Dune

I read Dune a thousand years ago, the summer between freshman and sophomore year, as assigned reading for my school. I fell in love with it. As a graduate of the Isaac Asimov and Robert Heinlein “juveniles” school of sci fi, I had never read anything like it. I think it was the mysticism. Or maybe the grand ideas (though no less grand than what Asimov had been churning out and I eagerly reading). Or maybe it was the fact that my parents dragged me to motorcycle shows. I hate motorcycle shows, and motorcycles in general. So Dune was a surrogate interest for me that summer, one of my first forays into escapism (along with Watership Down and The Lord of the Rings, read a couple years earlier).

Now, the strange part. I tried my hand at a re-read, sometime in the early 90s, I think. I hated it. Couldn’t get through it. Tried a different Frank Herbert book, same result. Twenty-five years later, I picked up the sequel to Dune, Dune Messiah, and wound up having to force myself to finish it. Why this one-hundred-and-eighty degree shift? Why can I not enjoy a beloved book from my youth?

I think it is because of the 1985 movie. David Lynch’s Dune ruined Frank Herbert’s Dune.

Way back then I did not see it in the theaters. I must have rented it back during the VCR / video craze. Maybe with friends, maybe solo, maybe both. It did not leave a strong impression on me, one way or the other. Or so I thought. It was, like, meh. Not good but not bad. But not how I envisioned the novel.

Thirty years later, in keeping with my new ritual of watching – completely without the possibility of familial interruption – a science fiction flick on my birthday, I decided to re-watch Dune. Perhaps some distance would lead to a Herbertian renaissance. Like re-discovering a whole new world, or, rather, an old, vaguely familiar one. Yeah, I couldn’t get into Dune Messiah, but maybe, just maybe, a re-watch of this flick would bring out some spark to older, wiser me.

Was not the case.

But let me back up a moment. For those uninitiated, can I summarize Dune in three or four sentences? I can:

The spice mélange extends life, enhances physical abilities, heightens awareness and possibly psychic abilities, and even allows for hyperspace travel. It is found on only one world in the galaxy, the desert planet Arrakis, or Dune. Two Royal Houses battle over Dune – House Atreides and House Harkonnen, machinated by the Galactic Emperor. Dune itself supports the rebel Fremen and giant sandworms, and may allow young Paul Atreides to develop into a godlike messiah.

That’s a lot to cram into a movie. Perhaps a Star Wars-like trilogy might have served Dune’s purposes better. Probably; I think that was someone’s intention back then. But when I watched it again (almost like a first time, really), I saw lots and lots that disappointed. Here are the most egregious offenses:

- The “intro” is a bit of exposition spoken by a beautiful princess. I kinda liked this, but then realized that she had virtually no other speaking scenes in the entire movie.

- The special effects are terrible. Horrible. Embarrassing. The spacecraft models look one step up from those old fashioned Flash Gordon serials. Noticeable blue/green screen effects.

- Everyone who indulges in the spice gets the cheap special effect of glowing blue eyes. I guess that’s to cue us morons watching the film.

- All of Herbert’s proper nouns, a cool looking mishmash of Arabic-sounding phonemes, sound ridiculous in the movie. “Bene Gesserit.” “Kwisatz Haderach.” C’mon, say them out loud.

- Kyle McLachlan is completely miscast as Paul. That huge giant head of hair, that Grand Canyonesque chin cleft, eh, suffice it to say he was not how I imagined the hero of Dune, young Paul Atreides.

- Also miscast was Sting as a Harkonnen baddie, who really only utters a few lines at the end of the flick while decked out in a giant diaper.

- The Harkonnens, particularly the Baron, were unnecessarily over-the-top gross and did over-the-top gross things. I’m talking warts and popping warts and – ugh, I don’t even want to write about it.

- I guess the budget ran out and they couldn’t afford visual lasers for their laser guns. Unless they were meant to be sonic guns, or something. My attention was wandering as I watched, I admit.

Overall, an ugly, silly, ill-thought-out flick that does the source material no justice at all.

Do I have any ideas how it could have been made better? I do. One, really:

If you don’t have the money, the imagination, and the will to do a serious imaging of the book, camp it up. Really camp it up. Barbarella, 1980s Flash Gordon camp. I believe one action sequence had some cheesy rock guitar licks thrown in. By the band Toto, of all groups. Why not commission, I dunno, somebody way out in left field. Who was big in 1984? Van Halen? Prince? The Cars? Yes had a resurgence back then. Why not the Police? Anyone. Just get ’em in a room together, take some, ahem, mélange, and score the film as weirdly wildly as possible.

Two further observations:

Dune was remade as a miniseries about fifteen years ago. One county library has it, but it’s too far away and I’d have to order it delivered to my home library, and I just don’t have enough interest to do so.

However, I rented a movie called Jodorowsky’s Dune. This is the movie to watch instead of Lynch’s film. It is not Dune, but the reminiscences of eccentric director Alejandro Jodorowsky’s monumental early-70s quest to get Dune filmed. This man storyboarded the entire film from his own reading of Herbert’s book and even began casting the film: Orson Welles as Baron Harkonnen, Salvador Dali as the Emperor, David Carradine as Paul’s father, and Mick Jagger as the role later taken by Sting. He wanted Pink Floyd to score the flick. He hired H.R. Giger, the future creator of the Alien xenomorph monster, for the concept art. The art and the storyboards were sent out to various studios, but no one proffered the money needed for the budget. However, it has been claimed that Jodorowsky’s Dune is one of the most influential films not made, influencing Star Wars, Alien, and the Terminator movies.

Oh well. Now to start thinking about next birthday’s science fiction film. A more tried-n-true classic, I think. Forbidden Planet? Them? The Thing? Hmmm. A big decision to be made ….