Dune 1984 Movie Review w/Spoilers

From the far reaches of the Milky Way Galaxy, It's Retro Nerd Girl with a film review for you.

Today I'll be reviewing the movie Dune released in 1984.

Starring:
Kyle MacLachlan, Virginia Madsen, Francesca Annis

Directed by:
David Lynch

Genre:
Action, Adventure, Sci-Fi

Rating:
PG-13

Budget:
$40,000,000 (estimated)

IMDb Rating is currently:
6.6

The Synopsis is:
In the year 101,91 AG (After Guild).   The son of a Duke, Paul Atreides, discovers that he has been bred to be the super being, the Kwisatz Haderach!   He must defeat the Baron Harkonen and the Padishah Emperor Shaddam IV by raising an army and controlling the production of the most important commodity of the known universe, the spice Melange.

Story:
The movie is based on the brilliant fantasy sci-fi novel Dune published in 1965 written by Frank Herbert.  This is definitely one of my favorite books of all time and I remember as a young teen, I wanted to write an epic science fiction book just like it.

Frank Herbert got the idea to write Dune in 1953 while traveling through Florence, Oregon and learned of some agricultural development that would control the flow of sand dunes, keeping them from roads and other locations occupied by humans. 

This also made him more curious about ecology and the many cultures that exist in desert regions globally.  That is precisely why much of the book uses Arabic and Islamic terms.  He was also fascinated by the people of the Kalahari Desert in South Africa and how they conserve every drop of water.

Frank Herbert also spoke on several interviews during his lifetime about being inspired to write Dune about the dangers of blindly following messiahs and leaders.

He read over 200 books for his research before he began writing a three-part series, Dune World, in the monthly Analog magazine from December 1963 to February 1964 along with illustrations by award winning artist, John Schoenherr.  A year later he published a five-part series, The Prophet of Dune, January – May 1965.

When Herbert shopped around his 800 page novel, Dune, it was rejected by over 20 publishers before it was finally accepted and published in August 1965 by Chilton Books.  The funniest thing is that this publisher was known for publishing auto repair manuals, crafting and hobby books.

The novel was a huge hit and was tied for the Hugo Award in 1966, which is a literary award for the best science fiction or fantasy works for the previous year.  As well, it won the inaugural Nebula Award for Best Novel that year.  To this day it is considered one of the best selling science fiction novels ever written.

After the novel’s success, Herbert went on to write 5 more books in the Dune Saga, Dune Messiah in 1969, Children of Dune in 1976, God Emperor of Dune in 1981, Heretics of Dune in 1984, and finally Chapterhouse: Dune in 1985.

His son Brian Herbert took the reigns along with Kevin J. Anderson after Herbert's death to write prequel novels House Atreides (1999), Dune: House Harkonnen (2000), Dune: House Corrino (2001), Dune: The Butlerian Jihad (2002), Dune: The Machine Crusade (2003), and lastly Dune: The Battle of Corrin (2004).

Two continued rewriting more books regarding Dune, such as The Road to Dune (2005), Hunters of Dune (2006), Sandworms of Dune (2007), Heroes of Dune
Paul of Dune (2008), The Winds of Dune (2009), Sisterhood of Dune (2012), Mentats of Dune (2014), and Navigators of Dune (2016).

Brian Herbert also wrote a biography of his father’s life in the book, Dreamer of Dune: The Biography of Frank Herbert (2003).

So now you get an idea of how popular Dune was and still is.

Now rewinding back to the 1970’s, when there were many attempts to make the Dune novel into a feature film.  No one got closer than Alejandro Jodorowsky.

As the story goes, producer Arthur P. Jacobs bought the rights in 1971 but when he died in 1973 it landed in the hands of the French consortium led by Jean-Paul Gibon, with Alejandro Jodorowsky at the helm to direct.

In 2013, the documentary, Jodorowsky’s Dune was released describing in great detail the director’s vision for the project, shocking Dune lovers around the world about what might have been.

Some of his ideas included rock groups Pink Floyd and Magma in the sound track. Alejandro’s son Brontis who was only 12 years old at the time was to play the protagonist Paul Atreides.  Legandary artists H. R. Giger and Jean Giraud (AKA Mobius), were attached to lend their visions to the characters and sets.   Salvador Dalí was to be the Emperor, Orson Welles as Baron Harkonnen, and Mick Jagger as Feyd-Rautha, the Baron’s nephew.  After years of work, funding the film proved to seal the doom for this project.

