Dune (1984)
January 16, 2025 1:44 PM - Subscribe

[TRAILER] In the year 10,191, the most precious substance in the universe is the spice Melange. The spice extends life. The spice expands consciousness. The spice is vital to space travel. The spice exists on only one planet in the entire universe, the vast desert planet Arrakis, also known as Dune. Its native inhabitants, the Fremen, have long held a prophecy that a man would come, a messiah who would lead them to true freedom. This post is for the 1984 adaptation by the late David Lynch.

Starring Kyle MacLachlan, Francesca Annis, Patrick Stewart, Linda Hunt, José Ferrer, Freddie Jones, Brad Dourif, Richard Jordan, Virginia Madsen, Silvana Mangano, Everett McGill, Sting, Kenneth McMillan, Jack Nance, Siân Phillips, Jürgen Prochnow, Leonardo Cimino, Paul L. Smith, Dean Stockwell, Max von Sydow, Alicia Witt, Sean Young.

Directed by David Lynch. Screenplay by David Lynch. Based on the novel by Frank Herbert. Produced by Raffaella De Laurentiis for Dino De Laurentiis Corporation/Universal Pictures. Cinematography by Freddie Francis. Edited by Antony Gibbs. Music by Toto, Brian Eno ("Prophecy Theme").

36% fresh on Rotten Tomatoes.

Find out where to stream this in your country via JustWatch.
posted by DirtyOldTown (46 comments total) 4 users marked this as a favorite
 
I'm pretty sure I saw the movie after I read the book, and for all the changes that were made, I didn't even notice them, based off the spectacle that Lynch gave us of Frank Herbert's film. The film always had a stronger hold of me than the source material. I enjoyed it and never understood the critical discourse against what was something wild, different, and incredible. Despite his many recent roles, Kyle MacLachlan's Paul is the role I immediately think of when I see MacLachlan anywhere else.
posted by Atreides at 1:48 PM on January 16 [5 favorites]




Toto???
posted by supermedusa at 2:24 PM on January 16 [1 favorite]


Yes, Toto! I was humming the theme from Dune on the way home this afternoon. The soundtrack slaps. The cast is fantastic. Sting tries to stab Agent Dale Cooper. Jean-Luc Picard carries a pug into battle. Virginia Madsen almost forgets to tell you the most important thing. Dean Stockwell! Linda Hunt! Max von Sydow! The visual design and costuming are gorgeous. The intro voiceover was legally mandated to be sampled in every techno track produced from 1988-1996. This whole movie kicks ass. I'm just going to say it: if you have a negative opinion of Lynch's Dune, it's because you are an enemy of fun.

It also helps that growing up I had a copy of the apeshit Bill Sienkiewicz-drawn comic book adaptation, which made the whole thing about twice as dreamlike.
posted by phooky at 3:21 PM on January 16 [10 favorites]


I first watched Dune on VHS, I think, at a time when there was no way to know what the critical consensus on a movie or its box office. Unless you literally looked it up in a book or knew someone who was really into movies, all you had to go on was the art and text on the box and maybe what your friends or family had to say. It was a time when even being able to mail-order a movie that wasn't available at your local video store was relatively new. I mention this to emphasize the degree to which I was ignorant that a lot of people hated the movie and it was one of the biggest box office flops of its era. Literally all I knew was that it was a famous science fiction book and something to do with "House Atreides" and "spice". Feel free to find my taste in movies puzzling or low-brow if you want, but I loved it! It was a hell of a lot cooler than the Star Trek: The Next Generation re-runs on TV, that's for sure. I definitely didn't know who David Lynch was, and it was a weird movie, to be sure. It really built a plausible if fantastic alien world, there was a hero to root for, and for the time the special effects were awesome. Highly memorable and quotable.
posted by wnissen at 3:55 PM on January 16 [5 favorites]




I unironically think this is better than the new Dune movies on basically every level, although I wish it were possible to somehow cut and paste Oscar Isaac and Jason Momoa into it. You can keep Timothee Chalamet, new Dune.
posted by kittens for breakfast at 6:45 PM on January 16 [5 favorites]


