Jodorovsky’s Dune (the documentary) is excellent. I doubt his version of the movie would have been more watchable tough. Most of Jodorovsky’s movies are pretty unwatchable to begin with.
It would have been interesting though. In a different but similar way that the lynch version is interesting.
If they ever do a remake in 201x style it will be extremely bland compared to both these versions, that’s for sure.
I have a different take, it sucks because it is too faithful to the book. Neither have decent pacing. The book keeps building until it’s forced to unwind everything in two chapters; it’s like Herbert ran out of time and had to get it to the publisher. The film does the same thing. Both tell instead of show. Herbert explained the “weirding way” at least ten times, The film has voiceovers, inner monologues, and other terrible devices.
I’d love to see this as a television series. There are great ideas in Herbert’s world that could use space to breathe.
Where’s the part of the book where it starts raining on the desert planet for no reason?
Because that is the awfulest part of the movie.
I think its sins lie more in the “not adapted faithfully” side of the equation.
Agreed on all points. It didn’t leave me wanting him to finish his movie, really, it left me wanting to get my hands on the Moebius storyboard book they kept showing in the documentary. They need to publish that thing.
You asserted that nobody should judge the film without first presenting their own adaptation (which is ridiculous) and I stand by my analogy for both Lee and Lynch: If I find peed-in soup gross, I do not have to be a chef to send it back in disgust any more than I would have to be a chef to enjoy it if it were delicious. The chef is fallible and soup is not sacred. If the dude at the next table loooooves chugging some pissy soup, he can have mine.
Regarding “The Fifth Element”: I was delighted to see it because it remains as the closest thing we’ll ever see to Metal Hurlant comic book stuff hitting the big screen. Even if it is a bit crap, you still see ghosts of Moebius and Druillet in the visuals and subject matter. That’s a big deal to me.
I don’t see anything in Lynch’s “Dune” to delight me besides the mere fact that it’s a science fiction movie from an era where such things were somewhat uncommon.
A really good adaptation of the Frank Herbert novel would play a lot like the BBC version of “I, Claudius.” All palace intrigue and skullduggery.
When an otherwise important director makes an otherwise forgettable movie from a deeply memorable book, we are free to ignore the movie in favor of the book.
Unfortunately, all this cult following of the movie serves as a distraction from the importance of the book. Spice addiction in Dune is every bit as problematic for those characters, as oil addiction is in this world. But the nature of the addicted mind is to distort all negative feedback into something more comfortable, less threatening to that same addicted mind.
This may be the real reason it’s so hard to see Dune made into a successful commercial product. Its core message (Oil addiction is bad, m’kay?) is simply not something American audiences want to hear.
I didn’t say nobody should judge a film—I said you can’t call any film crap unless you’ve made your own (I mean, you can… it’s a free country, but your taste-based opinion carries as much currency as a knuckle-wracking schoolmarm.) And what kind of neoliberal mumbo-jumbo equates a work of art with food, like it’s some sort of consumable nourishment?
So, you can judge a film, but only if you have a positive opinion on it?
That kind of renders “judgement” meaningless.
Seeing this topic (and having just re-read the first book), I thought I’d give it a chance and watch it again. I got to 53:45 and I couldn’t take any more.
It’s appallingly bad.
It’s even stranger than that. He seems to be saying:
Weird.
I saw the movie well before I came to the book. I can see how one who had read the book would come into the movie for something more.
But the problem is, the things that make the book good only really work in the medium of a novel. If I were to compare the book to a canvas, then the paint upon it wouldn’t be the character’s actions, but the character’s thoughts. More than anything else, the book is about thoughts. Without that, it’s basically space Game of Thrones.
Every single scene is about 10% action, 10% talking, and 80% views into the internal thought processes of the participants as they try to figure out what other people are thinking.
Some examples:
The story opens when the Atreides are gifted control of an incredibly valuable world by the Emperor, taken away from their bitter rivals, the Harkonnens, as punishment for the Harkonnen’s failings. Why would anyone do that? Because it’s a trap. Why would the Emperor spring such a trap? Because then he can cover illegally destroying the Atreides as merely bog-standard inter-house warfare. But why risk so much to destroy the Atreides, one house among many? It’s halfway into the book before we find out. The characters know there is a plot, but they have no choice but to participate until they understand it, so there’s a lot of thinking about the plot.