As well Frank Herbert made it known that he was not a fan of this interpretation because of the changes to the story that were to be made.  In a way it’s probably better that the author’s work wasn’t used in a way that he didn’t support.

However, selfishly as a lover of science fiction, it would have been fantastic to get a bold big budget science fiction film at that particular time in the early 1970’s.  It was so needed and fans of science fiction were scraping at the bits to be entertained on the big screen.

Producer Dino De Laurentiis had been eyeing Jodorowsky’s progress all along and scooped up the rights to the film as soon as it became available.  In an attempt to get an accurate interpretation of the book, Frank Herbert was asked to write the screenplay for the film, which he did in 1978, however it was 175 pages long, which would have been approximately 3 hours of run time.

With an intermission, that might have worked, but it’s not ideal for theater showings. 90 minutes is the sweet spot, and 2 hours works is within range of being optimal.  Let’s not forget, that the initial successful reception of a film is based on ticket sales.  Trust me, I hate that because, I wish it should be about the art of the story.  I would gladly watch 3 hours of Frank Herbert’s Dune based on his original script.

In the biography of Jack Nicholson, “Five Easy Decades”, the book claimed that in the late 1970's that he considered directing Dune!  What?!  He decided to pass on it and and also later turned down being cast in the flick as the Duke’s warrior Gurney Halleck.

Ridley Scott was hired to direct and wisely decided to split the book into two movies.  Sadly, after seven months of working on the film, he dropped out when his older brother died of cancer.

Ridley Scott was then replaced with David Lynch, who at the time was a young artist with two films of massive critical acclaim under his belt, The Elephant Man released in 1980 and Eraserhead released in 1977.  He was hired at the request of De Laurentiis’ daughter who became the first female producer of a multi-million dollar film while working on Dune, Raffaella De Laurentiis.

Lynch had a three picture deal for Dune, Dune Messiah and Children of Dune.   He was also charged with rewriting the screenplay into one film with Eric Bergen and Christopher De Vore.  Ultimately Lynch became the sole writer, parting with the two men for creative reasons and a 135-page, sixth draft of the script, finally launched the film into production.

It was still a bit long clocking in at approximately 2 and a half hours, but the studio wanted one movie and one movie they received.

The final result was as many film adaptations are, an attempt to tell the novel’s story in a linear fashion along with a few additions to express the filmmaker’s interpretation and creativity.

I’ll definitely get into more of the differences between the two formats as I get deeper into the review, but for the most part,  I’ll just tell you that I just love the film and what was done in it.

It’s not a popular opinion and I totally understand why many people would not like the film because it’s flawed in many ways.  The story is a little choppy because it tries to follow the books events, give reasons for it, and do it in one film.

One of the biggest complaints that people have with the film is the massive exposition in it.  In fact, before the story begins, (depending on which version you watch) a character by the name of Princess Irulan explains the different factions of the known universe and their desire to control the production of the Spice Melange, which is a drug that is widely used throughout the known universe for various purposes. 

In doing this, many viewers felt confused as the film divulges more exposition, strange terms, and character’s inner dialogue throughout the film.

I am a bit eccentric, so I loved every moment of it all, even at the tender age of 14 back in 1984.

That’s not to say that I understood the film at 14 years of age.  I hadn’t even read the book at that point, but I did enjoy the weirdness of it all and it made me so very intrigued. 

What is a Kwisatz Haderach and a Padishah Emperor?  Give me more!  It’s a whole other world and society with their own language and customs.  I was in nerd paradise!  There is so much information and minute details that build the story and it is glorious.

This is a film you need to see multiple times to understand it and reading the book helps even more.

What surprised me was how much of the book was exactly laid into the film.  Much all of the inner dialogue that many critics hated, is directly from the book.  As well, it is clearly visible that many things from the book made it into the film, but remained unexplained and I think that was the biggest challenge for viewers.

Another challenge for the story was that many of the occurrences in the book were wisely avoided in the film keeping the morality of the 1984 audience in mind.  It avoids the book’s mention of slavery, rape, incest, pedophilia and the fact that our main character, Paul and the Baron’s nephew, Fayd-Rautha are only 15 doing very mature things.

