the Ring was a complete book – Dune needs Messiah and Children to tell Paul’s story; the story isn’t over once Paul becomes Emperor. Many of the concepts introduced in Dune don’t reach fruition until the latter two.
Besides, Leto II was actually willing to make a choice and do what needed to be done – unlike that whiny git, Paul.
And the fact that I can’t re-read the original trilogy now without hearing Kyle MacLachlan’s asinine muttering of phrases from the book is the real reason I can’t stand Lynch’s film.
The sandworms fed on what was essentially sand-plankton. They’re in the equivalent of a baleen-whale niche. They’re also what is converting carbon dioxide into oxygen on Arrakis, since there’s no vegetation to do so. And the sandtrout apparently far outnumber what seem to be imported critters like the sand-mice and desert-hawks. Although I’ve no idea what the sandtrout eat.
Really? It’s been a while since I’ve seen the movie and longer since I’ve read the book, but the only major difference in plot that I can remember between the two was the addition of the (kinda stupid) Weirding Modules. And I agree with other posters that beyond that, the movie really does a good job of capturing the weirdness and mood of the books.
But I probably would’ve hated it to if I’d seen it before I read the novel, there’s just too much plot to make sense of in a 2 hour film, and part of the appeal of the movie was seeing the Dune universe brought to life in a way different then I’d pictured it.
As to the OP, if you like Sci-Fi, you should deffinately pick up the first Dune book. To much Sci-Fi relys on using cliches and conventions from dozens of other sci-fi books before them. Much of the pleasure of the Dune universe is that it is unique.
I can’t believe somebody hasn’t posted this one online in a PDF or something. The world eagerly awaits. (And I kick myself remorselessly as I remember selling mine to a used bookstore).
