Dune (1984 film)
Dune is a 1984 American epic science fiction film written and directed by David Lynch and based on the 1965 Frank Herbert novel of the same name. The film stars Kyle MacLachlan as young nobleman Paul Atreides, and includes an ensemble of well-known American and European actors in supporting roles. It was filmed at the Churubusco Studios in Mexico City and included a soundtrack by the rock band Toto, as well as Brian Eno.
Set in the distant future, the film chronicles the conflict between rival noble families as they battle for control of the extremely harsh desert planet Arrakis, also known as "Dune". The planet is the only source of the drug melange—also called "the spice"—which allows prescience and is vital to space travel, making it the most essential and valuable commodity in the universe. Paul Atreides is the scion and heir of a powerful noble family, whose inheritance of control over Arrakis brings them into conflict with its former overlords, House Harkonnen. Paul is also a candidate for the Kwisatz Haderach, a messianic figure in the Bene Gesserit religion. Besides MacLachlan, the film features a large ensemble cast of supporting actors, including Patrick Stewart, Brad Dourif, Dean Stockwell, Virginia Madsen, José Ferrer, Sting, Linda Hunt, and Max von Sydow, among others.
After the novel's initial success, attempts to adapt Dune as a film began in 1971. A lengthy process of development followed throughout the 1970s, during which Arthur P. Jacobs, Alejandro Jodorowsky, and Ridley Scott unsuccessfully tried to bring their visions to the screen. In 1981, executive producer Dino De Laurentiis hired Lynch as director.
The film was a box-office failure, grossing $30.9 million from a $40 million budget, and was negatively reviewed by critics, which heavily criticized the screenwriting, lack of faith to the source material, the pacing, direction and editing, although the visual effects, musical score, acting and action sequences were praised. Upon release, Lynch disowned the final film, stating that pressure from both producers and financiers restrained his artistic control and denied him final cut privilege. At least three versions have been released worldwide. In some cuts, Lynch's name is replaced in the credits with the name Alan Smithee, a pseudonym used by directors who wish not to be associated with a film for which they would normally be credited. The extended and television versions additionally credit writer Lynch as Judas Booth. The film has developed a cult following over time, but opinion varies among fans of the novel and fans of Lynch's films. A new adaptation directed by Denis Villeneuve to be released in 2020.
Plot
In the distant future, the known universe is ruled by Padishah Emperor Shaddam IV. The most important substance in the empire is the drug known as melange or "the spice", which can extend life and expand consciousness. The most profitable and important of its properties is its ability to assist the Spacing Guild with folding space, which allows safe, instantaneous interstellar travel. The Guild fears a conspiracy that could jeopardize spice production and sends an emissary to demand an explanation from the Emperor, who confidentially shares his plans to destroy House Atreides. The popularity of Duke Leto Atreides has grown through the empire, and he is suspected to be amassing a secret army, which Emperor Shaddam sees as a potential threat to his rule. Shaddam's plan is to give House Atreides control of the planet Arrakis, the only source of spice. Once they are installed on Arrakis, he intends to have them ambushed by their longtime archenemies, the Harkonnens, with assistance from the Emperor's elite troops, the Sardaukar. The Guild Navigator commands the Emperor to kill Duke Leto's son, Paul Atreides, a young man who dreams prophetic visions of his purpose. The execution order draws the attention of the Bene Gesserit sisterhood, as Paul is tied to their centuries-long breeding program to produce a superbeing, the Kwisatz Haderach. Before Paul leaves for Arrakis, he is tested by the Bene Gesserit Reverend Mother Mohiam by being forced to place his hand in a box which induces excruciating pain. To Mohiam's surprise and eventual satisfaction, he passes the test.Meanwhile, on the industrial world of Giedi Prime, the sadistic Baron Vladimir Harkonnen tells his nephews Glossu Rabban and Feyd-Rautha about his plan to eliminate the Atreides by manipulating someone in House Atreides into betraying the Duke. The Atreides leave their homeworld Caladan for Arrakis, a barren desert planet populated by gigantic sandworms. The native people of Arrakis are called the Fremen, a mysterious people who have long held a prophecy that a messiah will lead them to freedom. Upon arrival on Arrakis, Duke Leto is informed by one of his right-hand men, Duncan Idaho, that the Fremen have been underestimated. There are in fact large numbers of them and they could prove to be powerful allies. Duke Leto begins to gain the trust of the Fremen, but before an alliance can be established, the Harkonnens launch their attack. The Harkonnens' traitor within House Atreides, Dr. Wellington Yueh, Leto's personal physician, disables critical shields and destroys sonic weapons, leaving House Atreides nearly defenseless. In the attack, Idaho is killed, Leto is captured, and nearly all of House Atreides is wiped out. While captured, Leto dies in a failed attempt to assassinate the Baron Harkonnen using a poison gas capsule planted in his tooth by Dr. Yueh. Leto's concubine Lady Jessica and his son Paul survive the attack and escape into the deep desert, where they are taken in by a sietch of Fremen. Paul takes on the Fremen name Muad'Dib, and emerges as the leader for whom the Fremen have been waiting. He teaches the Fremen to build and use Weirding Modules—sonic weapons developed by House Atreides—and begins to target spice mining production.