This was Dune for me for about ten years before I read the book and I loved it on its own merits. It's so unapologetically weird in a way that so much space opera refuses to be and as the article ShooBoo shared says, it really is a quote-machine. Freak-child Alia turn those blue eyes on the emperor and pronouncing, "He is the Kwisatz Haderach!" Is one of my favourite movie moments. I wish there were more times I could casually drop that into conversation.
posted by nangua at 11:29 PM on January 16 [4 favorites]


One of the few movies I actively dislike most of the choices made. The weirding modules don't work at all for instance. Lynch would have been better off going the Verhoeven/Starship Troopers route, don't read the book, do your own thing.
posted by Carillon at 12:29 AM on January 17


One of my favourite movies, especially with the watercolour history lesson.

Fuck yes, Jean Luc taking a pug in arm and into battle.
posted by porpoise at 12:59 AM on January 17 [2 favorites]


To be little less reactive; I thought that the interpretation of casting Sting as Feyd-Rautha was brilliant - flamboyant and more than a little mad.
posted by porpoise at 1:01 AM on January 17 [4 favorites]


I also really like this film. The fabled ten hour version is top of my list of imagined films I'd like to see. I guess maybe the only version of that has now gone to its resting place with David Lynch's consciousness.
posted by biffa at 2:21 AM on January 17 [1 favorite]


One of the first movies where I was too young to go all by myself but I talked my parents into letting me see this while they went to a different movie (because they'd have hated it and I was sick of their boring adult movies). I'd read the book already, but then weirdly, the movie version replaced it in my young mind, and I was shocked when I reread it in high school that there was no rain at the end.

Love this version even tho it's a mess and like reading the book on 8x speed. Villaneuve had aspects of the weirdness, but somehow in a movie 3x as long left out a lot of it (I wish we'd seen Mentats and mutated Spacing Guild navigators and baby Alia, oh and "a thousand deaths for Dr Yueh!").

This movie is so quotable too but not in any useful way ("my brother is coming with many Fremen warriors"... fun to say, rarely practical).
posted by kokaku at 2:29 AM on January 17 [4 favorites]


Can we all agree that the movie feels like it runs out of steam about 2/3 of the way through? Don't get me wrong: I fucking love this movie, a lot. But it feels like it wants to just take its time and really live in this crazy galaxy for a lot of the runtime - a decision I am 100% here for - and then at a certain point you get the sense that the editor woke up and said "oh shit I guess we need to finish this thing" and... a lot of stuff just happens.

In spite of that, I think this is FAR superior to the recent Denis Villeneuve version. It's just... weirder in the best possible way. Those whispered voiceovers as interior thoughts are an amazing creative decision. The costume design! The casting! The sets! The pugs!

9/10
posted by rocketman at 6:15 AM on January 17 [5 favorites]


Does anyone know where the TV broadcast edit of this can be found?

I remember it was not only credited to Alan Smithee as director, but to Judas Booth as screenwriter, as in Iscariot and John Wilkes, which is hilarious.

I used to have a VHS bootleg of that.

Is the "extended cut" that hit DVD a while back the same thing?
posted by DirtyOldTown at 6:34 AM on January 17


According to Wikipedia, those are the same thing.
posted by Atreides at 7:04 AM on January 17 [1 favorite]


I thought that the interpretation of casting Sting as Feyd-Rautha was brilliant - flamboyant and more than a little mad.

It is entirely possible that the shot of him in the flying underpants is what kick-started my puberty.

I think that splitting the book up into two parts was a wise choice - that is a LOT of book to cover in just one movie, and it felt like a lot of the 1984 characters were stuck in Exposition Mode and couldn't just....be people, you know? I appreciated Denis Villeneuve from a dramaturgical point.

A couple years ago, I discovered a Youtube channel run by some VFX guys, who did a side-by-side comparison from some scenes from the 2022 Dune (Part 1) with those same scenes from Lynch's Dune, reacting to both - and I came away with some tremendous respect for Lynch, because there were some effects he did in the 80s that were massive achievements.
posted by EmpressCallipygos at 8:38 AM on January 17 [8 favorites]


I confess, I have never seen this. I just convinced Mr Supermedusa we should watch this tonight (he has seen it several times before). it's got so many awesome people in it!!! weeeeeee
posted by supermedusa at 8:58 AM on January 17 [1 favorite]


This movie is so quotable too but not in any useful way ("my brother is coming with many Fremen warriors"... fun to say, rarely practical).

