Dune: The Third Time’s a Charm
We have arrived. After years of anticipation, the world is finally taking their seats to see Denis Villeneuve’s epic sci-fi film Dune.
Much like the story of Dune itself, the film has undergone an arduous journey to make it to the silver screen as its release lined up fatefully with the heart of the Coivd-19 Pandemic.
After months and months of hype leading up to the November 2020 release date, fans around the world were let down upon discovering that it would be pushed back almost an entire year.
For a project of this scope, it is almost unbearable to wait another week let alone another 11 months for it to come out, so fans, like myself, were disheartened by the news.
Yet the continuous rescheduling of release dates echoes the ill-fated past of Hollywood’s attempts to bring this seminal piece of literature to the screen. Many would-be fans of Dune aren’t aware that two of the greatest film directors of all time took shots at bringing to life Frank Herbert’s book, and both ultimately failed.
So to further appreciate Villeneuve's latest film, let’s take a look at the past attempts to make Dune and why this story has chewed up and spit out some of Hollywood’s most promising artists.
FRANK HERBERT’S DUNE
Released in 1965, Frank Herbert’s novel Dune quickly became the most popular science fiction novel in the world. Just one year after its release it won two prolific awards including the inaugural Nebula Award for Best Novel.
Since then, Dune has been translated into dozens of different languages and sold more than 20 million copies, making it the most successful science fiction novel of all time.
So what makes this novel so special that it so immediately and consistently captured the minds of readers around the world?
Well similar to other popular books like The Lord of the Rings Trilogy, Herbert’s Dune details an expansive universe complete with its own languages, worlds, and maps in which readers can lose themselves totally. It’s far more than just a story.
Also, unlike other sci-fi novels, Dune covers deeper philosophical themes including underlying sentiments of Zen, ecology, gender dynamics, and more. Such ideas resonate with readers on a level beyond that of just the superficial.
Setting aside all scholarly critiques of the novel, Dune is simply a well-written book with compelling characters, believable conflict, adventure, and love.
JODOROWSKY’S DUNE
Alejandro Jodorowsky is an artist unlike any other.
Born in Chile, Jodorowsky began his career excelling in the mediums of playwriting and poetry before picking up the camera to begin making challenging, unique avant-garde films that shocked the world.
He found especially great success with his 1973 film Holy Mountain that initially caused public outcry due to its bizarre nature. The New York Times called Holy Mountain a “dazzling, rambling, often incoherent satire on consumerism, militarism and the exploitation of third world countries by the West.”
What better director to take up the ambitious challenge of Dune than he?
The following account is chronicled in the 2013 documentary Jodorowsky’s Dune.
In 1974 the rights to Dune were virtually given to Jodorowsky and his French producer and collaborator Michel Seydoux. Thus began one of the greatest failures in movie history.
Jodorowsky began assembling a team of all-stars to tackle this titan of a project. Among the artists that he recruited were Chris Foss, Jean Giraud, H.R. Giger, and Dan O’Bannon (the latter two were the artistic minds behind Alien).
While the artistic team set to work building the world, Jodorowsky started handpicking the stars of the film. When all was said and done, he had obtained commitments to act in the film from Gloria Swanson, Orson Welles, David Carradine, Mick Jagger, and Salvador Dali— a veritable dream cast for any project.
For the cosmic score of Dune, Jodorowsky enlisted the talents of prog-rock bands Magma and Pink Floyd who were at the peak of their powers when approached by the production team.
Everything was set and preparations were in full swing. Jodorowsky knew that the only way he was going to be able to accomplish this project was with an incredibly detailed storyboard, so he oversaw the illustrations of every single shot as well as the designs of every costume, spaceship, and set that would be featured.
The art team assembled all of their preparations into a large book that outlined an epic film with gigantic proportions never before seen, including a 10 to 12-hour runtime.
So armed with his giant book, Jodorowsky set out to Hollywood to pitch to all the major studios in order to get the final $5 million needed to begin production. That's when things took a turn for the worst.
At each studio, Jodorowsky was met by an executive who told him that the project was incredible but that they couldn’t produce it. He went from studio to studio and over and over again faced rejection.
