Dune was first a book written in the early 1960's. It did
so well that its
author, Frank Herbert, continued to write two more books and another trilogy
after that. A total of 6 Dune books. A movie based on the first book,
called
Dune, was released in 1984. I saw the movie after reading the book. So
let's
get down to the point here- How is the movie?
First of all, Dune makes a lot more sense if you had read
the book. If you
had not read the book, the movie is much more confusing and boring. But
anyway...
The plot of the movie Dune is fairly faithful to the original
book. It leaves
out a few characters, but the basic point is made: Dune is a desert planet
that has Spice. Spice is used to fold space- travel without moving.
Therefore Spice is valuable. Spice is only on Dune.
Emperor Shaddam the IV is sending the Atreides to Dune
and is moving out the
Harkonnens at the same time. The reason for this is that both "clans"
are
feuding. The Atreides are supposed to go and live on Dune for a short
bit,
while the Emperor gives the Harkonnens extra troops to destroy the Atreides
so there is no more feuding and fighting between the two. The Atreides
do not
know this however...
That is basically the beginning of the plot of Dune. I
don't want to spoil
any of the surprises, but other parts of the plot involve a traitor and
the
local people of Dune called the Fremen.
The actors they picked for this movie are ho-hum. They
have Patrick
Stewart (Star Trek: Generations) as Gurney Halleck, the man who trained
Duke
Leto Atreides' son. They have Sting as the son of Baron Vladimir Harkonnen.
They have a lot of no-name actors as well. Some do a good job, but the
majority of the script focuses on Paul Atreides and his mother Jessica.
They
do an OK job.
The special effects for this movie are definitely dated.
The sets are very
good. The music score mainly by Toto is also excellent.
But the movie itself drags on at 2 hours and 20 something
minutes. Even at
that length, Dune fails to describe the characters and flesh them out
as well
as the book does.
So what is my reccomendation? Watch this movie if
you wanna see a slightly
technical sci-fi movie or if you have read the book.
**1/2 out of ****
Copyright c)2001 Matthew Tschirigi
www.steelcaves.com
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