There are few situations in which "my name is a killing word" isn't applicable, though
posted by thecaddy at 10:21 AM on January 17 [5 favorites]


This movie is so quotable too but not in any useful way ("my brother is coming with many Fremen warriors"... fun to say, rarely practical).

Then again, I do know a few people who had a lot of fun randomly screaming "I WILL KILL HIM!" at odd moments.
posted by EmpressCallipygos at 1:06 PM on January 17 [4 favorites]


One of the most expensive films ever made at the time. It was a MASSIVE production. I do like the film, but much of it simply doesn't work, and it's Lynch's fault.
posted by Jessica Savitch's Coke Spoon at 2:28 PM on January 17


I first saw this as a teenager on late night commercial TV in the late '80s (after Blue Velvet, before Twin Peaks), and I totally did not understand the hate for it. The version I saw was on over two nights (presumably Friday and Saturday), and it was the megacut that DoT mentioned. I only realized later that it differed from what people had seen in theaters.

I have no idea why Lynch hates it so much, other than he didn't cut it, which, I mean, I get, but...it makes so much more sense than the theatrical version, and I really think it's a better film. I think the film would have been much better received in that form. (I like the theatrical version, too, but i don't know whether I would if my enjoyment weren't informed by reading the novel and seeing the longer version of the film.)
posted by kittens for breakfast at 3:57 PM on January 17 [2 favorites]


Given that the reason the theatrical cut doesn't make sense is because of the cuts the studio forced him to do, I can get why he was cranky at them adding stuff back in afterwards without him.

But yeah, even supposing that the TV version was never going to be as good as his three hour version... I do like it better than his abbreviated version.
posted by DirtyOldTown at 4:59 PM on January 17 [1 favorite]


I didn't like the thought voice-overs--there's a reason why comics have gotten rid of voice bubbles--and they're what made me bounce off the movie when I tried a recent rewatch. But Sting absolutely makes a better Feyd than Austin Butler, easily the weak point of Villeneuve's duology and coming off as a minor Marvel villain who was badly rethought for live action. And there's just a lot of very Lynchian touches; I keep thinking of the Guild navigator as the baby from Eraserhead if it had grown up.
posted by Halloween Jack at 7:48 PM on January 17 [4 favorites]


kittens - why Lynch hates it so much

Lynch, like Villeneuve, realized that Dune needed more than a standard 120 minute movie. Villeneauve got the chance to break it into two and was much more successful.

There's a fan edit that uses just about all extant I need to explore what "Spicediver cut" versus "Alternative Edition Redux" versus a pirate 4:3 ... that I just discovered that I had lost.

Halloween Jack, I loved the voice overs - I don't 'get' why people hate them like they hate the ones in the theatrical Blade Runner, but de gustibus.
posted by porpoise at 11:25 PM on January 17


"Spicediver cut" versus "Alternative Edition Redux" - is the same thing - does not contain the watercolour background voiceover story to how things got to the way they did.
posted by porpoise at 11:58 PM on January 17 [1 favorite]


Ok, "Dune - Extended Edition David Lynch 1984 Eng Subs 1080p [H264-mp4]" floating around out there has the intro.
posted by porpoise at 12:08 AM on January 18


I think the voiceovers reflect something which the book does a lot, which is to state what characters are thinking, directly as text. I dislike this in the book since it always seems very clunky and quite lazy, and I don't think it works well cinematically either.
posted by biffa at 1:34 AM on January 18 [2 favorites]


"I WILL KILL HIM!" at odd moments.