Much of it is still cringe-worthy today but we understand that some of these things were the norms in the history of humanity and still exist in certain cultures.  This helped to weave together strong emotions while reading the book.  On the other hand, this is one of the reasons that it was perceived that Dune was unfilmable.


Pacing:
At 2 hours and 17 minutes it’s very slow paced and you feel every bit of those two hours.  If you are into the style and rhythm of the first 10 minutes, you’ll enjoy the rest of the film as it builds into a nice crescendo.  The last 30 minutes is a true epic spectacle.

Challenge:
There are several challenges in the film against Paul Atreides.  The main villain portrayed in the film is the Baron Vladimir Harkonnen from House Harkonnen on the planet Giedi Prime.

The back story is that 10,000 years earlier, the Harkonnens were banished for cowardice by the House Atreides.  The Harkonnens have since gained their respectability but the feud still remained between the two houses of nobility in something they called the art of kanly.

The Baron is working with the Emperor of the known universe to utterly destroy the House Atreides to satisfy his family vendetta, but what the film leaves out, is that he hopes to have is nephew Feyd-Rautha marry the Emperor’s daughter, Princess Irulan to have him ascend to the Emperor’s throne.  After being shamed for thousands of years, there would be no better satisfaction for the Baron, than to have a Harkonnen on the throne.

Excellent motivation, but none of it is in the movie.  Maybe it was intended to be in the film, because, at the end of the film, Fayd-Rautha strangely appears alongside the Emperor and his camp.

I had a lot of fun watching the Baron and his antics.  He’s a malicious, boisterous man relishing his power with absurdity.  At one point he takes a shower with some black liquid, at first I thought it was chocolate, but on second thought, perhaps it is spice, which backs up his actions.  He’s tripping on spice. That would explain his behavior.

The Emperor is probably the next most imposed villain.  He is from the House Corrino on the planet Kaitain.   Sadly, somehow, the Padishah Emperor Shaddam IV is related to the House Atreides.  However, his status is threatened by the fact that Paul’s father, Duke Leto, is gaining popularity in the assembly of noble families called the Landsraad.  In this case, blood is not thicker than power.

The third party of opposition for Paul is the Spacing Guild, which is an organization that provides space travel for the entire universe.  They can only do this with the Spice Melange that is collected from the desert planet Arrakis, also known as Dune.  The Guild’s space navigators, mutated humans, and according to the film they use the spice to fold space and travel light years without moving.  (In the book the Holtzman Effect is what allows space travel.)

The Spacing Guildmen have foreseen that their spice production will be in trouble if Paul Atreides is allowed to live, so they have entered themselves into this massive plot to destroy the House Atreides to protect the flow of spice.

The spacing guild definitely flex a lot of muscle with the Emperor, pretty much bossing him around, because they have true control over the universe.  There are many famous lines from the movie, but one in particular that stands out is from the Baron, “He who controls the spice, controls the universe.”

And so he who controls the spice controls the guild.    So when it suits the guild they change sides.  They simply empower whomever has control of the spice production.  Likewise, they have so much pull because space travel is so important.

The last opposition for Paul is the Bene Gesserit sisterhood, who have been secretly manipulating genetic bloodlines to create the Kwisatz Haderach.  This superbeing would take the throne and it would be as if a Bene Gesserit was on the throne that they could control.

The sisterhood are quite powerful, with their own fighting skill, called the weirding way.  It’s a last resort because the Bene Gesserit presents themselves as accommodating servants, advisors, truthsayers to men in power, bearing them children and again, the motive is about power and protection.  Truthsaying is the ability to know when someone speaks the truth as they believe it.  The Kwisatz Haderach would act in their interest, because he was one of them.

They would have their way except for the fact that Paul was born and hidden from their influence. He utterly despises them for the way that they have treated his mother, The Lady Jessica.


Empathy:
My empathy for the characters was something that builds.  There are so many characters that it was hard to really care about them when they died or vanished out of the story.   I won’t get into every single character, but  we can start with Duke Leto his father.

The Duke is given the opportunity by the Emperor to take over spice production on the planet Arrakis and make a lot of money.  It’s not only about the money though, He feels as if he is offering some hope to the Landsraad.  He takes the job knowing that it is a trap that will endanger the lives of every Atreides in his House.

He is a man driven and trapped by his noble duty, whether it makes sense or not.  In the film, you can often see him in some kind of contemplation and he acts like he knows he’s going to die, feeling regret for his past (i.e. not marrying the love of his life for political advantages).

