xarcosis

I confess.  The only reason I even read Dune, or harboured any kind of interest in it, was because of Westwood’s Dune II, back in 1992.  I was six years old and I played it on an almost daily basis for the next few years of my childhood.  It was a most excellent game, but it had one minor drawback for me — I never really understood what the hell it was about, other than what my intuition told me, and the occasional dribbling from my brother (which I later found out was mostly wrong, just like he is with everything).  Of course, this really didn’t matter too much because if you’ve played Dune II you’d know that it could’ve been about a peg-legged transvestite from Procyon and it still would’ve torn out your ovaries with its awesomeness.

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Emperor Frederick Corrino in Dune II was designed after David Lynch, because Westwood understood how much of an asshole he was.

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When Frank Herbert (author of the Dune book itself) died in 1986, David Lynch decided to destroy his work by making an abomination of a movie about his relative masterpiece.  Herbert was rolling in his grave so fast he could’ve supplied half of the USA with perpetual power.

A few days ago I decided to watch the Dune mini-series, which was produced in 2000.  I never bothered to watch it before because I expected that it’d be just as terrible as a festering pile of discarded foetuses (also known as Lynch’s adaptation).

To my surprise, however, my expectations were wrong.  First off, the mini-series wasn’t what should have been an abortion.  It kept somewhat true to the book and conveyed a lot of the story over in a fluid way, especially by preserving the socio-political-religious context which was what made the book great.  The method in which it does this allows people who’ve never read Dune to actually understand it, instead of being pummeled in the crotch with a jackhammer.  Oh, and Chani is hot.

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He even looks like one.

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The worst thing about Lynch’s version were the ornithopters.  I cannot get over how ridiculously poor their design was.  Let me try to turn my disgust in words; an ornithopter is supposed to be a type of aircraft that functions like a bird; flapping its wings to stay in flight.  Lynch, however, thought that this was the equivalent of drawing a triangle on a piece of paper and calling it a day.  I bet a disabled, one-armed monkey could have urinated out a better design.  Words do no justice:

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I spent as much effort drawing this as I did writing this article.  Clearly, I should be a science fiction prop designer.

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I was a bit curious about what people have rated the two adaptations, and even though I always thought IMDB’s opinion on anything was about as extensive as Paris Hilton’s knowledge of evolution, curiosity got the better of me.  It, of course, only reinforced the fact that to be a movie ‘reviewer’ you inherently had to suffer from cerebral palsy.  I don’t even want to relay the results because it’s obvious Lynch paid everyone who rated his one above two stars.  I’m not sure what he paid them with, though, but I’m assuming it was a detailed picture of his hair.

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I can really only think of two redeeming traits about Lynch’s version.

One: it laid some foundation for the Dune games by Westwood, whose graphic portrayal of characters look superior to any of the movies.

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Stilgar from the original Dune game, looking stalwart, contrasted with what can only be described as ‘condombeast’, from the 2000 movie adaptation.

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Two: Patrick Stewart.  If it wasn’t for Pat, this movie could have quite possibly caused a deadly epidemic of photon-borne AIDS.

Don’t ever mess with Patrick Stewart.