Hacker News Reader

Comment by padseeker | Hacker News Reader

I'm glad to see I'm not the only one who likes Lynch's Dune. I enjoyed it, visually I think its beautiful. I don't think it dishonors the book.

View on HN

I first saw it as a teenager, right after I had finished reading the Frank Herbert series. It was so different from what I expected - I HATED it! But over the years, it has grown on me, and has really made me appreciate the difficulty that creators face when they are adapting something into a different medium. Lynch is a master filmmaker, and he was ruthless in his re-molding of the source material to make it work on the silver screen. The books are very focused on the internal lives of characters, and the grand designs of powerful people - and I think Lynch instinctively knew that a lot of that wouldn't translate well. Indeed, the awkward inner thoughts that you hear all through Lynch's Dune are one of the worst aspects of the movie... despite being faithful renditions of Frank Herbert's Dune.

What finally won me over was the realization that Lynch's movie in no way devalued the books. Sure, it left out a lot... but it more than made up for it by giving me some visual glimpses of what a Dune universe might be like, how live-action representations of these characters might behave. The aggressive weirdness helped give it that otherworldly feel that I felt when reading the books. I would never recommended it as a substitute to reading it... but as a companion work, it's excellent.

I hope the scuttlebutt about a new Dune movie is true. The more the merrier!

As a young man who had read and loved Dune, Lynch's movie infuriated me. (Weirding modules? Really?) I should give it another chance.

IMHO the weirding modules made more sense than the kung-fu kicks against armored and armed stormtroopers. Plus, it gives you the classic line "His name is a killing word."

More the merrier, indeed. I hated the Lynch movie at first viewing, but have grown to appreciate it as an abridged story.

The SciFi series was better, IMO. I would love to see McAvoy reprise his role as Leto for a "God Emporer" production.

I actually think the movie works best as a companion to the book. It's probably quite confusing if you're not familiar with the story and universe already.

I agree, as a companion to the book, it is fantastic. (Although rain on Dune? WTF).

spoilers

Dune had a lot of water. It wasn't circulating in a normal precipitation model but was instead sequestered underground via a few different means. And that doesn't even mention the sand-trout.

More spoilers

In later books only portions of the surface of Arrakis are given to the worms and the spice.

IIRC, that's how the book ended as well. To go further, Paul held on to the water and only rarely allowed rain as he knew the water itself was poison to the sand worms.

ditto

I watched the movie many times before I touched the books and sure, there is a lot left unexplained, but I really loved the "tip of the iceberg" effect that created. Paul is permanently overwhelmed by knowing more than he can make sense of and Lynch does an excellent job of putting the viewer in harmony with that state of mind.

This unexplainedness by the way also keeps the mind engaged without dropping into the game of trying to mentally map out every little detail as a plot explanation mechanism. This mode of watching besets me when I see a movie that caters to the "everything has to be explained" crowd, but it should be exclusive to the murder mystery genre. Attempts to transplant that into other types of movies tend to either be painfully obvious or pointlessly complicated, to avoid the former. And somehow, they often manage to be both at once. I want immersion, not a CGI-clad sudoku.

the "everything has to be explained" crowd

Thank you for that expression.

I also watched the movie before... actually I still haven't read the books. I guess they must be superb and that's why readers are spoiled and dislike the movie.

The scene with the emperor and the navigator is best thing I've ever seen in sci-fi, both visually and for meaning.

> a CGI-clad sudoku

That might be kinda cool too...

I love the first half of Lynch's Dune. Even the long comic-book style exposition dump at the beginning.

"What is in the box?" "Pain"

IMHO it all goes wrong after Paul and his mom escape the betrayal and attack. The movie gets so bogged down with turning Paul into a Freman god that it goes completely off of the rails.

Frank Herbert liked it too.

based on the tone of this article, the writer of this article would judge anyone, including Frank Herbert, who professes to liking the film version to be lacking in understanding or appreciating Dune and SF in general.

I think that's a bit harsh. The article explained why the writer feels that the movie fails as a movie, especially as a SF movie. Even David Lynch wasn't that happy with the end result and really disliked the TV cuts. The title of the article is a bit punchy, but it's clearly about Lynch's understanding of the SF genre, not about how people who liked or hated the movie feel about SF.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com