"This is a Harkonen ANIMAL. Let me. PLEASE, my lord!"
posted by porpoise at 3:58 AM on January 18 [2 favorites]


But Sting absolutely makes a better Feyd than Austin Butler, easily the weak point of Villeneuve's duology and coming off as a minor Marvel villain who was badly rethought for live action

FWIW, I both think this assessment (Butler v Sting) is true and think that the Harkonnens may be the best thing in the new movies, which may give you an idea of what I think of the new movies (not much).
posted by kittens for breakfast at 4:02 AM on January 18 [1 favorite]


Wow, "Dune (1984) Alternative Edition Redux [fanedit][MP4-x264]" has stuff that I've not yet seen before.
posted by porpoise at 4:17 AM on January 18 [2 favorites]


I will agree that this is so much better than the new movies. Yes, the acting is hammy as hell and way too over the top, but I will take gleeful scene-chewing over po-faced drama any day of the week. I like the prescient idea of the emperor being utterly at the mercy of the transportation cartel. I love “All I can see is an Atreides I want to kill” and “Bring me the floating fat man!” I love Stilgar’s rather prim “Muad’dib!” when Kyle cracks Sting in half. It’s got so much verve!

Also, i remember the Glasgow WorldCon in the 90s where they had a live remake with Feyd played by a Sting standee and the Baron played by a Mr Blobby balloon.

It also inspired my idea to remake it as a musical using Ramones tunes.

🎶 Thufir is… a Harkonnen… Thufir is… a Harkonnen… Thufir is… a Harkonnen nooooow!


🎶 Rock, rock, rock, rock, rock 'n' roll Fremen!
Well, I don't care about Arrakeen
Rock, rock, rock 'n' roll high Fremen!
'Cause that's not a place where I have been
Rock, rock, rock 'n' roll high Fremen!
I don’t want to be the pet
Of the Bene Gesserit
Rock, rock, rock, rock, rock 'n' roll Fremen!

It writes itself.
posted by GenjiandProust at 3:57 PM on January 18 [2 favorites]


Those whispered voiceovers as interior thoughts are an amazing creative decision.

1000% cosign on this, it's a wonder that more movies haven't tried it, I think it's really cool.
posted by juv3nal at 12:35 AM on January 19 [2 favorites]


The line delivery in this film is underrated. So many moments live in my head on loop,

it does the book justice to have so many of the words perform what they do in the film.

C'mon, it's amazing to run around White Sands National Park, Pug in arms, yelling "Long Live Duke Leto!" And singing those triumphant Toto chords
posted by eustatic at 2:46 AM on January 19 [1 favorite]


You know I'm in the morning, waiting for the bus all

"MMmmmmMM SHAI HULUD"
posted by eustatic at 2:56 AM on January 19 [2 favorites]


I believe the TV recut was done by the same people who did the 'Love Conquers All' TV recut of Brazil. It's a sloppy mess.
posted by Jessica Savitch's Coke Spoon at 12:01 PM on January 19


This film, along with Return of the Jedi, were my first youthful experiences of total disappointment in films. Like elements of it. Some of the design elements, such as the look of the Bene Gesserrit, the Guild, etc., but overall a very disajointed narrative and I hate the rain at the end. To this day, in my opinion, there has not yet been a good Dune adapation.
posted by juiceCake at 4:51 AM on January 20


From Battlestar Galactica to Buck Rogers, the entire sci-fi VFX community slavishly cribbed from the 1977 Star Wars kitbash style of spaceships. Dune's style and audacity blew my mind.
posted by whuppy at 6:21 AM on January 20 [5 favorites]


Since this is part of the Lynch retrospective, I was thinking about his focus on sound design as "50% of the movie"

Dune, as a sci fi universe centered on the power of the Voice as an extension of human talents, the thing that makes humans extrahuman, must have fascinated him.

So it would make sense that the changes to the weirding way, to make an auditory weapon, were his edits (I dunno for sure)

It also makes sense that he would focus on the line delivery in this film, centered on the Voice.

I do like the new version of the Voice, and I think we have enough cinematic grammar around "multiverses" now that the new series can posit a different weirding way of precognition.

