Alejandro Jodorowsky, Stanley Kubrick, Steven Spielberg bowed to the challenge of adapting Dune (Editions Robert Laffont). David Lynch made one of the worst sci-fi movies out of it, two mini-series won two Emmy Awards, and Denis Villeneuve (First contact, Blade Runner 2049) is making the new adaptation, in theaters on Wednesday September 15.
Published in 1965, the first adaptation project dates back to 1975, a French production which was to transform science fiction into cinema, without ever seeing the light of day. What fascinates so much about Dune ?
When Dune is released in the United States in 1965, America is in turmoil. The country engages massively in Vietnam the same year, the Beat Generation has given way to the more radical hippies. The counter-culture takes power. Freedom, solidarity, pacifism, ecology and spirituality are part of a subversive ideology of which Dune is one of the catalysts. The hippies will be recovered in the 70s, annihilated in 1980.
With Philip K. Dick (Ubik) and Norman Spinrad (Jack Baron and Eternity), Frank Herbert felt his time. In 1965, science fiction was a minor genre, considered infantile, although Isaac Asimov (I, Robot)) or Arthur C. Clarke (2001: A Space Odyssey) are recognized. For Dick, recognition came with Blade runner (1982) when he dies, Spinrad is still waiting. The hippie generation recognized itself in Herbert’s work, especially for its ecological and spiritual content. Dune is also the story of a war, with the background that of Vietnam in its time, but tinged with “Jihad” in the book. This holy war goes back to our days. Since 1965, the Asian conflict (Korea, Vietnam, Laos) has moved to the Middle East. Desert, the planet Arrakis of the novel today takes on the hues of Afghanistan.
Dune is the story of Arrakis, a planet of sand where the “spice” is cultivated, a drug (cf. Afghan opium) which makes it possible to bend time and facilitate space travel. It is managed by the Galactic Empire which has entrusted its custody to the cruel Harkonnen family. Arrakis is ruled by the Atreides family whose last born could well be the messiah who will deliver the planet from its evil grip. Based on an American Manichean model, the novel dazzles with its subtext where environmental themes, drugs, religion and war emerge. Very literary, critics qualify the book as a masterpiece, between Antiquity and Shakespeare, with Wagnerian reminiscences. A novel of SF with such references, unheard of: a revolution, quickly a bestseller.
Block of more than 500 pages Dune is beautiful, a little thick, weighed down by several suites by its author, then by his son: a gold mine. Since then, comics, video and board games have emerged, musicians have been inspired by them and a third TV series is in the pipeline: an empire.
In 1974, after the unexpected successes in France and in Europe of El Topo (1970) and The sacred mountain (1973) by Alejandro Jodorowsky, the French producer Michel Seydoux gives him carte blanche. He answers Dune. The director brings together Dan O’Bannon with special effects, Moebius, comic artist, HR Giger, painter, and Christopher Foss, SF illustrator, for the visual design. All are linked to the revolutionary new BD / SF journal screaming metal which announces the project. To the music: Pink Floyd and Magma. The cast: Brontis Jodorowsky – whom his father directed in El Topo -, David Carradine, Salvador Dali, Amanda Lear, Orson Welles, Mick Jagger. Unbelievable.
The film is valued at $ 15 million, a large sum at the time. Seydoux is missing five to make ends meet. He leaves with Jodo knocking on the doors of the American majors – Metro, Fox, Universal, Columbia and Disney – to get there. In their luggage: the complete storyboard of the film drawn by Moebius (co-founder of screaming metal) : never seen. Everyone is dazzled, but no one accepts the director behind the project to make the film.
The French leave empty-handed, but all the major American studios keep the manna from the stroryboard which goes around all of Hollywood. He will be at the origin of the aesthetics of SF in cinema from Star wars (1977, two years later) which will draw on it, as Alien (1979), which brings together Moebius, Giger, Christopher Foss and Dan O’Bannon (as screenwriter) in the credits, defectors from the initial project. The influence of Dune by Jodorowsky has been featured in every SF blockbuster since, until today. It remains “the greatest sci-fi movie ever made”. The whole story is beautifully told in the documentary Jodorowsky’s Dune by Frank Pavich (2016).
Jodorowsky wanted to make a messianic film (as is the hero of Dune), a “LSD experience without LSD “, he said, for “give a boost to youth “. But doesn’t this movie already exist in 2001 (1968) by Kubrick? Jodo breaks his teeth: his previous nonconformist works do not reassure the majors. In 1975, never had such a complex film reached such a pre-production point without being directed. Failure all along the line.
Seydoux resells the rights to the novel to producer Dino De Laurentiis who gives the film to his daughter Raffaella. This is his second production, after the success of Conan (1982). David Lynch emerges from the triumph ofElephant man (1981): the director is the perfect choice for the film. It will be a fiasco, which its author will deny. Mulholland Drive (2001) is he not a film version of his Hollywood experience?
On paper, this Dune is promising. Lynch has just discovered his favorite actor Kyle McLachlan to play Paul Atréides, Jürgen Prochnov is perfect as Duc Leto, Sting is Feyd-Rautha Harkonnen, Max von Sidow, Brad Dourif, Dean Stockwell, Patrick Stewart are in the game. So far, so good. The result: one of the worst sci-fi films ever made, with a hideous aesthetic and unworthy script simplification.
No quarter on such a fiasco, the criticism is assassinated and the film a failure reduced to the only opportunism to cling to the vogue of films of post-space.Star wars. The children who saw the film at the time remembered it as a cult film from the 80s, which it portrays well. SF lovers, Dune and de Lynch are distressed. Jodo is delighted. The film does not come close to its project. A product, everything he creates against. First class burial.
Dune thus remained in the boxes, the film not having benefited from an adaptation worthy of the name. HBO draws two mini-series from it, Dune and Children of Dune (adaptation of the Frank Herbert sequel), rewarded with two Emmy in 2000 and 2003. Another victim of a failed aesthetic design, and all-digital special effects today dated. “It’s not that”…
The Warner, which holds the rights to the novel, tightens the cover by announcing in 2018 a new version which will be released on September 15, after many postponements due to the Covid. At the realization, Denis Villeneuve reassures. Revealed by Fires (2010), the Quebecer has two major science fiction films behind him, First contact (2016) and Blade Runner 2049 (2017), a great film and a masterpiece.
The universe of Dune is emblematic of SF: interstellar space, desert planet, giant worms, military and imperial costumes, palaces, technological warfare… Everything Star wars in fact. Previous versions have aged badly. Except that of Jodorowsky who, on paper, is always one step ahead. What would he do with it today? No one asked him. Villeneuve knows the whole story. How will he do it? Answer on September 15th.