FRANK HERBERT'S DUNE (2000) has unfortunately not stood the test of time
Not even the extended Director's Cut of John Harrison's adaptation can salvage the miniseries from its fundamental shortcomings.
- “Will we ever have peace, Muad’Dib?”
- “We will have victory.”
It was a valiant attempt.
That was already the phrase I once used to describe David Lynch’s 1984 film version of Frank Herbert’s Dune, and it remains an even more pertinent way to describe John Harrison’s laudably ambitious Sci-Fi Channel miniseries adaptation from the turn of the millennium.
Perhaps it’s unfair to compare the miniseries to the films that came before and after it, considering Lynch’s earlier film, and Denis Villeneuve’s later two-part duology, both had much, much bigger budgets to work with than the miniseries did. (Lynch had a $40-ish million budget, or $135-ish million in 2024 money; Villeneuve had a combined $355 million across both his films; Harrison only had $20 million, or $36-ish million today, to make all three feature-length 90 minute episodes.)
Perhaps I’m too spoiled by how amazing Villeneuve’s two Dune films are, and should cut the miniseries some slack.
Hell, I even watched the extended Director’s Cut of the miniseries — with added dialogue, violence, and boobs — to make sure I saw the best possible version of Harrison’s adaptational vision.
But alas, in spite of all that, I’m sorry to say… the miniseries just kind of sucks.
In terms of things I did like about it:
I give props to the major beefing up of Princess Irulan’s character to be a more involved player in the story. I like that the Fremen’s blue-within-blue eyes glow in the dark, which allows for some striking imagery that plays with the contrast of their eyes shining eerily from the shadows. I love the excellent performance from the little girl who plays Alia, who was just as great a child actor as Alicia Witt was back when she so memorably played Alia in Lynch’s film. I appreciate the boldness of the cinematography, taking a big swing towards extremely subjective lighting that is less beholden to reality, and more to mirroring the characters’ emotions, and expressing the atmosphere in a super heightened manner. And, since two of my favourite scenes from the book never made it into either of the big screen versions, I appreciate them turning up in this one.
Pity that the miniseries does a disservice to the original power of those scenes, in the same way it fails to capture so much of what makes the book so fascinatingly detailed and compelling. The biggest misstep, and the same one that befell Lynch’s Dune, is the omission of one of the book’s crucial plot points, and one which Villeneuve’s films took great pains to make abundantly clear: that the “prophecy” painting Paul as a messiah is, in fact, a Bene Gesserit fabrication, a story the Sisterhood embedded in Fremen culture hundreds and hundreds of years ago, leveraging religious fanaticism as a tool of control, power, and protective contingency. Any adaptation of Dune without this crucial piece of the puzzle just renders it into resembling your bog-standard “chosen one”/”white saviour” fantasy narrative, which Dune always gets accused of being anyway, even though the book is rich with subversions and deconstructions of that trope. That’s part of what makes the book stand out from the crowd, even 60-ish years after its release.
What John Harrison’s Frank Herbert’s Dune suffers the most from, though, is its cheapness and garishness, the Adam-West-Batman-esque camp laid on thick with its depiction of the Harkonnens (all topsy-turvy Dutch angles, maniacal laughter, and Ian McNeice’s Baron Vladimir monologuing like a cartoon villain), the VFX having aged quite badly (though what hope was there for CGI done on a tiny TV budget in the year 2000?), the acting from most of the cast being mediocre at best (with William Hurt at his sleepiest as Duke Leto), and the overall sluggish (or should that be wormish?) pacing, making it all a chore to sit through.
Give me the Lynch version — be it the SpiceDiver Cut, or even the botched theatrical cut! — over this version any day. The miniseries may be more faithful to the book, but faithfulness isn’t automatically equivocal to its level of quality.
So it goes.
(Oh, and here’s some added irony: the miniseries design of the Fremen in their pale stillsuits, coupled with their pale hooded cloaks, and blue glowing eyes atop their facemasks, makes the Fremen often look like either a multitude of Sub-Zeros from Mortal Kombat when their hoods are down, or when their hoods are up, they look like a bunch of clones of Moon Knight. A character famously played by Oscar Isaac, who also played Duke Leto in the 2021 Dune! Bada-bing! It all comes full circle!)
Miniseries Rating: ★★
Originally published at https://letterboxd.com.