Just as a bit of backstory, Paul’s mother, the Lady Jessica, is a Bene Gesserit that was bought from the sisterhood by the Duke to be his secretary.  Yeah, in this world you can buy people.  Eww, GROSS!

The Duke and Lady fell in love, in which he asked her to bear him a male child even though, Bene Gesserit are ordered to only bear females. Isn’t it cool that they can control the sex of their offspring?

Paul is the result.  In the film and the book, Paul is arrogant and entitled because of his nobility. He’s not unkind.  He’s just really wrapped up in his title of being the Duke’s son.  That sense of duty is present in father and son.  In many ways they are doomed to make the same choices in service of duty.

Duke Leto has done everything possible to prepare him to be a great leader by having him train with the best teachers.  He is extremely proud of Paul and Paul thrives from his father’s approval.

It can be hard to find someone like Paul likeable and truly, Frank Herbert didn’t write the character to be likeable or to be a hero because Paul’s part in the story is only a small part of a bigger tale with a profound message.

Paul grows on you because of his trials and tribulations.  He has attempts on his life, he loses his dad and many family friends to the Harkonnens, has to fight for his life in the desert, and honor his family name.

We can definitely understand the suffering in his journey and root for him by the end of the tale.

In the end, as much as they are enemies, Paul and the Baron seek the same thing, retribution.  I love that connection!

As well there are lots of mirrors in the story, such as Paul and his father / Chani and Jessica expressing how history repeats itself.  This is part of Frank Herbert’s brilliance in creating characters and stories that transcend time and explores humanity.


Technical:
Here are some technical stats for you:

• David Lynch worked a total of three and a half years
• The film was shot in a period of two years with a crew of about 1700 people.  As well 80 sets were built on 16 sound stages with a crew of over 1700.

Mexico was chosen as the location, which had the correct aesthetics for the film, which coincidentally was the same location and filming for Conan the Destroyer (1984) (another movie that I plan to review in the future).

But sharing the location was the least of their troubles.  Two months prior, over 200 people had to clear trash on the sand dunes. The cast and crew came down with "Montezuma's Revenge" which is diarrhea experienced by tourists after drinking water or eating food in Mexico as a result of a bacteria strain to which native Mexicans are immune. That meant that a whole lot of money had to be put into building  cafeteria providing the entire cast and crew food imported from the United States for every meal.

Let's talk about the look of the film.  Wow, the concept of nearly everything in this film is so dynamic to me blending a hint of fashion from Baroque and Tudor eras with a touch of creativity beyond my expectation.  It’s probably my favorite part of the film, the actual aesthetics.

Many critics of the film hate the look manly because of how dark and strangely the Harkonnens were portrayed.

However, I feel that the filmmakers brilliantly meant to really upset viewers.  Not one compassionate or admirable visual was given to the House of Harkonnen to show the horrors they couldn’t reveal from the book.

The Baron is immoral, cruel, and vicious.  The filmmakers really want you to know that by making him a disgusting sore infested mass.  He is in pain internally by being born in a family that has been looked down upon for over 10,000 years and the House Atreides has never been kind to him or his family.  He’s suffers externally as well, for the benefit of the audience to see this.

I loved the fact that anything to do with the Harkonnens was utterly vile and disgusting with lots of terrifying visuals.  Geidi Prime is like a planet of horrors and I think it was creative to project the savagery of their mentality as a visual in their world, so gritty and putrid.  Again, it is a creative visual to describe their lack of morality and disregard for human life other than their own.

The costuming for the Bene Gesserits were outstanding, denoting their feminine mystique and dedication to the sisterhood by shaving their hair.  Wow, what a powerful image it was to see these gorgeous bald women!  I thought it was totally mind-blowing, and I loved it.

At the time in 1984, it was a sign of defiance to see a woman with a bald head and it was very rare reserved for rebellious goddesses like Grace Jones and Sinead O'Connor.  The detail of the Bene Gesserits being bald is actually a detail that is not from the book and I thought it was a nice addition.

There is so much detail given to all of the costumes and I enjoyed how they matched this creation of the Dune universe by being dark, vastly textured, and imbued a sense of drama and flair.

And I loved they way that the different sects and factions had distinct looks that were completely different from the other.  I loved that.  All of the costumes weren’t wowing, but 90% of them were amazing to me.

