DUNE (1984)

I love Dune! Dune was groundbreaking.

WTf was that floating fat guy? I don’t think I could watch it.

I love Dune. It's maybe my favorite book of all time. Wonderful story.

And Sting was pretty hot

The movie that made me fall in love with Kyle. It’s a strange film but I didn’t think it was so embarrassing that Lynch should remove his name from it

Kyle MacLachlan was so beautiful when he was younger.

What a prolific career Kyle has had. I'm a millennial, I first became aware of him watching Desperate Housewives, but he's done so much

[quote] It’s a strange film but I didn’t think it was so embarrassing that Lynch should remove his name from it

Ha! I had no idea that he removed his name from the movie.

I totally get why he did. The movie is just too fucking bizarre, and way too out there.

Even some 25 years later, it still makes no sense! And it's still weird as hell.

R7 that's not his fault. He mostly follows the book. A lot of those individual plot elements are not so bad in the book where there's room to give it all context. It just shouldn't have been adapted I guess

The movie was a mess. Audiences who didn't know the book didn't understand what was going on, and audiences who loved the book found Lynch's changes either ridiculous or incomprehensible, or both. And turning the interior monologues of the book into voiceovers seems like rookie mistake.

I just couldn't get past the disgusting Baron, the creepy little girl (abomination, indeed!), and the bald women in black gowns.

It was just too, too much weirdness.

O.M.G.

I had no idea that the weird little girl in the movie was Alicia Witt!

That just blows my mind.

The movie had quite a cast.

Max Von Sydow, Patrick Stewart, Sian Phillips, Linda Hunt, Virginia Madsen, Dean Stockwell, Sting, Sean Young, and more...

Kyle MacLachlan had really great hair in that movie.

Damn, I wish he wore this outfit in the movie!

And a great jaw R13

I just read an interesting little tidbit about the characters in the movie:

"the other truth is Sister Mohiam is Alia's grandmother and Jessica's mother sired by the Baron. The floating fat man, the Baron, is actually homosexual. He was a very beautiful and handsome man and the Bene Gerssirts wanted his genes to eventually in another generation would have produced the Kwisatz Haderach. He rebelled and attacked Sister Mohiam, raping her. She was able to introduce a disease into him while he raped her which caused him to loose his beautiful body horribly."

I would never have known, just from the movie. I guess it was in the book.

The info you just cited R16, is learned across 3 books in the series. The original Dune barely touched his origins.

He eventually possesses Alia from the grave

The weirdest thing for me - the big tank with the huge space folding cuttlefish thing in it, why do they have to keep following it around with mops? Couldn't they figure out how to make it watertight? What's up with that?

Rofl R18.

I also loved the language translators which looked like old-fashioned microphones from the 1920's and 30's.

Hyphenation matters, OP.

I think they just wanted to demonstrate that the tank creatures of such great importance that lowlier members of the guild follow them around doing menial labor. There was probably a better way to do that. Or maybe the director was just being silly

Sting! He was so damned hot. Still is.

To this day, when there's a lull in the conversation I will say, "Tell me of the waters of your homeworld, Usul."

The book is great. The movie is fairly faithful and yet somehow does not satisfy. Amusing to think Jodorowsky was too weird to make Dune but Lynch was acceptable.

I'm not for remakes in general as I think good films should be enshrined, preserved and rereleased regularly.

But here's a case where we could have a remake as a miniseries. After all there are 7 Dune books. Never mind that no one could stay with them after the increasingly mind bending 5!

I think there have been multiple Dune miniseries.

The was a second remake in the early 2000s I think. Much more faithful, covered the first 3 books.

The miniseries' were even worse than the movie.

I think it's possible to do an adaptation that is both faithful and good, but I'm not sure anyone has the budget for it, and with all the failed attempts, I'm not sure anyone should bother trying at this point.

Budget would be a serious problem. We have the tech to make a visually stunning movie. But I can't see a project like this getting enough budget for good CGI, good writers, and not no name actors. I LOVE everything Dune and even I can admit the market for this movie is not large.

Oh I didn't know. Thanks! Well, it can't be easy. The books are masterpieces - deep, and gets deeper and deeper.

A friend and I watched this movie every weekend as kids. We didn’t understand it, but it was interesting, unique and had beautiful people. We swooned over Kyle.

[quote] To this day, when there's a lull in the conversation I will say, "Tell me of the waters of your homeworld, Usul."

