Dune

David Lynch is one of my favourite directors and I love science fiction, but this is awful. I haven’t read the book and in the first hour I was unable to grasp who is who, who does what and what is going on… and then I didn’t even bother. One of the very few films where I needed fast-forward to get to the end. A star for the amazing sandworms. Lost Highway, Eraserhead and other Lynch’s films are hard to understand and it’s their strength, but in this case the story should have been more clearly told. Fail AF. (25/08/2011)

It wasn't so bad until the attack on the base... after that it was. Although I liked the seriousness with which David Lynch and Co. tried to shoot Dune, the often unintentionally ridiculous result of their efforts unfortunately does not quite match. However, I want to add a little gleefully that it is a faithful adaptation of the book after all - the book bored me quite similarly. I prefer not to talk about the confused story and annoying all-explanatory inner voices, nor will I criticize Sting, for example, and I will try to forget about his role. (26/02/2017)

From age 15 and 30, I had a period when I was obsessed with sci-fi in any form, but I never got around to watching Herbert's Dune. I already had a dislike for fantasy films that take only the environment from sci-fi, like the popular Star Wars series, and I considered Dune to be an obscure matter. Lynch's adaptation was accompanied by conflicting reactions, and the director himself called the film the only one he would prefer to distance himself from, clearly acknowledging his mistake. However, I was surprised by how it affected me with its desperate lack of art and low quality. It started off nicely with a glimpse of Virginia Madsen's face, who in her youth was among the most charming actresses in Hollywood. But then everything went wrong. Inappropriate casting, terrifyingly overacting villains, and terrible sets. Today Lynch's Dune feels like a parody of itself, even though I would certainly not suspect Lynch of intentional genre parody. In the same year, Gilliam's Brazil was created, which still leaves a great impression thanks to its stylization and originality decades later. Dune is a farce that is lucky it was directed by a cult filmmaker, and the presence of a famous name mitigates audience reactions and allows for rose-tinted glasses to be put on even when it is not appropriate. It is interesting that the three-part television adaptation left a significantly more sympathetic impression on me and is rated worse on FilmBooster than this thing. Yes, you can find a few interesting and impressive images in the first half, two or three actors who fit in, but the negatives outweigh these few minor positives. I don't often waste time on garbage but this was truly a painful waste of time. Even the naive technicolor film Flash Gordon leaves an infinitely more entertaining impression because at least it doesn't bore, and someone like Paul Verhoeven with his film Total Recall could explain to Lynch how to make low-quality sci-fi. Lynch bores audiences with this film, and his lack of skills causes awkward embarrassment. Overall impression: 10%. (09/11/2020)

If you are familiar with Lynch's newer films, you are probably surprised that he would even try to make something like "Dune". First of all, it is an incredibly interesting material that has not yet been successfully adapted to the screen. And probably never will be. It's too extensive, too complicated, too demanding, and the outcome is uncertain. This applies to Lynch's case. There are beautiful scenes that are clearly his work, but as a whole, the film doesn't work and can't work. I don't know how it would have turned out if the version he wanted had been released, but it's already evident how outdated the film is. If you're not familiar with the source material, it's quite easy to get lost in the story, as well as to not understand it. Lynch tried, but eventually he had to understand himself that this is not something he wants to do, and how he wants to do it. It's not a huge disaster, but it doesn't fit Lynch's style. Moreover, despite the huge budget, it often feels incredibly intimate and cheap. This doesn't suit such a sci-fi film. (04/03/2014)

The extensive world in Lynch's hands turns into a depressive and simplified pseudo-saga. After just a few minutes, fateful decisions about the future of many people are thrown at me, allowing previously completely unknown main characters to utter heroic wisdom and emphasizing the atmosphere with exaggerated bizarre elements. In other words, Lynch precisely "lynches" his viewer according to the clearest assumptions, but in the sci-fi genre, it is noticeably less functional than in mysterious thrillers or dramas. And the detached and questionable sublimity is saved by the perfectly fitting ideal hero Kyle MacLachlan and, above all, by Dune itself. Visually hypnotic Arrakis, with its huge specters, can completely absorb everyone and, at least for a moment, make them feel that what is happening on the screen actually makes sense. (02/12/2007)