MovieChat Forums > Dune (1984) Discussion > The Problem With the Original Dune Movie

The Problem With the Original Dune Movie

posted 4 years ago by TMC-4 (19411)
5 replies | jump to latest

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=llSvz3p4vrw

David Lynch's Dune is cool. It’s got great costumes, some really good sets, a lot of really excellent casting choices such as Silvana Mangano as the reverend mother, Francesca Annis as the lady Jessica and Jürgen Prochnow as Duke Leto, but the movie falls short when it comes to pacing in the second half, and also relies on expository voiceovers throughout much of it. I know some people don’t mind the voiceovers as much but, personally, I think that the way it's done in David Lynch’s Dune breaks up the narrative flow of the movie. But let’s get down to my real issue with the movie, and that is that Lynch’s Dune does not accurately enough reflect the themes, philosophies, and ideas of Frank Herbert’s book. David Lynch’s Dune casually glosses over many of the nuances of Frank Herbert's book and presents a more trivialized version of several of the book's concepts.

[–] MickyMac (2943) 4 years ago

The voiceovers add nothing to the film, they distract and take away.

[–] freefallin (35) 4 years ago

The problem with Dune was that it sucked. The picture looked awful, everything's so dark. The special effects were atrocious. The shields in particular looked so terrible. Even at the time it was criticized for its bad SFX, especially when movies like Star Wars RotJ which had come out a year before looked so much better. Many of the cast members were woefully miscast. Kyle MacLachlan was too old to play Paul. And Freddie Jones as Thufir Hawat? He looked more like some mad scientist with those ridiculous eyebrows and hair. The whole thing looked like some bad B-movie production. I heard Lynch has disavowed the movie and refuses to talk about it. I don't blame him. This movie actually made me avoid reading the book for many many years because of how bad it was and how terribly confusing it portrayed the story and plot and how weird everything looked.

[–] Erting (201) 3 years ago

I agree with just about all your criticisms (though I didn't have a problem with Machlachlan's age, I know it's not in keeping with the book but I'm not sure any actual teenage actor could have pulled the role off).

I'll also add that if Lynch was only allowed to work with a 136-minute running time, he did a really poor job of choosing what to keep and what to excise. Paul and his mother literally don't join the Fremen until 90 minutes into the film, and there's only 45 minutes left after that! The entire final battle of Return of the Jedi took nearly that much screen time on its own!

One of the things that annoy me most in defense of this movie are those who claim this film had good f/x for its time. The Empire Strikes Back, Return of the Jedi, Star Trek II, and Star Trek III all came out before this film and all had far superior special effects, and they were all made on lower budgets.

[–] cj3333 (1046) 3 years ago

Agreed.

Love Eraserhead, though.

[–] kenburke (2280) 3 years ago

You have to have read the book to know what was going on!!!