Rofl R23!

My favorite line is the very last one in the movie, when the freaky little abomination says, "And how can this be? For he is the Kwisatz Haderach!"

The perfect fucking end, to one shit fest of a movie.

The costumes in the movie were pretty amazing.

To any lovers of the books:

I adored the Bene Gesserit. I loved how much control they wielded over the universe and how others only understood a fraction of how deep their plots ran. And I thought Other Memory was an awesome concept.

For people who didn't tread the books, members of this almost female cult/group that can undergo a ritual that leaves them with all the memories of all their female ancestors unlocked. It's why they are so scarily intelligent. Each one has thousands of years of wisdom and experience.

Yes r33

The SyFy miniseries from about 15 years ago was very good. As was their adaptation of Children of Dune.

Reading it decades ago, I remember thinking this might be how it would be when Arabs and women rule the world.

I'm so impressed that some of you know the characters and the names of the different groups, so well.

I watched the movie, and I can't remember everybody's names, much less what organization they belonged to. The names are very difficult to remember!

[quote] I remember thinking this might be how it would be when Arabs and women rule the world.

I noticed that too.

There seemed to be a lot of Middle Eastern references in the movie.

I've only seen bits and pieces of this movie and was incredibly confused. I have a feeling if i revisited, i'd still feel exactly the same. Also wtf at what R16 typed lol

I love this movie. I can’t say it’s exactly successful at what it tries to do, but Lynch swung for the fences and there are enough glorious moments that I find it tremendously watchable. Watching the SyFy miniseries just makes you realize how good much of the movie actually is.

BTW, Lynch didn’t take his name off the movie, just the recut TV version.

The Lynch movie is very different from the books in feel and storytelling, but it's still my favorite telling of the initial Dune story.

The more-faithful-to-the-books TV adaptations just left me cold. I think it's because they had less flair and the actors weren't as good.

The version I prefer is the one without all the explanation. The one that came out in theaters, will all that narration and exposition, is dreadful. It's like the How and Why Wonder Book version of the movie. I saw the movie before I had read the books and I was able to pick it up as I went along.

That's because it's based on an Islamic prophecy, r37.

It's not really based on Islamic prophecy, it just borrows from the fervor of the Arab conquest to help tell the story. While it uses the term Jihad and emphasizes the militant power of desert people, it's far from being Islamic in its "religion".

Dune is really its own thing, although it borrows from many different ancient earth traditions. Herbert was very successful in creating an incredibly rich and vibrant science fiction culture and backdrop, with its own history and feel. In that way he's very much to SF what Tolkien is to fantasy, although Herbert was a bit of a better writer than JRR was.

This explains some of the less clear elements of the story.

I am glad you know of our ways R33. The Kwisatz Haderach was our doing. Never forget that.

Part of the paul story is based on Islamic prophecy, r42. The rest of the story is influenced by lots of other cultures such as Buddhism, Bedouin and even the Illiad.

I love Dune's weirdness. Few sci-fi-fantasy films have done a better job of creating an alien but human relatable world, something that would most resemble a place where humans could have been plopped down and adapted elsewhere in the universe. And the trippy whispering was good for ambiance. And also, Kyle Maclachlan's perfect jaw.

Also the one of the most primal stories of mankind. A boy avenging his wrongfully slain father.

That is the basis of multiple stories in every culture

I loved the Bene Gesserit in the original novels, too, R33. It bugged me that in Lynch's version the Emperor tells Mohiam he wants her to use telepathy to spy on a closed meeting, when it's explicitly said in the novels that the BG aren't capable of telepathy.

[quote]... although Herbert was a bit of a better writer than JRR was.

Hmm. Not too sure about that. Herbert could be wordy and abstruse when he felt like it. Which was often.

R45, he definitely uses a LOT of Islamic imagery and terms. But let's not forget that Islam is a very strictly monotheistic religion that has no concept of man-gods, which if anything is more of a Christian concept than Muslim. In fact, many of the themes in Dune would be considered pagan and/or infidel beliefs that need to be struggled against. Muslims appreciate the fact that discrete concepts of their culture are made a part of the story, but I have also read them say that the parts are all ajumble and that Herbert didn't really understand them or how they fit together.

That's true r48, but even with that, his writing is still less painful than JRR's.

[quote]I'm so impressed that some of you know the characters and the names of the different groups, so well.

