Well, Clan McClarey, as is our custom, toasted the new year by watching Dune (1984), a film so spectacularly bad that is entertaining, a true train wreck of the filmmaking art. Director David Lynch in the above video explains just how much a disaster the three years the film took to make became for him.
In a 1985 interview, below, he is, unsurprisingly, somewhat more circumspect, although he seems haunted by the ordeal he has just put behind him.
After the initial opening of the film, and many members of the audience being completely confused by the film, the introductory expository scene, usually a bad sign for a film when spoken exposition is required, was changed. Here is the original intro featuring Virginia Madsen as Princess Irulan:
Madsen was charming, but her exposition seemed to most members of the audience to be more cryptic than informative. The author of the novel Dune, Frank Herbert, narrated a replacement intro that was somewhat more informative, but probably left a fair number of the audience puzzled who hadn’t read his elaborate exercise in galactic creation:
The problems with the film were legion, go here to read about some of them, but an inability to convey the story to the audience was one of its cardinal sins. Go here to see a fan version that makes the film a much more orderly attempt to tell a coherent story.
“ Well, Clan McClarey, as is our custom, toasted the new year by watching Dune ”
Being married into an Italian family, I don’t think I could get my clan to sit through that. It’s card games, wine, calamari and lasagna on New Year’s Day.
Goodbye 2020.
DUNE. A Sleeper.
I’ve never made it. I’ve tried numerous times but it puts me to sleep somewhere after the poison toothpaste 🙂 and while he’s riding the wild tapeworm.
If you have a case of insomnia throw this flick on your screen.
Happy New Year!
Of course, you’re a better man than I am, Mac.
Anymore, I can’t sit through ten minutes of stuff like that. It’s my old age [completed three score and ten; but emotionally 16]: in addition to getting all my exercise hiking to and from the latrine all day, I now have the attention span of a gnat.
However, the Warden and I sat through most of “That’s Entertainment” on TCM. Made me think how different are today’s youth’s ‘diversions’ from the golden years of Hollywood.
For 2021, “Live Jesus In Our Hearts. Forever.”
“Whether we live or whether we die, we are the Lord’s.”
“Whether we live or whether we die, we are the Lord’s.”
Quite right T.Shaw. For Catholics it is always a Happy New Year.
I’m at a disadvantage to start with. Although an avid sf devotee, I’ve never been able to make it through Dune (the book) or any of its sequels. And here’s another factoid to put me outside the mainstream. I’m bored by Deep Space Nine (although my good lady watches it to see Rene Auber… as the shape shifter–he was one of her students at then Carnegie Tech, now CMU.)
My third oldest picked up the book a few weeks before Christmas He seems to be enjoying it. So we bought him a boardgame based on it, and I got him the movie. Not being a sci-fi type, and since Dune has always truck me as deepest, darkest sci-fi, I know little about it except spice, worms and Sting. But he seems enthused by it, and we’re going to play the game – and watch the movie – for him.
FWIW, I seem to remember a miniseries way back in the day starring James Mcavoy, but didn’t know if that would be any better than this notorious film for understanding the story.
I can’t believe it has been two decades since the Dune miniseries:
https://io9.gizmodo.com/6-things-i-liked-about-the-dune-miniseries-and-6-i-did-1844246902
I like it. At the very least it certainly wasn’t the grand trainwreck that Dune 84 was.
It can be found on Youtube:
https://www.youtube.com/results?search_query=dune+miniseries
Dune II released by Westwood in 1992 was one of the first real time strategy games.
Many years ago I read and enjoyed the first book, but never could get more than 50 pages into the first sequel without giving up. When the film came out I was enthused at first, but when I saw it, it quickly lost me for all of the reasons you’ve listed, especially the incomprehensibility of even the simpler parts of the plot to anyone who had not read the first book. I also thought the “steampunk” visual milieu Lynch adopted was a mistake, on top of all the others.
By the way, Don, this line from your 2012 post may be the best I’ve seen about this or any other bad film:
“Viewing Dune as a serious film is akin to watching a troupe of Shakespearean actors performing a three-hour length Three Stooges “short” written by Sartre.” That one prompted an actual LOL from both my wife and me. Well done!
Thanks Frank! I did have fun writing that.
