Dune 2021 Will More Than Likely Be The Definitive Adaptation
By George Robbins
While there may not be many space epic films which exist in the world, there are some and among those is a movie that has had a niche audience over the years and that is the movie ‘Dune.’ There are not really all that many films which can take home the title of being an epic, but this movie was one in pretty much every sense of the word. From start to finish, the movie ranged from just over two hours to just over three hours based upon which version of the film was being screened. ‘Dune’ is a science fiction film based upon the novel by writer Frank Herbert which was originally written in 1965 while the movie ended up releasing in 1984. The movie, written and directed by one David Lynch (Twin Peaks, Mulholland Drive), and it was poised to be an interesting movie until it actually released to the public.
The problem with adapting movies from novels is that the latter is a medium that sees a lot of time and effort being put into a readable detail that people can understand and imagine for themselves by reading it. Unfortunately, movies must take that detail and turn it into visual detail that people will be able to recognize and that is a very unfortunate job to have. Being able to take something that people can imagine in their minds being completely different from each interpretation and turning that into one definitive version of that thing is a difficult task. Ultimately it falls to the director and set designers to come up with whatever it is that they need for this stuff to work. When it comes to adapting novels to film, it is even more difficult for science fiction films to be done properly because everyone imagines things being far different.
The original ‘Dune’ movie was one that not a lot of people could identify with and it didn’t help that David Lynch is known for having a strange way of directing. The movie was an epic the likes of which no one would have imagined but it ended up being a box office bomb in the end after only grossing about $31 million on a budget of $40 million. Not only did the movie do bad while it was in theaters but it was plagued by constant development trouble before it was even released. They had talked about making a film based upon the novel not long after the novel’s release but it would be almost 20 years before they got a working film out of the novel. Unfortunately, the issues they were having were a glimpse into the future because they prefaced the lack of box office response that the movie had upon release.
Ever since then, it has been a question as to whether the failure of the movie was because of the director and his directing style or if it was the novel the movie was based upon. Some novels simply do not translate as well as people think they do into the movie medium and as such, the movie itself does not feel like it is paced properly and people end up disliking it. The new and upcoming Denis Villeneuve-directed ‘Dune‘ will be a good opportunity to gauge which one of those two statements is true and it is likely it was the former issue. Brian Herbert, the son of the original author Frank Herbert, has continued writing stories in the series and developing comics based upon the series and he has said that the upcoming version of the film will be the definitive version of his father’s original work. The movie was originally supposed to release by the end of this year, but it was pushed back to October 1st of 2021 where it will release on HBO Max and in theaters simultaneously. Hopefully the movie will end up being the thing that everyone wanted from the original film.