Lynch-dune is mostly good, but Villeneuve's is so much better in a beautifully indescribable way that only cinema can really do.
Villeneuve has been dreaming of making his Dune since he was a boy and it shows. ignoring the visuals, the tone is just so much more ominous and alien than Lynch's. One thing that really dates old movies versus their modern counterparts (of sorts) is the sound design. Dune's sounds are absolutely fantastic.
Dennis Villeneuve has been watching David Lynch's Dune since he was a boy, and it shows. Villeneuve lifted dozens of shots directly from Lynch's version, and relied on the same key scenes as the 1984 Dune. I started out impressed by all the homages to Lynch's Dune, but beyond a certain threshold "homage" becomes "ripoff".
In Lynch's the Harkonen's were brutal. In Villeneuve's Dune Gurney had to explain to us that they were brutal, because no actual brutality made it to screen. Baron Harkonen was lower energy than Jeb Bush.
Villeneuve basically just took Lynch's Dune and drained the colour out of both the imagery and the performances.
The biggest criticism of Lynch's Dune us that it doesn't make any sense, and I still totally lost the plot 2/3 of the way through the new Dune as well.
Old Dune is kind of trippy view that happened once and I can't imagine it happening ever again, not with that budget and quality actors. Its still most approachable of all of Lynch's work. I like it a lot for sort of nostalgic feeling for the 80s vision of the future like from some pulp comics.
New Dune is completely different beast, can't wait till second part comes. That universe is rich for other stories, tv series etc. which seems to be the direction all major studios are moving to.
There are very different kinds of trippyness though. The Lynch version seems quite determined about avoiding that cheesy "bunch of swirling colors" brand of trippyness. Sequences like that exist, but they aren't the trippy bits. The trippy qualities are more between the lines. The TV serial... not so much, that one was more "oh, he's having a vision, switch on the mood light vfx!". Haven't seen the Villeneuve yet, which one would it be?
I think Villeneuve might go more in the trippy direction with the next one.
If you compare (say) 2049 and dune you can tell that the latter has been made to hold the audiences hand a lot (blade runner didn't make it's money back). Now he's sold the concept I imagine he'll have more confidence/freedom with part 2.
I think there's a better version of Dune somewhere between Lynch and Villeneuve.
Lynch didn't trust the audience enough. The wierding modules, the amount of voice-over, the limitations of the special effects of the time, etc. Also, the studio didn't fully trust the material, forcing Lynch to cram everything in one movie. The movie starts off well-ish enough. But after Paul and Jessica escape the Harkonnens, we just sort of yadda yadda years away and jump to Paul getting ready to attack Arrakeen. I think only the last 30 or so minutes is after the escape (excluding credits). Could be longer, but the jump is jarring. The movie moves at a decent clip otherwise. Set up with the emperor whinging about the Atreides, the Atreides getting ready to leave, the arrival, establishing the Atreides are not the Harkonnens, the coup, the escape, the time jump montage, the final attack.
Villeneuve's movie covers up to the escape and that's it. Villeneuve's film is 19 minutes longer. So Villeneuve basically had the opportunity to expand the beginning of the story by about an hour. He's going to be able to cover the same ground as the last 30 minutes of the Lynch movie with at least 2 hours.
The issue is that Villeneuve kind of wastes his time. We see Dr. Yueh. And that's really it. We never get even a mention of imperial conditioning or why it's shocking that it's Dr. Yueh that betrays the Atreides. Piter is seen, but I don't think ever named. We don't meet Feyd at all in the movie. We get way more backstory about a bull's head than we do any character.
If we had more of Lynch's development and Villeneuve's aesthetic, we'd have a near perfect version of the film.
Absolutely! Villeneuve caught the Dune-universe as I pictured it in my head incredibly well, from visuals over story telling to sound. And it showed just how alien and dangerous / harsh Arrakis is.
I'm just a tad worried about Feyd-Rautha so, Sting was just brilliant in that role!
Arrakis is alien but it's depicted as relatively friendly in the dream-sequences. They used sounds of waves crashing on beaches, which makes a lot of sense as to the Fremen it is their home.
My only gripe is that Arrakis doesn't feel hot enough, but I also don't really care.
I don't think it's been underrated, in critics' circles, for 15-20 years or so by now. Since the tales about its production, and the related art, have fully emerged, it has been widely re-evaluated - also because Lynch has gone on to become a bit of a sacred cow after Twin Peaks and his later work.
The original series set the bar for thriller tv series from then on - both on the good elements (always one more secret, one more cliffhanger; living on the edge of fantasy) and the bad (making up stuff as they go along; disappointing finale; unceremoniously cut).
I have only watched a couple of episodes of series 3 but by now I've seen enough Lynch to dread his output, narratively speaking.
* Why would soldiers sent to fight on a Desert-Planet wear black, vulcanised, full body rubber Hazmat suits?
* What on Earth is a "Wyrding Module" supposed to be?
* What exactly is achieved by charging into battle while holding a pug on ones arm?
* It says "Ornithopter" in the books, implying something vaguely animal-shaped, not a hovering metal box.
* Why do communication devices in the far future resemble telephones from the early 1900s?
* What exactly was the point of bringing the late-stage navigator to the meeting in a room-sized spice-tank, when his subordinate did all the talking anyway?
just speculating (usually set design isn't accounting for anything beyond "looks cool"):
- Hazmat suites can contain climate control, and the Tuareg wear dark clothing as well
- Wyrding Module: In Lynch's words: He didn't want Kung-Fu on sand dunes
- No idea what you mean, but charging into battle has since been proven to be viable tactic by the Avengers, so it has to work
- Ornithopter refers to the propulsion, like a bird, instead of a simple helicopter; I'd have to watch Lynch's Dune so to see how those actually look like in his film; Villeneuve nailed them pretty well
- Same reason why the first Enterprise under Archer used fancier screens than the ones under Kirk or Picard; IMHO Lynch borrowed a lot of his aesthetics from WW1, and the Dune universe is surprisingly low tech anyway
- The navigator: A wild guess, I always understood it as a way to show the importance of Spice and Arrakis to the Guild when they had to send one of their Navigators to talk directly to the Emperor instead of using proxies
Ok, I take Lynch pug and raise you by a guy carrying a shield but no sidearm then. The charging into battoe after breaking formation is similar in both cases.
If you're referring to something in the Villenueve Dune, I don't remember it in enough detail to know what you're talking about. And I only know the Lynch one from snippets and memes. :) I think I agree about breaking formation. Just once I'd like to see a movie that took battle formation seriously.
I referred to our beloved Cpt. America. For some reason we accept all kinds of absurdities from Marvel but call out other films dor much less. It's a film, a lot of stuff is just there to look cool. Which is a pitty, because those films that do shiw things like formations properly, e.g. Alatriste, still look cool if you ask me.
The Lynch version deserved all the drubbing it received. Weirding modules, heart plugs, and rain on Arrakis: trampling all over the novel. The exposition by way of overdubbing was horrible too.
Villeneuve has been dreaming of making his Dune since he was a boy and it shows. ignoring the visuals, the tone is just so much more ominous and alien than Lynch's. One thing that really dates old movies versus their modern counterparts (of sorts) is the sound design. Dune's sounds are absolutely fantastic.