Toward the beginning, there is a lengthy scene between Lady Jessica and Doctor Yueh, who will eventually betray the family. The conversion leads the doctor to remember his lost (probably dead) wife, the reason he will betray them. Jessica is reading his motions, words that make him halt, small pauses, contortions of his face. She senses his unease, but misreads the underlying reason. The entire scene is about the conversation, what the doctor is thinking, and what Jessica is thinking about what the doctor might be thinking, and how ultimately this set the entire family up for betrayal later.
When we first meet Paul, he is practicing a peculiar style of hand-to-hand combat meant to work with personal shields. Personal shields are skin-tight and stop fast-moving projectiles such as bullets (because snipers make political stories more difficult), but must let through sufficiently slow materials (or else you’d never be able to move while wearing one). Paul is practicing a form of knife fighting that tries to combine slow knife strikes that might get through a shield with efficient dodging of your opponent’s blade.
Later Paul is in a ritualized fight to the death a Fremen named Jamis. There’s no shield, but that’s how Paul learned to fight. He can dodge, but he can’t land a blow. So everyone watching thinks he’s the better combatant, but toying with the hotheaded Jamis. Basically, they think he’s a sadist.
The point is not the action. The point is how everyone around him perceives the action differently, and how that strains the politics of it.
on Arrakis, the Atreides host a formal dinner for local nobility and gentry. The entire dinner is a parade of veiled threats and backhanded pleasantries. This one is an idiot: no, she’s a spy and I’m an idiot. This one has the mechanical power to halt the flow of water: but this other one has the financial power to halt the flow of water. The scene is about what is said, what that really means to someone who can understand, and what that means about how those involved view the stability of the new Atreides rule.
When Duke Leto meets Keyne on Arrakis, Keyne spits on his feet. This is meant as a sign of respect (the sharing of water), that is not universally understood.
A confluence of factors give Paul an ability to gain impressions of the future. Once we accept these at face value, we learn that he’s aware that there’s a strong risk of his legend getting away from him. Paul must try and thread the needle between a future where his family is utterly destroyed for lack of political support, and a future where his followers end up becoming fanatics that overthrow civilization in the name of his Jihad. When Fremen in the same room as him end up killing many heavily trained Sardaukar, his first thought is, grimly, “people will say of this day that I killed ten Sardaukar with my own hands, even though I did not even draw my blade”. He knew his legend was getting away from him.
You can film all the action and dialog faithfully, and it will be dreadfully dull.
I owned the criticism as personal right out of the gate and made a very simple analogy. You’re either being obtuse or trolling. Adorable.
I think you’ve got it backwards, no matter what Spike Lee said: the whole point of art is to invite judgement. Without judgement on the part of the audience, art cannot have any meaning at all, likable or torturous.
Well, I liked it and I loved the books as well. The movie goes way off course from the books, but it’s still pretty to look at. I think Lynch did a fairly good job at conveying the general feeling of the book imho.
I think that pretty much encapsulates my views too, @Dooner . It’s not faithful to the book, but it had the right feel for me.
Hang on a moment.
looks out the window, films some raindrops with his iPhone
Ok, now that that’s sorted. I have seen some heckin crap films.
Worst thing for a movie is to be boring. This movie is not. It triggers emotions.
I loved the atmosphere. Impossible to dislike the settings like Caladan, the throne room or Arrakis. If you would create a bar with this look, it would be a success.
Definitely very inspirational for every steam punk fan.
And, if I called a film a masterpiece, that would also be an absolute judgement.
“Good” and “bad” are absolute judgements.
If I’ve seen two films, I can render a judgement as to which is better.
If I’ve seen ten films, I should be able to articulate which are good, which are bad, and which are simply “meh.”
If I’ve seen a hundred films, I should be able to designate a few masterpieces and a few pieces of crap from among them, despite not having produced one myself.
I’m not willing to go quite that far with Dune (though it definitely falls into “bad”) but I feel quite comfortable categorizing Star Trek Into Darkness as “crap,” in pretty much every respect.
