It is 2023 and I am watching Dune 2. I enjoy the visual style again and am comforted that the story of Paul Atredies is completed. Every element of it comes from the book and so I am not surprised by much but the visual effects are the best we can do in the mid-2020s and the director is the best to ever hold a long shot since Stanley Kubrick or — given it’s setting — I guess I should say David Lean.
The spice must flow.
It is 1984 and David Lynch has released his version of Dune. I do not see it as I am six and no one thinks it is appropriate for me. Pulitzer Prize-winning Film Critic Roger Ebert gives it one star and calls it a ‘real mess.’ Later critics will be kinder. A friend will urge me to watch it before seeing the 2021 Dune.
I try but give up 30 minutes or so into it. I might have lasted an hour. The last thing I remember is Baron Harkonen escaping his poisoning death again. I think of poor doomed Leto Atreides. Forever required to die and give Paul a reason for vengeance. And I think, you know, Hamlet’s father always gets the short end of the stick.
The spice must flow.
It is the late 1990s and I am in High School. I read books like they are water. Few payday weekends pass without three trips: a visit to the comic book shop, then a jaunt to FYE for a CD, and then I walk down the hall of a mall — which has not yet been destroyed by a hurricane or humanity’s need to shop at home in their underwear — to my last stop. It is a Waldenbooks where I will pick a new novel.
I choose Frank Herbert’s Dune.
It moves me in a way few books do. Along with Heinlein’s, The Moon is a Harsh Mistress it quickly becomes my favorite science fiction novel.
Sometime later I grab Dune Messiah. The second book in the series. I bounce right off it giving up 30 pages in. Sometime later a friend will tell me of Paul’s final fate. I never try to read more Dune.
The spice must flow.
It is 2000 and the Sci-Fi channel releases Dune the miniseries. I find it amazing. It is faithful to the book and has stunning computer-generated graphics. The story is finally given justice in a live-action thing. I can’t wait for what else the Sci Fi channel will do with this technology and a world of great science fiction books that can be adapted.
They do movies about tornadoes with sharks inside them until all of what is known as cable television becomes irrelevant. The world of malls and cable television passes away.
Dune remains.
The spice must flow.
It is the mid-1970s and Alejandro Jodorowsky is tapped to direct Dune. I am not yet born. As Dune 2021 makes its way to cinemas I will learn that there is a documentary about Jodorowsky’s attempt. I think I should see it but I never do. News reports tell me that Jodorwosky ultimately failed but that he pulled together an impressive list of imaginative artists, writers, and thinkers. One of the great comic book artists of all time, Jean “Moebius” Giraud, creates a 3000-piece storyboard. H.R. Geiger, who created the alien in Alien, is part of the team.
The documentary notes that the storyboards and other work by this group make the rounds in Hollywood. It argues that Star Wars, Terminator, Alien, and a host of other movie science fiction have their genesis in this failure.
In the present this makes me think that perhaps that’s why I don’t have the religious fervor for Dune 2021 that many others experience. Perhaps I have just seen too many versions of this story in one form or another to care as much.
The spice must flow.
It is October 22, 2021, and Dune is released in theaters and on HBO Max. I watch it at home over the weekend. It is what I expected. God Tier visuals. A familiar story. Director Denis Villeneuve clearly doesn’t feel the need to explain much or engage in character-building dialogue. I think this is probably the right choice.
The score is as impressive as the movie. The filmmakers treat a story with giant sandworms and villains who are evil for evil’s sake as if it is Shakespeare. Or as Jadorworsky once described it, Proust.
There is no flaw here. Nothing is wrong. It is Dune. Or at least, it is the first third of Dune. Half of Dune is still Dune. It will forever be Dune. It is as it should be.
Later that week a co-worker asks me what I think of Dune.
“Well … it’s loud,” I say.
We both laugh. But behind the laughter, I feel something else. Perhaps I have grown tired of Dune. Of this story. Of these people. I want to go somewhere else, I want to see a new story. Perhaps I should create one.
Instead, I write a long review of Dune for an app on the pocket computer that we colloquially refer to as a phone. I still use my phone to make phone calls. Those younger than me hate phone calls. Thinking of this makes me feel old.
It also nags at me that I never saw this Dune in IMAX. But two weeks pass and I don’t get the chance. Life gets in the way. Dune is replaced by Marvel’s The Eternals. The world moves on.
For the next few weeks, my coworkers and I will stop one another and say, ‘The spice must flow.’
Sometimes we do, ‘fear is the mind-killer.’ Though none of us can get all the way through it.
It is 1957 and writer Frank Herbert is in Florence, Oregon. He becomes enamored of the dunes. The US Department of Agriculture is trying to use poverty grass to stabilize the area. Herbert considers the land and comes up with a story about religion, drugs, and ecology.
He spends five years writing and revising it. Twenty publishers reject it. It finally comes to life in 1965. It sells poorly and the editor who took a chance on it is fired.
Over time, it is recognized as a masterpiece. Herbert spends the rest of his life writing sequels.
The spice must flow.
Roger Ebert gives Dune (1984) a 1 star review
Syfy’s Dune Miniseries is the Most Okay Adaptation of the Book to Date
Dark Highways 