Dune The Movie
Dune The MovieThere are two different "Dune" movies - both from the same books:
Looks like most people who liked the books don't like the movie.
JeffGrigg liked the books and the movie.
Some have said this movie is best if you read and liked the books. I read and liked the books. I thought the movie was a poor interpretation of the books. Others obviously disagree.
Second Opinion: Most people I know who have read the books dislike the movie. I have not read the books, and the movie has been on my list of MoviesToConsider for about fifteen years now. I find that the worst possible thing you can do to a movie is compare it to the book - the two media work on such completely different levels that you should treat them as separate works.
The movie was a very poor interpretation of the books. But if you read the (first three) books, you can at least understand the movie, which is otherwise pretty obscure. ;-> It's a "cult classic." I like it. -- JeffGrigg
The "2000" version has some pretty harsh reviews, but I liked it better than the 1984 version. -- JeffGrigg
I would have liked it better without some of the silliness. The silliness I remember best:
No you wouldn't. In the film, you yell to make the guns shoot because the guns are a novel weapon which uses the sound itself, and only certain sounds work. They are a hardware/technology advantage. The guns do not appear in the book. In the book the Atreides advantages are discipline, moral, loyalty, training and general hardiness. This profoundly effects how we see the battle. In the book the Atreides win because they are better people. In the film they win because they have better weapons. -- DaveHarris
In the book, the Atreides were learning the "weirding way" of battle. That means that they were using Bene Gesserit tactics, including an odd variation of the Voice. While the B.G. Voice was used as a command (similar to the JediMindTrick of StarWars), the Atreides Weirding Voice was a way to use the voice to directly injure or kill opponents. In the book, the "weirding module" guns didn't exist. I presume that the guns were put into the movie as the easiest way to describe this concept in a visual format. -- RobMandeville
It's been years since I read the books, but it was my impression that the weapons were represented accurately in the movie. The house Atreides had developed unique weapons - personal shields and sound-activated weapons (and Paul's discovering that his name, "Maud Dib" was a "killing word"). But their main strength was good government and leadership - inspiring loyalty in the troops. The best fighters were the Emperor’s troops and the Freemen - both because they live in a harsh environment. The Atreides win by gaining the loyalty of the Freemen.
In both the book and the movie, everyone had personal shields. That is why such an archaic practice as hand-to-hand combat was a common skill. Projectile weapons could not penetrate a shield and anyone who was anyone would have a shield, so combat required either bombing from above or getting in close with a knife. I cannot find any reference to sound activated weapons in the book. If they are in there at all, it must be in a minor role. I have always felt that the "weirding modules" degraded the Atreides in the movie. As noted above, they were powerful because they inspired loyalty in fierce soldiers and powerful friends in the Landsraad. The second was the reason that the Emperor turned on them in the first place.
[There were no sound-guns in the books. In the books, the "killing word" line was in reference to the fact that Muad'Dib's soldiers used his name as a battle cry. I think the movie really devalued a lot of the philosophy and spirituality by reducing everything to "big guns". The 2000 movie did a much better job. Improvements in special effects and the popularization of wire-fu made the special effects for the martial arts more accessible.]
The merry-go-round was really odd.
-- JeffGrigg
I was very disappointed with the film after having read all the books. But then again, how would one make a good film of Dune, perhaps it's not really possible? -- ChanningWalton
I'm a DavidLynch? fan. I thought it a wonderful film with a few flaws. In particular, many of the characters were spot on. I can forgive them almost anything if they get the characters right. -- DaveHarris
I didn't hate the film so much as I keep thinking I've missed out on most of it; probably because there's so much more to the book. I saw the movie three or four times and the biggest reason why is because I kept forgetting that I had seen the entire movie. Very weird. Also, I keep remembering this scene from the movie where one of the Guild's Navigators swims up to a hole in the ceiling, and the last two or three times I saw the movie the scene wasn't there. Very, very weird. -- RichardKulisz
I liked the books (and read the first few before seeing the Lynch film). I quite liked the film; I was much less impressed by the TV series. This was not because it is not faithful to the book (it is, more so than the film, partly because more time is available to show the bits the film missed out). However, I couldn't get over how much the TV series owed visually to the film - I actually found that something of a a barrier to my enjoyment of it. -- JamesYoungman
I agree. The Lynch movie did miss the point and strip away much of the point of Herbert's work, but it substituted it with a new direction and artistry that makes it stand alone. The TV series felt like a slavish reproduction of the books that completely missed the underlying themes and concepts. It felt like a bad Shakespeare production - they're going through the lines and following the plot, but there's nothing else there but words and story - no soul to it. Lynch ripped out the soul and supplied it with a new one. The miniseries was just flat.
Either way, Herbert's original story, as written, isn't really filmable. -- MartinZarate
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(last edited January 27, 2006)
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