Frank Herbert’s massive 1965 novel Dune has been made into yet another version which is scheduled to come to theaters later this fall. I have read the book more than once, and seen both earlier film versions repeatedly. I will see this one as well.
Reviewers generally pan the first theatrical film by David Lynch, starring Kyle MacLachlan as Paul Atreides. I disagree while admitting that if you’d not read the book first, as I had, you might miss more than a few of the nuances.
The 2000 TV miniseries for the SciFi channel starred Alec Newman as Paul, and was good in its own way. As was the follow-on Children of Dune, released in 2003, with some of the same cast.
Now, sixty years or so after it was written, another filmic version has been produced. I wonder if Herbert’s imagined future hasn’t passed it's sell-by date?
Dune was written in the psychedelic 1960s, all these years later the future imagined by Herbert looks less and less credible. Herbert saw humans getting more involved with mind-expanding drugs and shunning computers and IT.
In spite of a few creative types in Silicon Valley sampling hallucinogens, the reliance on drugs vs. on machines seems to have gone the opposite way - the machines are winning hands down while drugs are the often-terminal anesthesia of society’s losers and burnouts.
Hearing once again a Guild Navigator intone “The Spice Must Flow” and Paul recite “Fear is the Mind-Killer” will be nostalgic for me but I have to wonder if it will mean much to a modern audience.
It is an epic tale but most ‘Duniacs’ are old as dirt, like me. Does anyone still read the books?
