"6 Things I Liked About the Dune Miniseries (and 6 I Didn't)" Topic

"Every time I've told people I've been reading Frank Herbert's Dune series, two things happen: 1) I'll learn what books I can skip, and 2) someone will ask if I've seen the Syfy miniseries. Following my experience of watching the baffling disaster that was David Lynch's vision of Dune, I decided to check out the adaptation that fans consider superior. But were they right?

Released in 2000 as the first official Syfy miniseries, this five-hour version of Dune stars Alec Newman as Paul Atreides, the noble son of a duke (William Hurt) and a Bene Gesserit (Saskia Reeves), who survives an attack on his home and becomes the leader of the people of Arrakis. As House Harkonnen seeks to dominate the planet and seize its spice production, Paul and his allies—including the Fremen warrior Chani (Barbora Kodetová)—work to bring the baron and his family down, changing the fabric of the universe in the process…"
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Amicalement
Armand

baffling disaster that was David Lynch's vision of Dune

Did he watch the same movie as I did? Maybe his version was all cut up by commercials and stuff. I saw it in the theater. It's brilliant and -- with the blatant and appalling exception of sonic weapons to replace the real weirding way -- authentic.

The miniseries was pretty good. It captured the weirding way nicely, but felt too connected to the familiar for me. The story takes place some 10,000 years in the future. It should be weird.

I liked Lynch's Dune.

Snotty film critics with no imagination didn't like the movie. Dune is one of the best science fiction movies ever made.

I didn't like it when I first saw it at the movies. I felt that it had been dumbed down for the general public.

Now I like it and accept that sometimes you have to make compromises to make a book into a film.

May be I've just got soft with old age. The same thing happened with the Flash Gordon movie.

Of course Aliens still has to be the best Sci Fi movie ever made….

I liked both but preferred the mini series.

Lynch's "Dune" is visually stunning and captures much of the look I imagined. The casting is good but the story is not well organized. The think I liked about the series was that the Sardakar were real soldiers and not weird mutants.

Done the book is a really tough nut to convert to film. Love the book, like the movie and the series.

I like Frank Herbert's own take on the Lynch Movie. He said he thought it was the most beautiful done Science Fiction movie he had ever watched….. what it had to do with Dune? He didn't have the slightest idea. F.H. Stated he wrote a book about a boy who thought he was a god and Lynch made a movie about a god who made it rain.

I love the movie myself and watched it many times. It is not the story in the book.

My experience was different in that I saw the movie before I read the book. I loved the movie and read the book in that visual context.

The second and third books in the series I didn't like. Maybe I was still thinking in terms of the movie and wanted definitive endings and clear cut good vs evil. A decade later I picked up book 4, "God Emperor" and absolutely loved it.

I had an audio tape of an interview with Frank Herbert shortly after the movie. I remember he said people do terrible things to their leaders. They nail them to pieces of wood, shoot them in the streets of Dallas, etc.

Thanks!.

Amicalement
Armand

"Of course Aliens still has to be the best Sci Fi movie ever made…"

Amen to that brother!