(Max Ranney • The Student Life)
For the second time this decade, Dune fever has swept the nation and seeing as I’ve finally gotten around to watching “Twin Peaks,” it seemed like as good a time as any to revisit the “Dune” that started it all (if you don’t read books) — David Lynch’s, from 1984.
Lynch’s “Dune” was a critical and commercial flop when it came out and in the 40 years since it’s mostly talked about as the black sheep of its director’s filmography — a strange blemish on a strange career.
With each new adaptation of the source material, the 1984 original gets exhumed from its grave for cultural reappraisal and every time the takeaway seems to be about the same: David Lynch’s “Dune” is not great. It’s nice we’re getting a new one.
I have a confession to make, though. For as much as I’ve staunchly and off-handedly defended this movie (at least twice), I’d never actually sat down and watched it.
If there’s anything that anyone should know about me, it is that I always root for the underdog. I wasn’t a big fan of Denis Villeneuve’s 2021 entry and I’ve got a big soft spot for oft-maligned movies (probably due to my naturally gracious heart and unflinching good-naturedness), so I was ready to enter the world of Lynch “Dune” with wide eyes and open arms.
It’s got beautiful ’80s set design and charmingly unconvincing giant worms. It’s the weird guild navigator guys that live in big fish tanks. It’s got Sting! Sting! From the Police! He’s got the mannerisms of a lunatic and an ornate metal codpiece. I would have bet my life savings, possibly my firstborn, that this movie was an unappreciated classic.
“Lynch’s “Dune” was a critical and commercial flop when it came out and in the 40 years since it’s mostly talked about as the black sheep of its director’s filmography — a strange blemish on a strange career.”
But man, it’s a lot harder being a Lynch “Dune” apologist once you’ve actually watched it.
“Dune” (1984) isn’t very good. It feels pointless to say that about a 40-year-old movie with a 37 percent Rotten Tomatoes score, but I have to get it out of the way before I can get to the point. “Dune” isn’t very good and it’s not good for reasons that are disappointing and uninteresting.
It’s enormously ambitious in its scale but frustratingly, overwhelmingly weightless. For something that wants to be a biblical epic (essentially a sci-fied Moses and the Israelites), the film is a dry recitation, devoid of drama on a macro and micro level. The characters are dull. Their interactions are uninteresting and their world feels scopeless. It overexplains itself at every turn and is somehow still difficult to follow. It is, bluntly, a mess.
Having said all of that, I don’t know, I still kind of like it.
Perhaps it’s my naturally gracious heart or my unflinching good-naturedness, or maybe I’m just a contrarian, but I can’t say that I don’t kind of admire what “Dune” shoots for.
It’s got a lot of good pieces. They don’t converge into a great whole, but they’re good pieces. The sets and costumes are stunning. There’s an abundance of great space-desert psychedelia and a real willingness to be weird and colorful and out-there that a lot of modern science fiction is decidedly allergic to.
For all its glaring flaws, the original “Dune” succeeds in a few ways that I wish we were still interested in recreating. I can’t help but wonder if, in 40 years of dragging this weird, bad movie through the dirt, we’ve thrown the third stage guild navigator out with the bathwater.
Why must a genre brimming with unimaginable creative potential be so limited to charmless hyperrealism and strict believability? Where are the drugged-out psychic mutants floating in giant tanks? Where’s Sting in his weird metal codpiece? Where’s the curiosity?
Time is kind to movies like “Dune.” I’m sure sitting through it in 1984 was close to torture — nostalgic appeal takes a lot of time to cultivate — but in 2024, just the act of seeing giant worm puppets and expansive painted backdrops and psychedelic dream sequences is its own kind of treat. Saying Lynch’s “Dune” sucks is like saying that the first bicycle ever invented sucked — it’s true, but the vision is unignorable and don’t you kind of wish those great big wheels stuck around?
I want to make it known that I haven’t seen the recent “Dune: Part Two.” That may in and of itself make the points I’ve made moot and if you feel that way, I think that’s fair. My criticisms are levied with its older sibling and the rest of its generation and though I’ve seen little to dissuade my fears about the sequel being another cold, tan spectacle, I’ve since learned not to judge a “Dune” by its cover.
If “Dune: Part Two” ushers in an era of strange, stylish, challenging space epics, then let this article serve as a time capsule. I hope that in 40 years, my fellow movie reactionaries and I will be able to dig up all the under-loved sci-fi flicks of this decade for reappraisal and finally appreciate their finely aged archaeological charm.
Or maybe they’ll all suck forever. Who can really say?
Gerrit Punt PO ’24 is a film writer from a planet that only has very small worms. After watching two “Dune” movies, he’s decided he’s going to give reading books a try. It seems like a better use of his time.
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