Dune
1984
Participants: Kyle
MacLachlan, Virginia Madsen, Sting and Patrick Stewart
Directlessor: David
Lynch
Links: IMDB
Trailer:
Reviewing Crappy
Movie So You Don’t Have To
Welcome to the
first of hopefully many review of crappy movies. The inaugural movie is the spectacularly
awful Dune.
Filmed in 1984 this
was an adaptation of the successful sci-fi Dune book series. The book series
was written in 1965 and spawned 5 sequels. It is regarded as one of the greatest
sci-fi series ever written, winning a Hugo Award for best sci-fi or fantasy
novel. The movie has no ability to claim any such recognition and would only be
able to win an award if it was called “1984 Fred’s Award for Sustained Reticule”
When researching
this I found that there have been many attempts to write a movie for this.
Turns out that they are all equally up for ridicule. My favourite is the 1974
attempt by Alejandro
Jodorowsky who is an avant-garde director. This is an early warning system
for anyone not wanting to make a flop, do not use anyone who films are
described as avant-garde.
His basic idea was
to use the book to make a 10 hour feature film starring surrealist painter
Salvador Dali, Orson Welles, Mick Jagger and David Carradine with soundtrack from
Pink Floyd. The movie was started with a budget of $9m and many of the designs of
the sets completed. The film pre-production ended due to many reason, but some
of the best reasons are that Salvador Dali requested that he be paid at
$100,000 an hour and that any other scenes with him a puppet would be used, the
first script was so big that it would result in a 14 hour film and that nearly
a quarter (about $2m) of the budget had been spent before filming had begun. Yeah, no....
So, who’s to blame
for the 1984 attempt? My blame is with David Lynch. For those who don’t know
him, he’s renowned for guff like Twin Peaks, Mulhullond Drive and Blue Velvet.
Now, many trendies will tell you that he’s an amazing director and that he is
visionary and durpy durp. To me, I don’t understand him. Visually his stuff is
great, but in the end much of his films are basically incomprehensible. Most
start promising then lead into a mess of extra characters, pointless mysticism
and total lack of conclusive story telling. Dune is the same.
Now, Lynch has told
many that it’s not his fault, that he did not have control over the final cut, therefore
its horrendousness. But, I doubt this. It’s got his little grubby, revolting confusion
all over it. This is where the best info of this films crapness comes in, it’s not
actually credited to Lynch, but to Alan Smithee. Smithee is a pseudonym used
for directors if do not like their film. The other thing to note is that it is written
by a Judas Booth, another pseudonym made up by Lynch to explain his so-felt
deception.
Now to be brutally
honest, I really struggled with the plot. I don’t know if it’s because I am dumb
or that it’s that confusing. Ill try to summarize. The film is based around Paul
Atreides (Kyle MacLachlan, Twin Peaks, Blue Velvet, The creepy husband in Sex
in the City). He is part of the Atreides family on one planet. The universe is
ruled by Padishah Emperor Shaddam Corrino IV (Jose Ferrer, he hasnt done anything else) who mines a spice
called.... well .... spice, which gives the user psychic abilities and long
life. Now, he mines if for a consortium called ‘The Guild’, which are all humans,
except for a giant sperm creature with a vagina mouth that live in a fish tank.
The spice is mined
on Dune a desert planet uninhibited except for giant worms that eat space
ships. ow, this is where it gets confusing. I think that because the Guild felt
threatened by the Atreides family so go out to kill him. They are unsuccessful
and end up banishing Paul (Yep, that name is still popular
after 10,000 years) to Dune. This is where the film turns into a “The One”
story. It turns out that there are
people living in the desert in Dune and Paul is “The One” and can control these giant worms. He rises
up, trains his newly found army, trains them in a day or so and attacks the
people who have been in charge in for 10,000 years.
So, why is it so
bad? Well for starters it is UTTERLY CONFUSING. Imagine a complex storyline
from giant novel, condense it into 3 hours (yes, three fucking hours) and then
put it through an industry strength washing machine. There are about three bad
guys, no of which seem to have any control or major role in the film. One guy
is in the first scene, but the ends up disappearing for the rest of the film.
