1984: DUNE

What’s it about?

In the galactic empire, the most precious substance known to man is “the spice”. The spice is a substance found only on one planet in the universe -- Arrakis, or Dune -- and has all sorts of recreational and commercial applications when taken as a drug. Chief among these is its use in making possible instantaneous interstellar travel by allowing a secretive guild of navigators to “fold” space itself. Control of the planet Arrakis is therefore extremely important to many powerful interests in the galaxy, so when the emperor starts using the planet as bait to incite factions in the empire to fight, he finds himself closely watched by others.

One of the factions being drawn into conflict by the emperor is House Atreides, the heir of which seems to possess some unusual powers. His mother disobeyed orders from a secret society when she bore him, and now it seems possible that he is the fabled Kwisatz Haderach -- a powerful being that will allow its controllers to rise to power. But as the son arrives on Arrakis with his faction, it also seems that he might fulfill a long-standing prophecy to free the planet from foreign control.

Is it any good?

Most science fiction movies take place in a setting that is somehow derived from the world we live in today. It makes sense -- it’s easier to relate to what’s going on if there’s at least some connection to the world that we know. For example, STAR TREK’s Federation of Planets -- for all its galaxy-spanning reach -- is still headquartered in a futuristic (but recognizable) San Francisco, with an intact Golden Gate Bridge and all.

There are a few cases of course where sci-fi movies take place in exotic worlds that have nothing to do with Earth at all. Many of the early examples -- like FLIGHT TO MARS (1951), THE SILENT STAR (1960), THE PHANTOM PLANET (1961), or ROBINSON CRUSOE ON MARS (1964) -- put Earthmen on other planets in our own solar system. The adventures they have while there don’t have a whole lot to do with their home planet, but there is always the yearning to go home. And, of course, the entire movie is filtered through the eyes of characters who are just as much strangers in these worlds as the audience is.

Perhaps the culmination of this is DOCTOR WHO AND THE DALEKS (1965), in which Peter Cushing’s doctor travels to a distant alien planet with several young companions. (Note: In the movie’s version of the Doctor Who mythos, the good doctor is actually a human inventor and not an alien Time Lord.) The doctor and his companions become spectators to and eventually participants in a conflict between two alien races. And since they traveled to the planet using the T.A.R.D.I.S., there’s no discernable connection between the planet they arrive at and Earth.

Some years later, IN THE DUST OF THE STARS (1976), STAR WARS (1977), and BATTLESTAR GALACTICA (1978) dispensed with any need to have human characters at all and even with any mention of Earth (except, in the case of BATTLESTAR GALACTICA, in mythological contexts). Naturally many of the characters still looked like humans -- they had to be played by human actors, after all -- but finally these were science fiction movies that seemed to take place in universes where Earth may not even exist and where its existence is often utterly irrelevant.

DUNE is another such movie, and even more than the others I’ve mentioned it seems to owe a debt to the universe of Isaac Asimov’s FOUNDATION novels. As in Asimov’s novels, the planets of DUNE are all populated by human-like beings who belong to the same species. There aren’t any aliens to speak of -- just planets with wildly divergent customs, cultures, histories, politics, and manners. It’s unclear in the movie how all these people got where they are -- particularly the folks who ended up on decidedly inhospitable planets like Arrakis -- but planets in DUNE are roughly analogous to nations or cultures on Earth.

This is a pretty cool way to populate a universe, in my opinion. I almost always feel a little embarrassed for writers or directors when they try to think up truly alien species with alien cultures, alien anatomies, and alien environments. Either they end up being humans with facial prosthetics and exaggerated philosophies (like Klingons and Vulcans) or -- well, to be honest, I’m having a hard time even thinking of a good example of a truly alien culture in any science fiction movie. By that, I mean a culture that could never evolve in humans because of anatomical or environmental limitations. The Borg from STAR TREK: THE NEXT GENERATION might be one example, or the Cylons from the new version of BATTLESTAR GALACTICA -- in both cases, the mechanical nature of the races means that individuality has far less opportunity to assert itself.