The fact is, the studios were scared of a project of such scope made by a director like Jodorowsky. They were worried, as studios always are, about what kind of audience would be attracted to a movie like the one presented to them.
One studio even asked Jodorowsky to make an hour and a half cut of the film and maybe they could have a deal. The director laughed at such a suggestion.
Jodorowsky was not the kind of director to bend over at the request of the suits. He was an artist and refused to bring anything less than his vision to the screen.
So Dune failed.
All the artists returned home and began new projects after dedicating two years of their lives to what they all believed would be a game-changing film.
Jodorowsky, of course, was devastated by the failure of Dune and describes it as an event that changed his life forever.
What’s interesting, however, is that despite never being made, Jodorowsky’s Dune has influenced the course of film history to this day. Many of the artists involved in the project went on to bring their initial concepts for Dune to other films.
It is claimed that Jodorowsky’s concepts for the film directly influenced movies like Star Wars, Alien, The Fifth Element, and Terminator. Thus it has been dubbed by some as “The Greatest Film Never Made.”
Dune: 1, Hollywood: 0.
LYNCH’S DUNE
While the wreckage of Jodorowsky’s Dune was still smoldering in 1976, Italian film producer Dino De Laurentiis purchased the rights for the book attaching then-unknown director Ridley Scott to head the ship.
Faced with the daunting prospect of making Dune, Scott ultimately dropped out having suffered a family tragedy, leaving De Laurentiis adrift with the script.
Meanwhile, a young David Lynch had just completed Elephant Man and was on the rise in the film industry. He received offers to direct some major movies including Return of the Jedi but opted for the illustrious prospect of slaying the giant that was Dune when it was offered to him around 1981.
Lynch’s Dune also boasted a relative all-star cast headed up by Kyle MacLachlan in his first role, and supported by such names as Sean Young, Patrick Stewart, Max Von Sydow, and Sting. Lynch, similar to Jodorowsky, also recruited rock band Toto for the scoring of the film.
So after six drafts of the script, the production began principal photography in Mexico in 1983 armed with a gargantuan $40 million budget, 80 sets, and a crew of 1,700. Just the fact that they made it to this stage in the production gave the appearance that things were going better than Jodorowsky’s attempt.
Enter the studio.
When the rough cut was presented, the run time was in the neighborhood of 4 hours, disappointing Universal studios who were expecting the standard 2-hour length.
So the chopping process began and eventually the film was released in 1984 with a run time of 2 hours and 17 minutes and it absolutely tanked.
By the end of its theatrical run, it fell $9 million short of breaking even and was met with scathing critical reviews that attacked its convoluted plot and cheap special effects.
Roger Ebert gave Lynch’s Dune one star out of four and called it a “real mess, an incomprehensible, ugly, unstructured, pointless excursion into the murkier realms of one of the most confusing screenplays of all time.”
Lynch subsequently disowned the film claiming that it had been effectively high-jacked from his possession by Universal. To this day he refuses to talk about the film and has gone so far as to remove his name from the credits in certain cuts.
Since its release, Lynch’s Dune has attracted a sort of cult following by those who enjoy the cheesy special effects and cinematic staples of 1980’s Hollywood sci-films, yet it only takes one viewing to realize that is all it will ever be: a gimmick.
Dune: 2, Hollywood: 0.
VILLENEUVE’S DUNE
Now we arrive at Monsieur Villeneuve.
There are a few things that set Villeneuve apart from previous attempts at adapting Dune right off the bat.
First off, Denis is a well-established director of major science fiction movies already. With titles like Arrival and Blade Runner 2049 already under his belt, the scope of which are both massive (Arrival is one of my all-time favorites), the studios can rest easy knowing that he is fully capable of pulling off a massive project like Dune.
Second, Villeneuve, unlike Jodorowsky or Lynch when they signed on to direct, has been a lifelong fan of Frank Herber’s novel, even saying in an interview that as a kid he identified heavily with the character Paul Atreides.
Villeneuve also made a key decision that escaped Jodorowsky and Lynch which was to split the story into two films. This allows audiences to consume it in more bite-sized pieces while maintaining the integrity of the story which demands far more than two hours of screen time.
However, Warner Brothers, being the nervous studio that they are, only green-lit chapter one to begin with, stating that they would wait to see how it went, but more on that later.
