Incarnations of Dune

Way back in 1975 I had read Frank Herbert’s Dune and been mightily impressed by the story. The paperback had a sticker on the front “Soon to be a major film” – but that proved to be rather optimistic, it was 1984 before the first film adaptation of Dune reached the screen. There was an earlier attempt to film the book – the Chilean-French director Alejandro Jodorowsky had purchased the film rights in 1974 – but in the end it all came to naught, no film studio was prepared to fund Jodorowsky’s vision, which reportedly would have resulted in a film lasting 14 hours.

Then in 1984, the David Lynch version reached the cinemas. It was not a commercial success, and was mostly disliked by the critics, but I liked it – it certainly had visual style. Lynch himself was not happy with the result – the studio cut his three-hour film back to two hours.

Following that, there were two TV series adaptations of Dune that were relatively successful, but I still did not think that justice had been done to the source material.

Then, in 2021, Denis Villeneuve brought his version of Dune to the silver screen. For the first time, I thought that this was the version of Dune that I had been waiting for. It turned out that this was Dune Part One – Villeneuve intended that a book as complex as Dune required two parts to tell the story.

I never got to see Dune Part One in the cinema, I’ve only viewed it at home on our TV (with surround sound). Still, it is very impressive. A spectacle, but also very well played by excellent actors.

Dune Part Two was released in March this year. This time I was determined to see it in a cinema on an IMAX screen, as Villeneuve intended it should be experienced.

I went to a morning screening (there were just 20 of us in the IMAX theatre) at the Pathé cinema in Arnhem. This was my first ever experience of IMAX, and it did not disappoint. Dune Part Two is superbly well-realised – in my opinion, a successful adaptation of the book in every way. There are sequences in it that are simply breathtaking in their spectacle, while the characters are never drowned out, their stories play out in front of us with real emotional weight.

The film does say “based on the book” and while it does follow the plot in the main and often quotes the text, there are some significant deviations (no Count Fenring at all and no Alia in the final scenes, for example). I wondered about the dropping of Count Fenring – although a minor character in much of the book, he turns out to be significant at the climax. The closure of the film is also very different from the book, but points the way forward for part 3 (based on the “Dune Messiah” book) – which will probably arrive in 5 years’ time – I think Villeneuve wants to take a break and do something else next. I hope that I will live to see it…