n a future galactic empire, power has been centralized in the hands of various noble houses. Politics has become an even greater stew of backroom deals and brutal backstabbing alliances. With all space travel dependent on continued production of Spice, a mysterious natural resource of the planet Arrakis, control of that world is the greatest priority of all—and when Duke Leto of the Atreides learns that the Emperor has placed his family in command of future spice production, he knows that he's been set up for destruction at the hands of his ancestral enemies the Harkonnen. He doesn't know that his son, Paul, is the end result of centuries of selective breeding—and the focal point of a prophecy destined to change the very face of Arrakis itself.
This three-disk set of the SCI FI Channel miniseries contains not only the director's cut of the 2000 production, but also a wealth of extras about the film itself, including full-length commentary by the production crew, an interview with director John Harrison, a feature on cinematographer Vittoro Storaro, production footage, production art and early designs from the projected Children of Dune sequel now in production.
There's also some exemplary extra material not devoted to the film itself, but rather examining the implications of Frank Herbert's storyline. One is a mini-documentary interviewing various religious scholars and one Jungian psychologist on the place of messiah figures in mankind's religions. Then there's a science future/science fiction roundtable, capturing a panel discussion between director John Harrison, inventor Ray Kurzweil, and noted SF figures Michael Cassutt, Octavia Butler and Harlan Ellison, which explores the implications of humanity's runaway technology on our future, our fiction and our way of life. There's precious little direct correlation to Dune itself, but it's still one hell of a fascinating conversation.
Character rather than camp
The complexity of the dueling ideas in Herbert's novel Dune is what made art out of what was otherwise (let's face it) a fairly simplistic plot. It's also what made adapting the work for screen so difficult. Before the first film version by David Lynch—which is, despite its vocal partisans, today widely regarded as one of the great disasters of cinema history—the adaptation was attempted and abandoned by talents as diverse as Orson Welles, Alexander Jodorowsky and Stephen Spielberg. Lynch's version, which has its moments, suffered from the near-impossibility of trying to cram not just the action but also the meat of the story into a two-hour film. Virtually every major character is followed around by intrusive voice-overs, the love story is as flat and schematic as possible, and the dramatic arc is almost nonexistent. If that film escaped total failure, it was largely because of the gleeful, over-the-top performances committed by many members of the cast.
At first, the John Harrison TV version seems doomed to bear several of the same flaws. The first two hours, anchored by a leaden William Hurt as Duke Leto Atreides, are slow, deadly serious and top-heavy with overbearing exposition. If anything, the more sober performances by these actors, bereft of any scenery-chewing, seem a step down from the wild theatrics of the film. But then the Harkonnens attack—and though the pace remains deliberate, the power starts to accumulate. The characters and the sense of wonder begin to shine through. When Paul and his widowed mother, Jessica, seek shelter with the Fremen, the nomadic people of Arrakis, there's even a real sense that they've encountered a real society, with real rules—and that the people they deal with are not actors wearing silly clothes for a science-fiction potboiler, but denizens of a culture with a history of its very own. Even the gigantic sandworms, which represent the planet's greatest danger and greatest natural asset, are realized with perfection.
The visuals are strong, the sets exquisite and the adaptation so strong that in some ways Harrison even improves on the hallowed novel. His best innovation is the increased role played by the Emperor's daughter, Princess Irulan. In the novel, she's an offstage presence whose contribution to the actual story is minimal until the sequel. In the miniseries, she's a strong-willed, intelligent presence with an agenda of her very own—an improvement by any standard.