Over the next two years, spice production is effectively halted. The Spacing Guild warns the Emperor of the deteriorating situation on Arrakis, and they fear that Paul will consume the Water of Life, a powerful poison used by the Bene Gesserit to help induce their abilities. The meeting is revealed to Paul in a prophetic dream, but then the dreams suddenly stop. Shaken by the absence of his visions, he goes out into the desert, drinks the Water of Life and enters into a trance. Upon awakening, he is transformed, obtaining powerful psychic abilities and the ability to control the sandworms. Paul also regains his ability to see into space and the future, and learns the Emperor is amassing a huge invasion fleet above Arrakis to wipe out the Fremen and regain control of the planet. As the Emperor arrives at Arrakis, Paul launches a final attack against the Harkonnens and the Emperor's Sardaukar at the capital city of Arrakeen. Riding in on sandworms and brandishing their sonic weapons, his Fremen warriors easily defeat the Emperor's legions, while Paul's sister Alia kills Baron Harkonnen. Once in Arrakeen, Paul faces the defeated Emperor and engages Feyd-Rautha in a duel to the death. After killing Feyd, Paul demonstrates his newfound powers and fulfills the Fremen prophecy by causing rain to fall on Arrakis, and Alia declares him to be the Kwisatz Haderach.
Cast
In addition, the film's director, David Lynch, appears uncredited as a Spice worker, while Danny Corkill is shown in the onscreen credits despite his scenes being deleted from the theatrical release.Production
Early attempts and ''Jodorowsky's Dune''
In summer 1971, film producer Arthur P. Jacobs optioned the film rights to Dune, but died in summer 1973, while plans for the film were still in development.The film rights reverted in 1974, at which time the option was acquired by a French consortium led by Jean-Paul Gibon, with Alejandro Jodorowsky attached to direct. Jodorowsky proceeded to approach, among others, the progressive rock groups Pink Floyd and Magma for some of the music, Dan O'Bannon for the visual effects, and artists H. R. Giger, Jean Giraud and Chris Foss for set and character design. For the cast, Jodorowsky envisioned Salvador Dalí as the Emperor, Orson Welles as Baron Harkonnen, Mick Jagger as Feyd-Rautha, Udo Kier as Piter De Vries, David Carradine as Leto Atreides, his son, Brontis Jodorowsky, as Paul Atreides, and Gloria Swanson, among others. The project was ultimately scrapped for several reasons, largely because funding dried up when the project ballooned to a 10–14 hour epic.
Although their version of the film never reached production, the work that Jodorowsky and his team put into Dune did have a significant impact on subsequent science-fiction films. In particular, the classic Alien, written by O'Bannon, shared much of the same creative team for the visual design as had been assembled for Jodorowsky's film. A documentary, Jodorowsky's Dune, was made about Jodorowsky's failed attempt at an adaptation.
De Laurentiis's first attempt
In late 1976, Italian producer Dino De Laurentiis purchased the rights from Gibon's consortium. De Laurentiis commissioned Herbert to write a new screenplay in 1978; the script Herbert turned in was 175 pages long, the equivalent of nearly three hours of screen time. De Laurentiis then hired director Ridley Scott in 1979, with Rudy Wurlitzer writing the screenplay and H. R. Giger retained from the Jodorowsky production. Scott intended to split the book into two movies. He worked on three drafts of the script, using The Battle of Algiers as a point of reference, before moving on to direct another science-fiction film, Blade Runner. As he recalls, the pre-production process was slow, and finishing the project would have been even more time-intensive:But after seven months I dropped out of Dune, by then Rudy Wurlitzer had come up with a first-draft script which I felt was a decent distillation of Frank Herbert's. But I also realised Dune was going to take a lot more work—at least two and a half years' worth. And I didn't have the heart to attack that because my older brother Frank unexpectedly died of cancer while I was prepping the De Laurentiis picture. Frankly, that freaked me out. So I went to Dino and told him the Dune script was his.Lynch's screenplay and direction
In 1981, the nine-year film rights were set to expire. De Laurentiis renegotiated the rights from the author, adding to them the rights to the Dune sequels. After seeing The Elephant Man, producer Raffaella De Laurentiis decided that David Lynch should direct the movie. Around that time, Lynch received several other directing offers, including Return of the Jedi. He agreed to direct Dune and write the screenplay, though he had not read the book, known the story, or even been interested in science fiction. Lynch worked on the script for six months with Eric Bergren and Christopher De Vore. The team yielded two drafts of the script before they split over creative differences. Lynch subsequently worked on five more drafts.
