For those of you who have perhaps read Frank Herbert's original Dune, and are considering viewing this movie, here's some advice: don't. Swish orange juice, toothpaste, and clam chowder in your mouth: you'll get the same effect.
Herbert wrote an epic masterpiece that should be regarded as the Hamlet of science fiction (actually, it is very vaguely adapted from Hamlet). David Lynch scripted and directed a butchery of this novel. He made so many mistakes, it is impossible to cover them all. Here's a general idea: the novel is summarized, not adapted. The movie contains about half of the elements involved in the story, and watching it makes you feel like you're falling asleep and missing half the plot. Everybody in the story has an agenda, but you get to see only half of these agendas, and are left to imagine the others. Character development was mediocre, and paled in comparison to the rich depth given in the novel. The writers obviously did not understand Herbert's technologies, because the movie displayed loads of horse dung where there should have been intricacies that would say, "Star Wars, eat your heart out." There was poor acting from everybody but Jurgen Prochnow as Leto, Patrick Stewart as Halleck, and Sting as Rautha. And finally, the special effects of the time simply weren't up to snuff for Herbert's vision. From the blue eyes to the force fields, everything looked horribly cheesy. If the folks had waited a decade, or maybe used something better than a third-grader's sketch pad, then they would have had stunning visual effects.
Overall, what we are left with here is a definitive flop. I can only hope that the TV miniseries version that aired last year did a better job. On a scale of 1 to 10, this movie is somewhere around absolute zero (-273.15, FYI).
Herbert wrote an epic masterpiece that should be regarded as the Hamlet of science fiction (actually, it is very vaguely adapted from Hamlet). David Lynch scripted and directed a butchery of this novel. He made so many mistakes, it is impossible to cover them all. Here's a general idea: the novel is summarized, not adapted. The movie contains about half of the elements involved in the story, and watching it makes you feel like you're falling asleep and missing half the plot. Everybody in the story has an agenda, but you get to see only half of these agendas, and are left to imagine the others. Character development was mediocre, and paled in comparison to the rich depth given in the novel. The writers obviously did not understand Herbert's technologies, because the movie displayed loads of horse dung where there should have been intricacies that would say, "Star Wars, eat your heart out." There was poor acting from everybody but Jurgen Prochnow as Leto, Patrick Stewart as Halleck, and Sting as Rautha. And finally, the special effects of the time simply weren't up to snuff for Herbert's vision. From the blue eyes to the force fields, everything looked horribly cheesy. If the folks had waited a decade, or maybe used something better than a third-grader's sketch pad, then they would have had stunning visual effects.
Overall, what we are left with here is a definitive flop. I can only hope that the TV miniseries version that aired last year did a better job. On a scale of 1 to 10, this movie is somewhere around absolute zero (-273.15, FYI).