Dune

[Jedi Master Carr]

Is anybody going to watch the Scifi original miniseries Dune it starts tomorrow night. I have my reservations about it partly because its a made for cable move and second the last version they did was terrible. I will watch it probably but I am going to keep my expections low and hope for the best. There is one thing that bugged me, William Hurt, who is in the movie, made a crack about Star Wars basically calling the Star Wars crap and calling Dune some great intellectual masterpiece. I think Dune is a great book but its just science fiction its not Dante's divine comedy or Milton's Paradise Lost its entertainment much like Star Wars is. Sure it might have some type of moral to it but intellectual masterpiece is pushing it. I never carred much for Hurt anyway I think he is an overrated actor who the critics love. Also he is a hypacrite because back in the early 90's Spielberg asked him to play Dr. Grant for Jurassic Park and he would do it because he did not want to be in those kind of movies and then just five years later he plays in Lost in Space which was one big piece of crap. Well that ends my rant on Hurt back to Dune I am hopefull it is a better film than the last one back in 1984 maybe it will be but I wary of that it might not be.

[Bromine]

I saw the original movie recently, having heard a lot about the books but nothing about the movie. I must say that as far as execution and storytelling goes, it was easily one of the WORST movies I've seen. This is probably the worst example of a book converted to a movie. Which was a pity, because the costumes and effects were very cool and the story itself was intriguing.
That said, I'm looking forward to seeing the Dune miniseries if it ever comes to a station we get in Western Canada. I agree we probably shouldn't get our hopes too high, though. I haven't been impressed with very many made-for-TV movies. On the other hand, it's a sci-fi world that has yet to be explored on the screen (except for the '84 movie), so just the visuals will probably make it worth while.

[foxdvd]

I am one of the few that thought the movie of Dune was GREAT..I just love that movie, even if it was not as good as the book..it came close..the music by Toto is an all time top 10..

[DvdJervs]

I found the movie was ok - my main problem was that they cut an awful lot of the book out. I know they had to fit it into movie length so something had to get chopped but still.

Seeing a sandworm swallowing a harvester though was pretty cool. :)

I won't be able to see the miniseries down here but it does sound interesting - Frank Herbert hasd always believed his book would work better as a miniseries than a movie because a miniseries would enable more of the book to be left in.

[Bromine]

I think that was the main problem I had with the movie: it jumped around so much and tried to cover so much material that I felt I was missing too much. It was more of a summary than a detailed story.
Hopefully the miniseries is so good that it gets distributed to other networks.:)

[foxdvd]

The TV version of Dune, had almost an hour of exta footage, and even if it is not a Directors cut, I felt it made the movie even better..

[Jedi Master Carr]

I just saw the first part of Dune and I must admit it was pretty good. It had problems sure, like some of the special effects seemed fake and there was some bad acting from a few of the actors but overall it was a definite imporvement from the original film. First I understood the plot, the original movie I was lost 10 minutes in the opening narration was completely confusing. In this version those problems do not exist and the plot is much more comprendible. I also was glad how they changed the villians, I remember in the other version the villians looked like idiots not to mention Sting was trying to act. One of them I think Kenneth Mcmillian was his name was awful in the film maybe even worse than Sting. In this version they do a much better job with them including the central figure I think his name is Baron Harkonnen I am not sure who plays him but he does a much better job and makes the character appear both intelligent and evil. Overall I think this is a much better adaptation not the best, because I would rather have a major studio adaptation that would use better effects and actors but oh well at least the story does make sense and its enjoyable which is better than what I thought we were going to get.

[Darth23]

I saw part 2 last night (twice) - missed part one.

I completely agree with Bromine's assesment of the David Linch version. Looked great, shame about the actual movie.

----

The tv version was generally pretty good. There were only a few minor thing left out of the book, but the added Princess Irulan stuff was interesting.The Desert mouse they showed looked REALLY fake (it's the LIGHTING, stupid), but the worms looked good, and the left otu a lot of the gross Harkonnen stuff that Lynch added.

It's a little wordy in places - I guess that's to be expected, but I really like how well they're following the book. I also like the Naboo-esqe feel that a lot of the scenes have.
The music is pretty interestign also.

I'm hoping they'll show the whole thing again soon. Prolly this weekend, judging from the way they repeat stuff.