David Lynch set himself an almost impossible task when he took on Frank Herbert's epic story, a task he came mighty close to pulling off.
In humanity's distant future, the House of Atreides is being betrayed. Taken from their home planet and sent to govern the Spice mining planet of Arrakis the Duke Leto Atreides can feel his time is up and that his enemies, the House of Harkonnen, are set on destroying him. But the Spice must flow, for he who controls the Spice controls the Universe. Young Paul Atreides knows this and so does the Emperor, who will do anything to be the one.
This sci-fi extravaganza, with it's sand worms, space bending whales and voice weapons does admittedly look a little dated now but that doesn't take away from what is an undeniably clever and engaging story. The international cast, with the possible exception of Kyle MacLachlan in the lead, is wonderful and includes Max von Sydow, Sting, Dean Stockwell and Jürgen Prochnow. The music is great and even though Lynch himself doesn't like it I think the edit works.
As I said, it was an impossible task. There's simply too much story to make into one film and if it was made today Peter Jackson would have split it into 3 parts. There were originally meant to be 2 sequels but with so many production problems, changes of director, cast members becoming ill etc, and with the film being considered a commercial failure they were cancelled. I doubt we missed much as the sequels to the book are nowhere near as good as the first.
Overall I really like this movie. It's one on the list of classic sci-fis and even with its undeniably 80s look it still stands up as a great watch.
*Editors Footnote*
Special mention should be made for the Sound Editing of Les Wiggins, a man who worked on everything from Waterloo to Apocalypse Now. In one of the few films that uses a voice-over narrative effectively, he did a hard job well.
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0087182/?ref_=nv_sr_1
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