Dune

It is a dark, spellbinding dream, full of murmurs and whispers, byzantine plots and messianic fevers. It finds its iconography of the future deep in the past. It's not always easy to follow, but it's even harder to get out of your system. For better and for worse, it takes more artistic chances than any major American movie around. [10 Dec 1984, p.93]

For all its cumbersome scope (realized on a shimmeringly large scale by Lawrence of Arabia cinematographer Freddie Francis), the film remains an intensely personal epic, Lynch's uncommon emphasis on characters rather than effects lending his exposition a rather remarkable lucidity.

Dune is a huge, hollow, imaginative and cold sci-fi epic. Visually unique and teeming with incident, David Lynch's film holds the interest due to its abundant surface attractions but won't, of its own accord, create the sort of fanaticism which has made Frank Herbert's 1965 novel one of the all-time favorites in its genre.

DUNE is visually delightful but choppy, confusing, and overloaded with exposition. Moreover, most of the thematic material that made the novel work--subtexts involving incestuous desire, capitalism vs. environmentalism, and Middle East politics--is simply missing.

The problem is that the imagery—as Sadean as Pasolini's Salo—isn't rooted in any story impulse, and so its power dissipates quickly. The real venue for this film is either a grind house or the Whitney Museum.

SEVERAL of the characters in Dune are psychic, which puts them in the unique position of being able to understand what goes on in the movie.

David Lynch's disastrous film adaptation of Fank Herbert's science-fiction classic turns epic to myopic. [14 Dec 1984, p.31]

When Frank Herbert published Dune in 1965, it was considered unfilmable for a long time. In 1984, the young and highly talented David Lynch ventured into the film adaptation. The result was a real work of art and also a masterpiece. A flop at the box office, but over time, viewers noticed the ingenuity and high artistry of the movie. A real classic, fantastically made, it convinces with its high artistic standards. It's not for everyone. In my eyes, David Lynch is an underestimated (how can it also be in Hollywood) artistic genius. The Albert Einstein and Salvador Dali of cinematic art. Too bad he couldn't make a sequel. There are still many books by the great Frank Herbert waiting to be made into fantastic movies. BRAVO, BRAVO, BRAVO! AWESOME!

Greetings from Lithuania. "Dune" (1984) is a perfect example of a movie, that tries and fails to adapt an epic story into a 2 h 10 min flick. First time i watched this film only in 2025, after seeing Denis Villeneuve's Part 1 and Part 2 multiple times. This 1984 adaptation has one core issue that sinks the whole movie down - its run time. There is no way in the world that they could have possible adapted this epic story in a any good way within 2 hours film. It's like making Lord Of The Rings adaptation with 1 h 45 min run time. "Dune" (1984) has great costumes, good set design, desert scenes do look impressive. I watched this movie in 4K UHD presentation so i won't tell how many times i saw wires holding the Baron up in the air. Acting was decent enough for this kind of movie. But its writing and storytelling that do not work. It's the bizarre scenes involving milking of cat, or Sting in his underwear that do not work. Nearly all scenes involving Baron are bizarrely weird - not menacing. The overvoices explaining the plot were necessary to make this film even slightly understandable for people who didn't read "Dune". Overall, "Dune" simply isn't an entertaining movie. It is fun movie to look at, but not very much to admire. Story scope wasn't filmable in 2 hours run time, and they failed to make a good movie. But, it is not the worst film even and i did mildly enjoyed it, i can not lie.

Not bad but they shoved way too much content into this movie. This movie needs every second it gets and yet it isn’t enough.

A Rushed, Comical Space Opera Packed with Clunky Expository Narrators: Blaming the Studio Rather Than the Director for a Compromised Epic.240613 (1.5)Set in the year 10191, the universe revolves around the spice melange, a substance that extends life, expands consciousness, and enables interstellar travel via the Spacing Guild and mutated navigators steeped in orange spice gas. Arrakis, also known as Dune, is a desolate desert world and the sole source of spice, where the indigenous Fremen survive in rocky enclaves awaiting a prophesied messiah. Duke Leto Atreides of Caladan governs a noble house developing sonic weaponry at the Padishah Emperor Shaddam IV's directive. However, the Emperor secretly schemes with the red-haired House Harkonnen of Giedi Prime, pledging five legions of Sardaukar terror troops to exterminate the Atreides line. Princess Irulan chronicles the events on Kaitain, while Reverend Mother Gaius Helen Mohiam, the Emperor's Truthsayer, represents the Bene Gesserit Sisterhood. This mystic order has engaged in selective breeding over ninety generations to produce the Kwisatz Haderach, an all-seeing cosmic superbeing. Lady Jessica, a Bene Gesserit and Leto's concubine, defied her order to bear a daughter for a Harkonnen alliance, instead giving Leto the son he desired. Gurney Halleck mentors young Paul Atreides, played by an actor resembling Professor X from "X-Men", reminding him that the sleeper must awaken. The Mentat Thufir Hawat serves as a human supercomputer trained to replace forbidden thinking machines, a concept echoing sci-fi classics like "The Three-Body Problem". The villainous Baron Vladimir Harkonnen is depicted as a depraved sadist draining the blood of young men, flanked by his nephew Feyd-Rautha, memorably played by rock star Sting. On Arrakis, Paul encounters the Fremen, a surprisingly organized populace whose maid Shadout Mapes warns of a traitor. The royal physician Dr. Yueh sabotages the shields and equips Leto with a poisonous gas tooth to strike down the Baron, acting as a tragic double agent coerced by the mutilation of his wife. While Leto perishes, Paul and Jessica escape into the desert with the ducal signet ring, forming an alliance with Stilgar's Fremen by promising to teach them Bene Gesserit disciplines. The acting among the Harkonnens feels bizarrely over-the-top, with characters delivering exaggerated, unhinged performances. Taking the name Muad'Dib after the second moon's desert mouse shadow and Usul meaning the pillar's foundation, Paul falls in love with Chani, the daughter of Liet Kynes who appeared in his waking dreams. The Fremen secretly gather massive underground reservoirs of water to eventually terraform the desert. Jessica becomes a Sayyadina and drinks the fatal Water of Life, causing the previous Reverend Mother to perish while passing all ancestral knowledge to Jessica's unborn daughter Alia, who is born prematurely and rapidly matures into a powerful, unnerving prodigy. Paul trains the Fremen in the Weirding modular sonic fighting style and halts spice production, forcing the Emperor and Harkonnens into a corner. Beast Rabban conceals the mounting losses out of terror for two years before the Emperor executes him. When the Guild pressures the Emperor to dispatch fifty Sardaukar legions, Paul drinks the Water of Life, awakening fully as the Kwisatz Haderach with the cry, "Father, the sleeper has awakened!" Commanding millions of Fremen, Paul leads an overwhelming counterassault where the Fremen overpower the Sardaukar. Alia effortlessly executes Baron Harkonnen with psychic mastery, while Paul defeats Feyd-Rautha in single combat with a devastating sonic roar. The film concludes abruptly without planned sequels as Paul brings rainfall to Arrakis, transforming the planet's ecology. Although the worldbuilding feels awkwardly crammed and jarring without pausing to review the lore, the fault lies with studio meddling that brutally condensed David Lynch's expansive multi-hour vision into a two-hour theatrical cut, truncating an ambitious epic inspired by foundational sci-fi landmarks like Isaac Asimov's "Foundation" and influencing later cultural giants like "Star Wars" and "A Song of Ice and Fire".

Unfortunately, the film left me disoriented and unsatisfied. Along with great panaromas comes a story so difficuously told that it becomes an inexplicable mud puddle. On a planet that has no mud puddles.