In the family of science fiction film, David Lynch’s Dune is the misunderstood, bastard cousin that no one talks about, but everyone knows is kept in cupboard in a dark corner in the basement. It’s not necessarily the smart kid in a family of dummies; Dune is more like the artsy weirdo in a family of steady desk jockeys. Everyone says “Well, isn’t that interesting?” when Dune talks about its latest project or love interest, then breathes a sigh of relief when Dune leaves the room. Don’t ask Dune when its having kids or getting married; that’s not Dune’s style.
Holy crap. Dune is me. I am Dune.
Dune wasn’t a great movie and it wasn’t a box office success. The voice overs were hokey and distracting, the acting was uneven, and the little girl was creepy. It was, however, something that a lot of movies just aren’t anymore: ambitious.
One of the weirdest things for me watching this movie were all the familiar faces stuffed into stillsuits and future garb. Agent Cooper, Big Ed, Eraserhead, Ming the Merciless, the Quantum Leap guy who isn’t Scott Bakula, Captain Picard, Grima Wormtongue, Sting.
What worked: I can’t look at Baron Harkonnen without wanting to throw up.I think he was portrayed as much fatter in the book, but he made up for the lack of size with his grossness. The sets and costumes weren’t particularly futuristic, but they were otherworldly, getting across the idea that this isn’t necessarily the future. The heaviness of the sets isn’t something we see very often in sci-fi anymore. They’re very dark and heavy, looking like they belong on a desert planet. Most of the time anymore, the surroundings are very light and airy, like Star Trek TNG or very gritty and industrial, like anything we’ve seen in the past few years (BSG, Firefly). And women got to wear gowns! I love a good gown, especially if it’s gilded. The sandworms were cool and fairly realistic for the time period.
What didn’t work: just about everything else. The voice overs were distracting, Sean Young was wooden, Alia was just silly. It wasn’t apparent that some of the voice overs were actually Princess Irulan, who narrated the opening and whose excerpts preceded each chapter of the book. You really need two actors to play Paul Atreides. or some serious make-up work, since the character ages so much over the course of the story. Something I typically appreciate from David Lynch is his lack of exposition; he doesn’t assume the audience needs everything explained, thus doesn’t beat us over the head with explanation. However, it wasn’t readily apparent why the spice was important or the purpose of the guild or the dangerous nature of Feyd.
It’s a lot like the V for Vendetta adaptation: it covers the main events of the book without ever touching upon the themes, which are really more important than the events. The books works with the hypocrisy of religion and the origins of myth. The whole Mau’dib-savior legend of the Fremen was never real in the first place; it was planted by the Bene Gesserit centuries earlier for their own benefit. So basically, all of the events were watching in Dune are driven by a lie, which we’re never exposed to during the movie. Dune is fun to watch as part of David Lynch’s development as a filmmaker, or as a bit of science fiction history. It just isn’t the movie it could have been.
![Dune (1984) [HD DVD]](/wp-content/uploads/b000ionjh401_scmzzzzzzz_v40321722_.jpg)
Lisa Fary's earliest influences are Princess Leia, Rainbow Bright, Astronaut Barbie, and her 6th grade teacher, Ms. Palmer. She's angry that it's 2011 and she still doesn't have a hovercraft, but will accept a jetpack as consolation. That jetpack had better be pink with a rhinestone monogram. 
Baron Harkonnen was nasty! Gross to the max