dub@pur-phy.UUCP (Dwight) (12/16/84)
My reactions after having seen Dune are very mixed. First of
all, I should mention that I've read the book twice and enjoyed
it greatly. From all of the terrible pre-reviews I'd seen about
Dune I went into the theater not expecting too much.
The movie started out rather well I thought.
<Enter face of Emperor's daughter fading in and out of existence>
The political situation is laid out for the viewer to comprehend
and all of the important parties involved are introduced. The plot
seemed to be following the book like a shadow. We get to see all
of the facets of Paul's development and his devotion to his father,
the Duke, comes through quite well. I really liked their shields.
After they arrive on Arrakis the film still looks pretty
good. The scene where the Duke goes out to inspect the spice mining
was very well done and also the scene with the "seeker" in Paul's
bedroom went off very well. Sure there were minor things I didn't like;
the Navigators looked like a cross between Jabba and Leto II,
the Baron was a bit skinny and seemed less "dark" (if ya know what I
mean). But the settings looked fairly good. Many little things I didn't
like I can trace back to my comparing the film to the book; in other
words, things that might displease a Dune fan, but not the avg. movie goer.
The trouble really starts for this film when the Baron
attacks the Duke. The battle scenes looked very poor; alot of people
just running around with an occasional explosion. Not at all realistic
in my opinion. My next-to-biggest disappointment was that the "fierce" Fremen
didn't strike me as being all that deadly. The entire Fremen culture
is not developed for the viewer to the point where we really understand
them. (The stillsuits are explained very well in the film but where
are the face masks and they are always forgetting to exhale through
their mouthpieces.) We hear Paul tell his mother to walk non-rythmically
but in the next scene they go marching across the desert. Even the
Fremen are guilty of this. One good point was that even though the
thumpers looked rather perverse (in and out and in and out) Paul's first
worm ride looked really neat! (neat - a ancient term meaning megafun)
The biggest failure of the movie in its post-"Baron invades
Arraki" part is to protray Paul as the "superior being" (sorry, can't
remember how to spell the H..............). The movie goer is given
no idea of just what the heck the spice has done to Paul conscienceness.
The images that the film uses to try to convey this facet of Paul
are totally obscure. Paul's obsessively constant remarks about Dune's
smaller moon are never explained.
The ending.... maybe I have got complete amnesia, but I
don't remember Paul making it rain at the end of Dune. Making it
rain would only kill off the worms and sandtrout. Also, there is
a narrative saying that after Paul's victory over the Emperor at
the Shield Wall there was at last peace in the universe. Like hell!
Paul brought a jihad and that sure weren't peaceful! The ending to
this movie may have been ok for a movie goer, but for this Dune fan it
left a lot to be desired. I'm a Sting fan so I liked his fight at the
end with Paul. In fact, the way Gunry Hallek wanted to do all sorts
of nasty things to Fyern(sp)(Sting), I was mentally rooting for Sting
to win. But anyways, I've seen advertisements for Dune that gave
Sting top billing! That last scene is the only scene he has any
importance in.
To summarize: First half was ok, second half lousy.
Liked the worms, though. Net result, there are tons of characters
in Dune (the book). Dune (the movie) introduces them all one way
for another, but most of them never get developed one bit. The result
is a somewhat confusing movie. This production should have been an eight
hour mini-series. There is just too much in Dune (the book) to put
into a 140 minute film.
Hope this review was readable, sorry if it wasn't.
Dwight Bartholomew
UUCP:{ decvax, icalqa, ihnp4, inuxc, sequent, uiucdcs }!pur-ee!pur-phy!dub
{ decwrl, hplabs, icase, psuvax1, siemens, ucbvax }|purdue!pur-phy!dubgtaylor@lasspvax.UUCP (Greg Taylor) (12/17/84)
I gotta agree with the general press so far, but perhaps be a little less graceful. The story is a muddled mess. The internal dialogues are poorly used (reminded me of a Certs commercial)-but what could be done. TOTO's score (somebody had to be *really* coked up to have thought of that) is at best totally ignorable and at worst ridiculous (notably the electric guitar chord that keeps showing up while the Fremen are up riding on the giant sofa bolster-OOPS, *sandworm*. Good stuff: Visually, the movie is *so* well done that you wind up filled with a sort of rage at the fact that everything else is so poorly done. As science fiction, the sense of an "other" but complete world is brilliantly done. In fact, there is this occasional sense watching Lynch trying to control the morass that the little details (the little "squash the mousie" cocktail comes to mind here)nearly do it:it's the sense of detail visually that *almost* carries the whole bloody film. THat sense of detail is nearly totally lacking in the rest of the stuff. The good roles are all bit parts. That should warn you of something. Lynch does a creditable job of using the visual details of the film to carry his narration. The murk of his earlier films is strongly here (my SO suggested that the Guild steersman was the baby in Eraserhead, grown and holding a respectable job), but he's got too much to do, and too many loose ends. As a feast for the eyes and the imagination, give it a 9. As a faithful version of the Herbert, uh..... give it a pass on the basis of extenuating circumstances. As a movie, give it a crutch. Greg