I've read the book many times. It made a huge impression on me the first time I read it, as a teenager who'd only read Asimov and Clarke and such. It's a very rich book, with a lot of big ideas and a deep backstory. I think that richness is what makes it tough to adapt to the screen. There's so much exposition.

The movie's score is pretty great.

As with The Lord of the Rings, Dune will not adaptable until some specific person does it.

LotR was considered impossible to make as a movie until Jackson came along, and even he screwed the pooch on the Hobbit films.

Also, the bigger problem with the later Dune books is that they are essentially fan fiction, albeit written by Herbert's son.

Alia's story was so tragic. She didn't really do anything wrong. If anything it was Jessica who messed up

Alicia Witt has had an interesting career.

I remember her from Dune, Cybil, and Walking Dead.

Now that's an eclectic mix of acting roles!

I am the true star of Dune.

Lol at R55. He's cute.

However, I think that Paul Atreides and his father are MUCH hotter.

I'd like to see some hot father/son loving in that family!

Lady Jessica did the damn thing that's all I got to say R55 .

I agree R56 both of them were just effortlessly sexy.

R35, it really wasn't. The sets and costumes were sterile at best. The Baron wasn't gross, he was a clean cut statesman. Totally wrong.

So? that's your opinion, r58. How nice for you.

R40 thought it left him cold as well. In fact, it's pretty common because … it really does.

If you walk without rhythm, you won't attract the worm

The entire Dune cycle is based on a terrible pun.

1. The spice is called melange.

2. The spice confers power and longevity.

3. Melange is a French word for variety.

In other words, "Variety is the spice of life".

Why does no one ever talk about this?

I didn’t see it if already posted. Sting’s winged bikini.

I will not fear; fear is the mind-killer.

Hot DAMN, R63.

I'd love to have taken that piece home with me, and hung it on my wall!

This is one of the best sci-fi movies ever. Someone above noted the incredible list of actors - and they all do a great job - no one is phoning it in. It's f***ing weird because it's set 10,000 years in the future...you're supposed to feel disoriented and uncomfortable, as the universe is a violent place. The costumes and sets are incredible: I could spend hours just looking at the first set when the navigator meets the emperor. Music was great too. David Lynch at his best, but not for everyone.

The "riding the worm" scenes, where they climb up on top the worm to ride it are cringe-inducingly bad... never has there been more obvious blue-screen. It's a really weird moment in a movie that is otherwise so well done.

They were originally going to shoot the worm-riding scenes using front projection, ala' Superman, and they even built the world's largest front projection screen down at Charabusco. But for some reason they made a switch during production for blue screen. The opticals for the film are hit or miss to be sure. I personally like the look of the personal shields, others find them cartoony. Some matte paintings work better than others. It's known that most of the miniature work was done under relatively crude circustances. It's a really mixed effects bag. Perhaps the most effective are those fabulous foreground miniature shots by Emilio Ruiz de Rio.

The Baron Harkonnen was not the horrifying monster in the books that he was in the movie. He was extremely fat, so that he needed a hover suit to move, but he was cunning and manipulative, and not a raving lunatic covered in pustules.

The Baron was pretty horrible in the books. He raped and murdered a kid just because he looked like Paul Atreides at one point. I agree he was a little less hysterical and wacky in the books and more menacing

R40

The acting in Lynch’s Dune is abysmal. Prochnow acts like he doesn’t understand English, which is probable but doesn’t explain why von Sydow acts circles around everyone (he also speaks English as a second language and didn’t speak any English at the beginning of his career). Almost everyone else is chewing the scenery, with most of the damage done by Patrick Stewart who wouldn’t figure out how to act for the screen for at least another five years.

The Dune miniseries has significantly better acting, although that also means it misses out on most of what makes the feature film so campy.

R69, the movie version was still closer to Baron Harkonnen from the books than the mini-series version, who was clean, prim, proper, and not in any sort of hover suit.

I really enjoyed the move. As I watched it I wondered how people who hadn't read the books could follow the movie.

We couldn't, R73.

It was confusing as hell.

I absolutely love that movie!!

I went to see it with three friends. At the end of the movie, I said, “Wasn’t that great?!” I looked around and all my friend were asleep

Rofl, R75!!

The movie always puts me to sleep, too!

Not only is it horrendously long, but all that whispering just lulls me to sleep.