One character design detail that many don't recognize is how the Spacing Guildsmen actually mutate over the period of the two years that the film takes place.

It’s quite a fascinating detail to watch, showing the physical effects that the spice have on their physical bodies.

The sets, the sets were ridiculous!  Full of detail in the moldings.  What artistry!  Each set drenched in exotic textures and motifs befitting the finest museum in the universe!  It takes my breath away when I see them and recognize that they actually existed, they aren't miniatures or painted backdrops, but real spaces for the actors to move around in.  I can only imagine the many long hours of work it took to create each one.

The emperor’s throne room was exquisite with the luxury and opulence of his rank and wealth while still embodying a sense of age and strength simultaneously.  I just want that back wall somewhere in my home.  It’s gorgeous!

It just astounds me how many amazing locations the movie displays.  This world building is all apart of the enjoyment for me.  A Lot of it was done with miniatures.  It’s such a staple in cinema, but all of the really amazing visuals came from this technique.

Toto was brought in to create epic instrumental music for the film accompanied by the Vienna Symphony Orchestra and the  Vienna Volksoper Choir.

The "Prophecy Theme" was composed by Brian Eno and much of the background music as well.  It was a fantastic score befitting a rock n’ roll Shakespearean space opera.


Performances:
The casting for this film was ridiculously amazing and all of the performances were stellar in this movie, just incredibly outstanding. Every actor in this film did their part to make this film an incredible fantasy epic making much of the film’s highly quotable moments iconic!  I won’t get into every single performance, but  I will talk about the main character actors.

First we'll talk about Paul Atreides muad'dib played by Kyle MacLachlan, who did a wonderful job playing the character.  He definitely captures the arrogance of the young Duke’s son but also gives him something charismatic for the audience to hold on to that is not in the written form.  As the film progresses the audience falls deeper in admiration for the character and the actor.

This was the film debut of Kyle MacLachlan, who had been a stage actor.  This film also began a long professional relationship with David Lynch.

Francesca Annis was a vital pulse to this story playing the beautiful Lady Jessica.  Lady Jessica is a very tricky character to play because one of the reasons why actress, Glen Close turned down the role was because she considered the character as,"the girl who is always running and falling down behind the men".

It’s pretty much true, especially how she is written in the book.  She is ridiculed and attacked by commoners and even Paul talks down to her on occasion and she has to put up with it.  This proves how hard it is to make the Lady Jessica a dignified character in the story.  Perhaps this influenced the filmmakers because a lot of insults to the character in the book didn’t make it to the film.

Francesca portrays her with the incredible ability to be vulnerable, regal and powerful when needed.  She infused the Lady Jessica with a great deal of poise and strength.

Many of the cast in this film went on to work with David Lynch in future projects for TV and Film, most notably, Twin Peaks Tv series.  The cast of this film includes some connections to Star Trek as well.

I really want to talk about every actor, but is more of the same, of how I loved their performance and thus, I became a lifelong fan of theirs.  I know that I am not alone because for many people, this movie was the introduction to these great actors and their incredible talents.

Sean Young was fantastic as Chani. She was so excited to be on the set that she shot footage of a lot of behind the scenes with the cast during the shooting of the movie.

I thought it was curious that the recording artist, Sting played Feyd-Rautha, and Alejandro Jodorowsky chose Mick Jagger to play the role for his version.  Was that on purpose or an interesting coincidence? 

Either way, Sting played the role with a great deal of boyish fun energy while embellishing the malice of his character with his facial expressions.  Unfortunately, he hardly has much to say in the film, but what of him we received, he was surprisingly good.

As a note of mention, David Lynch makes a cute little cameo in the film as a radio operator on the mining ship that was rescued from a sand worm.  That scene tickles me every time I see it knowing it’s the director and he’s going the extra mile to make the scene work.


The ending:
The ending is a source of much controversy and I totally understand why.  Leading up to the end is an incredible epic battle facing off Paul’s army of Fremen against the Emperor’s Saudakar warriors.  There is even a spectacular blade combat between Paul and Fayde. Universally that all seemed acceptable to the audience it goes in accordance to the book.

Paul is given the robe of the emperor and then proceeds to magically create rain on Arrakis sending the crowd of Fremen into a frenzy of cheer.

