is it really possible that we don't as yet have a thread about DAVID LYNCH'S DUNE?

One very obvious way it's aged is that the green-screen (or blue-screen or whatever) SFX of the early 80s is now just beginning to edge towards the kind of datedness you become less sneery about and more fond of and indulgent towards. The space effects are all pretty terrible -- even by 70s Dr Who standards, let alone Star Wars -- but it's much easier to just take it as it had to be, given the technology. Various props look much more evidently plastic and flimsy than called for (some red kettledrums being played during the Maud'dib/Feyd-Rautha fight, for example).

There's such a strange gradient between the thought put into the look of various early set and scenes -- notably (and famously) the one where the Guildsman arrives in his big personal train to meet the Emperor -- and much the later stuff, which feels hurried and sketchy, as if they used up all their budget AND imagination in the first 20 minutes. Basically I think the Arrakis desert-scenes and the Fremen were just so much not Lynch's kind of material, visually or psychologically. The worms are 70s Dr Who-level in terms of realisation (which is not the worst thing, and Lynch has -eraserhead form w/regard to getting you to feel creeped out by such stuff) but you can feel yourself adjusting your expectations down. There's some good foetus-work.

Apart from the Harkonnens the casting is uniformly weedy. Thufir Hawat and Alia aside, The Atreides -- family and household -- are all super-bland (which is a problem inherited from the book). Maybe the right lead could have been found for Paul: it's definitely not Kyle M (who apart from anything was just too inexperienced on-camera to play it with anything but a "what me worry?" grin). Also you have to worry about how much of Bene Gesserit witchcraft he's expending to keep his hair so perfectly processed in the desert. Lynch is a director with a longstanding and adirable gift for deploying character actors well, old-school and almost-lost Hollywood-style, as minor but super-memorable figures: Freddie Jones and Bard Dourif, the two mentats, don't have to do much more brandish their amazing eyebrows, to step ahead of nearly everyone else, even if their specific role in the book's plot is barely sketched in the film: as mentats, viz human calculating and remembering machines, in a culture where computers are forbidden (not sure that the "Butlerian Jihad" is even referred to in the film) (to be honest it's a fairly under-explored element in the book…)

The Harkonnens are inspired -- they're cartoons, obviously, but there's just so much glee and energy there, primarily bursting out of Ken MacMillan as he hurtles around in mid-air, plump distillate of cackling and pustules. Beast Rabban is minor, but there's a mutual joy in his evil-doing -- the Baron is just agog with love with the georgeousness of his nephews, whether in deed or body, and Sting (in his one good film performance?) has hit on the exact method motivation, playing Feyd-Rautha as a quivering penis of a warrior. Even Jack Nance -- stood at the back carrot-topped and always appalled -- is great: he is just constantly open-mouthed in horror at what his employers are up to (whether Harkonnen or Lynch).

But the moment they're off-screen -- until little Alia arrives (also a Harkonnen, of course, and in subsequent books actually possessed by the spirit of the long-dead baron who she executes) -- everything that isn't a nutso action set-up,constantly slumps into exposition or whispered inner-monologue, and the announcement of characters you don't have time to learn why you're to care for them beofre they die (even Dean Stockwell's treacherous Yueh is weak tea: and you literally end up with no idea why Halleck or Idaho or Kynes or the Shadout Mapes have been given names you're meant to remember).

The care put into the very first scene -- including unnamed bit players, like the Guildsman's crowd of monkish acolytes -- does kind of get you thinking that a 3 or 4 hour version might have ironed out some of these issues. But ppl's responses up-thread suggest that the extended cut does not bear this out? (Or is it just that Lynch is no longer involved -- I guess I'd like to see it, just in case it has any deranged mini-scenes not used in the Lynch cut, but I think you are telling me I will be disappointed…)

I enjoy that the nosepieces of the stillsuits makes all the Fremen look as if they all have little Hitler mustaches -- a semi-inadvertent BOYS FROM BRAZIL effect that lets you in on a secret abt the story's underlying politics? I like to think Lynch did this deliberately but who knows…

there is no "good" version of this movie but every cut is fascinating in its own right.

What he said. (Extended version does provide Patrick Stewart's Pat Metheny impression so there's that.)

Great thoughts by mark s of course. I'm surprised I hadn't mentioned this before -- an absolute must-read is Ed Naha's The Making of Dune book, released in conjunction with the film. It's no Devil's Candy in terms of start to stop history -- it's an official tie-in release, the spin is by default positive and it ends riiiight before the team goes in the editing room to start winnowing it down, which is where it all fell apart a bit. But even given the built-in puffery of the enterprise, it's still an engagingly detailed read with a slew of details that pretty much haven't surfaced elsewhere since I still think there hasn't been any proper documentary/look-back on the film. Naha's definitely looking at it all with an eye of 'okay how is this huge book AND this director all going to work with Dino de L. behind it all?' It also gave me a bit of a feel for the history of Churubusco Studios and working in Mexico, and he does a reasonable job of looking at numerous elements of behind the scenes work -- costumes, practical visual effects, design and so forth.