Finally, obviously, the technology has finally caught up with the story and everyone was instantly confident that there would be nothing appearing “cheap” about this adaptation.
So in 2017, when it was official that Villeneuve would be leading the army that would set out to conquer Dune, the film community let out a collective sigh knowing that the future of this story was in good hands.
Like his predecessors, Villeneuve obtained an all-star cast (this time with no notable rock stars) that includes Jason Mamoa, Zendaya, Oscar Isaac, Stellen Skarsgard, Javier Bardem, Josh Brolin, Dave Bautista, Rebecca Ferguson, Charlotte Rampling, and the ever-young Timothée Chalamet.
Hans Zimmer jumped on the train as well, turning down working with long-time collaborator Christopher Nolan just to claim his spot in a story of which he too has been a lifelong fan.
As anticipated, the production ran smoothly and we all got to see our first glimpses of the film in 2020, and the worldwide excitement for its release climbed steadily.
Then, just when it seemed we would finally have a Dune that we can lose ourselves in, the Covid-19 pandemic hit like a sandworm breaching in the desert.
As the world held its breath for the October 2020 release date, it was announced that the release would be pushed back another month. Then another month. Then another month. Then a year.
Suddenly it felt like the curse of Dune was alive and well and I, for one, began to question if I would ever see this movie.
So while we all turned our focus to surviving in the age of the pandemic, Dune sat on a shelf somewhere, collecting dust, awaiting its arrival in the world
Then last week, after years of waiting (decades for some), Dune was released to American audiences at long last and it was mostly everything that we were expecting: gorgeous, expansive imagery backed by cosmic sounds, thrilling action sequences, detailed production design and costuming, and those special effects that we all so crave for a story like this.
The acting was on point, the script was fantastic, and the movie, as a whole, seemed to be a slam dunk.
The only thing is that chapter one ends rather suddenly and we are left longing for the continuation of the story. The greatness of this movie will depend entirely on its second installment which, if filmed like The Lord of the Rings Trilogy would be close behind.
Yet it wasn’t filmed that way and we have Warner Bros to thank for that.
Like all previous attempts at Dune adaptations, the studio found a way to screw things up by stating that they would wait to see how chapter one performed before they green-lit chapter two.
Then they went and did something incredibly silly by releasing the film to streaming on HBO Max the same day that it was released in theatres.
Villeneuve has said time and again that this is a movie that is meant to be seen in theatres, but also if the studios are waiting to green light chapter two to see how it performs, releasing it straight to streaming is like shooting yourself in the foot.
In a scathing shot at Warner Bros and their parent company AT&T, Villeneuve wrote in Variety Magazine that this decision “means ‘Dune’ won’t have the chance to perform financially in order to be viable and piracy will ultimately triumph.”
Villeneuve is understandably upset with how his film, one that he calls the best movie he’s ever made, is being handled, and we the audience are the ones that suffer.
Thankfully, it was announced that chapter two has been greenlit, despite the damaging manner in which part one was released, meaning that audiences can expect to be back in the theatre for Dune in October of 2023…two years later!
It really is unfortunate that we have to wait so long to see what happens to Paul Atreides and the planet of Arrakis, but I guess that’s the price we have to pay for becoming so addicted to streaming movies from the comfort of our own couches.
Final Thoughts
So it seems, after all, we will have closure, albeit far in the future, on the persisting saga of the movie Dune.
56 years after Frank Herbert’s novel captivated readers around the world and 48 years after Jodorowsky made the first attempt at adapting it to the silver screen, we are left with a glimmer of hope of what’s to come.
Who knows what is going to happen in the next two years, if the pandemic will persist, if audience interest in Dune will have grown cold, if Warner Bros decides that they don’t want to spend another $150 million, or some other unforeseen issue arises that might prevent a satisfying ending on this nearly six-decade journey.
What we do know is that we have a wonderful piece of cinema from a groundbreaking production team that cannot be taken away from us. So I recommend that we get out there, in the theatres, and see that movie as many times as we can handle, because maybe in the future we will tell our grandchildren that we were there, we sat in the dark theatres during a worldwide pandemic with other lovers of film and allowed ourselves to be whisked away to a distant world that is Dune.