It wraps up so quickly that it actually becomes lackluster in spite of the triumphant music that is used to denote victory.

I can accept the ending for what it is.  It ends the story.  But it leaves questions… more questions than necessary and this is what leads me right into the next segment.


Wish List:
So just to let you know in advance, I do love the film as is, in it’s many versions that are available.  Just give me more Dune!  My first wish is that I wish this was a movie everyone loved and we would have been seeing Dune: Chapter House in theaters  by now.  The entire series of books is just totally mind blowing and epic.  It would be so cool to see it in the visual form.

I wish that the filmmakers listened to Ridley Scott who suggested that this needed to be two movies!  Why didn’t they listen to him?!  Imagine, twice the Dune 1984.  Twice the Kyle MacLachlan, twice the Sean Young, twice the Virginia Madsen, twice the Patrick Stewart, twice the Sting!  There is so much more incredible detail about each of the characters, language, and cultures that the film just couldn’t capture in one installment.

I even think it would be amazing if Dune was a full on trilogy, two hours each to really get into all of the history and trippy nuances that Paul and the Bene Gesserit’s experience.  Just to take it further, if I am totally daydreaming here, an entire season of episodic story covering the book would really allow the story to get intense, but that is just me.  I am a little fanatical about the book, I love it so much.  I really want to see it get it’s due.  Something animated would be cool too.

Paul’s visions were done well, but I wished that it was a little more obviously explained that the reason he can do that is that the Kwisatz Haderach is translated to be the one who could be many places at once.  And although we see Paul do that in the film, the audience doesn’t understand what’s happening.  It just looks like abstract images clashing together.  It might have even been cool to have him be a ghost image in the scenes where he's observing the actions of the emperor plotting against him, just to convey that he was actually there.

From watching several interviews from cast and crew, the main goal of this production was to turn Dune into a franchise that was a version of “Star Wars for adults”.   Just hearing that breaks my heart.  Even though the rumor has it that Star Wars was heavily inspired by the novel Dune, Dune is in it’s own lane.

Perhaps this is why a heavy emphasis on visual effects was placed in the film.  Unfortunately, many of them were unrefined and some even commented that they looked cheap, which could have been a result of the project running out of money. The chromakey blue screen work was a great example of this issue.

The film claims to be the first CGI of the human form rendered on film, during the shield battle between Paul and Gurney at the beginning.  In 1984 it was pretty cool, but it doesn’t hold up and seems like overkill for something that could have been more effective as a practical effect.  It doesn’t help that you can see that the actors were replaced by stuntmen in some clips.

Since they decided to tell the story of Dune in one film, it really only needed scenes that directly connect to how Paul becomes the Kwisatz Haderach and takes the throne of the known universe.

One example of that is the Spacing Guild’s Flight Navigator.  The design of the character was incredible, but in truth, he was not needed in the film.  We see him folding space 10 minutes.

The space travel scene from Caladan to Dune could have taken place in two scenes.  The Duke’s family get on the spaceship and sit down.  The spaceship flies into Arrakis with a title announcing the name of the location.  Done!

Most viewers don't understand what the Space Navigator is doing and the effect was not visually appealing.  So many scenes like this bloat the experience.

And to be fair, it seemed the filmmakers sincerely wanted to honor the book by having certain scenes and characters around.  It all comes from a good place of wanting to be as true to the book as possible.  But in the end they had to abandon all of that to maximize their profits on theater showings.

I can definitely see that many unexplained things that appear in the movie, were fully explained in the book… such as what I explained before, that Feyd-Rautha stands with the Emperor at the end of the film, because he was to succeed him.

As well the two young boys with the Fremen warriors were actually Paul's adopted sons.  That’s never explained in the film.

The film spends a great deal of time being artistic, which is a touch I enjoyed a great deal, but at the same time, many of those scenes were lingering and repetitive.  There were at least 15 minutes of just sand, rolling sand dunes, and the sun set.  Then there were about the same amount of time given to just footage of water ripples and dripping, over and over again. 

There were several zoom-ins to, just faces with no dialogue, eyes, and specifically, the right hand.  What's up with the right hand?

There was also a great deal of fading shots again with no dialogue, but drawn out for drama.  Mind you all of this was awesome to me, but we didn’t need all of it to tell the story, since time was a constraint.

My next wish is about the ending and it really needs explaining.  It’s a massive epic tale wraps up with rain being delivered to the planet Arrakis.  End of story.