You can get it for pennies on Amazon and I do recommend it if you have any interest in the film or Lynch at all:

https://www.amazon.com/Making-Dune-Ed-Naha/dp/0425073769/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1474211729&sr=8-1&keywords=ed+naha+making+dune

I had this book and the official film storybook to hand from the start. And got the soundtrack. Which for all the Totoness does have a couple of good moments -- the main theme is short but memorable -- and it was the first time I'd ever heard anything by Eno, so hey. Had actually read Dune for the first time a year and a half before the movie came out so I was kinda primed.

lol yes, i'm half way through the 3-hr fan-cut right now (it's here: https://yadi.sk/i/kciUCmMSiRhHS ), so just watched everyone sat listening to gurney halleck's baliset solo -- i like the way paul just bursts into this wide joyful grin at every moment of halleck's artistry (poems or music), either becasue he can't believe how talented he is or how awful he is

most of the extra scenes are yet more leaden-paced exposition (at the start over paintings, possibly the art director's sketches of sets and costumes), but there's a good confrontation between jessica and the shadout mapes , plus feyd-rautha gets to torment leto (sting opens his mouth so the quality of his performance drops quite a lot)

also a good pug-in-the-palace moment as the atreides compound is being destroyed

There's probably fanfic about the pugs...somewhere.

sting opens his mouth so the quality of his performance drops quite a lot

Imagining a cut where he just carries that cat around, all while wearing the jockstrap, and saying nothing.

are the "weirding modules" in the book? i don't remember them at all

Invention for the film. In the book the 'Weirding way' is a martial art form via the Bene Gesserit. Brief breakdown here:

http://dune.wikia.com/wiki/Weirding_Module

https://twitter.com/fireland/status/773690179299053569

the weirding modules were the best invention of the film and also provided a sample-rich scene:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=O4PeZ6YsbQ8

the pugs are the best invention of the film

the flip side, Deep Sleep, mines Paul's waking dream and the Prophecy Theme by the Eno bros and Lanois:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qSsjugznEJY

ok, further additions in the 3-hr fan-cut version: water rites and duelling in seitch tabr, thufir hawat's death scene

that's kind of it -- except for the scene w/mapes and jessica maybe the best bits were genuinely all present in the original: the sietch tabr stuff helps a little with pacing and scene-setting perhaps, but none of it is remarkable (also the acting in it is p dull and one-note)

IIRC the issue with Paul isn't so much in the acting as the script, which barely even sketches out the most interesting thing with the character in the book - the constant awareness that events and his 'narrative' are leading inescapably towards galactic fanaticism and slaughter. Without that he's just a plucky youth who suddenly becomes a superbeing beyond our comprehension or interest.

The weirding gizmos are dumb imho - if you're gonna punt the supernatural/ESP stuff, do it consistently. Feels like the original concept of Wolverine as a guy with claws in his gloves, so anybody who gets the gloves would be Wolverine. Silly.

saw this pic today and it blew my mind:

https://68.media.tumblr.com/312a31ec6f5365a31750d73bcbf423a8/tumblr_om0ekxnf3Z1vy747uo1_500.jpg

can't believe it's taken me this long to realize the baliset is really a modded Chapman Stick

there's a scene with gurney playing it in the extended version and it sounds like a steve hackett instrumental

the new, extended Dune ultimate edition, featuring a 16-minute chapman stick solo by Tony Levin

Don't try your powers on me. Try looking into that place where you dare not look. You'll find Tony Levin there, playing a 16-minute Chapman Stick solo.

LOL

I'm a lynch stan but both times I watched this I fell asleep. Just has that effect on me for some reason. I don't hate it or anything, maybe it would help to read the book so I start off already invested and knowing all of the many names given to each thing. Paul who is the moaddib who is the quidditch haddock (I find it funny that his actual name is "Paul", not sure if it's supposed to be funny). I love the simple fact that all these people are in a film together anyway

btw I know I keep missing the whole middle of the movie but I always find the last line a little weird: "he IS the quiznos hatchback!" It's like... we know. You told us at the beginning?

it's a callback to John Wayne in The Greatest Story Ever Told

Lol mebbe

The acting does feel to me like it's from an earlier era at times

Lynch seems to find the whole experience painful to think about but if anyone were ever able to coax him into making a long directors cut id def watch

can't believe it's taken me this long to realize the baliset is really a modded Chapman Stick