They filmed but cut for pacing two bits at the end of the movie. Thufir Hawat's death and Paul's alibi to Chani about marrying the Princess instead of her.

Thufir's death is such a terrific scene, Freddie Jones really got cheated by that theatrical cut.

R73, we received handouts from the theater (and Universal) on opening day detailing the characters, terminology, and locales featured in the film...don't know how long these were given out during the run. Not sure what Dune newcomers were supposed to do - try and read it while the film was playing?

The Baron was grossly fat in the books, and needed the hover technology to move -- but he didn't fly around. And those disgusting heart plug things were made up by Lynch. Sometimes I think the movie was inspired as much by a coke-fuelled nightmare as by the novel.

[quote] 3. Melange is a French word for variety.

Except it's not.

Uh, no, the heart-plugs were in the book, dumbass.

poorly done, it doesnt hold up to the david lynch standard.

its no credit to the book.

Were they Hartz Mountain Heart-Plugs?

And now, a word from our sponsor, Metamucil and our other sponsor, Space Mountain.

No, R80, dearest, they don't exist in the novel.

Maybe Brian Herbert added them to his endless string of craptastic sequels, I don't know.

Giada-I-Love-Chocolate (in many forms) grandpa produced this film.

R10, Sian Phillips is very effective as Reverend Mother.

R83, they most certainly do exist in the novel.

Page reference, R86?

You both may be kind of right.

Plot Differences

[quote] Harkonnens appear to be fitted with monstrous devices called heart-plugs, which make it easy for them to be killed if the plug is removed. In the book, this is not so, as heart plugs are used as filters.

What it boils(!) down to is this. The Harkonenns hated the Artreides because an Arteides banished a Harkonenn for cowardice. So they decided to have a big fat intergalatic war to regain their honour and spend $40 million on an indulgent poorly plotted over dramatised movie that few understood. I love the sets and visuals so occasionally I'll play it at 4x speed with the sound muted.

Does the film play well to "Dark Side of the Moon"?

[quote]Kyle MacLachlan was so beautiful when he was younger.

If you want to see Kyle naked, you should check out "Blue Velvet".

Can you see Kyle's hardon there because it's an unmatted "flat" version of the film, R91?

I think you can see a couple of brief glimpses of Kyle's cock on the DVD, R92.

I love Lynch but he probably shouldn't have taken on such a massive project. People were probably telling him he needed to expand out of 'art films', but his quirky style doesn't translate to spectacles. It's like Fran Leibowitz performing in an arena.

For something considered such a "bad" movie, it sure had some great, repeatable lines. Still my favorite: I am the Shadout Mapes. The. House. KEEEEEPER.

I will never forget Patrick Stewart saving the passel of pugs while fleeing House Atreides. The movie just keeps giving and giving.

Dune is one of those books that you don't just read: you marry it. Stephen King said that about The Thorn Birds. I spent every spare moment reading Dune. I was entranced. We watch the movie whenever it is on, no matter where it is when we land on it.

"I think they just wanted to demonstrate that the tank creatures of such great importance that lowlier members of the guild follow them around doing menial labor"

In addition, the Guild Navigator's environment is totally saturated in vast quantities of spice - the most valuable substance in the universe.

Damn right they were mopping it up.

"Couldn't they figure out how to make it watertight?"

And again, a central theme of the novel(s) is this is a stagnant society, slowly dying on its feet - no invention, no innovation. Technology is...distasteful.

David Lynch passed up directing Return of the Jedi. He made Dune instead.

Sandworms and spice explained.

an amazing novel, the film disappoints.

'a feint within a feint within a feint'

i remembered that line after 9/11 and the iraq wars

Recent interview with Siân Phillips about Dune & David Lynch:

R12 Do not forget Francesca Annis I was married to Jessica, Paul Muad Dib's mother for 11 years

I read DUNE one summer during college. A friend gave me the paperback to read while I recovered from wisdom teeth surgery.

It was such a trippy read, I wasn't sure if the pain meds I was on made it so bizarro or what.

Then the first movie was filmed ... nope, wasn't the meds, it was the book!

First sci-fi book I'd read with a glossary. I love the DUNE universe! I watch it whenever I catch it on TV.

r101

that scene showcases the film's problems.

i would love to see this redone with sian phillips in the role as reverend mother once more.

Yes, Siân Phillips was great as Reverend Mother Gaius Helen Mohiam:

I can see Avan Jogia in this.

