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:
Hear Brian Eno’s Contribution to the Soundtrack of David Lynch’s Dune (1984)
The Glossary Universal Studios Gave Out to the First Audiences of David Lynch’s Dune (1984)
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.
That’s a matter of perspective. You seem to assume Denis Villeneuve’s adaptation went right. David Lynch’s Dune was far from being a perfect movie. But still was way more faithful to the source material.
Lynch’s movie wasn’t even close to being more faithful to the source material. He missed the most important theme of the book which is that Paul isn’t the hero of the story, he’s just the protagonist. Lynch turned him into Space White Jesus and made it rain on Arrakis via straight up magic.
And no, it’s really not a matter of perspective. Lynch’s movie was a critical failure, it was a massive commercial bomb, it was not faithful to the book, it was not well received by fans, and even David Lynch himself hated the end result. When even the director and writer of the film considers it a failure you should believe him.
The Villeneuve adaptation was a massive commercial success, it won six Oscars, it got favorable reviews from fans and critics alike, it got a sequel, it has another sequel in production, it got a successful prequel HBO series which has been renewed for another season, and most importantly it understands the core message Paul is not to be trusted.
I disagree. I’ve seen both Lynch’s and Villeneuve’s movies. While I’m not championing Lynch’s, I see a LOT of good ideas and story beats, that weren’t executed well. Yes, the run time is a big problem with the movie. But seeing the longer cuts when I was younger, it made more sense to me.
I suspect studio interference is the culprit here. Lynch is a good director, he had a fantastic slate of actors both new and experienced at the time to draw from, and he had a decent story to work from. The film’s length should have been split into smaller pieces to give it the room to explore the ideas it had without being overly long on any part. But, as RotJ had opened three years earlier, Terminator two years earlier, and Aliens came out the same year, I think Universal wanted their own sci-fi epic, having not gotten the taste of Flash Gordon out of its mouth.
So, they pushed for Dune to stay one BIG movie, in the vein of projects like Cleopatra or Ben Hur: massive landmark movies that Hollywood rarely produced, but were record setting when they did.
I actually really liked the 1984 version.
A mi me gustó la película de Lynch. Tiene un buen *sabor* épico. Y recuerden que el cine no es literatura. Los cineastas pueden respetar o no, o en parte un libro original y eso puede ser bueno, malo o indistinto.
I can’t imagine any director doing a worse job of adapting Dune than Lynch did, no matter the length of the movie. He turned a great book into a horror show.
Oh, but he was more faithful. Even the Space White Jesus stuff is more faithful than Villeneuve’s crap about Paul being a villain. Neither you nor Villeneuve didn’t get it: the Fremens are not the heroes of the story. Actually, not counting the SciFi miniseries, Lynch’s movie was the most faithful to the book. And I’ve read every script or outline starting with Arthur P. Jacobs version up until Paramount’s attempts in late 2000s. I was being polite when I said it’s a matter of perspective. And I really don’t care about Villeneuve’s critical reception or Oscar nominations. That’s really not the topic here.
Did you even read the books? Paul starts the jihad to save his own family and then turns away from the only path that will not result in the extinction of the human race because he isn’t strong enough to sacrifice his own humanity. He shirks his responsibilities (but only after starting a sequence that will end up killing billions of people) and leaves his sister and his children to clean up his mess. His son Leto II even directly calls him out for this in Children of Dune.
Paul’s failure dooms Alia to death by abomination, and it dooms Leto II to become a tyrant for thousands of years to ensure the survival of humanity.
“The bottom line of the Dune trilogy is: beware of heroes. Much better to rely on your own judgment, and your own mistakes.” — Frank Herbert, 1979
Lynch’s Dune is the most basic ass hero archetype story you could imagine, and on top of that he turns the Bene Gesserit martial arts into some stupid voice direction device and turns Paul into a literal sorcerer. Lynch didn’t even read the book, and his sequel script is somehow even worse.
Oh, I did read the books. How about you? Villeneuve definitely didn’t read them. Because I remember Paul trying to avoid the Jihad as long as he could. Or did you skipped that part? And at the end of the day, the Fremens were those who enacted the Jihad. Do you really think FH’s quote does not apply to them too? They are anything but innocent or heroes. They are not good guys either and certainly are responsible for their actions. Paul was a tragic figure in the books, not a villain. As for Alia’s fate, that’s really not on Paul. More like on Jessica. I also don’t remember a schism among the Fremens. Nor the Bene Gesserit being the most powerful faction in the Imperium. And Villeneuve’s Dune is the most basic progressive left wing trope you could imagine. Btw, DV didn’t even have the guts to call the Jihad as such in his movie. He went with Holy War. However I bet if the source material would’ve featured the term crusade instead of Jihad, he wouldn’t have changed it to Holy War. You gotta love how “brave” are our filmmakers, as always.
I see. You’re just an angry incel who didn’t understand the book or the movie. Maybe you should stick to Rebel Moon or some other brainless dudebro nonsense.