(Thanks, MovieClips Classic Trailers!) 

Recently, someone who hadn’t seen it yet asked me “Is DUNE a great movie or not?” My answer was (and has always been) “Well, it depends…” I certainly didn’t hate it when I first saw it, but having not read the massive sci-fi novel it was based on at that time, my brain had to hold onto the inside of my head for dear life a few times during the more heady moments of mass exposition. I actually liked that David Lynch brought his trademark visual style to the film and some of the ickier visual effects (the alien navigator in the glass case, for example) were there to show this wasn’t yet another budget Star Wars clone.

Granted, the big, loud battle scenes were a big, loud mess and some of the “special” effects were reused too many times (for example, that same enemy ship swooping over the battlefield on Arrakis became a running gag to some friends I saw the flick with). Nevertheless, I liked the production design and facts that the different alien cultures were well portrayed thanks to some solid casting and it was a “pay attention” flick that demanded more of viewers than almost any other American sci-fi film of that period. Of course, it’s no Blade Runner by a long shot, but that’s another post for another random week…

Now, I didn’t think it was that “bad” back in 1984… but I did think it was a wee bit too crowded yet too heavily edited for its own good. Later reading proved that this was one of the biggest problems with the film as Lynch had no say on the final cut, something that’s never a good thing even if a film isn’t flawless when shown as intended. Seeing a heavily modified TV version a few years later didn’t help matters much because most of the “new footage” was made up of outtakes, unfinished scenes and other elements not approved by the director plus a voice-over narration and bland paintings of scenes that made for an overall more disjointed mess than the theatrical version. I recall being so put off that I was going to change the channel, but I stuck it out.

I can safely say that experience was more boring than reading a phone book upside down in the dark with sunglasses on a cloudy evening. Or something like that. I watched that particular version a few different times – the first because I thought “Alan Smithee” was a real person who got to reedit the film (and man, was I pissed off when I found out that Hollywood in-joke meant the film was worse after the “fixes”). The second time, it was a custom tape someone put together that compiled parts of the original and TV versions, leaving out as much of the crappy content as possible. I still wish I had that tape around here but it got sold off with the bulk of my more legal VHS tape quite a while ago. I later had a tape that made had the original TV edit and the equally terrible TV cut of John Carpenter’s The Thing on it, and it became a bit of a cult double feature hit for a while around here until it broke a few years back.

Of course, the film has a ton of other issues starting with the fact that while seemingly overlong, it’s actually far too short for its own good and isn’t “entertaining” in the way a less cerebral flick would be. There’s enough material in the novel to fill two or three films, so getting so much information in two hours and seventeen minutes was too brief for the eggheads and too long for the rubes. Movies like DUNE are supposed to be for the rubes, but they ended up staying away because no one likes to be learned when they want a simple popcorn muncher. People who went in expecting a light fluff dusting between the eyeballs got some hard grey matter dropped on their pointy heads that they couldn’t swallow.

All those names of races, religions, planets and past/future tech best left to those who read the 1965 novel (and were some of the films harsher critics) were l-o-s-t on casual viewers and even the few jokes presented probably fell flat. Other than a commercial and brief clip with a wooden William Hurt (an actor I usually like quite a lot) that made my eyebrows stiffen, I still haven’t seen the 2000 Sci-Fi Channel version or its sequels, but I hear they’re pretty good. Some day I’ll check them out – as ever, time factors in all things.

Then again, I liked the brain workout of all those names and places dropping every few minutes in the Lynch version to the point that I ended up seeing it something like five or six times in the theater and a few more times on VHS, DVD and cable as a guilty pleasure I’ve come to enjoy more and more. I recall having the kooky idea after the first viewing to go read the Frank Herbert novel at some point so I could come up with words to a parody song called “Bene Gesserit” using Elton John’s “Benny and the Jets” as a jumping off point. Of course, that never happened because it took me so long to read through the book and take notes (that required more research in other Dune novels) that I never got around to it. Well, feel free to take my silly old idea, play dress-up in front of a video camera and make a million new friends and followers on YouTube. You’d better nail it in terms of those references, as fans of the book aren’t to be trifled with.

Amusingly enough, I ran into the guy who asked me about the film a few days ago and when I asked him if he liked the move, he smiled and said “Well, it depends…” Even funnier, he happened to have a paperback copy of the novel in his bag. For the record, he’s got no intentions of making that video any time soon, as he just blinked a few times and said “Uh?” when I tossed the song idea his way.

So get to it, someone… I’ll keep an eye peeled for the results.