(Also, I have nothing against Klingons and Vulcans. I love Klingons and Vulcans. But Klingons and Vulcans aren’t truly alien -- they are just extreme extensions of existing human philosophies. Which is not to say that there’s anything inherently virtuous about movie aliens being “truly alien”. It all depends on how the aliens -- whether they are familiar or not -- are handled and presented.)

But look, this is all a digression. My only point was that DUNE is populated entirely by humans with widely divergent cultures, rather than different alien species. And that is a decision that I like and respect. Now, I need to make another short digression here. The navigators in DUNE certainly look like they are aliens -- they float around inside glass tanks with bloated bulbous bodies, stick-like arms, and horrifying facial features. Yet, my understanding from the movie is that they are not actually aliens, but are mutated humans who have been taking the spice so long that it has changed their very anatomy into something else entirely. However, I could be completely wrong on this point, as it’s not really explained in detail in the movie.

I’ve never read any of the DUNE books and didn’t really know anything about the story except that it concerned spice and sandworms. And Sting. But besides that, I went into the movie with no understanding of the story or world. It surprised me in two ways -- first, the sheer amount of raw explaining that was needed to simply set up the story. (Take a look at my summary -- it’s mostly a dump of underlying political conditions that make the conflict possible. The beginning of the movie is a lot like that too.) But the second thing that surprised me was how rarely I was bored with it all. The political situation is pretty interesting once you get a handle on it, and it’s usually clear which characters are on which side. And it’s not just A vs. B. There are like five or six different sides all with their own objectives and ambitions. The very beginning of FLASH GORDON (1980) is a little bit like this too -- but DUNE is orders of magnitude more layered and more satisfying. So if you’re into politics and intrigue, this is probably the movie for you.

On the other hand, DUNE ultimately feels like a summary of a movie. There’s just so much stuff to get through that the characters often get shafted. There are lots of minor characters who I thought it would be interesting to hear more about, but at most they get one or two scenes, which is only enough for a hint at what’s going on with them. And even a lot of those scenes were cut from the theatrical version by director David Lynch. There is a three hour cut of the movie that restores a lot of that footage, but I watched the theatrical two-hour cut since that’s the one that Lynch seems to prefer. (He had his name taken off the longer version.) But judging from the deleted scenes that I watched, there’s a lot more tying up of loose ends and closing of minor character arcs in the longer version, which is something I would have liked to have seen more of.

And how did a weirdo like David Lynch end up directing a studio movie like DUNE anyway? His first full-length film, ERASERHEAD (1977), got him lots of attention from other directors who appreciated his avant garde style and distinctive voice. From there, he was given THE ELEPHANT MAN (1980), which was a massive critical success and earned Lynch several Academy Award nominations. George Lucas then approached Lynch to direct RETURN OF THE JEDI (1983), but Lynch feared that he wouldn’t have the level of freedom he wanted so he turned it down. But he took up Dino De Laurentiis’s offer to direct a STAR WARS-like sci-fi epic (DUNE) in exchange for the chance to follow it up with any movie of Lynch’s choice. After DUNE was completed, Lynch took the opportunity to make BLUE VELVET (1986) and he has never really come back to anything resembling normality since then.

Despite the exotic costumes and make-up and sets, DUNE is a fairly traditional (though dense) story. It was apparently not much of a success on its initial release, and I’m not sure that anybody considers it a classic these days. I liked it pretty well, but I do think it would have played much better as a miniseries -- or even as a whole season’s worth of television. Like I said, I’ve never read the book, so maybe it’s not as interesting as it seems when you really start delving into all the things that the movie only touches on. And it would be pretty frustrating to have to wait hours and hours until you get a glimpse of a sandworm. (By the way, this movie has giant sandworms, and they are pretty sweet.)

In the end, DUNE mostly makes me more curious about the book. I can’t say it makes me want to read it, since it does have me a little scared that’ll it be too dense and full of exposition to be truly enjoyable. But it at least has me wondering what else there is to know that didn’t make it on to the screen. Oh yeah, also, this movie has Sting, Patrick Stewart, and Dean Stockwell in small (but key) roles. And its score was composed by the rock group Toto, best known for its 1982 hits “Rosanna” and “Africa”. So those are some other things about this movie that you might want to know.