Review of Dune (1984) by Gloone — 01 Dec 2020

Don't be fooled by the cult classic status. On the whole this is obviously not a good movie. I've just finished the novel, which I enjoyed. Frank Herbert built a fascinating and convincing world and, as any great author, understood the importance and art of gradually setting up points of interest and later resolving them.

The screenplay here does the opposite, and starts by narrating a ham-fisted and pointless information dump. One illustrative example: the Spacing Guild. In the novel they are a secretive organisation whose involvement and motivations slowly unfold throughout the story.

And the Guild members themselves, rumoured to have strayed from human form, are never seen; they only do business by means of human agents. They are glimpsed only once, through a vision of Paul's, and he does not disclose what he saw.

This is effective, engaging storytelling. In this movie, within the first ten minutes, a Guild member is placed directly before the Emperor. (Oh yes, you also immediately see the Emperor and are told his motives.

) The Guild member is a big scary monster. Whoo. It then tells the Emperor that the Guild are in charge and that the Emperor must kill Paul Atreides because he's going to destroy the spice, which is essential to the Guild.

Okay then. This kind of boneheaded obviousness is all over, and as a result the story is flat and boring. At several points it's downright cringe-inducing. "I'm going to miss Caladan so much!", Lady Jessica shouts at Duke Leto, as they prepare to leave their homeworld.

Great, thanks for explaining. Most of the performances are bad, due to the bad writing, bad casting, and plain bad acting. Sometimes it's difficult to watch. Kyle MacLachlan does his best as Paul but is miscast and too old.

Sting actually provides the best performance here as Feyd-Rautha -- take from that what you will. Baron Harkonnen is written ridiculously but Kenneth McMillan just about pulls it off. Many characters are changed for the worse.

The Lady Jesscia is an excellent female character in the book -- strong, cunning, magical. In the film she is useless and sometimes hysterical, serving only as mother to Paul. Other female characters receive similarly poor treatment.

There appears to be only a single woman amongst the Fremen, and her only role is as Paul's lover. Also rather baffling is that every character is white. The cosmopolitanism of Frank Herbert's novel was an essential ingredient, drawing from many cultures, religions and races, so this is a real disservice to the source material.

Dr Yueh should obviously be of asian descent. Thufir Hawat is described as "dark skinned" -- in the film he looks like he should be wearing a smoking jacket and holding a glass of port. Fremen culture is clearly derived from the Middle East, and they've lived for thousands of years in a scorching desert! In the film they don't even have a tan.

Visually the film is a mixed bag. Some of the sets and costumes are good. Some are bad. There are a few interesting abstract sequences. The design of the worms is pretty good. But the execution of the special effects ranges from okay to bad.

This was released seven years after Star Wars; it looks much worse. Most of the score is by Toto for some reason, and it gets pretty bad when the electric guitars start playing. There's one track written by Brian Eno which is an absolute stand out and sounds just how the book felt.

If only the rest of the film were as successful.