But I dig cinema as a sound based weapon
posted by eustatic at 9:26 PM on January 20 [2 favorites]


new version of the Voice

Are you thinking the new movies, or the tv prequel?
posted by porpoise at 10:38 PM on January 20


Another one that comes to mind often, comes to mind; "Get out of my mind!"
posted by porpoise at 10:40 PM on January 20 [1 favorite]


I'm thinking specifically about the movies and even just the water scene and the Gom Jabbar scene, and how we as the audience "black out", experience editing discontinuity, and even experience different realities, which is cool because it ties the voice to the scenes of precognition

I haven't seen the new TV stuff, I'm afraid I'm one of those "there are only six books" types, and likely won't watch it

I re watched some clips, and it s inconsistent, so I'm really mostly talking about those two scenes
posted by eustatic at 1:54 AM on January 21


So this weekend was Dune Weekend at Chez Kyol - my spouse and I watched Lynch's Dune and then the Sci-Fi Channel's 2000 miniseries, which seems like it's getting close to unobtanium at the moment (I guess there's a blu-ray release, but amazon won't ship it for a few weeks, which makes me wonder), which is maybe a bit of a shame? Like where Lynch's Dune spent a looooooot of time leading up to "oh hey maybe we need to get Paul off to the Fremen" and then packed the rest of it into the last third of the movie, the miniseries did a decent job of breaking it up more evenly - 90 minutes for the the migration from Caladan to Dune and the Harkonnen treachery, 90 minutes for Paul getting Fremen-ified, and 90 minutes for Paul getting all water-of-lifed. The first episode was a little rough since Paul was portrayed more like Whiny Luke than Kyle's mature acceptance, but once Paul started his campaign to kick the Harkonnen off the planet it all settled down a bit. And compared to the pace of Lynch's Dune, it felt a lot more like they were just boop boop boop running through the numbers to get Paul into the desert while doing just enough to establish the baron and emperor's roles.

I still don't think any of the filmed versions do a particularly great job of standing on their own merits - even Lynch's Dune with the whispered internal thoughts skips right past huge chunks of background that I'm not sure is sufficiently explained elsewhere, but it's so wild on its own that I kind of forgive it of its sins.
posted by Kyol at 9:50 AM on January 21 [1 favorite]


I just finally watched this over the weekend! I enjoyed the heck out of it while having no idea what the heck was going on at all.
posted by maryellenreads at 7:26 AM on January 22 [1 favorite]


I saw Lynch's Dune in theaters when I was like 8 years old. Definitely a strange and confusing experience. What the fuck is happening? What is a Kwisatch Haderach? For whatever reason, I assumed that this was all stuff that everybody knew -- that "Kwisatch Haderach" was just some idea out there in adult culture that I, a foolish child, had never heard of.

I do love this movie, but it is "A masterpiece in disarray," as the recently published oral history is called. Some of it is brilliant; other parts are confusing and sloppy as fuck. Paul and Jessica meet the Fremen, Jessica does some Bene Gesserit jiu-jitsu on Stilgar, and they are all like, "OK you are now completely integrated into the Fremen, please take over and run shit, thanks." Paul and Chani meet and then the voice-over tells us they fall in love, oh and by the way, Paul waged war for 2 years on the Harkonnen, check this montage!

The Extended Alan Smithee version is a much clearer narrative, but a much more workmanlike film, and oh man, that beginning. Ten minutes of some grizzled old dude narrating the history of the Dune-iverse while cameras pan over what appears to be concept art from pre-production. It's like an old PBS kids' show from the 1980s. And then there's actually a few seconds of low-quality video footage of sand dunes, which I'm pretty sure was test footage shot as reference for the VFX crew. It is effing insane.

The sound weapon/weirding modules don't really work for me. I think Lynch added that because of his interest in Transcendental Meditation, where everyone gets their own secret mantra to repeat silently.

I think the biggest failing, though, is that it uncritically accepts the "Paul is the Messiah" narrative. That's the one area where Denis V's version surpasses Lynch's; it foregrounds the political and religious manipulation of the Fremen and the horrors to come of Paul's jihad.
posted by Saxon Kane at 6:48 PM on January 22 [2 favorites]


I think the biggest failing, though, is that it uncritically accepts the "Paul is the Messiah" narrative. That's the one area where Denis V's version surpasses Lynch's; it foregrounds the political and religious manipulation of the Fremen and the horrors to come of Paul's jihad.

Yeah, the miniseries version has a brief dream premonition that ends with Paul's hands covered in blood, but is that a premonition of the eventual galactic jihad or just acknowledging that this path will probably lead to the deaths of his friends in the Fremen? _who knows!?_ We don't want to risk making the protagonist into an interplanetary terrorist, that might be loaded!
posted by Kyol at 7:59 AM on January 23 [1 favorite]


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