One bad guy (Sting, yep that Sting) doesn’t speak at all. It seems like he’s going to
be big, then doesn’t do anything until he fights Paul at the end. I have no
idea where the sperm with the vagina mouth went.
The production
staff must have realised this so to help they put in these voiceovers all
throughout the movie. Someone narrates it parts of it, mostly at the start then
some random parts during the film as if it try to make things less confusing.
This seems, if anything, to try to fill in gaps where scenes have gone missing.
At one point the narrator say “Two years later, Paul trained his army”. WHAT?
WHY? TWO YEARS AND NOT EVEN A DECENT MONTAGE!
But, this isn’t the
worst voiceovers, for some bizarre reason, there are voiceovers of the cast
explaining what they are thinking. It does help in some parts because otherwise
you would have literally NO idea of what was happening. At one point Paul is
standing in a room and a syringe appears from the wall and floats around the
room. This goes for a little bit, until Paul says something like “It’s here to
kill me”. OH, good, thanks Paul, I thought you had missed your measles, mumps,
rubella shot. There are other scenes where characters stare at each other and
think things like “Why is she worried?” or “She’s using that voice”. Then they
stand around looking at each other without talking. It looks likes two people who
hate each other meeting after not seeing each other for10 years and have
nothing to talk about.
One other thing is
that it looks like it has been filmed in the 1960s. This would be good but it wasn’t,
it was filmed in 1984. This is about the same time as Blade Runner (82) or
Return of the Jedi (83). They are much, MUCH better put together and look less
dated. It also looks like that they ran out of special effects budget in final
production. At one point during a battle scene, there are people running down a
dune with (I think) weapons of some sort. They are yelling these weird chants
and pointing these guns like you would do as a kid with a stick. Nothing comes
out of the gun, no noise, no colours then something explodes in the next frame.
It looks hysterical, I was giggling when watching this. Grown men, all serious,
yell “Pwwow”, “Byoing” pointing something that looks like a jigsaw puzzle piece.
WHAT ARE YOU DOING?
There are some
other funny things. Patrick Stewart plays his character from American Dad and
just yells. He actually has a mullet. Sting does well, but just sort of prances
around showing his little skinny body off. One bad guy can fly, no one else in
the film can. Just him.. for no apparent reason.
*Note*
After some research
I found that this flying bad guy in the book is gay, which I don’t think is necessary
offensive it’s not like his sexual preference made him bad..... BUT.... here’s
the kicker.... in the film adaptation he has these welting sores on his face.
So ... Lynch? In 1984 during the height of the AIDS being a gay disease hysteria
you want to put the only gay man with welts all over his face and give him an
ability to fly.
Needless to say this was pretty controversial.
There are also
these great scenes where Paul is trying to train. He basically darts around a
Dalek kind of machine chopping off screwdrivers around the edge. He takes this
technology to his new army and they train the same way. Its blisteringly funny
watching them dancing around shooting at these screwdrivers. Oh, one thing I forgot. There is a scene where McLachlan and Stewart have a training session. For some bizarre reason they are now in these faux glass shields which look weird. Needless to say they didn't appear again.
I don’t really want
to poke fun at the storyline too much, mainly because it is interpreted from a
novel that I haven’t read cannot say how much is from the novel or Lynch
fantasy. But there are glaring plot holes:
-
Why
is it miners can’t control the giant worms with all their superior technology
but some nomadic people can?
-
Why
can the worms eat space craft, but won’t touch the people riding them on their
backs?
-
Why
do people change their voice and they are immediately able to throw people over
the room?
Ugg...
Anyway. Enough. It
was a painful experience.
The film ends with
a rainfall in Dune which has never seen rain. Which besides all the meteorological
inaccuracies would play havoc on their drains. This was a metaphor for my tears
when I sat at the end. A truely deplorable effort and not enough was done to
stop it from happening. As a inaugural review I need to rate it.
I give it 4 out of 5
steaming wet turds.
