Review of Frank Herbert'sDune

What happens when you mix bad acting, bad special effects, and a piss poor script? Well, you get an Ed Wood movie. Or the new Dune miniseries.

Now, for years fans have been screaming that they want Dune remade because the movie didn't follow the book well enough. The movie is my favorite SF movie ever and it's so good that I don't care if it didn't follow the book perfectly. A movie adaptation that makes changes to the original book isn't a bad thing if those changes either work to enhance the story or are made to make a film easier for film viewers not familiar with a book to understand. That's why Lynch introduced the sound weapons--it was easier to give those as a reason why the Emperor feared him than getting into the more complicated politics of his intense popularity with the other houses.

And here's the first place the miniseries falters: it alters things significantly in ways that are harmful to the story. Paul is portrayed as a brat who never really accepts or believes his role as messiah. One of the original points of the book was to explore the messiah theme and how Paul became it heart and soul. Another detriment to the story was the introduction of Princess Irulan as a major supporting character. For starters she meets Paul before she was supposed to, then wandered about after his supposed death to see how the Harkonnens were involved with the plot to destroy his family. This whole subplot was absolutely useless--it didn't have an effect on the main story or on Paul himself, and, were it ousted, other scenes from the book that didn't make it into the miniseries might have been included instead.

But even if the movie had adapted the book more faithfully, it still would have been bad. Real bad. First, there's the script. Instead of taking dialogue from the book--which is especially good and imitates normal human conversation wonderfully--the scriptwriter took it upon himself to create cheesy lines and bad philosophical statements.

Next comes the acting itself. There wasn't a good actor among the lot cast for this miniseries. Ah, some might suddenly say, the big name actor William Hurt can act, now can't he? Won an award or something. Ha! Who are they fooling? If William Hurt actually showed an emotion, I think he would keel over dead. The way he expressed anger was exactly the same he expressed love, hate, and joy. This guy can't act and that's all there is to it. He's no Jack Nicholson, I'll tell you that. As for the rest of the actors: time for them all to go back to acting school or find new careers. Not a single one could act. And every one of them portrayed their characters radically different from those in the book.

If the Baron Harkonnen from the book met the one in the miniseries, he'd just sneer and wonder how this guy ever got into a position of power without being assassinated. There is also the portrayal of Jessica as severely compassionate and uncertain in her decisions. She asks Chani what to do when Paul's near death after taking the Water of Life. Now why would she do that? She's a Reverend Mother and has thousands upon thousands upon thousands of generations of past lives to consult with instead. She was portrayed exactly wrong. And now the award for absolute worst acting: this comes at the movie's end when a Guild representative tells Paul the Guild won't heed Paul's demands--and while he does so he hilariously flails his arms about. Paul's sister, Alia, earns the award for the funniest character. Nearly every time she spoke or did something while in the presence of the Emperor, I laughed my ass off!

So what if the movie had a good script and top-notch actors? Would it have been better? Well, I'm not sure even that could have saved it. The directing is pathetic. Fight scenes have as much tension as a broken rubber band and I've seen better drama directed on daytime soap operas. Were that not bad enough, the special effects, set designs, and (most of all) costume designs were all a disaster as well. The biggest special effect offender was the desert mouse (called muad'dib, which is where Paul gets his Fremen name). The worst custom was the one worn by Chani at the series' end when Paul confronted the Emperor. She looks exactly like a Time Lord (or Lady if you prefer) from the British sci fi series Doctor Who. Now, I love Doctor Who, but its futuristic customs really sucked and so do the ones in this movie. The worst set was that of the Fremen sietch--it looked like an ancient Egyptian tomb from the New Kingdom and would have been a bit hard to hide from those pesky Harkonnens who were forever looking for them.

All in all the only redeeming feature this movie has is that it is so bad the likelihood of sequels is minimal. I lost approximately six hours of my life watching it, but at least it gave me something to review (which is always fun). In fact, the only reason I finished watching it is so I can write this review and tell people they're better off getting a root canal done than watching this train wreck of a miniseries.