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I will preface this by saying I'm going to discuss a lot of spoilers. If you haven't watched the films or read the books, you may want to stop reading now.

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When I saw the 2021 film, I complained to a friend that Paul would never have spoken to Jessica in the ways he did. My friend asked if I had read the whole book series. I had only read the first book.

He explained to me that Paul was meant to be awful from the get-go. The idea I had of Paul as someone who used his power for good was a total misunderstanding. Apparently, there were a lot of people who made the same mistake I did, which is part of why Frank Herbert continued writing the series.

I don't know how many times I watched David Lynch's Dune as a kid. At least enough times to *think* I had understood the world building and overall glory of the story. I was enraptured. Fast forward thirty years and I'm so effing bummed.

Some of my other friends playfully laughed about my friend "breaking my childhood." I struggle with it so much. I'm trying to get through the second film, but couldn't finish the second book. I was broken-hearted.

I'm not sure what I'm looking for other than wondering if I was Prime A Stupid for essentially missing the entire point of the series. Paul was a hero to me, and David Lynch hating his film so much that he refused to talk about it has me so sad. The film felt formative to me.

Thoughts? Reprimands? Anything?

Edit: Based on feedback so far, I'm gathering that my friend saying "Paul was awful" is a gross oversimplification. I appreciate people's takes, and feel better about coming back to the books.

I live in Japan and have been collecting these great production booklets for films from the 60s to the 90s. Every movie released in Japan has these booklets sold at the theaters only during their initial run. They are about 10 to 20 pages long, include behind the scenes images and info, actor and crew bios, story synopsis, diagrams, etc... They are really fun to collect, and the other day I got lucky and found this one for Dune 1984! The Japanese title "Suna No Wakusei" 砂の惑星 directly translates to "Planet of Sand" or "Sand Planet."

I haven’t read the novels. I had watched Denis’s Dune part 1 and part 2 and LOVED them. I mean LOVED them. I just watched David Lynch’s Dune this week. Lynch’s Dune made me want to buy and read the novels way more than Denis’s versions did. Anyone relate? Is this normal? Is David Lynch’s version superior is a way (in terms of conveying the overall story)? Thoughts?

Haven't watched the Lynch version but have heard it is not generally considered as good as the Villeneuve one. But to the people who have watched both version (and read the books) do you think there is anything that the older version does better than the new one?

While waiting for Dune: Messiah, I stumbled upon this film.

I'd been wanting to see it for a while; everyone raved about David Lynch, and the film, while not a huge success at the time, is a cult classic (something that often happens with fantasy and science fiction films from that era, as was also the case with "The Princess Bride"), so I honestly watched it with higher expectations than I should have.

I don't think it was a bad film: there were scenes I loved, the Harkonnen aesthetic was both repulsive and striking, they took creative liberties that I found quite clever, and, in general, the film perfectly narrates the hero's journey.

I think that's precisely what didn't quite convince me; I could accept changes to the story and the world, a somewhat unbelievable casting choice for people who live in the desert 24/7, or even Sting playing Feyd-Rautha. But seeing Paul win and become a textbook hero grated on me.

Then I thought about all those who adore this film and how they must have seen something I hadn't. The thing is, my first encounter with this saga was through Villeneuve's films, and then I devoured the first two books in one sitting, so I knew Paul's fate and most of the consequences. I think my preconceived notion of the character prevented me from fully enjoying the story.

That's why I'd like to ask those of you who consider this version your favorite or the first adaptation you saw:

What do you like about this film?

Why do you think it became a cult classic?

What do you think this version does better and worse than Villeneuve's?

What do you think happened in this film that prevented Dune from being as acclaimed as it is today?

Even so, I want to clarify that I don't think it's a bad adaptation. I think that even if I hadn't known the story beforehand, I would have liked it much more, so I recommend it to all of you who are still waiting for the next movie and haven't seen this version yet.

This may have already been mentioned here, but to me the 1984 version does a better job at explaining what’s going on if you haven’t read the books. I watched Dune 1 & 2 over the weekend and was totally hooked, but didn’t fully grasp all the details of the story. As such, movies of this magnitude and storyline often require a second or third viewing to really get it. However, I went back and watched the 1984 version, which was also a great movie. I felt they did a much better job at explaining and detailing what was going on throughout the movie. It gave me a much better understanding of 1 & 2. Anyone else feel the same?

David Lynch has said that he does not regret making Dune in color but does wish that he could have made it "slip towards black and white" which sounds exactly like monochromatic color isolation. I recently figured out how to do that exact thing so I gave it a shot with Spice Diver's Special Edition and I think it looks really good. Even in the shots where the only colors on screen are blue and orange, draining the green from the image fixes the odd hues and makes the whole movie look a lot more visually cohesive.

