Dune (1984)
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Dune Movie Review
Dune is a 1984 science fiction film directed by David Lynch and starring Kyle MacLachlan. It’s one very solid, underrated cinematic adaptation.
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“I must not fear.
Fear is the mind-killer“
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The film follows the book surprisingly close and it’s one of the more faithful adaptations that I’ve ever seen. Of course I loved that, but unfortunately that came to its detriment in certain areas. I am of course talking about the second act of the movie. Whereas those parts in the book were also inferior, here they are even worse and much duller.
The pacing issues of the book are also present in the movie itself and again they are even worse here as the second act doesn’t have any momentum to it and most of the movie felt strong, but lacking in terms of excitement or audience engagement.
I did love the first act though. It was slower, but it worked to set up the story wonderfully and I really loved the ending too as the last fight was very well executed and the movie felt epic in those last couple of sequences.
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Jessica is nowhere near as great here as she was in the book, but Paul himself is quite strong and Kyle MacLachlan did a good job in the role. I also just loved the depictions of essential figures to the protagonist with Duncan, Hawat and Halleck all being superbly portrayed and acted too. The Fremen also look terrific in their blue eyes and although I did not personally imagine him as such a deformity, I ended up loving Baron Vladimir Harkonnen regardless as he’s a lot of fun as this highly memorable villain, just as he was in the novel itself. Paul’s sister is awesome herself.
Dune is first and foremost an epic audio-visual cinematic experience and I have to congratulate David Lynch for making such a stunning looking and sounding movie. I am not usually the biggest fan of his, but you can always count on him to deliver at least in those two areas which is exactly what he did here.
The special effects are superb for the eighties and it’s undoubtedly one of the best looking films of the entire decade when it comes to the VFX. I especially loved the practical stuff as it added to the movie’s high weirdness level. Arrakis looks terrific and very faithful to the source material and I loved the worm and all of the gadgetry.
The movie also sounds beautiful thanks to frequently impressive score and an outstanding theme in Dune Prophecy Theme. The sound design is great too and the world building is outstanding. The action sequences are so well executed, though a bit abundant in the third act.
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I did like the film’s dialogue, but it’s simply not as good as in the source material and the decision to loudly showcase the inner monologues of all the characters really did not feel cinematic to me. That is great for the book, but for the movie it felt odd and not fitting at all.
The themes of course aren’t as well explored here and that’s usually the case with cinematic adaptations, but at least we get touches of those and the movie still felt like a complete picture, even if it felt oddly paced, but the runtime is long so none of the major plot points were sacrificed thankfully. And although often I don’t like his work, I really liked Dune and I find it to be the most underrated David Lynch movie.
Dune is undoubtedly the most underrated David Lynch movie which isn’t great, but it’s solid and certainly not bad as many would say. The inner monologue being loudly showcased was odd to me and the movie’s very badly paced throughout, but it’s thankfully very faithful to the book as none of the major plot points were left out. It’s first and foremost an impressive audio-visual cinematic feat thanks to very advanced VFX for its time and a truly wonderful score.