Virginia Madsen said in 2016 that she was signed for three films, as the producers "thought they were going to make Star Wars for grown-ups."
On March 30, 1983, with the 135-page sixth draft of the script, Dune finally began shooting. It was shot entirely in Mexico. With a budget of over $40 million, Dune required 80 sets built on 16 sound stages and a total crew of 1,700. Many of the exterior shots were filmed in the Samalayuca Dune Fields in Ciudad Juárez, Chihuahua.Editing
The rough cut of Dune without post-production effects ran over four hours long but Lynch's intended cut of the film was almost three hours long. Universal and the film's financiers expected a standard, two-hour cut of the film. Dino De Laurentiis, his daughter Raffaella and Lynch excised numerous scenes, filmed new scenes that simplified or concentrated plot elements and added voice-over narrations, plus a new introduction by Virginia Madsen. Contrary to rumor, Lynch made no other version besides the theatrical cut. A television version was aired in 1988 in two parts totalling 186 minutes including a "What happened last night" recap and second credit roll. Lynch disavowed this version and had his name removed from the credits, Alan Smithee being credited instead. This version has occasionally been released on DVD as Dune: Extended Edition. Several longer versions have been spliced together. Although Universal has approached Lynch for a possible director's cut, Lynch has declined every offer and prefers not to discuss Dune in interviews.Release
Dune premiered in Washington, D.C., on December 3, 1984, at The Kennedy Center and was released worldwide on December 14. Pre-release publicity was extensive, not only because it was based on a best-selling novel, but also because it was directed by Lynch, who had had success with Eraserhead and The Elephant Man. Several magazines followed the production and published articles praising the film before its release, all part of the advertising and merchandising of Dune, which also included a documentary for television, as well as items placed in toy stores.Box office
The film opened on December 14, 1984, in 915 theaters and earned $6,025,091 in its opening weekend, ranking number two in the domestic box office behind Beverly Hills Cop. By the end of its run, Dune had grossed $30,925,690. On an estimated $40 million budget, the film was considered a box office disappointment.Critical reception
gave Dune one star out of four, and wrote, "This movie is a real mess, an incomprehensible, ugly, unstructured, pointless excursion into the murkier realms of one of the most confusing screenplays of all time." Ebert added: "The movie's plot will no doubt mean more to people who've read Herbert than to those who are walking in cold", and later named it "the worst movie of the year." On At the Movies with Gene Siskel and Ebert, Siskel began his review by saying "it's physically ugly, it contains at least a dozen gory gross-out scenes, some of its special effects are cheap—surprisingly cheap because this film cost a reported $40–45 million—and its story is confusing beyond belief. In case I haven't made myself clear, I hated watching this film." The film was later listed as the worst film of 1984 and the "biggest disappointment of the year" in their "Stinkers of 1984" episode. Other negative reviews focused on the same issues as well as on the length of the film.
Janet Maslin of The New York Times also gave Dune a negative review of one star out of five. She said, "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" and explained that the plot was "perilously overloaded, as is virtually everything else about it."
Variety gave Dune a less negative review, stating "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." They also commented on how "Lynch's adaptation covers the entire span of the novel, but simply setting up the various worlds, characters, intrigues and forces at work requires more than a half-hour of expository screen time." They did enjoy the cast and said that "Francesca Annis and Jürgen Prochnow make an outstandingly attractive royal couple, Siân Phillips has some mesmerizing moments as a powerful witch, Brad Dourif is effectively loony, and best of all is Kenneth McMillan, whose face is covered with grotesque growths and who floats around like the Blue Meanie come to life."
Richard Corliss of Time gave Dune a negative review, stating, "Most sci-fi movies offer escape, a holiday from homework, but Dune is as difficult as a final exam. You have to cram for it." He noted that "MacLachlan, 25, grows impressively in the role; his features, soft and spoiled at the beginning, take on a he-manly glamour once he assumes his mission." He ended by saying "The actors seem hypnotized by the spell Lynch has woven around them—especially the lustrous Francesca Annis, as Paul's mother, who whispers her lines with the urgency of erotic revelation. In those moments when Annis is onscreen, Dune finds the emotional center that has eluded it in its parade of rococo decor and austere special effects. She reminds us of what movies can achieve when they have a heart as well as a mind."
Film scholar Robin Wood called Dune "the most obscenely homophobic film I have ever seen",–referring to a scene in which Baron Harkonnen sexually assaults and kills a young man by bleeding him to death–charging it with "managing to associate with homosexuality in a single scene physical grossness, moral depravity, violence and disease." Gay writer Dennis Altman suggested that the film showed how "AIDS references began penetrating popular culture" in the 1980s, asking, "Was it just an accident that in the film Dune the homosexual villain had suppurating sores on his face?"
