The Dune book adaptation must be so incredibly tempting and for so many reasons. A space opera series that will eventually build to the hero becoming an oppressive dictator? Who could want anything more? After going back through every Dune adaptation (that has happened so far), I think I can safely conclude that some books are just not meant to be adapted into movies or television shows. It’s been approached in a number of ways, and none of them are all that inspiring.
4. Frank Herbert’s Dune [2000]
The Sci-Fi three-episode mini-series version of Dune seems to exist for one reason only: to put the entire book into one series/movie. There is a charm to the Sci-Fi house style of extremely cheap looking costumes and sets and extremely brightly lit. They splurged for William Hurt for Duke Leto and then surrounded him almost entirely with people I have never heard of and all of them made little to no impression on the screen. There is some joy in the colors and whatnot, but this largely just feels like one of those Harry Potter movies – anonymous uninspired slop for the fans of the book.
3. Dune [2021]
It is honestly kind of beautiful that the two people who have gotten to make a Dune film are David Lynch and Denis Villeneuve. Both men are so different in virtually every single way as filmmakers, and you see that so clearly in their Dune films. Villeneuve’s first entry is crystal clear in its storytelling – you rarely feel confused about what is happening and why it is happening. It’s so easy to follow that you start to wonder how in the hell you never understood Lynch’s film. But while Villeneuve manages to streamline a story to make it accessible to all, he dulls the edges to the point of cutting out the soul of the film. Every character feels like a chess piece that the director is moving around. The set design feels sterile. The action is flat. It is FINE overall but no more than that.
2. Dune Part Two [2024]
Dune 2 is perfectly fine, but Denis Villeneuve simply does not make films for me at all. There is a cold detachment in the DNA of his films. They feel like a man executed a math problem more than anything. And a perfectly solved math problem can be beautiful in its own way – and there are moments that are beautiful here no doubt. Perhaps if I was younger, I would be more impressed by this chosen one story that more explicitly explores the pure evil of colonialism (than apparently the too opaque attack on the United States empire that was Star Wars lol). But really the most interesting part of Dune to me is that The Chosen One is going to eventually going to become a tyrant. And after close to 5.5 hours, we are almost there, folks! (You can tell what is going to happen because Paul now has a black cape and his own Darth Vader music.)
1. Dune [1984]
Ah, the infamous David Lynch adaptation of Dune. The making of this film is a very sad story that Lynch refuses to talk about. I really feel like I understand why. Having a corporation take away your art baby sounds frankly completely miserable. The finished product is **clearly** compromised in a way that makes it impossible to be enthusiastic about it as a whole. The finished product is so damn confusing and feels impossible to understand even if you are very familiar with the story from the book and the much more clearly laid out adaptations.
But while it is confusing, a lack of clarity does not necessarily mean bad. Life is confusing, and the disorienting feeling you get from watching this movie is – while not as stimulating as Lynch’s classics – not a crippling issue. The production design is delightful. The costumes. The sets. The hair. All aces. The score is by far the best of any Dune. The casting is even fun in parts. While all of the Dune movies are flawed (deeply so in fact), this is the Dune that still feels the most inspired and with the most life in it.
The Reel World 