David Lynch has many problematic “villains” in his movies, which is kind of the entire point of Blue Velvet, but in Dune, that excess doesn’t always work. Still, something about this scene, in particular, is in terrible taste and - intentionally or not - homophobic. Yes, we need to know that the Duke is evil and sadistic. Now, we can debate until the end of the day whether or not Lynch wanted that particular on-the-nose voiceover, but that’s not the point.
And while it’s happening, we get a voiceover from Feyd (Sting), and he’s like, “This is what I’m going to do to the Duke and his family.” One example of this is when Baron Harkonnen (Kenneth McMillan) kills an underling for sport in a gut-wrenching, utterly disgusting scene. It makes the film seem unsure of itself at many times. Hearing various characters, sometimes in the same scene, add up to create a second audio-only movie, one that is whispering at you while you’re trying to watch the regular movie. The constant voiceovers are also annoying. Max von Sydow and Kyle MacLachlan as Liet Kynes and Paul in Dune. What makes this film so strange is that the choices are equally baffling, infuriating, and inspired. (That would be super misguided.) There’s no reason to believe such a thing exists, and even if it did, the problems with this version of Dune have nothing to do with length. Part of that seems to be connected to the fact that he wasn’t given the ability to have a final cut which could suggest that somebody should start a #ReleasetheLynchCut movement. Suffice to say, Lynch took his name off some versions and refuses to talk about it today. Getting into the making and the problems behind the scenes on Dune is a boring way to assess its whole schtick. Not just among hardcore Dune-head fans but people who have never read the book too. It is not a misunderstood “bad” sci-fi film, nor is it a “good” one that is simply “underrated.” Lynch’s Dune is all of those things and none of those things simultaneously, and something else, too. The 1984 David Lynch Dune comes closest to that last criterion, but the truth is, none of the easy ways of talking about science fiction films really apply to it. Perhaps if something is a noble attempt at adapting a beloved science fiction story, then that’s enough, too, which certainly applies to the 1995 film Johnny Mnemonic, a movie that is awesome but still, basically, a failure.ĭavid Lynch directs Dune. The art abides all on its own.īut what is really being said when we say bad sci-fi movies (or shows) are good? Unless you’re only asking people to look beyond aesthetics that have aged hilariously and poorly ( Logan’s Run), the claim that bad sci-fi is actually good usually contains a contradiction: This art isn’t really good, but it is watchable and “fun,” like The Chronicles of Riddick.įailing that, maybe this troubled art is essential for understanding aspects of the genre, like the original Flash Gordon or, in rare cases, the film captured a certain mood, even if the film is still bad like 1998’s Lost in Space. Correlatively, if you can’t get over it, that’s fine, and maybe just as well. This is why I like to say that you'll find it's a great show if you can get over the outrageous hairstyles in Babylon 5. Any narrative flaws or unintended kitsch inside a science fiction show or movie is helpful because it makes the viewer work harder to find the thing that’s profound and good about the art. I love this line of thinking and make this kind of argument all the time, and it works on “good” and “bad” sci-fi in equal measure. To put it another way, this is like saying Planet of the Apes is good because the rubber masks look fake, not despite it. Because of its pulpy origins, sci-fi is one of the few types of fiction where the flaws aren’t always flaws but instead can be qualified, after the fact, as the price of admission and simply part of the art form. Saying a bad movie is actually good is a familiar tactic when talking about films in general, but it’s a particularly common flex in the discourse of science fiction flicks.