The one thing that can be said for the Dune movie is this: If Lynch hadn’t made it, he very well may never have started working with Kyle MacLachlan. No Blue Velvet and no Twin Peaks.
The Dune miniseries had a follow on miniseries Children of Dune. I’ve only read the original Dune book, so I don’t have a baseline as to how faithful the Children of Dune miniseries is to the source material. It was a pretty decent miniseries.
It’s a shame Jodorowsky never managed to complete his Dune movie in the 70s. With Orson Welles, Salvador Dali and Mick Jagger, design by HR ‘Alien’ Giger, and music by Pink Floyd, it would have been a riot.
Sure, it’s a mess of a movie, but I give a lot of latitude to directors taking on impossible tasks. Peter Jackson with LOTR, Zack Snyder with Watchmen, whoever was behind the 1994 version of The Stand. The Harry Potter movies were generally quite good, but the source material had a movie-like structure. I can forgive David Lynch for Dune a lot faster than Mulholland Drive.
@GregB, it is about as faithful as the first miniseries was IIRC.
I actually made it through all 6 dune books. Don has to be careful tempting me and foxfier into a contest on who can bore the rest of the commentariate around here with scifi talk. 😉
The story behind this film seems twice as interesting as the film itself. After all there was the Dune film we very nearly got…
The spice must flow.
“whoever was behind the 1994 version of The Stand”
That was Mick Garris, who also directed “*batteries not included” and “Hocus Pocus”. I regard the ’94 Stand as the last of the classic network TV miniseries a la Roots, Rich Man/Poor Man, North and South, etc. (episodes aired in succession over multiple nights, all-star cast, based on a bestselling novel). Has anyone seen the CBS All Access version yet — which I reckon is probably a woke mess compared to the ’94 version (has to be with Whoopi Goldberg as Mother Abigail vs. Ruby Dee in the ’94 version).
I guess I’m the only person here that enjoyed the original and felt the mini-series was the trainwreck…
I saw the movie when it came out and was unimpressed. Sometime in the past decade I gave it another chance and I was quite impressed by folly on such a colossal scale that it borders on genius. Around that time a friend from work sent me this (not the exact link) https://dangerousminds.net/comments/these_odd_dune_coloring_books_adapted_from_the_david_lynch_film_are_brilli
by folly on such a colossal scale that it borders on genius
Precisely.
Elaine – The Stand (1994) is available on YouTube. I watch it every once in a while, although I haven’t been in the mood since Captain Trips invaded from China. It’s probably my favorite filmed Stephen King work. They typically have weak endings, but The Stand just kind of worked for me. I think I’d give the new one a watching it it was on a free service, but I probably couldn’t accept anyone other than Matt Frewer as Trashcan Man. For all the oddball roles he’s had, that’s the definitive one in my mind.
“I couldn’t accept anyone other than Matt Frewer as Trashcan Man”
I would also have a hard time accepting anyone other than Gary Sinise as Stu Redman — I believe the “new” Stu is James Marsden, whom I think of primarily as pompous newscaster Jack Lime in Anchorman 2 (later forced to change his name to “Jack Lame” when he loses a bet with Will Ferrell’s Ron Burgundy)
Sinese is interesting in that role. He plays Stu as a hero, but not a friendly guy. I haven’t read the book, but typically a Southern hero would be a likeable good ol’ boy.
The one portrayal I don’t understand is Molly Ringwald. I don’t mean to be rude, but I can’t tell if she’s supposed to be simple or just innocent and lovestruck.
There is a documentary about Jodorowsky’s Dune on the Roku Channel. It is currently in the New This Month section titled “Jodorowsky’s Dune 2013.” It is an hour and a half long. It is the documentary that NATE WINCHESTER posted a trailer of.
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I’m wondering what is going to happen with the new Dune movie by Denis Villeneuve what with all the virus related theatrical release complications. There is supposed to be a sequel to follow the first movie.
Roku update. The Jodorowsky’s Dune 2013 documentary has been moved to the Documentaries section. It is directly accessible when using a Roku streaming box. Roku also has an option to view the Roku Channel online via a web browser on a PC. You need to use the website search option to locate the video. It can be found by using Dune as the search term.
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I got the impression that Jodorowsky’s Dune was Dune as art house film. It is claimed that the script would have been a 14 hour long film according to Wikipedia.
Thanks Greg. I will have to watch it.