Beautiful but with enough masculine heft for the role of Paul.

Kyle MacLachlan has always had such a beautiful ass.

Thanks for sharing the photos, R91!

paul atreides is slight and boyish, the reverend mother remarks about his small appearance when she first meets him.

because of the water discipline the fremen use to survive on arrakis, , paul muad'dib grows sinewy and desiccated in frame.

You're welcome, R107.

Are you jealous that I got to pull off Kyle's shorts?

The film is now on Amazon Prime in the extended version. It’s actually held up very, very well. Had I not read the book it would not have made any sense.

The character actors are terrific. Is Kyle wearing a wig?

The names seem taken from all sorts of sources without regard for any linguistic unity, like the names in Game of Thrones but unlike Tolkien. For example, Bene Gesserit is a Latin expression meaning "will have acted well" or the like. Apparently it's a legal formula from Roman law.

Yeah, goofy-ass names!

We did some work on the publicity for this film when we worked at Rogers & Cowan!

The first 40 minutes or so are a masterpiece of atmosphere and increasing threat. It all goes kaflooey after that IMO, but is still worth watching. And Kyle was angelically handsome.

The score is tremendous.

a flawed film, but interesting. im a long time fan of the novel, the film disappoints

R115, the scene where Sian Phillips tests Kyle with the box is one of the best:

My next car will be an electric Heighliner.

𝐒𝐉𝐖𝐬 𝐜𝐨𝐦𝐩𝐥𝐚𝐢𝐧 𝐃𝐮𝐧𝐞 𝐢𝐬 𝐚 𝐫𝐚𝐜𝐢𝐬𝐭 𝐛𝐨𝐨𝐤 𝐰𝐢𝐭𝐡 𝐏𝐚𝐮𝐥 𝐚𝐬 𝐭𝐡𝐞 "𝐔𝐥𝐭𝐢𝐦𝐚𝐭𝐞 𝐌𝐢𝐠𝐡𝐭𝐲 𝐖𝐡𝐢𝐭𝐞𝐲"

In Frank Herbert’s original 1965 novel, Paul is

an unbeatable ninja hand to hand fighter

a human calculating supercomputer

a genetically engineered male witch with a Voice that must be obeyed

a seer with the ability to predict the future

a matchless military strategist

the chosen one of multiple interlocking prophecies

all of the above. He probably shits gold too while flowers spring up where he walks. Why the hell not?

Superman has super breath and even super-hypnosis in some iterations, but even when he’s muscling planets around, he looks like a pallid also-ran next to Paul, who spends his days ruling the universe, not foiling bank robberies. No wonder everyone in Dune is always staring at Paul open-mouthed and thinking about how awesome he is. Even Jessica, Paul’s mother, is overwhelmed, musing about how she’s “trained [his] intelligence … but now she found herself fearful of it.” Paul is amazing; Paul is terrifying. Be amazed and terrified, reader!

But why is Paul so ridiculously amazing and terrifying? The answer is pretty straightforward. It’s because he’s white.

Dune is basically a long, tripped out, ecstatically bloated reiteration of the Mighty Whitey trope. A Mighty Whitey is a European or white character who adopts the culture of indigenous people, becoming their king and gaining near mystical powers along the way. James Fenimore Cooper’s Natty Bumppo, a white man who adopted the ways of Native Americans and became the most strong and noble of them all, is an early example. Other iterations include Tarzan, the comic strip character the Phantom, C3P0 among the Ewoks, Dr. Strange (who goes to Tibet to learn Eastern magic and ends up being better at it than any Tibetans) and Iron Fist (who goes to the East to learn martial arts and ends up being better at it than … well, you know the drill.)

Dune is set in the far future, but Herbert wasn’t coy about drawing parallels with earthbound colonial narratives. Paul is a noble duke from a planet with a temperate climate. Though it’s the far future, he’s associated with a European-style noble tradition. He’s also the product of a centuries long breeding experiment, so he’s effectively a perfect eugenic specimen. He goes to Arrakis, a desert planet whose inhabitants, the Fremen, are persistently linked to Arabs. Their culture includes both the hajj and jihad.

The Freemen, are portrayed with the familiar tropes of noble savages. When they find out just how cool he is, they quickly make him their leader and worship him. This isn’t a one time thing for the Fremen, either; before Paul, their previous leader/god figure was an off-world ecologist named Liet, who, in Herbert’s words “had gone native.”