While most critics were negative towards Dune, critic and science fiction writer Harlan Ellison had a different opinion. In his 1989 book of film criticism, Harlan Ellison's Watching, he says that the $42 million production failed because critics were denied screenings at the last minute after several reschedules, a decision by Universal that, according to Ellison, made the film community feel nervous and negative towards Dune before its release. Ellison eventually became one of the film's few positive reviewers. Daniel Snyder also praised elements of the film in a 2014 article which called the movie "...a deeply flawed work that failed as a commercial enterprise, but still managed to capture and distill essential portions of one of science fiction’s densest works." Snyder stated that Lynch's "surreal style" created "a world that felt utterly alien", full of "...bizarre dream sequences, rife with images of unborn fetuses and shimmering energies, and unsettling scenery like the industrial hell of the Harkonnen homeworld, the fil actually closer to Kubrick than Lucas. It seeks to put the viewer somewhere unfamiliar while hinting at a greater, hidden story." Snyder praised the production and stated that Herbert had said he was pleased with Lynch's film.
Science-fiction historian John Clute argued that while Lynch's Dune "spared nothing to achieve its striking visual effects", the film adaptation "unfortunately–perhaps inevitably–reduced Herbert's dense text to a melodrama".
The few more favorable reviews praised Lynch's noir-baroque approach to the film. Others compare it to other Lynch films that are equally hard to access, such as Eraserhead, and assert that to watch it, the viewer must first be aware of the Dune universe. In the years since its initial release, Dune has gained more positive reviews from online critics and viewers. On review aggregator Rotten Tomatoes, the film has an approval ratings of 52% based on 48 reviews, with an average score of 5.92/10. The site's critical consensus reads, "This truncated adaptation of Frank Herbert's sci-fi masterwork is too dry to work as grand entertainment, but David Lynch's flair for the surreal gives it some spice."
As a result of its poor commercial and critical reception, all initial plans for Dune sequels were canceled. David Lynch reportedly was working on the screenplay for Dune Messiah and was hired to direct both proposed second and third Dune films. In retrospect, Lynch disowned the film and acknowledged he should never have directed Dune:
In the introduction for his 1985 short story collection Eye, author Herbert discussed the film's reception and his participation in the production, complimented Lynch, and listed scenes that were shot but left out of the released version. He wrote, "I enjoyed the film even as a cut and I told it as I saw it: What reached the screen is a visual feast that begins as Dune begins and you hear my dialogue all through it." Herbert also commented, "I have my quibbles about the film, of course. Paul was a man playing god, not a god who could make it rain."
Alejandro Jodorowsky, who had earlier been disappointed by the collapse of his own attempt to film Dune, later said he had been disappointed and jealous when he learned Lynch was making Dune, as he believed Lynch was the only other director capable of doing justice to the novel. At first, Jodorowsky refused to see Lynch's film, but his sons dragged him. As the film unfolded, Jodorowsky says, he became very happy, seeing that it was a "failure". Jodorowsky added that this was certainly the producers' fault and not Lynch's.
In the documentary about the miniseries Frank Herbert's Dune, actor William Hurt said that he was a fan of the book series and that he wanted to be a part of the 1984 film, but seeing what it turned out to be, he was happier not having had a role in it.Accolades
Dune was nominated for the Academy Award for Best Sound.
The film won a Stinkers Bad Movie Award for Worst Picture.Merchandising
Toys
A line of Dune action figures from toy company LJN was released to lackluster sales in 1984. Styled after Lynch's film, the collection featured figures of Paul Atreides, Baron Harkonnen, Feyd, Rabban, Stilgar, and a Sardaukar warrior, plus a poseable sandworm, several vehicles and weapons, and a set of View-Master stereoscope reels. Figures of Gurney and Lady Jessica previewed in LJN's catalog were never produced. In 2006, SOTA Toys produced a Baron Harkonnen action figure for their "Now Playing Presents" line. In October 2019, Funko announced a "Dune Classic" line of POP! vinyl figures, the first of which would be Paul in a stillsuit and Feyd in a blue jumpsuit, styled after the 1984 film. An alternate version of Feyd in his blue loincloth was released for the 2019 New York Comic Con.Games
Several Dune games have been styled after Lynch's film. Parker Brothers released the board game Dune in 1984, and a 1997 collectible card game called Dune was followed by the role-playing game ' in 2000. The first licensed Dune video game was Dune from Cryo Interactive/Virgin Interactive. Its successor, Westwood Studios' Dune II, is generally credited for popularizing and setting the template for the real-time strategy genre of computer games. This game was followed by Dune 2000, a remake of Dune II from Intelligent Games/Westwood Studios/Virgin Interactive. Its sequel was the 3D video game ' by Intelligent Games/Westwood Studios/Electronic Arts.