Der Wüstenplanet

I consider Frank Herbert's "Dune" to be the greatest science fiction novel of all time. Others would disagree, but they would have to admit that it is up there, even if it isn't their #1. I'm not talking about the whole book series, I'm just talking about the original novel. So I'm a serious fan of the material.

The 1984 film adaptation was an abortion. The depth of this novel cannot be conveyed in a two hour film, and David Lynch was badly undercut by the producers, who changed things to match their own desires. In its defense, however, it contained very high production values, lavish production design, a stellar cast, and much incredible visual imagery that sticks in the mind. If you can just try to forget that rain falls on Arrakis at the end (without reason), the rock group Toto's score, the ridiculous and distracting attempt to allow the characters' inner monologues be heard on screen, and the truncation of many plot elements, you can stand it. If you don't know the novel at all, you could be lost.

John Harrison's new adaptation takes the breadth and depth of the book and really makes a go of it. He slowly unfurls the intrigues and action of the novel, allowing character to be built and introducing the nuances of the novel, sometimes in clever ways, at other times not so subtly. One gets the feeling when watching that Harrison really cares about the source material, and wants the viewer to be included in its richness. This causes it to be slow moving at times, but it becomes more and more engrossing as time goes on. For many elements of the film his production designers, who did a first rate job, borrowed heavily from the 1984 Lynch adaptation, especially in their portrayal of the Harkonnens, who are comic-book villains again without a dash of dangerous cunning. In other cases I was thrilled by Harrison's renderings - of the Fremen sietches, much more livable than in the book, and the scenes where Jessica becomes a Reverend Mother. I don't feel gypped by this adaptation - it feels proper.

The movie is hamstrung a bit by a lack of budget - considering the subject matter, $20 million for six hours isn't much, and every penny and then some is there on the screen. He makes do by using a lot of international actors, and filming in Prague and Tunisia had to help. The special effects are for the most part CGI and bluescreen and are very effective for the money spent. Production design is EXCELLENT, especially when reminded of the total outlay for the film.

The calibre of the cast in the first film was so high that they pose a hard mount for any followers to climb. The only one who is clearly better is William Hurt in the expanded role of Duke Leto, as opposed to Jurgen Prochnow in the original. Alec Newman is fairly new to the screen and was a bit old, and not self-absorbed enough, to play Paul as well as Kyle Maclachlan did in 1984, but he has developing charisma and his performance at times radiates Muad'Dib's complexity. Saskia Reeves is good as Lady Jessica, but once you've fallen in love with Francesca Annis as Jessica it would be hard for anyone to replace her. Of course the original's Patrick Stewart as Gurney Halleck, Dean Stockwell as Yueh and Freddie Jones as Thufir Hawat are insurmountable, regardless of the brevity of their roles. I rather liked the Scottish Duncan Idaho, although I don't know if his brogue will hold up well in the potential sequels.

The nicest thing, for a fan of the book, is to see so many of the great scenes of the novel finally brought to the screen that could not be included in the two-hour film. These add a depth to the proceedings that was only hinted at in the 1984 adaptation. I am thoroughly enjoying this adaptation, and hope that the expanded Lord of the Rings that will be released theatrically will have as much care as this one did.

I've read the Dune books about a dozen times and I have also watched the 1984 movie a few times, and, while it had good ideas, it didn't thrill me. So I decided to give this mini series a try.

The first time I watched it I switched off after hearing Lady Jessica use the Voice for the first time. I disliked the 'spatializer' effects in the movie, and I didn't like them in the series. Months later I decided to give it another try.

I was quite astonished. The series has lots of very strong points.

The Fremen sietches have a very arabian feel to them, just the way they were intended in the books. Having lots of foreign actors added to the overall feel of a universe populated by a race that has split out into different planets. Of course, everyone would speak Galach with their own accent.

The passage to Arrakis is very unique in its approach to the navigators and their skills and I really liked the idea.

Unfortunately it had a few downright flops.

Paul should have been replaced. He is too old, he is too plain and he is way too 2 dimensional. The dream sequences are too unconvincing.

The Voice. It hardly appears in the series, and it's badly done. Trying to copy from the movie as a poor idea. I would have preferred a normal tone of voice, maybe some underlying sound effects and extremely voice trained actors who can snap out harsh commands unexpectedly and at will. The complete denaturalisation the spatializer gives the voice just makes me cringe.

What spoilt it even more was knowing the movie and then watching the series. You find yourself longing for the original Gurney, Leto, Feyd and Paul. Fortunately, you also adore the new Dr Kynes, Chani and Baron Harkonnen.

Finally, as was expected in any adaptation of Frank Herbert's novel that is shorter than 12 hours, I found myself explaining parts of what was going on to my friend, who hadn't read the book.

Overall, it is an excellent series, one to watch and one to buy. It is not perfect, but it is almost there.

Hints for future producers: Skip the spatializer, exploit the arabian and islamic Fremen theme, less technology, Harkonnens are evil, 6 hours are not enough.

This miniseries devotes more time than the David Lynch version (but at 4.5 hrs will be less than the two new Denis Villeneuve films). The big success here is that it manages to unpack much more of Frank Herbert's novel, expand the role of characters who were either truncated or missing from the Lynch film. It also gains more depth by including a few more scenes as well e.g. The banquet scene, the interactions with Duncan and Keynes after the death of Duke Leto.