― Moodles, Monday, March 6, 2017 9:09 PM (yesterday)

there's a scene with gurney playing it in the extended version and it sounds like a steve hackett instrumental

― clouds, Tuesday, March 7, 2017 4:38 AM (five hours ago)

There's a reason I made a Pat Metheny crack a few months back!

yeah it's pretty deliberately arch i think

nostalgia for old movies is a big part of a lot of SF movies in the post Star Wars era

sadly I think Lynch has said that the rumour of hours of unused footage aren't true

A few years back I attended a lecture by Lynch -- it was on his TM stuff rather than film but I figured 'eh, it's Lynch, it'll be weirdly entertaining' -- and he was introduced by the MC who ran off a list of all his films in order, except Dune. So in the Q&A someone had to ask about that, and there was both general applause from the audience and Lynch seemed pretty comfortable talking about it. It's kind of a comfort-zone botch now.

i think a bunch of ilxors have been to one of those TM lectures! mine was in Philly i'm almost positive.

Reading through the thread mark s's review seems about right (maybe it's the whispering that's lulling me to sleep) - I thought of the keep as well, another interesting "butchered" film that almost certainly doesn't make any more sense in the 4-hour cut

For that matter, Patrick Stewart is really just a modded Tony Levin:

https://img.discogs.com/z5RU0QNghN4msT9GMSV92Xhfnrw=/fit-in/300x300/filters:strip_icc():format(jpeg):mode_rgb():quality(40)/discogs-images/A-256225-1144684281.jpeg.jpg

I wish Lynch would make more SciFi films

Reading through the thread mark s's review seems about right (maybe it's the whispering that's lulling me to sleep) - I thought of the keep as well, another interesting "butchered" film that almost certainly doesn't make any more sense in the 4-hour cut

― wins, Tuesday, March 7, 2017 1:15 PM (one hour ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

man i want 4 hour keep so bad

I want a 4 hour cut that has literally no expository dialogue or narration

but would settle for 90 minutes

highly recommend the book wins, much superior work

the best thing about dune (the novel) is the deep-ecology philosophy but that doesn't really carry into the film

Yeah I need to read it

Love these:

https://68.media.tumblr.com/c6d0423d60034645a7e24f51baa34845/tumblr_op2re29zEX1tvemm6o2_500.jpg

https://68.media.tumblr.com/441e22399b529c2e8dc50acea9a96594/tumblr_op2re29zEX1tvemm6o3_500.jpg

https://68.media.tumblr.com/28c979094c349feb4c7977f117b9e872/tumblr_op2re29zEX1tvemm6o1_500.jpg

omg yes

nausicaa meets dune!

The third one especially

Sign me up for the HideakiAnno-directed anime miniseries.

Just watched this for the first time in like fifteen years last weekend. I still love it for all it's flaws, but good gosh the last 45 minutes is so rushed. You can just tell it was ruthlessly cut to get it under two and a half hours.

Also the triumphant ending with a noble race of warriors rising up out the desert to conquer civilisation can't help but feel a little uncomfortable in light of more recent world events. I understand Dune Messiah deals with the consequences of the Fremen jihad getting out of control but as Lynch never got to film a sequel, what we get is "PAUL IS GRATE AND SOLVES EVERYTHING the end."

Now I'm watching the Sci-Fi Channel miniseries from 2000. God, it's so threadbare. Awful costumes, cheap looking sets, lousy CG special effects. At least the new film, if it ever happens, couldn't possibly look this shabby.

I always thought of that version as essentially a stage play that was filmed.

the "non-director's cut" three-hour version is p much just as rushed in the final hour

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SxgDk2I_bSc

relive ALL the excitement and adventure

Isn't the book like that? It's been decades now (oh god) but I remember a huge amount of Paul's edification followed by womp bam boom insurgent takeover

Maybe the film colored my memory of the novel - but it certainly didn't ruin my idea of what an ornithopter should be (but by god, they tried)

the book (which as you recall is VERY LONG) spends quite a long time on the desert stuff where the film has already begun to hurry

also iirc one of paul's principal dilemmas/heroic struggles is with how to overturn the existing political status quo without unleashing a "jihad" that would bring violence and destruction to the universe at large. though i can't really remember why that would have seemed so likely a proposition. kinda interesting in that it was written a decade and a half prior to the iranian revolution which to my limited understanding sorta took the global powers-that-be by surprise...? idk

also btw just gotta say i am very very late to the party on this but for those who appreciate the long-term terraforming aspects of Dune the novel, i am finally reading RED MARS, the first part of kim stanley robinson's MARS TRILOGY and it is fucking incredible on this and several other points.

Do we have wormsign?🐛 #dune pic.twitter.com/Gh8Hqf4CIf

— Kyle MacLachlan (@Kyle_MacLachlan) July 16, 2017

Usul has called a big one!