The Mighty Whitey trope suggests that a white person dumped among less white people will automatically become a king and a god. But in Dune, as in other Mighty Whitey stories, there’s a bit more going on. Paul’s whiteness makes him an object of worship for the Fremen.

This makes sense if you see Mighty Whitey’s might as a metaphor for imperialism. White people grow wealthy and powerful by subjugating other peoples and extracting their resources.

Paul’s divinity and power comes from his ability to capitalize on the resources and pain of others. On the surface, Mighty Whitey characters are superior because of their whiteness. But dig a little deeper, and their powers are borrowed or, more accurately, stolen. They are godlike because they’ve appropriated the labor and wealth of others. Paul claims to be wracked with guilt because he sees a future in which he leads the Fremen in a path of bloody destruction across the universe. But really the guilt is for his present glory, built on blood and a deceit that the story won’t, and can’t, quite acknowledge.

And it has Patrick Stewart just a few years before he became Captain Picard.

We never saw the movie, nor do we have any desire to do so. But we recall we were paid $10 per hour which would be more than $60 per hour today, for writing press releases.

r121, the film flopped.

Who's "we", R121?

And how exactly and where, did David Lynch "remove his name from it"? Hmmm?

R121 is Mrs Patrick Campbell aka Erna aka Nazi-loving pedo coprophile. For some reason she now seems to be oscillating between those two names and anonymity.

Extended version, r124.

Some nice bits, but essentially sweepings from the cutting room floor...

If he didn't cut the "extended version" then I don't blame him. Who cares. The original is weird and wonderful if also sort of sucky. Like much of Lynch.

R119 They don't get it: There are meant to be similarities with our world and there are meant to be differences, so some things would have developed in a similar way and other things, differently. Pulling from ancient Earthling religions in addition to modern ones was important to communicate the similarities and the nature of similar organism under similar conditions development.

You can't fully lift the politics of "Dune" and find a correlation to our real world history because, well, sandworms. Every creative work doesn't have a modern day grievance politics direct translation.

[R128] I largely agree but there are still some correlates that make me uncomfortable about the novel. The Harrkonens are presented as decidedly evil in the first novel, although more subtly so than the film, and their characteristics include some (potentially) antisemitic details that coincide with the Islamic basis of the Freman's beliefs. These were glossed over or discarded in the film.

Kyle MacLachlan's ass was TREMENDOUS in "Showgirls."

Kyle is handsome and his face is kind of irregular with that jutting chin. The camera certainly loved him.

You can briefly see his cock in "Blue Velvet". (See screencaps at R91).

I love this movie. It’s visually stunning and the plethora of different characters and their relationships are intriguing.

Is Kyle a homosexual?

I don't think so, R134.

He's been married to a woman for 17 years and has a kid with her.

I loved that the emperor rode around in a gold Art Deco pyramid that doubled as a battleship. I want one.

Right, r135, being married to a fish and having a child means 100% str8!

'DUNE' is weird in two ways. The material from the novels was weird on its own. But 'DUNE' is also suffused with David Lynch's own peculiar symbolism, common to all of his films and television: zig-zag patterns, a color palette of black and red, flickering lights, humming electrical crackling, nightmarish dream sequences, etc. These mark the film as uniquely 'Lynchian.' If you've watched a lot of Lynch's oeuvre, you'll recognize these features in 'DUNE.'

Our Heighliner is faster than the Emperor's gold Art Deco pyramid!

R6, not of very good quality. I'm surprised he's still working. I wonder who is he blowing?

Frank Herbert wrote Dune particularly as a warning against leaders like John Kennedy.

[quote] Herbert said, "I think that John Kennedy was one of the most dangerous presidents this country ever had. People didn't question him. And whenever citizens are willing to give unreined power to a charismatic leader, such as Kennedy, they tend to end up creating a kind of demigod . . . or a leader who covers up mistakes—instead of admitting them—and makes matters worse instead of better.

Which was pretty stupid on Herbert's part, R141.

Kennedy challenged the establishment and took on powerful interests, which may have been one of the reasons he was assassinated.

Both the movie and the miniseries (Sci Fi network) have Paul played by an actor who doesn't particularly physically resemble the character described in the book. Both Kyle MacLachlan and Alec Newman are much fairer-skinned than Paul should be, arguably, and Newman even has reddish hair. Though MacLachlan's hair could certainly be described as "black-black" the way Paul's is in the book. (I was sure Paul's colouring was described as olive-skinned in the book, but I can't find it now. His father is described that way.)

