Average Rating: 
Rating:  - Great mvoie, lousy condition....
This video would have gotten 4 or 5 starts if it had been in better condition when I received it. This is the ORIGINAL, David Lynch version of the story, which seems to have a LOT more "warmth" or "soul" than the recent Sci-Fi channel version. The casting is excellent, bang-on, in fact, and I would have LIKED it if more key scenes from the book had been put in in, but all in all, the story of Paul and Jessica Atreides gets told quite well by this dream-like production. Even though this movie supposedly bombed at the box office, fact is is that just about every cast member went on to bigger and better things: Voila...Patrick Stewart - Your friendly neighborhood Capt. Picard
Kyle MacLachlan - Agent Cooper from Twin Peaks, and a good movie career to boot
Brad Dourif - A lucrative run as the voice of Chucky in the "Child's Play" movies and various TV sci-fi roles
Everett McGill - Nice run of movies where he played people very different from the noble Stilgar
Francesca Annis - Much work for the BBC
Alicia Witt - "Cybil", various movies.
Dean Stockwell - A career completely revived by his work with David Lynch, starting with this movie So, maybe it didn't set the B.O. on fire, but it still stands as one of the better movies of the 80s and one of the few translations of an epic sci-fi novel to the big screen. Buy it, but make sure you get a better vendor than (( I ))did!!
Rating:  - REMEMBER: Frank Herbert liked this film.
Yes, believe it or not, the late author of the "Dune" science fiction series, Frank Herbert, was reported to be quite pleased with David Lynch's treatment of his novel ... and so was I. Bear in mind that I consider "Dune" to be one of the greatest sci-fi novels of all time, so when a film director takes liberties with elements of the story, I SHOULD be angry ... but not in this case. Considering that the only way to truly do justice to the novel would be to make a film that's at least five hours long, I think David Lynch does an absolutely remarkable job of immersing the viewer in Frank Herbert's universe in just two-and-a-half hours. Some prior understanding of this future galactic culture would be helpful. In other words, READ THE BOOK! David Lynch apparently feels this film is one of his weaker efforts, but I think he's selling himself short. "Dune" is one of the most visionary and exhilarating science fiction films ever. "We have just folded space from Ix," INDEED.
Rating:  - A true-to-the-book attempt, just squashed
The David Lynch movie version of Dune came out in 1984. This was the first time that the very famous Dune series by Frank Herbert had been adapted for screen, and legions of fans waited eagerly to see how it would work out. Many were thrilled, many were disappointed. It's only really now, with a 6 hour miniseries out on the same subject, that many people are viewing this movie attempt fairly. First, the movie was only 2 hours and 17 minutes long. That's an incredibly short period of time for such a long, complex book. Even the six hour miniseries had to leave key scenes out and combine characters together. So any complaints about missing scenes or favorite characters has to take that into account. Kyle MacLachlan is Paul Atreides, and Jurgen Prochnow (one of my *favorite* actors) is his father, Duke Leto. Some criticize the two for being non-emotional. If you read the series, however, you'll find that this is true to form. Neither of these men were ones to show how they felt. They were raised in the rough world of hard-core politics and daily death threats. The story of Dune is about Duke Leto's hardest time of a hard life - being forced to move to a planet he hates, to put his beloved wife and son directly into danger. Paul's life isn't much better. If anything, I give HUGE credit to the scriptwriters for keeping Paul intelligent and mature throughout the movie, just as he was in the book. The miniseries turns Paul into a sniveling, whiny brat and this drove me CRAZY. That was NOT Paul. The backup actors are fantastic. You have Patrick Stewart (Captain Picard), Dean Stockwell, Sean Young, Linda Hunt, Jose Ferrer, and many others. They do a great job of trying to get a character across in the short time they have to do it in. The visual style is very engaging. Their stillsuits look like STILLSUITS quite unlike the miniseries turning them into beachwear. The rich Gothic architecture really gives a sense that this culture has existed for thousands of years and has been taking advantage of the power it had. At least one reviewer has said *incorrectly* that the DVD has scenes cut. In fact, the DVD is the exact same version as the theatrical release. There was a *TV* release that was severely cut to fit into TV-time, and Lynch hated that version so much he refused to allow his name to be put on it. I admit that I used to be a critic of this movie. But seeing what others did to the content of this amazing book even with much more time to work with, I have to now admit that Lynch squashed an amazing amount of quality into his just-over-two-hours. I would recommend that anyone who finds the concept of Dune even slightly interesting to definitely READ THE BOOK and then watch the movie with that background in mind.
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