Poll: Was David Lynch's Dune film good?

[LonelyWizzard]

Inspired by the news of a documentary on Jodorowsky's failed dune film, I'd like to know hat the general consencus is on David Lynch's stab at the story. I personally love the film (allthough thats partly for personal reasons) but I know its a flawed film that a lot of people found confusing and/or unpleasant. I should also mention that i think the Lynch/MacLachlan team can do no wrong (the greatest actor/director team in history? I'd say so).

 

[tabriaswolfe]

It was good, while it wasn't the greatest movie I've ever seen it did a decent job of translating the source material in a movie. The special effects were not bad, considering when the movie was made, but not everything was shown the way I'd imagined it to be. But I suppose that's the problem with a majority of book-to-film movies. If you've read the book(s) then you've created your own image of the characters, places and other parts of the story, and seeing someone else bring them to life does not always match the image you created.

Overall I'd say the movie was good, not a classic for me, but not horrible. The Sci-Fi channel's take on Dune and it's sequel was good as well, but still not matching the world of Dune that I created while reading the books.

 

[GundamSentinel]

Tried to watch it three times, but I just couldn't finish it. Truly awful. It had decent actors and a good director, but the story just wouldn't work in that movie format.

 

[Vonnis]

It's a classic. It's not particularly good, but it's highly enjoyable in spite (or maybe because) of its cheesiness.

 

[Shameless]

I never saw it, however my friend is a movie buff and he always recommend it to me, so yeah give it a watch.

 

[oooooooooooooooooooooooooo]

I personally thought it was utter rubbish. I watched it shortly after reading the book for the first time, and even though I was to young to fully understand the book at the time (I was 12/13 years old) I could already tell that Lynch had taken a fantastic story and turned it into a B action/sci-fi film.

 

[Axolotl]

It's probably Lynch's worst film, alot of Dune doesn't work in film format and it's just too short too be able to cover the novel properly. The whole film is just a mess with too many bizarre characters and dodgy set design. It would have been better if Lynch could have just made Ronnie Rocket instead. But at least it pretty much killed his film career thus forceing him into TV.

I should also mention that i think the Lynch/MacLachlan team can do no wrong (the greatest actor/director team in history? I'd say so).

I'd say Herzog/Klinski were better but Lynch and Maclachlan are pretty awesome.

 

[FalloutJack]

It's a movie, but it's not really Dune, you know?

 

[LonelyWizzard]

But at least it pretty much killed his film career thus forceing him into TV.

And the thanks to that he was able to make Twin peaks, a tv show i was only able to watch pretty recently when it was rerun on the horror channel.

Patrick stewart was great as Gordy (I'm not spelling that right, the atreides general with the long hair). In fairness i saw the movie before reading the book, so you could say i brought my image of the characters from the movie and projected them onto the book. I never really cared for the tv show.
I think even if you disliked the movie, you have to admit it had a great soundtrack (my third favorite film sountrack of all time after Robocop and Flash gordon). I'm surprised to hear people complain about the set design, i thought that was amazing, particularly the emporer's palace, especially considering it was only used for like one 4 minute scene.

 

[Spacelord]

I'm missing an 'all of the above' option in the poll.

 

[Matt-Sama]

It's a complete disaster but it's such a joy to watch that it makes it a good film...in a sense.

 

[Rainboq]

Its a thinking movie, you really have to pay attention.

 

[Atmos Duality]

It was certainly made for the fans.
The first times I saw it, I had not read any of the books so most of the film didn't make a lick of sense (why is there a disgusting fat man getting his huge pimples cauterized? Why is he enjoying it? Why is a nun burning a man's hand with a box? What the hell is that yellow space turd doing?).

Now that I know what's going on...yeah, it's just a disaster in storytelling. The plot is so badly paced and rushed that characters have absolutely no time to develop. Nearly every scene contains an internal monologue or other such exposition dump. Of course those already in the know are going to get it (the books carry the power of allegory; namely, an allegory of the first Oil/Gas Shortage).

 

[Crimson_Dragoon]

It's weird as hell, but what do you expect when you give a story like Dune's to someone like David Lynch?

 

[Srdjan]

Than it was pretty good, now it's good only for people who watched it than.

It's classic but when you take off nostalgia glasses effects are ridiculous by today's standards, scenes are recycled way too much, it lasts way too long, but on the other hand plot goes nowhere, it didn't capture essence of the book and it was going on more SF action stuff.

 

[boag]

I liked the film, but I preferred the 6 part mini series more.

 

[Hawk of Battle]

I watched it about, duno, 6 months ago maybe, when was bored one day. 3 hours later I had SOMEHOW managed to not die of boredom. I think the only reason I kept watching is because Dune is supposedly this really great classic book series that I have unfortunately never read, and I wanted to see what the story was actually like (have only played the Westwood games) but the movie was fucking terrible. Even as a non fan of the book I can tell it's diabolical.

The constant internal monologues, the unexplained characters, the sudden and confusing plot jumps, it's as if the whole thing doesn't WANT you to know what the fuck is going on, despite everyone constantly monologuing to themselves. Truly one of the worst films I've ever seen.

 

[Talydia]

It's a movie, but it's not really Dune, you know?

This. If you took the movie on its own, it would be a decent scifi movie for its time. But as a Dune adaptation is not really all that great.