Dune

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Star Wars. Star Trek. Battlestar Galactica. These titles all can bring about images of highly passionate fans that horde to conventions and will easily come to arms against anybody that talk poorly of their beloved franchises. Frank Herbert´s "Dune" stands among these science fiction behemoths for many people. Although there aren´t quite as many "Dune" conventions, the film has been remade into a mini-series, has spawned a few games and is a long running book series. Fans of the "Dune" storyline can quickly tell you about House Atreides, House Harkonnen and the rest of the Universe where Spice is as powerful as the Force or the Starship Enterprise. Frank Herbert´s book is a modern classic and the film is both loved and hated by fans of the author´s work.

Kyle MacLachlan has not been the biggest of names in Hollywood, but he is well known to more than a few rabid fanbases. He is the primary star of this theatrical version of "Dune" and was a primary character in the cult favorite "Twin Peaks." He is joined by Jose Ferrer, Virginia Madsen, Jurgen Prochnow, Patrick Stewart, Max Von Sydow, Sean Young and Sting in director David Lynch´s maligned version of the book. For all of the star-power, "Dune" is heavily flawed and at times quite dull. At 137 minutes, the theatrical version is Lynch´s chosen version of the film, but a three hour television release also exists and has been long disowned by Lynch and is credited to Alan Smithee. There have been rumors of five and six hour cuts in existence, but they have never surfaced and though the director states that five hours of material was shot, he had intended it to be roughly three hours long. This is a science fiction film where the fans want more.

They want more because the book and its series are science fiction classics that deeply paints their own history and creates a remarkable universe of characters and situations that easily top the stories of George Lucas and Gene Roddenberry. David Lynch attempted to tackle "Dune," but glossed over much of what made the story great and rushed the stories pace and left out key moments from the book that would have added much needed depth, character development and warmth that is missing from the theatrical release. The 2000 mini series did a slightly better job at tackling the material, but "Dune" faithful still want more. Perhaps a Peter Jacksonesque trilogy is what fans really deserve.

I have watched "Dune" a few times on home video and can see their point of view. I have played a "Dune" game or two and read a few chapters of the primary novel. There is a lot of story that is absently missing from a film that spends about as much time looking at Spice Worms as it does trying to understand the story´s main characters. There are times when "Dune" starts to feel like a grander version of "Flash Gordon" – complete with rock soundtrack and cheesy villains. "Flash Gordon" had Queen. "Dune" has Toto. "Dune" also spends considerable amount of time trying to make Sting look like a god of men. For a film that spends a lot of its time in the desert, David Lynch worked very hard to make "Dune" look spectacular. In the end, I always felt that "Dune" tried to look and sound spectacular, but was missing the heart and soul of the book.

This is a film that I don´t dislike. As I have said, I´ve watched it a couple times. However, knowing some of the back story and knowing how much more exists for the "Dune" universe, it is a disappointing effort. There are aspects of the mini-series that I find far superior to this cinematic telling of Paul Atreides and there are things in David Lynch´s version that I wish would have been used in the mini series. Somewhere and sometime, "Dune" will be touched again. The story has too much of a history to be left where it is now. "Dune" could be the science fiction equivalent of "Lord of the Rings" if it ever finds a loving and talented crew to do justice to the film. David Lynch didn´t have the digital technology to give the film the justice it deserved and studios were not nearly as open to long running times as they are now. The film is a science fiction classic, but serves as only decent entertainment.

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