Dune, the $40 million science fiction epic that marked David Lynch’s first and only foray into major studio filmmaking. Based on Frank Herbert’s legendary science fiction novel, Dune is the story of Paul (Kyle MacLachlan), heir to the noble House Atreides of planet Cala&. His father, Duke Leto (Jürgen Prochnow), is growing so popular that he threatens to overtake the Padishah Emperor Shaddam IV (José Ferrer). Shaddam, seeking to secure his position, draws Leto into a scheme by pretending to give him control over Arrakis (source of the spice melange, a mind-expanding substance that also enables interstellar travel) while actually arming Leto’s chief rival, House Harkonnen’s ruthless Baron Vladimir (Kenneth McMillan), for a sneak attack. When Shaddam’s plan comes to fruition and House Atreides is destroyed, Paul and his mother Jessica (Francesca Annis) take shelter with the Fremen, a native race embedded deep in the deserts of Arrakis. As Paul acclimates himself with Fremen society, its leaders (including Everett McGill as Stilgar and Sean Young as Chani) begin to suspect he may be their long-awaited messiah.
Eraserhead and The Elephant Man, but Universal Pictures refused to give David Lynch selesai cut, and he’s largely disowned the resulting product. We can see why: It’s a mixed bag of a film that threads together goofy ostentation with incomprehensible density. It pulls us into a world, but then keeps us at a distance. Emily Asher-Perrin writes for Tor.com that Dune “is a perfect example of what happens to an excellent science fiction premise in the hands of someone who has no particular love for the genre.” That hasn’t stopped it from becoming a cult classic, though, and the Dune property has stayed popular enough to produce sequel novels, a Sci Fi Channel miniseries in 2000, and an upcoming theatrical remake from Denis Villeneuve.
My friends and I were huge fans of the Dune series growing up, so this ended up being the very first David Lynch film I ever saw. If I’m being honest, though, I always preferred the Sci Fi miniseries (it was one of the first DVDs I ever bought). I think that’s because — even with time and context — Dune is incredibly frustrating. It’s alienating when it should be immersive. There are things I like, of course, namely Kyle MacLachlan’s lead performance and the screenplay’s general audacity and bombast. Cheap effects aside, there’s also some wonderful Lynchian creature design (it’s nice to see the baby from Eraserhead getting work as a spaceship navigator!) and a few moments of genuine exhilaration. But it’s also terribly uneven, going from the first whiplash-inducing hour of constant voice-over exposition and confusing worldbuilding to a second hour of repetitive action and anticlimactic drama. And look, I understand how difficult it is to dilute a sprawling novel into a two hour film, and how much pressure Lynch must have felt working with a big studio for the first time. But for as much as I enjoy a lot of the camp and wonder of it all, it feels very much like things got away from him. The whole thing lacks confidence.
My friends and I were huge fans of the Dune series growing up, so this ended up being the very first David Lynch film I ever saw. If I’m being honest, though, I always preferred the Sci Fi miniseries (it was one of the first DVDs I ever bought). I think that’s because — even with time and context — Dune is incredibly frustrating. It’s alienating when it should be immersive. There are things I like, of course, namely Kyle MacLachlan’s lead performance and the screenplay’s general audacity and bombast. Cheap effects aside, there’s also some wonderful Lynchian creature design (it’s nice to see the baby from Eraserhead getting work as a spaceship navigator!) and a few moments of genuine exhilaration. But it’s also terribly uneven, going from the first whiplash-inducing hour of constant voice-over exposition and confusing worldbuilding to a second hour of repetitive action and anticlimactic drama. And look, I understand how difficult it is to dilute a sprawling novel into a two hour film, and how much pressure Lynch must have felt working with a big studio for the first time. But for as much as I enjoy a lot of the camp and wonder of it all, it feels very much like things got away from him. The whole thing lacks confidence.
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