What the film doesn’t explain is that all along, Fremen want to terraform Arrakis eventually and they do slowly over time in the books.   Granted, this is only one rain fall and we are not informed how far the range is, but it leaves more questions for people who have read the book.  The book informs us that water is deadly to the worms and the rain Paul conjures up would ultimately destroy the worms and the spice production.  As well the book informs us that most of these characters are so bound by the spice that they need it to stay alive.

In doing this, the film misses the point of Dune and the series as a whole.  Frank Herbert did not create Paul to be an actual God.  The legend of Muad’dib is a contrived tool to subdue the Fremen people on Arrakis.  Paul’s a fake and the story is a warning for humans not to blindly follow leaders.  The movie’s ending is stating the absolute opposite.

In the introduction of his 1985 short story collection, "Eye", Frank Herbert wrote, "I enjoyed the film, even as cut, and I told it as I saw it. What reached the screen is a visual feast that begins as Dune begins, and you hear my dialogue all through it." "I have my quibbles about the film, of course. Paul was a man playing god, not a god who could make it rain."

Paul had been displaying many feats of an intuitive nature, truthsaying as well as some voice control abilities over people, but creating rain is way outside of this skill set.

I wish the ending was just simply Paul ascending to the throne.   A sequel would have been possible to follow out of curiosity of what was to come next.

With the rain, it closed the door on the possibility of a franchise.  No more spice.  The worms are dead.  No one lives, who’s addicted to the spice, which would be practically everyone.  Paul has cured the universe of all of its problems.

It’s so sad because at that point, the studio had to throw the baby out with the bath water so to speak.  It was the final nail in the coffin.

I wish that the character Duncan had a bigger role in the film because he is so very important to the sequels and I felt he didn’t get his due in this film.

The weirding way was a Bene Gesserit fighting technique.  However, in the film, it was a sound gun.  I just wished we could have seen the actual fighting style and the audience could see a full demonstration of how powerful it was.

And lastly, of the many complaints about the film, either people loved the music or thought it was too repetitive.  I never tire of it, but it I was shocked to learn that Brian Eno actually scored the entire film, so we could have gotten more variety and depth from hearing more of it.


Enjoyment:
The first rough cut of the film, over four hours long, was rejected from the studio.  It was re-shot and edited down to almost three hours long.  Then it was cut to two hours and 17 minutes along.

The studio felt it was still too confusing for audiences so an introduction by Virginia Madsen was added to explain the Dune Universe.  And maybe it was overkill, or setting the precedence for weirdness, but during the film's original release, "cheat sheets" we handed out to all of the movie goers.

Hype for the film was insane with high expectations, because:

• the studio put a lot of money toward publicity, including a special television documentary
• it was an adaptation of the very popular book
• people wanted another David Lynch movie after his critically acclaimed films Eraserhead and The Elephant Man
• it was produced by epic filmmaker Dino De Laurentiis and his daughter Raffaella
• the actor playing Faye-Rautha, Sting, was growing in popularity and featured in many of the promos.

It was a disaster at the box office, coming $10 million dollars short of it’s budget and the reviews were alarmingly scathing.

Roger Ebert said, "This movie is a real mess, an incomprehensible, ugly, unstructured, pointless excursion into the murkier realms of one of the most confusing screenplays of all time." "The movie's plot will no doubt mean more to people who've read Herbert than to those who are walking in cold" "the worst movie of the year."

Gene Siskel  said "it's physically ugly, it contains at least a dozen gory gross-out scenes, some of its special effects are cheap, surprisingly cheap because this film cost a reported $40/45 million and its story is confusing beyond belief. In case I haven't made myself clear, I hated watching this film."

Variety magazine said, "Dune is a huge, hollow, imaginative and cold sci-fi epic. Visually unique and teeming with incident, David Lynch's film holds the interest due to its abundant surface attractions but won't, of its own accord, create the sort of fanaticism which has made Frank Herbert's 1965 novel one of the all-time favorites in its genre." "Lynch's adaptation covers the entire span of the novel, but simply setting up the various worlds, characters, intrigues and forces at work requires more than a half-hour of expository screen time."

There was some particular criticism about the Baron Vladimir Harkonnen which called him out as a homosexual character and asks if the sores on his face are subtly referring to HIV/AIDS.

