Tags: Books   Movies


One of my favorite characters in the Dune novels by Frank Herbert is Duncan Idaho. He's the character who just won't die, no matter how many times he gets killed. This guy survives thousands of years and countless resurrections!

And so it is with Dune. Yet another film adaptation of the sci-fi space opera classic masterpiece Dune is confirmed, as reported months ago to everyone but me.

Peter Berg will be directing and promises a huge budget. I've never seen any of his films, but now I definitely need to. The Kingdom, Friday Night Lights (yuck to american football!), and Very Bad Things are notable movies on his resume. This doesn't scream "sci-fi masterpiece" to me...


David Lynch was the first to take a stab at bringing Dune to celluloid, and he did a very... eccentric job. In a way, I really enjoy it. It shows how two people can read the same book, with the same words, and the same dialog, but see it so differently. Lynch's twisted imagination really shows itself in his Dune. I think Lynch saw the word "feud" in the novel and used it as the primary motif that ruled all the film's artistic decisions. However, the movie uses voice-overs in almost every scene, so I must admit that it sucks. When a director needs to use voice-overs to tell a story, you know he's desperate. Narration is for books, not movies. There are two things that I hate in films and TV: 1. narrators and voice-overs, 2. actors who whisper. Speak up! You're in a frikkin' movie! Anyway, Lynch did a crappy job on Dune version 1.

Next, the Sci-Fi channel gave it a try with a mini-series. I liked it because it took its time to tell the story more coherently without voice-overs whispering in the audience's ears. However, production quality was undeniably TV-quality, not big budget. You could easily tell that the desert was just a small sound stage. In a movie called "Dune", you really should have a good budget on the desert scenes! "Arrakis! Dune! Desert planet!" Idiots.

Also, the script was unpolished and often failed to make clear the plotting, scheming, and double-crossing, despite the long scenes of wooden dialog. I don't understand why they felt the need to add more characters to the story, like Irulan. The story had plenty of strong women. There was no need to add more. Dune is a hard enough story to portray on screen (apparently...), so don't shoot yourself in the foot by adding more complexity to it. Irulan appears at the end of the story in Herbert's original, and I think it is an interesting reveal in the end-game. What kind of person is Irulan, who promises to be the only one in the feud who can keep the human universe together? By keeping her invisible for most of the story, I think the impact of her arrival is increased a great deal. Good writing and direction would be able to pull this off.

Ok, I've given myself away. I'm a Dune fan. It's the kind of story that gets better with age. Frank Herbert clearly saw oil for what it is: a finite resource that will soon run out and has the potential to destroy human civilization as we know it today. In the end-game, whoever controls the last reserves of oil stands to win it all. How might that play out? How is it playing out today? Who are the big players? It's science fiction at its best, I say!

Good luck to Peter Berg on his attempt at Dune. Third time's a charm? I would like to see the rest of the series brought to life, so I'm hoping that Berg's Dune will be the start of a great new sci-fi franchise.

In other news, Berg is also set to do a Bran Mak Morn film. Could this be paving the way for a big-budget The Call of Cthulhu film? Geeks will dream.