[quote]Right, [R135], being married to a fish and having a child means 100% str8!

I didn't say it was proof he was straight.

Someone asked if he was, and I said it appears he is.

So Frank Herbert was a homophobe who hated the fact that his son is gay? true?

Tbh the movie would have had to be six+ hours long to adequately explain everything, if that would even cover it.

I had recently read the Dune series when that movie came out, and was bitterly disappointed by the film. The set design was magnificent. The adapted dialogue was terrible to the point of wondering if Lynch had done more than skim the book. I have yet to see a David Lynch production that puts a fraction of effort into *being* as thoughtful as it wants to *seem*.

Denis Villeneuve, Blade Runner 2049, is currently filming Dune; to be released in November 2020. I’m really excited because I love his work and think his vision would be a great fit for the story. All star cast!

Bump!

Thank you r148. I can’t wit to see this

I can't either r150!

r148, blade remake no comparison to the original

r152, the original Blade Runner is my all time favorite sci-fi film but I really enjoyed what Denis did with the sequel.

Honestly, Dune is one movie that actually should be remade.

The 1984 version was a mess.

I know it’s nowhere near a perfect film but it is very well cast and it has held up well considering it’s over 30 years old.

only sian phillips, all the rest miscast.

the reverend mother is a crone, sian phillips turned it inside out and made her truly glamorous

[R156] I think the movie was well cast. In addition to the major roles, Alicia Witt and Linda Hunt were superb. And Francesca Annis must be one of the most beautiful and graceful women in a science fiction film of the time. Her descent from the starship into the rippling heat of the desert planet is one of the great entrances in film history.

R156, agreed, Sian Phillips is always awesome.

She was the great Livia, after all.

"How can this be? For he IS the Kwisatz-Haderach!"

Awesome cod pieces worn throughout - most of the men dress left!

Hypnotic, beautiful film, with possibly my favourite score ever.

One thing I remember in that movie was in the beginning their eyes had the blue glow but at some point the blue glow seemed to be dispensed with. I figured the damn thing was so long the special effects people got sick of having to hand tint the eyes of every frame the blue glow people were in.

I never understood why people say the movie or its plot was hard to follow or incomprehensible if you didn’t know the book. I watched the movie when I was ten and I had no problem to understand what was going on or who wanted what and why.

Really interesting BTS recorded by Sean Young

Yikes, Sting is eating his lunch with his elbows on the table. Was he raised in a barn?

[quote] Yikes, Sting is eating his lunch with his elbows on the table. Was he raised in a barn?

Vintage DL!

Jason Momoa.

RUINED.

The casting is giving me an uneasy feeling. Oscar Isaac would make a good Duncan Idaho -- definitely not Momoa. Instead, Isaac is a young-looking 40 year old playing Duke Leto, a character in his 50s. So many great 50-something actors being passed up.

Horrendous movie but an interesting world. I’ve never read the books. I’m looking forward to the remake.

Momoa and his usual cinematographer not being involved? A recipe for disaster.

Anyway, there's more discussion of the reboot in the thread below.

Atreides would be what nationality hypothetically speaking?

Greek?

That’s what is wrong with films. They will pass up a great actor who is age appropriate for the role and cast with someone young and popular. Movies suck.

Yes, the family was descended from the House of Atreus from Greek mythology. In one of the books, Ghanima spends time recalling their ancient ancestry. Agamemnon was the most well known.

Were the Harkonnens supposed to be Jewish? Given the context of jihad and their red hair (a mark of Jewish people in the hate mythology of the medieval period) I always felt uncomfortable with this possibility.

The name suggests Scandinavian roots, however.

[quote]Were the Harkonnens supposed to be Jewish?

Highly doubt it.

They were supposed to be "evil gays".

All of their women were turned into machines for producing babies.

The broader Dune story stretches from Greco-Roman times to 34,000 years in the future. Give or take a few centuries.

[quote]They were supposed to be "evil gays".

What was the purpose of the gay subtext involving the Baron and the twinky servant?

To reinforce how "evil" gay men are?

Again, didn't the author have a gay son?

That's what I'm wondering. I thought I read that it was Lynch and the filmmakers that made the Baron a bigger pervert than he was in the novel.