Denis Vil­leneu­ve’s recent film adap­ta­tion of Dune is gen­er­al­ly con­sid­ered to be supe­ri­or to the late David Lynch’s, from 1984 — though even accord­ing to many of Lynch’s fans, it could hard­ly have been worse. In a 1996 piece for Pre­miere mag­a­zine, David Fos­ter Wal­lace described Dune as “unques­tion­ably the worst movie of Lynch’s career,” not least due to the mis­cast­ing of the direc­tor him­self: “Eraser­head had been one of those sell-your-own-plas­ma-to-buy-the-film-stock mas­ter­pieces, with a tiny and large­ly unpaid cast and crew. Dune, on the oth­er hand, had one of the biggest bud­gets in Hol­ly­wood his­to­ry,” mar­shaled by super-pro­duc­er Dino De Lau­ren­ti­is. But could even a mas­ter block­buster crafts­man have made cin­e­mat­ic sense of Frank Her­bert’s orig­i­nal sto­ry, “which even in the nov­el is con­vo­lut­ed to the point of pain”?

With its two parts hav­ing been released in the twen­ty-twen­ties, Vil­leneu­ve’s Dune prac­ti­cal­ly cries out for Youtube video essays com­par­ing it to Lynch’s ver­sion. The one above from Archer Green first high­lights their dif­fer­ences through one scene that was mem­o­rable in the nov­el and both films: when, being put to the test by the Rev­erend Moth­er Gaius Helen Mohi­am, the young hero Paul Atrei­des, played in the old Dune by Kyle MacLach­lan and the new one by Tim­o­th­ée Cha­la­met, inserts his hand into a box that inflicts extreme pain. Super­fi­cial­ly sim­i­lar though they may appear, the two sequences reveal defin­ing qual­i­ties of each pic­ture’s look and feel — Vil­leneu­ve’s is shad­owy and full of ancient-look­ing details, while Lynch’s looks like a piece of retro-futur­is­tic Jacobean the­ater — as well as the con­trast between how they dra­ma­tize the source mate­r­i­al.

The new Dune is “a very mod­ern-look­ing film that goes for a real­is­tic and ground­ed aes­thet­ic, and it feels more like a seri­ous pres­tige sci-fi movie,” says Archer Green, “where­as old Dune is more sur­re­al­ist: it’s elab­o­rate, grungy, and ulti­mate­ly quite over the top.” Their hav­ing been made in dif­fer­ent eras explains some of this, but so does their hav­ing been made at dif­fer­ent scales of time. Viewed back-to-back, Vil­leneu­ve’s Dune movies run just over five and a half hours. Lynch open­ly admit­ted that he’d “sold out” his right to the final cut in exchange for a major Hol­ly­wood project, but he also sel­dom failed to men­tion that the stu­dio demand­ed that the film be “squeezed” to two hours and 17 min­utes in order to guar­an­tee a cer­tain min­i­mum num­ber of dai­ly screen­ings.

This pres­sure to get the run­time down must have moti­vat­ed some of what even in the nine­teen-eight­ies felt old-fash­ioned about Lynch’s Dune, like its extend­ed “expo­si­tion dumps” and its “hav­ing char­ac­ters’ thoughts audi­bi­lized on the sound­track while the cam­era zooms in on the char­ac­ter mak­ing a think­ing face,” as Wal­lace put it. The film’s fail­ure “could eas­i­ly have turned Lynch into an embit­tered hack, doing effects-inten­sive gorefests for com­mer­cial stu­dios” or “sent him scur­ry­ing to the safe­ty of acad­eme, mak­ing obscure, plot­less 16mm’s for the pipe-and-beret crowd.” Instead, he took the pal­try deal sub­se­quent­ly offered him by De Lau­ren­ti­is and made Blue Vel­vet, whose suc­cess he rode to become a major cul­tur­al fig­ure. In a way, Lynch’s Dune fias­co gave Cha­la­met the even­tu­al oppor­tu­ni­ty to become the defin­i­tive Paul Atrei­des — and MacLach­lan, to become Spe­cial Agent Dale Coop­er.

Relat­ed con­tent:

A Side-by-Side, Shot-by-Shot Com­par­i­son of Denis Villeneuve’s 2020 Dune and David Lynch’s 1984 Dune

Hear Bri­an Eno’s Con­tri­bu­tion to the Sound­track of David Lynch’s Dune (1984)

The Dune Col­or­ing & Activ­i­ty Books: When David Lynch’s 1984 Film Cre­at­ed Count­less Hours of Pecu­liar Fun for Kids

The Glos­sary Uni­ver­sal Stu­dios Gave Out to the First Audi­ences of David Lynch’s Dune (1984)

The 14-Hour Epic Film, Dune, That Ale­jan­dro Jodor­owsky, Pink Floyd, Sal­vador Dalí, Moe­bius, Orson Welles & Mick Jag­ger Nev­er Made

The Wide-Rang­ing Cre­ative Genius of David Lynch (RIP): Dis­cov­er His Films, Music Videos, Car­toons, Com­mer­cials, Paint­ings, Pho­tog­ra­phy & More

Based in Seoul, Col­in Marshall writes and broad­casts on cities, lan­guage, and cul­ture. His projects include the Sub­stack newslet­ter Books on Cities and the book The State­less City: a Walk through 21st-Cen­tu­ry Los Ange­les. Fol­low him on the social net­work for­mer­ly known as Twit­ter at @colinmarshall.