Perfect cast and a good story

Must See Movie...

As Good As It Gets

This movie was so-so. It had it's moments, but wasn't the greatest.

One can never really compare a book to a 2-3 hour condensation of a book. This is an awesome attempt. A CLASSIC of the period. Incredibly good especially considering its age. We're talking 1984! Well worth the watch. Fav for me.

I had only seen David Lynch's 1984 production of Dune once before when I was much younger, so when I got the chance to see a midnight screening of it at my local theater, I jumped on it. Going into this screening I recalled the movie being somewhat goofy, probably because I had just read all six of the original Dune novels the first time I saw it and OF COURSE it didn't come close to holding up to that lengthy, legendary storyline.Frank Herbert's universe had seemingly endless plots, subplots, characters and themes. Dune has all the sex, violence and political machinations of Game of Thrones while also concentrating on much more weighty issues like technology, ecology, drug use, spirituality, the destiny of mankind, etc. The depth of Dune is too much for any movie to come close to capturing and that's the brick wall that David Lynch runs into. He can't possibly do the source material justice; not on a thematic level anyway. He can only capture the forms and some of the spectacle from the first book.That said, I did enjoy it slightly more this second time, probably because I was focusing on its artistic merit and what David Lynch does well rather than mercilessly comparing it to the scope of the books. The first half of the film is steady, well presented and follows the book fairly well but somewhere around the middle of the movie the pace dramatically speeds up and they start cramming way too much story into too little screen time as events hurtle toward a hasty, contrived conclusion.I wish that Lynch hadn't shoved so many of the characters thoughts into recorded voice overs. Apparently this was done because the studio demanded he cut his original 3 hour version of the film by 40 minutes. I get that anyone who hasn't read Dune would have a hard time comprehending what was going on without all that exposition, but I think the film would've benefited greatly by saying less. Let the mysterious remain mysterious and focus on those inspired visuals! If people want to unravel it all, they can go back and read the novel. What a torture, to have to read one of the most important works of science fiction ever!For all its flaws, the film nails quite a few elements of "Dune." It's very well cast and most of the costumes / sets are spot on. Even the pronunciations of Herbert's fictional terminology are mostly correct and Paul's dream sequences are splendid to behold, evoking the symbolism and artistry you expect to flow from the prose of the book.The film ends on a bit of an eye roll. Muad Dib and the Fremen win a crazy one-sided battle, he kills Feyd in the duel (Sting was surprisingly good in this role for someone who's not, primarily, an actor), Paul proclaims a new dawn of humanity and it suddenly rains for the first time on Dune. Really David? That rain wasn't in the book and you couldn't think of a better way to end it? How about after the proclamation we have a nice long zoom in on Paul transitioning into visions of the future from the subsequent five books? Muad Dib's fall, the trials of his children, the God Emperor and the rise of the Honored Matres! Paul is soaked in spice at this point so he's already getting glimpses of the future. Even just a brief montage eluding to those events with the dramatic score in the background would've made a great ending to your acid trip of a movie! But no, we get a sadly typical put-a-bow-on-it Hollywood ending and fade to credits.Despite its shortcomings, I'm not overly disappointed. Adapting Dune is too great a task for anyone and it was fun to see Lynch try. Although much of the substance is missing, he succeeded in capturing the dramatic weight of Dune and painting a dazzling silver screen portrait of my favorite novel. It will be interesting to see if Denis Villeneuve can do better.

I belong to the camp that read the book before seeking out and watching the film. The book is an epic, and draws you into the Dune world (I wouldn't have sought the film otherwise).The film however places you into the cold looking in through a window. It is very accurate to the book, however as you'd expect a lot of it got chopped out. This was expected of course as there is no way to stay accurate to such a long book and keep the film feature-length.The editing makes for awkward storytelling, and I found I had to stop the film after almost every scene to explain to my girlfriend what was going on (not having read the book herself). Thankfully I only had to do this for the first-quarter because she got bored and left! Sometimes the film deviated from the book, for example the fact that somehow it inexplicably started raining on Arrakis at the end after the Freman victory really irked me, as 1) no such thing ever happened in the book, and 2) the whole preciousness of water wasn't fully explored/emphasised at all in the film and so the rain didn't seem as miraculous as it would otherwise certainly have been. This would have been a good ending to the film if it could have been explained. The book explained that 300 to 500 years of geo-engineering was estimated before green-life could self-sustain in the desert, let alone for heavy rainfall to come.Indeed the preciousness of water was a central pivot for everything in the book. In the film it was only quickly glossed over.The characters and their relationships are not explored, with many (Stilgar, for example) that have a major role in the book getting insignificant roles in the film. The majority of the acting has no passion and is wooden.These are the reasons I hate this film. But why do I love it at the same time?The scenes, set design, props, costumes, and graphics, are all rich and stir the imagination and are well within the theme of the book. Even the early CGI work (used to render shields) is fairly impressive considering it was 1984. To some it may look a bit naff, but then who are we to say what shields look like in the year 10,000?My review is certainly biased from reading the book. But then this was a film that was purposely made from the book. I think that maybe they would have been better off 'basing' the film on the book, and coming up with a story more suited to film.

I saw Dune when it first came out with a group of high school friends in 70mm Dolby at the Cine Capri in Phoenix. We were all avid science fiction readers and had read all of Frank Herbert's books. Despite all its short comings I still love this movie. The state of special effects in 1984 were just not advanced enough to adequately pull it off. It was also unrealistic to try and cram all the first book into a single two- hour movie. It did, however, have a stellar cast; but they were a bit hampered by an odd, awkward screenplay. I can only imagine what could be done now with modern special effects and a series of movies like The Lord of the Rings, the Hobbit or Star Wars. I agree wholeheartedly with the review by Nergal-Is-Risen. I was amazed by the number of 1-star and 10-star reviews this movie received by users on IMDb—quite a bi-modal distribution! Love it, or hate it, people are passionate about this movie.