The IRA blowing up his wife for no particular reason wasn’t enough for you?
I liked the imagery in Lynch’s Dune, but it would have been a better movie without Kyle M. and music by—for some reason—Toto.
Re: Lynch’s movie.
A feature-length visual adaptation of Dune was doomed to short-change the book from the get-go. Everyone knew that.
It’s just that what David Lynch did made it even worse than it had to be. While there’s some Lynch I love (Eraserhead, Mulholland Drive, his contrtibution to Lumiere and Friends), it was clear he had no use whatsoever for his source material, simply going through his usual motions when he’s producing crap (Twin Peaks, most of Blue Velvet, Wild at Heart).
I never saw the Sci Fi Channel series, but a series is what it should have been conceived as right from the start, if it had to be done at all. There’s too much material for anything shorter.
Of course, I don’t think Dune works visually at all. So much of the story takes place inside the characters’ heads.
Yet another one - The Santaroga Barrier, about the odd goings on in a quiet, but oddly insular little California town. A personal favorite, though I can’t exactly articulate why.
- Tamerlane
Dude, I love the soundtrack to Dune. It totally justifies the existence of Toto, a band which has totalyl sucked in every other endeavour they’ve turned their hands to. There’s absolutely no rational reason why having Toto score the film could possibly have worked, and yet… it did.
This is reason enough to kill off every woman on Earth?
The Santaroga Barrier has already been mentioned.
He wasn’t setting out to kill off every woman on Earth. Just the women in the centers of terrorism (Ireland, Libya, etc)
He was trying to wipe out cultures that supported terrorism.
Others I liked:
Soul Catcher,
The Jesus Incident and The Lazarus Effect
Oh yeah. Swoooon. 
I’m in the minority, but I loved the Lynch movie much better than the SCI-FI Channel’s attempt. I thought Lynch fleshed out the rich imagery and universe very nicely. I even enjoyed the laughably poor special effects.
The Lynch movie actually gave me a better appreciation of the mood and settings in the books and brought the story more to life for me. The betrayal of Yueh was very well done in the Lynch movie, in my opinion and, again, gave me a better perspective upon my subsequent read.
The only downside, I guess, is now I so closely associate the Lynch actors with the characters that I can’t, for example read Gurney’s interaction with Paul without his words weighed down by a Scottish brogue, or read Piter without seeing Brad Dourif.
“Mmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmm Shai-Hulud.”
Time to whip out the ol’ VCR and watch me some Dune! 
Had I been in charge of turning the book into visual media, I would have adapted Dune as the SFChannel series* contentwise*, but at the same time as the Lynch movie aesthetics/stylewise. I mean, it’s supposed to be an alien milieu, “realism” is moot.
In any case it’s kind of a lost cause to try and ask for a faithful adaptation: it’s supposed to be something of an internal emotional experience anyway. IMO the book series, as others have said, has a smashing opening with Dune and real climax at God Emperor…. But you’d end up with a 50-hour movie if you tried to make a “faithful” screenplay out of the whole megillah. Sure, the SFC version of* Messiah/Children*, tries to cram the next two books into less total screen time than the first one, causing a few “Huh?WHAT?” moments, but you gotta give them marks for even daring to try. Likewise I give extra marks to Lynch for actually making it to release where others had given up. I have to wonder if with no high-concept stylized Lynch version, there would have even been any motivation to try and do the SFC “more faithful” version 20 years later.
( OTOH, as for the “Long Version” adaptation of Lynch’s movie into a CableTV 2-parter… well, a critic once said “Can there be any more depressing phrase than Dune, LONG Version?” Too much explaining.)
Eh?
Critical1: Please go to FAQ - Rules for Posting at the Straight Dope Message Boards and note especially Post #11:
Your offense is in Post #50. Yes, I know it was meant as a joke, but it is a serious rules violation… and it won’t happen again. Right?
HOT DAMN! That’s where I’d seen Grima before!!! Thanks!
You know, I always thought that the style of Dune would lend itself very well to an anime series.
Something broken down into 10 or 12 hour-long episodes could really be perfect for doing the story’s plot justice, and it would look cool as hell.
Herbert and Anderson didn’t stop with the prequels. They’ve written two more books, one already released and one coming in August, that follow the story after the last of Frank Herbert’s six books. Supposedly, these two Herbert/Anderson books are based on an outline Frank left behind. Read them if you dare, and let us know if they’re any better than the prequels.
I think Brian relies heavily on Anderson, because their books are very similar in style and structure to other Anderson books I’ve read.
Oh, one thing that irked me about the Sci-fi Channel “Sciniseries” version:
The Thoptors.
Why did they look drastically different, depending on whose side they were on? The last time I checked, both the Atreides and Harkonens were using largely the same supply of Thoptors on the planet, unless I missed something. That said, it’s probable that both families brought their own thoptors with then when they arrived on Arrakis, but it’s weird that we never see either side flying the same ones.
Can I please jump in here and say that one of my all-time favorite lines is Sting’s pronouncement:
Thank you.
I was in 4th grade when the original Dune came out, and I loved it. I’ve heard people say that it left a lot out of the book and would be hard to understand because of that, but I had no trouble understanding it even at that age. After seeing the movie I tried reading the book but couldn’t get into it. I might give another go at it sooner or later.
I guess the appeal for me was that it was epic sci fi with a metaphysical bent to it and more depth. It had a grand scope, unique ideas, a sense of destiny, and “cool shit”, and plenty of action.
I liked thesci fi channel miniseries version too, except that I really missed the sound blaster guns which I hadn’t realized weren’t in the book.
I really enjoyed the Children of Dune followup series for the overall feel and the breath taking soundtrack.
After Lynch’s movie came out my friends and I used to have countless ridiculous (it seems to me now) arguments about the weirding modules in the movie, which I thought were very cool, by the way.
I remember this one guy who was so fixated on the weirding modules that every time my friends and I would get together, at some point, without fail, he would say “there are no sound weapons in Dune,” or “show me where there are sound weapons used in the book.” …Literalist moron. Jeez I miss those guys 
Dune was an awesome book. Very readable, required reading multiple times to get all the nuances, not predictable, great characters, requiring imagination to flesh out the scenery. The sequels were trash by comparison in my opinion; I read two of them simply because I had to know where the story went next, and then stopped reading the rest seriously (skim time) when I realized that learning how the story “turns out” is the only reason to read them.
The Lynch movie was interesting, but not very faithful. I’ve not seen any of the other treatments, including the SciFi channel or British (?) versions.
sorry, I had no idea. and yeah totaly meant as a joke.
I also kinda understand the issue with the weirding modules, Dune was a freaky enough place as it was where in the hell Lynch pulled those from I’ll never know.