I actually think it was a coincidence.  It wasn’t intentional.  I explained the reason why I believe the Baron’s character was designed the way he is, to visibly show us his mental state of festering suffering.  In the film his sexuality is insinuated but not confirmed.  In the book, he is a slave owner, a malicious killer, and a vicious pedofile.

One of the prequel books, House Atreides, it explains that the Baron Harkonnen's obesity and sickly condition is actually a punishment for raping the Bene Gesserit mother when she asked him to father a daughter for the sisterhood.  Lady Jessica was the result.

No one is harsher on this film than David Lynch, unhappy with the result and the what he refers to as his “selling out” while working on Dune.  He asked that his name to be removed from the credits of other versions of the film and declined many offers to create a director's cut.

David Lynch said (January 13, 2006), "Dune, I didn't have final cut on. It's the only film I've made where I didn't have. I didn't technically have final cut on The Elephant Man (1980), but Mel Brooks gave it to me.  And on Dune (1984) the film, I started selling out, even in the script phase, knowing I didn't have final cut, and I sold out.  So it was a slow dying-the-death, and a terrible, terrible experience. I don't know how it happened.  I trusted that it would work out, but it was very naive and the wrong move. In those days, the maximum length they figured I could have is two hours and seventeen minutes, and that's what the film is, so they wouldn't lose a screening a day.  So once again, it's money talking, and not for the film at all, and so it was like compacted, and it hurt it, it hurt it. There is no other version. There's more stuff, but even that is putrefied."

To this day he is still uncomfortable with talking about Dune because of how much it marks a hard time in his life.  However, in a recent video call interview (2019) he did say that there were some parts of the film that he “liked”.

There were a few favorable reviews at the time that acknowledged the faults in the film but praised the attempt.  Dune also was nominated for an Academy Award for Best Sound (Bill Varney, Steve Maslow, Kevin O'Connell and Nelson Stoll).

Science fiction writer Harlan Ellison was a big supporter of the film and spilled a little tea when he said in his book, Harlan Ellison's Watching released in 1989, that critics were denied screenings at the last minute after several reschedules and the community flooded the film negative reviews, in his opinion as a result.

Hollywood took another crack at it in 2000 for a Sci-Fi Channel miniseries, Frank Herbert's Dune and Children of Dune.  It had record breaking views for the channel and they both won a Primetime Emmy Award for Outstanding Special Visual Effects for a Miniseries, Movie or a Special.

Some of the more recent reviews of the miniseries are mediocre at best. Although it was more accurate to the book, the visual effects didn’t hold up over time and unless you’re a pure fan of Dune, it may be a little slow moving and too political for some.   Nevertheless, I’ll take it!  I guess I just love Dune so much. It worked for me and I hope to review it one of these days if I can get a copy of them.

For all of the complaints that the 1984 film gets, the series proves that it’s really difficult to get this right.

For me and a select few, the original movie excited and delighted at a time we wanted to see science fiction and travel to other worlds.  Over the years, television airings of the movie kept the flame going for the film, sparking interest for a lot of people who didn’t even know that there was a book called Dune.  It opened up Frank Herbert's fascinating world to a new fan base of 80’s kids and the many generations afterwards.

The book inspired many things using the film’s aesthetics like a series of computer games, board games, songs and art.

I would be remiss to not mention Dune II: Battle for Arrakis, a real-time strategy video game developed by Westwood Studios and released by Virgin Games in December 1992 based upon the 1984 movie and was so successful that it laid the foundation for Warcraft.

It’s a very unpopular opinion, but I can’t help it!  I love Dune 1984!  This is my guilty pleasure!

Father!  The sleeper has awakened!

My Rating:
9.0



Hey, I usually don’t do this but if you love the book Dune or even just curious about the Dune universe, I have some recommendations for you that you can check out on YouTube.

There is the Duneinfo channel and it has so much information about the 1984 movie, the miniseries, cut scenes from the video game and so much more.

The channel ComicBook19 did a Dune book series where the host goes into detail talking about the novel from beginning to end in several videos.

The channel IdeasOfIceandFire goes into detail about all of the Dune books, the Dune universe, the characters and even voice acts excerpts from the novels, explaining them as he goes along.  He also covers discussions about the 2020 film.

That sums up my review.  I hope you liked it.  This is Retro Nerd Girl signing off!

Take care movie lovers!  I'm off to the next review!

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