Arrakis, Dune, desert planet, film flop. This cannot be shaken at first. When Frank Herbert’s socio-political sci-fi saga was first made into a film in the early ’80s, Universal and producer Dino De Laurentiis were after an adventurous blockbuster that could rival Star Wars. Director David Lynch’s result not only fell short of expectations at the box office, but also caused fans and critics to frown.
But honestly: If I have the choice between a rewatch of Dune – The Desert Planet (1984) and Denis Villeneuve’s well-received Dune (2019), whose sequel Dune: Part Two is currently in the cinema, the choice goes retro in the vast majority of cases -Model. Am I just a Lynch fanboy who doesn’t want to know any better? Or The old film adaptation has a lot to offerwhich puts the New Kwisatz Haderach on the Block to shame?
David Lynch’s Dune is overflowing with design ideas
Hiring the director of Eraserhead and The Elephant Man for the lavish project must have seemed like the more moderate, audience-friendly option at the time. Before Lynch, the avant-gardist Alejandro Jodorowsky, who floated in even more surreal spheres, tried a version that was as ambitious as it was megalomaniacal, but it came to nothing.
In contrast, Lynch’s film seems shockingly “normal”, even in the context of the rest of his filmography. Fragments of a dreamy, otherworldly film with a unique signature and vision remain, even despite studio influence. But especially, When it comes to production design, the film shines. Each space noble house on each planet has its own look and vibe, with creative costumes and expansive sets made from different materials.
Caladan, for example, the home of Paul Atreides (then Kyle MacLachlan, now the almost equally beautiful Timothée Chalamet), is made of warm wood, while Giedi Prime, the Baron Harkonnen’s enclave (Kenneth McMillan), was fabricated from poisonous green metal and the Emperor’s (José Ferrer) residence can be described as a lavish nightmare made of gold.
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Dune (1984)
Villeneuve, on the other hand, seems to be a little afraid of flourishes, colors and the potential to slip into the camp camp due to less good taste. So, like a Sad Beige Mom on TikTok, he sticks to the same yellow and gray tones. It’s all a question of style and preference, of course. Only they are Settings and factions can hardly be distinguished from one another visually. And with all the empty space in the picture, you might think that a perfume being advertised is about to appear. Spice… by Paul Atreides.
If Dune84 were a Batman, he would be Tim Burton’s stylized one, while Dune19 emulates Christopher Nolan’s Dark Knight: despite the imaginative template, he is doomed to be set in a world that seems far too realistic. Sad!
Boobs and inner monologues are good, actually
I don’t know about you, but I like to see filmmakers get personally involved instead of just serving as well-behaved adaptation avatars of a template. Lynch’s version allows itself charming eccentricities, such as the monstrously designed, almost iconic guild navigator, the bizarre cat box, space gates decorated with gold frames and, last but not least, the space pugs lovingly carried through the film by Patrick Stewart.
Villeneuve deletes and streamlines elements rather than adding them, apart from the repartee humor, which is occasionally dangerous on the verge of pleasing Marvel dialogue prancing around. And how many space boobs does he offer us? Hm? Zero. Zero space boobs. J’accuse!
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Dune (1984)
A criticism often directed at the old Dune is the allegedly questionable use of inner monologues. However, I think that these are always a negative point trueism, which doesn’t apply here at all. In this case, the revealed world of thoughts reinforces the wobbly dream feeling and also gives the chance to keep unspoken lines from the novel in the film.
Of course, not every film should use them. But like the annoying “Show, don’t tell!” – the internalized wisdom that one should only show in films rather than tell – complained about inner monologues far too reflexively. However, sometimes, just like elements told rather than shown, they are perfectly passable, if not outstanding.
Which annoys me and is less easy to defend
1984’s Dune is far from a perfect film. David Lynch, who has long since distanced himself from the project, would be the first to admit this. And some things are actually almost impossible to defend. The whitewashing of characters who probably really shouldn’t be white, commonplace in Hollywood at the time, is the first thing that comes to mind. But I can hardly sugarcoat the pacing in the second half and the tiring battle scenes.
Furthermore, the film takes no issue with Paul as the supposed savior and allows the Baron to degenerate from a brilliant schemer to a cartoon villain. That’s a shame, but it can be done precisely through the similarly knitted Star Wars, which was the declared target of the attack. Perhaps the never-made sequel, whose script was only discovered this year, would have brought a little more depth to the story.
The serious difference between the sci-fi films
As charming as the handmade 80s sci-fi wraps me around its finger, it’s hard to deny that between the old and new Dune film adaptations a serious difference consists. For David Lynch it was the one trip to the big blockbuster cinema that he never returned to because he had to bend too much. While Denis Villeneuve is at his best in the face of technically complex challenges at the cutting edge of Hollywood. And you can definitely see that in both films.
The real gift of Dune84 is actually its failure, which catapulted it into the cult film category. Because without the flop, De Laurentiis would hardly have offered his eccentric directorial talent the much smaller film project Blue Velvet as a consolation prize. As a result, we probably wouldn’t have had Twin Peaks, whose influence on modern and postmodern television can still be felt in series. And Mulholland Drive, which 117 film critics voted a few years ago as the best film of the millennium so far, would most likely have slipped through the cracks if there had been a lynching in Hollywood’s blockbuster mainstream.
But above all: Without the failure of the first film, Villeneuve might not have felt compelled to do it differently and “better” in the first place.