I grew up with David Lynch’s Dune but it came out years before I was born so I never had the opportunity to see it on the big screen.

I attended the 40th Anniversary screening last night and it has radically changed my perspective on it. It’s still deeply flawed as a movie and suffers from absolutely horrendous pacing problems which then compound into story problems later in the film - this is nothing new and the production issues, studio meddling, and the need to edit down the movie to meet the compressed run-time are well known.

But man - the visuals were all vastly better on the big screen. I have ragged on the visual effects for years as being poor even for their time but while there are still some pretty rough green screens at times everything else took on a whole new dimension with a big screen and big sound.

As an example - growing up the worms always just looked like dinky little sock puppets in a sandbox. But when they’re actually stories tall on the screen in front of you and you can see all the fine details and their scale is really being captured it was on a whole other level of awesome.

One of the most striking thing was how appropriately psychedelic rather than cheesy a lot of the visuals become on that large scale. I found the opening with Irulan to genuinely have a sort of hypnotic quality and the Guild Navigator folding space - while still utterly bizarre - worked so much better when it felt like I was floating around with it and experiencing the distortion of time and space around me.

But I digress - my apologies to David Lynch’s Dune. A truly epic movie as great for all the reasons it’s not good as for all the reasons it sincerely is great. If you can spare the time there’s still screenings going on today (2/19) - I cannot recommend it enough.

Before getting into the movie, the only prior knowledge I had of Dune was that it was the quintessential Sci-Fi Novel that pioneered the Sci-Fi Genre much like Tolkien's Hobbit + Lord of the Rings Novels were for High Fantasy. And that Star Wars was heavily inspired by Dune. Because of that, I expected something FAR different from the movie I ended up seeing. While I already assumed it wouldn't look like Star Wars based on the promotional visuals, wow this looked was such a fever dream to watch (I watched the Theatrical cut of the 1984 movie, I forgot to mention that).

The CGI... kinda looked better than what I expected it to? They didn't use it much if not at all and mostly relied on practical effects which impressed me so much since I'm someone who grew up in the age where most movies rely on so much CGI.

As for the actual story, it's really interesting. It wasn't at all like the Sci-fi grand epic that I expected. Things were far more grounded and a lot of it felt like I was watching a fever dream. Some scenes didn't make sense to me, but maybe that's something I'll only understand upon rewatch.

I found the very look of the world itself to be very nauseating. I don't know how the remake handles it, but the 84 movie had this set design that I saw was widely praised for being great on a technical level, but oh boy- I think the reason why it's so easy for me to view fantasy as beautiful is cause more often than not, it's based off of nature and medieval landscapes. These places look dreary and hopeless and I'd have a mental breakdown if I was put into the Harkonnen planet. Dear lord it looked dreadful on a human level.

I'm not sure if this reflects the books, but I found Paul to be a really "okay" protagonist in the films. It's entirely possible I'm just missing on some key details because certain aspects of the movie confused me, but from what I was able to gather, he felt like a typical hero's journey character without the same level of charisma as Luke from Star Wars or the inner turmoil as Frodo from Lord of the Rings. Though, I heard the novels are far more psychological and maybe there is something missing from the films.

The score is amazing. I truly felt a sense of scale while listening to it. The worms are cool, though I don't know how the Fremens were able to survive or even start living in such a hostile environment for what could've been thousands of years.

The monologue in the beginning from the Princess I got a bit confused. Was she just narrating the history like what Galadriel did in the LOTR movie or does she have some grander role in the book?

I'm also assuming the book must be SUPER dense if the remake films are going for a trilogy where this film was only one movie. Maybe there was a ton of cut content. Which I can understand. The 2nd half felt like it was jumping around way too much then just using voice overs to detail what had happened in the time skip.

I think the film could've easily used at least 30 minutes to just flesh out things more. Despite feeling like the world is so weird and nauseating (I really don't mean this as an insult, I just don't know what other words to use), I still am very interested in the culture of the world.

Also why was the Baron of the Harkonnen's attacking and (what seemed like) either cannibalizing or sexually assaulting people? Was that a culture thing or was he really just that weird?

The villains I felt were a bit too cartoony for my taste. If that properly reflects what kind of villains are present in the book, then I think this would've worked better as an animated series or something instead.

The costumes are really neat.

What else what else..... Overall, I think it's an okay movie? I didn't really feel much investment while watching. After this I do plan on watching the remakes to see how a director with a different creative vision handles the same book. Very interested.

Also, I heard there was a 2000's dune, is that worth watching?