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Yet Dune should be more than pure dazzlement. In fact, such is the visual force of Villeneuve’s filmmaking – allied to Hans Zimmer’s immersive, chest-beating sound design – that you could sink into its soaring spectacle. So perhaps the greatest achievement of the latest version, directed by Arrival and Blade Runner 2049’s Denis Villeneuve, is that it makes sense. John Harrison’s 2000 Sci-Fi Channel mini-series, Frank Herbert’s Dune, was well-received, but many felt it failed to capture the scale of Herbert’s creation, and it was criticised, too, for its confusing storytelling. His campy 1984 attempt at least got made, but its clod-footed storytelling and lumpen visual effects baffled critics and angered fans.
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The next director to stumble out of Herbert’s source material was David Lynch. Jodorowsky’s solution? Film Dalí for only four minutes, and use a life-size doll in his place for the rest of the shoot.) (Salvador Dalí, for instance, cast as the evil emperor Shaddam IV, demanded a $100,000-an-hour fee. His adaptation, though, was sunk by its grandiose 14-hour running time and the diva-ish antics of his stars. Chilean auteur Alejandro Jodorowsky was the first to try to adapt it, in 1973. It tells the story of a space-faring noble dynasty, House Atreides, who are sent to the mysterious planet of Arrakis, where they’re caught up in a galactic conspiracy and an ancient prophecy about a saviour who will lead a rebellion against the malevolent Empire.ĭune has left a wreckage of filmmakers in its wake. Simply picking up Frank Herbert’s 1965 novel requires readers to pause and swallow manfully before plunging ahead.Īt a portly 500-plus pages, it’s a lavishly operatic sci-fi adventure set 10,000 years in the future which bulges with Machiavellian intrigue, dense metaphysics and arcane technologies.
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Like the compass-baffling deserts of Arrakis, the Dune universe can be an inhospitable place.
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Timothée Chalamet as Paul Atreides on Caladan - Courtesy of Warner Bros.
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