Dune

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.

Jon Harrison's version of Dune isn't exactly what you'd expect from a SciFi TV Miniseries...but it's a SciFi TV Miniseries. Much like British Masterpiece Theater, you'd swear they got actors out of college trying to fill a work quota. The acting is Shakespeare in the Park levels of bland with all the pageantry of a repertory theater. William Hurt doesn't help considering his acting has always been bland. He even looks bored in the Marvel movies. There clearly isn't a single frame of this filmed outside, and every single desert scene looks green-screened. The costume design literally makes this look like a college project. No effort is made to produce makeup effects. On the plus side, they used actual contact lenses instead of roto-scoping for the Melange infused eyes. It wasn't the best way to do it since the camera has trouble seeing it in bright light, but it's a far superior way to do it than the other version of Dune did. So, points for that decision! That is a SciFi/SyFy TV mini-series, which means we can forgive most this. It's not as bad as most SciFi/SyFy TV productions. I've seen worse acting worst productions, so let's get into why I rated this at 7 out of 10 instead of 3 (which the acting absolutely deserves).

First, let me get the good things about the acting out of the way. For all of my riding on how rehearsed and bland the acting sounds, they aren't actually bad, and we do get to see who the better actors are, like Julie Cox's Irulan, who was absolutely a stand out performance. Giancarlo Giannini was thoroughly convincing as the Padishaw-Emperor Shadam IV. In fact, I get the feeling that all of the scenes with Irulan's education and trying to solve the mystery of Muad'dib (which absolutely were not in any version of the book) were only added so that we could see more of Julie Cox's performance. It was a good choice. Giancarlo's Emperor gets a few extra scenes out of this, too, though not as many as Cox. These two are definitely a bright point in this production. Barbara Kordetova's Chani also stands out, but this might not be a good thing as she consistently outstages Alec Newman's Paul Atreides/Muad'dib. A lot of people will point to Ian McNiece's Baron Harkonnen, but I don't see it. While he's definitely chewing the scenery, if nothing else, I actually get the strongest rep theater, low-rent vibe from his performance. It doesn't help that he actually frequently breaks the fourth wall and talks directly to the audience repeatedly. I know that's the director's fault and that it's done for theatrical effect, but it does nothing to improve my view of the acting in this production. Miroslav Taborsky's Fenring was...an interesting performance. I don't know if it could be called good, but it definitely was memorable. He also appears in most of the extra scenes with Irulan, but I didn't find his performance particularly likable. He used a strange set of vocal ticks and hand motions for his performance that I suspect was intended to indicate that there is an inherent strangeness to the character (if you've read the books, you can probably see what he was trying to do), but I really don't think it worked. I think if he had a bit more time to perfect this performance it might have been something very special. Unfortunately, it just doesn't land.

Now, onto set design. I've already mentioned that this movie has had the greenscreened out of it, and not very well. Regardless, there is nothing you can say bad about the design. The cities, interiors, and designs: if any money went into this production, this is where it went. Every detail is attended to and real work went into the design. For once, a SciFi production doesn't look like the room's been mostly made out of cardboard. You can actually believe the buildings and the city (and this only gets better in Children of Dune). I feel like with a little more budget and time behind it, this production could have been great.

Script and story are fantastic. For all of this production's flaws, it's extremely immersive. True to the book? Absolutely, but it has a lot of material that isn't found in the book, and I think they could have actually replaced that material with greater depth from the book. It speaks to the quality of the extra material that I don't think they were wrong to do this. I loved every single Irulan scene, which is what the bulk of this additional story was. Don't forget that Jodorowsky's Dune would have been 14 hours. We don't actually need anything extra. Still, I'm glad for it. Julie Cox was a bright light in a sea of bland acting. The story delves far more deeply into the book than the Lynch version did, looking at the deeper nuances of Paul's transformation, and doing one very important thing that Lynch's version failed to do: blurring the moral line for the protagonist. Is Muad'dib the hero or the villain, or something inbetween? Can heroes and villains even really exist and is everyone something inbetween; not wholly good, but not wholly evil? That was the crux of the book, and this production jumps into that with both feet. Where this production fails in the technical aspect, it more than makes up for in story telling, and even a portion of the technical aspect is well done.

Overall, of the things that are SciFi/SyFy Channel production quality series and films, this definitely ranks in the top tier. Absolutely worth your time.

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 know that everyone has problems with David Lynch's 1984 version of Dune, but after seeing the television version that adds some scenes, it's grown on me. I never understood why until I saw the new SciFi Channel miniseries. It was the acting. They had little to work with, but they were fascinating. The new miniseries gives the book a much more proper story treatment, but the acting falls short. My best example is the Paul-Feyd contrast. Although, Kyle McLachlan seemed too old to me, he and Sting made excellent opposites in the Lynch version. The two actors cast in the miniseries looked so much alike and were both so wooden to me that it took me half the movie to be able to easily tell when Feyd appeared. As has been mentioned in other comments, the rest of the cast is good, but the 1984 version just had such a great cast that the acting is tough to beat.

I wish that the 1984 cast had the miniseries treatment to work with and it would have been grand. Perhaps after several viewings the acting in the miniseries will grow on me. All in all, it's nice to see more of the book's depth filmed.