There is one particularly large change from the novel and this is to expand the role of the Princess Irulan who now takes on an investigation role and is used as a way of helping the audience understand the story. This makes perfect sense given that viewers of the Lynch version were largely left baffled.

Where it lets itself down is in production values. Acting is variable in quality and at times below professional levels, some actors seem to be struggling to act in English and are emphasising parts of sentences in all the wrong places. Even oscar winner William Hurt seems dead behind the eyes on this just quietly reading out his lines with little passion. PH Moriarti is often incomprehensible Only Ian Mcneice really shines delivering a pantomime like performance and occasionally breaking the fourth wall.

VFX is generally acceptable though also reused a bit in places. Some really obvious backdrops lets this down badly though in places - not sure why they didn't use green-screen but you can clearly see where paintings have been stuck together in places.

The costume design is another dodgy part of this. It feels like the designers thought making a sci-fi film was a license to treat everything like an avant garde Paris fashion show. Some very silly costumes and ridiculous hats make it hard to take some scenes seriously.

I was wondering if I needed to wait until viewing the entire mini-series version of Frank Herbert's seminal science fiction classic, but now having seen Part One, I know that won't be necessary.

How I wish there were some way to extract the charisma of the movie's cast, and somehow meld it with the production values and plotline of the new version. That way, fans of this sprawling allegorical tale could have the best of both worlds. Not that there aren't admirable things about both versions.

Where the magnificent photography of the late, great Freddie Francis served well David Lynch's more ethereal tendencies in the 1984 version, Vittorio Storaro's cleaner, clearer images for Harrison's miniseries could very well be a metaphorical reflection of the ever-expanding vision of its hero, young Paul Atreides (nee Paul Mu'ad D'ib.) The production design of both films is lavish, but where Lynch's film gave locations and accoutrements a more lived-in look, the mini's similar designs, though equally accurate by the novel's standards, reflect that antiseptic cleanliness that we are learning to recognize more and more with the advent of digital technology and its application to cinematic visual techniques.

With a few exceptions, the casting and therefore the subsequent performances are just as clean and clear-cut, dispensing with some of the character's humanity in exchange for the original's hystrionics of its more memorable characters.

Where Kenneth McMillan's unredeemably repulsive yet completely unforgettable Baron Harkonnen was the apex of pustulant, corpulent evil, Ian McNeice's version comes off as daintily perturbed, as if the most upsetting event in his worldview is not being served tea on time. William Hurt and Saskia Reeves capture the confident, manor-bred mantles of Duke Leto and the Lady Jessica accurately enough, but gone are the sorrowful grace of Jurgen Prochnow and the stunning Francesca Annis, whose relationship seemed tinged with the inescapable taint of a prophecy waiting to be fulfilled, and the damned, doomed parts they both played in its unfolding.

The rest of the cast, though gamely essaying their roles to the best of their ability, could hardly hope to match the powerhouse ensemble assembled by Italian mega-mogul Dino de Laurentis. For years, David Lynch was wrongfully assigned the blame for butchering his own film, when buffs everywhere know that he suffered through the ham-handed, studio-supervised editing of what should've been a landmark of science-fiction filmmaking, similar to what Terry Gilliam would endure at the same studio with BRAZIL.

Further insult was added to the injury when a four-hour cut was assembled by Universal for the TV version, which Lynch promptly removed his name from, (hence the traditional "Smithee" credit for direction, and the writing by "Judas Booth.")

While it is a splendid example of how CGI and other visual technological developments are making it possible for filmmakers to maintain accuracy and a truth to tell those stories it would've been impossible to film over a decade ago, (and for about half the cost), I for one do miss the star power and (at least) some of the remarkable acting in the Lynch version. I suspect where more money was spent on securing stars in '84 than for the sets and costume designs, the exact opposite is true for the new miniseries.

New and old fans of the tale should view and enjoy the latest version for the visuals, then go back and review the movie for the Lynchian touch, which in some odd but affecting ways came closer to Herbert's underlying messages of mysticism, miracles and seizing one's destiny than the Harrison version. In any case, you can come away with some elements of the best of both DUNE worlds.

The problem with adapting books to the movie screen, especially huge epics like Dune, is that a certain interpretation of the original is necessary. Making a 2-3 hour movie out of this novel simply requires a lot of interpretation along with picking and choosing of the source material. So, I know a lot of people who read the book Dune and really hated the movie adaptation for all the same predictable reasons -- "Why did they change that?", "How could they leave that part out?", and "Where did they come up with that?".

I have a unique perspective on Dune -- I watched the 1984 movie first and absolutely loved it, I watched the 2000 mini-series adaptation and thoroughly enjoyed all the familiar scenes/words but with the added depth, and then I read the book. The book, of course, still was different from the 2000 mini-series and I still wanted to know why so many things were different in the mini-series than in the book -- my interpretation of the book would have been different. So, even the mini-series falls far short of the depth of the book and anyone who reads books knows they can be better than any movie.

The 2000 mini-series conveyed a much better story than the 1984 movie did, but the 1984 movie was simply a much better movie -- much better performances, much better visual effects for the most part (and 16 years earlier), and much more *excitement*. No matter how good the 2000 mini-series is, it can never be described as being as exciting as the 1984 movie. In short, the 1984 movie is worth buying and the 2000 mini-series is only worth renting unless you have no intention of ever reading or buying the book. If you're a book reader, just buy the book and skip this mini-series.

I could only give this mini-series a 6 out of 10 stars (barely above average).