Oh Dune. You could have been so amazing. There is a lot to like about David Lynch’s screen adaptation of Dune: the crazy montages, the almost impressionistic acting, the beautiful sets. But it all falls apart because of the story. There’s just too much story to cram into a two and a half hour long movie. So we have a disjointed plot that is stuck together with an unbearable voice-over: story-wise the thing is a giant mess. Then again, story-wise Eraserhead is a giant mess, too, but that’s not why you watch Eraserhead. You watch it because of the visuals and the technique. And Dune is much more similar to Eraserhead than I had initially expected. So as an adaptation of a great book, Dune is a failure. But a glorious one.

my dad is a huge sci fi fan. he highly recommended the books but was reluctant to recommend the movie, and i can understand why.

the story has been summarized so much that it makes little to no sense. the dune chronicles couldn’t possibly have been made into a movie, or even a series of movies without editting a lot of the story out. to simplify this great story to ‘reasonable’ movie-length would turn into another piece of meaningless hollywood crap, so instead they tried to keep everything and it all ended up on the cutting room floor. i heard they filmed something like 60 hours of footage, and had to lose 95% of it. it was a tragedy.

if you’ve heard the dune books are good and think the movie will be a suitable substitute, you’re wrong. read the books.

interestingly enough, i’ve heard there’s a remake in the works. hopefully it turns out better than this version.