Dune (PG-13)
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Caution: spoilers!

This 1984 film, directed by David Lynch, is based on a 1965 novel by Frank Herbert, which I haven't read. I think I saw it on TV sometime in my youth, and didn't really care for it, but by the time I re-watched it on Max in 2025 (just a day after Lynch's death), I didn't really remember anything about it. Like, I sort of knew the line "walk without rhythm and it won't attract the worm", but that I mostly associate with the Fatboy Slim song "Weapon of Choice". Anyway... there are different versions of the film, but I assume the version I watched was the original theatrical version. The movie is... pretty weird, in a lot of ways. It kind of makes me curious to read the book and find out if I would feel the same way about that, or if I would like the book better. But the movie also makes me hesitant to read the book, because it's hard to imagine my liking it very much if it's anything like the movie. Don't get me wrong, I didn't hate the movie. In fact it was a hard call between rating it "meh and three quarters" as I did, or rating it one smiley. So, what can I say about it? I didn't particularly care for any of the acting, but I don't blame the actors for that. I thought the pacing was weird, and there was too much exposition, though it might have made more sense if there had been even more exposition. Because man, it did not make a ton of sense. I followed the plot well enough, for the most part, but it just seemed like a bunch of random ideas thrown together in a mishmash.

It's set in the year 10,191, and begins with narrative exposition by Princess Irulan (Virginia Madsen), who otherwise barely appears in the movie, and seems to be of no importance whatsoever. Her father is Emperor Shaddam IV, who supposedly is the ruler of the known universe, but he's bossed around by members of the Guild. I don't really understand much about the nature of the Guild, except that they apparently control space travel. And that includes trading a spice called melange, which is mined exclusively on the desert planet Arrakis (also known as "Dune"). Until this point, the planet has been controlled by one of the universe's noble houses, Harkonnen, which is ruled by Baron Vladimir Harkonnen (who gives an incredibly hammy performance). But the emperor gives control of Arrakis to the Harkonnens' enemies, House Atreides, which is ruled by Duke Leto. The Duke has a concubine named Lady Jessica, who is part of a sisterhood called the Bene Gesserit, who have like telepathic powers and whatnot. The leader of the sisterhood had ordered Jessica to only bear daughters for Leto, but she had disobeyed and bore him a son named Paul (Kyle MacLachlan), whom she had taught some of the Bene Gesserit's abilities. And the Guild wants Paul killed.

Leto, Jessica, and Paul travel to Arrakis, which is populated by enormous and very dangerous sand worms, as well as people called Fremen, who have a propehcy that a messiah will come to their planet and lead them to freedom. The Atreideses have to deal with sabotage by the departing Harkonnens, and eventually learn that there's a traitor among their own people. That turns out to be a doctor named Yueh (Dean Stockwell, familiar to me from Quantum Leap), though there's a twist as to his reason for betraying House Atreides, which I won't spoil. There are some other people who come to Arrakis with the Duke's family, including a warrior named Gurney (Patrick Stewart), and some other guy whose position I didn't understand at all. Oh, and a friend of the Atreideses named Duncan went ahead of the Duke's family, for a reason I don't think was ever explained in the movie. It was kind of weird that he seemed really close to the Duke's family, but he was pretty unimportant to the story. The Baron assigns two of his nephews, Feyd (Sting) and Rabban, to kill Paul. Or at least I thought he did, but we don't really see very much of them actually trying to do that. But anyway, the Harkonnen do attack the city on Arrakis and take over, but Paul and Jessica escape.

They are eventually found by the Fremen, led by a man named Stilgar. There's also a Fremen woman named Chani (Sean Young), who becomes Paul's lover. (She said she was someone's daughter, but I can't recall if it was Stilgar or someone else of importance.) Paul is given a couple of new names, one of which I forget because it wasn't used very much, and the other, more important name was Muad'Dib. He becomes the Fremens' leader, and teaches them to use some sound-based weapons called Weirding Modules, and they spend the next couple of years staging attacks on the spice mining operations. Jessica becomes the Fremens' Reverent Mother, and also gives birth to a daughter named Alia (Alicia Witt), who over the two years ages rapidly, so that she appears to be about 8 years old maybe? And she was born with, like, all the knowledge and powers of the Bene Gesserit, I guess. I'd say she's kind of creepy. And, um, eventually the emperor comes to Arrakis to try to stop the Fremen attacks, but the Fremen win, and stuff. Some more majorly important developments occur, but I don't want to spoil everything about the movie. There are also lots of characters I haven't mentioned, of lesser importance. The only one I'd feel really bad about not mentioning at all is a Fremen housekeeper who warns Paul of danger at one point. She was rather underused in the story, I thought, and I only mention her because she was played by Linda Hunt, and I wanted to mention all the actors who were at all familiar to me. (There are some bigger names who I'm afraid weren't really familiar to me.)

So... I guess I don't know what else to say. It's all just really weird and sort of awkwardly put together, but at least the story was kind of interesting. Oh yeah, I also wanted to mention that we frequently hear characters' thoughts, especially Paul's. That was another thing that was weird about the movie. And hopefully I'm not forgetting anything else I wanted to say.

The book was later adapted as a TV miniseries in 2000, and a couple of movies in the 2020s.