Dune The film

And again I reply to a video review from one of the team over at TGWTG, still no one reads this and I need a place to vent!

Lindsay Ellis, otherwise known as the nostalgia chick, has posted a review of Dune. Reviewing Dune is sort of like clubbing a starving seal to death with a frozen, week old, dead fish. You know it stinks from a mile away, but you can't help but be drawn to the spectacle. David Lynch is very good at directing his own works. Seriously, go and watch the disturbing Blue Velvet if you don't believe me. It's beautifully strange, with moments that range between pure madness and terribly serene. On the other hand Dune, train wreck that it is, is unique in sci-fi.

Every scene is unique, and not because of bad pacing but from it's own goals. Never before (and not until Farscape) had a science fiction universe been so richly portrayed. The imagery and vision behind it required just the sort of madman that David Lynch is. Even the clunky acting and stilted dialogue (the latter unavoidable, but I'll get to that) can't detract from the fact there is still nothing like Dune out there.

Neo-gothic and post modern architecture. Impossibly realised ships and hideous navigators are all included to flesh out the over all impression. The goal of this film, as with all of Lynch's work, is to immerse the viewer in the world created and if you can spare the effort to accept that its not that bad.

Now on to what galls me the most, her views on the Spice. it isn't a Macguffin. That's reserved for things like the money in Psycho. It gets the plot moving and provides a goal for a few characters but can be completely forgotten in the overall plot. The Spice is a vital art of the film. First of all it is the main reason Arakis is so important, second it is what helps bond the Fremin with the Worms, making them desert survivalists. It's what the whole story revolves around. A macguffin has no bearing on the plot, Spice is the whole point of the movie and the book.

Right here we get to the main problem with the film. The book is a text medium, is designed to be read, not watched. Your supposed to have time to understand and absorb what is presented to you. More importantly it takes longer to read because there is more to it. Instead of forcing a viewer to watch it in a couple of hours you can spend days reading a book. The reader can put the book down, have a cup of tea and let things settle in. They can re-read paragraphs and ponder their meaning. Most importantly there is more room to develop characters. As I alluded to earlier a great deal of dialogue was forced simply to cover up massive plot holes generated by chucking whole chapters of the book into the bin. A lot of plot points and plot holes were addressed if you took the time to read the novel and it's sequels.

Concepts that were glossed over (Paul Atreides existence as the second coming or "the voice of God" Muad'Dib) actually make sense if you read the books. Lynch knew this and that what was behind the Alan Smithee moniker.

A bit of back story Ellis missed was just why Lynch agreed to direct this film. Originally the studio snapped up the rights to produce the film without a director or script. Panicking that they had the rights to an award wining book but nothing else they approached a popular art director of the time (Lynch having won praise for his work in The Elephant man and Eraserhead as an art film producer/director) to do the award winning novel justice. Lynch agreed, but only if he could produce Blue Velvet. That's right the whole reason he was attached to Dune was so that he could get the budget required to make Blue Velvet.

After spending untold millions on Dune Lynch ran out of money. He was trying to produce a true and honest adaptation (making the film five or six hours according to some reports) but the studio simply could not afford to pay for something that long. Whole acts were simply thrown away before they were filmed and in the end of the day the studio released the film without Lynch signing off on it. Incomplete, half edited and ridiculously over budget. Lynch is still not happy with the results today and even after being given the go ahead for a directors cut years ago deliberately removed his name from the production.

So why does it have such a cult following. Like a train crash, or a horribly disfiguring incident with a wood-chipper and a cement mixer it's morbid curiosity. You can't help but love the honest failure that is Dune. Everything that could go wrong did on a project that was doomed from the start. It should never have been made, the novels are far to complex to be condensed into a film, or even a series of films

Lord of the Rings, perhaps the best conversion from novel trilogy to film franchise, cut whole characters from the plot. Chapters of character development was either removed or cut and paste elsewhere for pacing and because of this it succeeded where most failed.

Still Dune is entertaining, simply because it is so bad. It's flaws make it great. Like the Rocky Horror Picture Show if it was perfect it wouldn't be as entertaining. This is a film you should watch with your mates and a few drinks. Doing a serious review of this isn't worth it. When fans, like myself, quote it it's out of celebration of it's bad dialogue.

And with that I end this. "Long live the fighters!"