Dune ...

I think that the book is extremely hard to transmute into a movie. The movie did a good job of it, but a longer format would be kinder to the story.
My choices only apply for the the first book, not any of the others that wandered far more in scope and would be even harder to turn into a movie or miniseries.
The only movie that I've seen that did justice to the original book was The Name Of The Rose...of course, it had Sean Connery, so it had to be good.

I wanted something stronger than "I didn't like DuneTM." I really liked the book a lot when I read it, and I thought the movie sucked and sucked and sucked and sucked. And then sucked harder, and then sucked some more. Really, I just can't tell you how psyched I was to hear that they were making a movie from a book that I really liked, and how disappointed I was by the godawful incoherent mess that it actually was. (And forget a "force" or that awful "Voice Warriors" bullcrap; they could have done it as a martial art and it would work!) As a side note, the last time I re-read DuneTB, I found that it was going downhill fast, and decided never to read it again, so that I could still kinda like it.

No way would Jessica have reacted like that when Paul fell towards the sandworm in the desert. That one scene, so jarringly wrong, is what stands out for me from that movie.

Book and movie were both OK, hard to compare to one another; I know what you mean about the "voice warrior" thing although it didn't bug me as much as it seems to bug you. (DuneTM was *much* closer to the book than BladeRunner was to DADoES. Perhaps Total Recall/We'll Remember it for you, Wholesale would be a better comparison.) BTW, remember that DuneTB is actually Dune-the six-book series, which I somewhat shamefacedly admit to having read. The raining at the end of the movie is drawn from one of the other books, I think, though it's hard to remember.

I only saw the movie. Can't present much of an opinion on this, and have as yet resisted any temptation to read the book. ***lisashea You're not going to break me that easily. ***reality: my lunch isn't that long

I think it's a darn shame that Frank Herbert died after he agreed to come to Technicon (OH NO! THE "T" WORD!) the following year at WPI. It would have been an honor to meet him. Oh, and I liked the Dune books but I kinda lost interest after the first 3 or so.

How about a "I've never read the book or seen the movie" option?

When I saw DuneTM it was subtitled and I still ended up trying to explain (in Spanish) to about twenty people what was going on, based on a book I had read in English with a lot of made-up phrases/concepts in it. Challenging begins to describe the experience.

Feh! to books-on-tape.

whee... okay.. Dune was a good movie, and yeah, I guess it should have been called something different. it followed the basic plot, with modifications. the most major and obvious modification was the 'weirding way' or the voice powers as the survey called it. in the book, the weirding way was simply a martial art, like karate, only slightly more so. that was the only thing that made a good movie into something so cheeseball that I have had to walk away from the tv(when I tried to watch it for a 3rd time). the mystical aspects of the bene gesserit(sp?) were simply due to the observation, spice and training. The training included a knowledge of how to pitch your voice to command others or plant suggestions. the observation was because the order was millenia old and the center of a huge conspiracy and breeding program, and the spice was the magic blue powder that everyone was after. the voice weapon thing is an obvious misunderstanding and after you read the book seems quite stupid.
*jjg: remind me, I'll bring it in for you to read during lunch...
*jjg: thhhppppttttt... you know what I meant. you seem to read a book during lunch, then pick it up again the next day.
*bill: heh.. thank you.
Jody: I think book four was done that way on purpose. or at least I hope it was. it was one of the more boring I have read, up until close to the end. I think it adequately showed the stagnation imposed on the society by Leto II. then again, I have read the entire series at least twice, some parts three times or more. a fun book (or one I enjoyed) was the one by Herbert's son, I can't remember the title though.

There is no "I've never read or seen Dune" option...*grumble*

Arrakis-Dune-Desert planet

Dune,the movie - is one of the best science fiction films ever made.
Dune, the book - is one of the best science fiction novels ever written.
**lisashea/lelle, there was a version that aired on broadcast TV that had additional scenes and an intro segment where the universe was described in detail. I guess it was done to address the "what's going on" complaints. It was a kind of slideshow thing (with lots of voice voer). It was cool in that it linked current-day Earth to the Dune universe, explaining how all the groups formed and the current state of the power structure.

I feel very strongly that Dune is one of the best Sci-Fi books ever written. I played in DuneMUSH for 2 years and did a great deal of research into the characters, background, interpretations and meaning of the various books in the series. It was extremely well written.

It was really painful, therefore, to watch "Dune-The Movie". I'd have been much happier if they made it clear that it was a "based on" movie, sort of like Blade Runner. Instead they kept the name and removed much of the truly important content. They cut it down into a "space epic" like Star Wars which, while tons of fun and containing some meaning, lost or twisted a lot of the essence of the book. Why not do it as a series of movies instead of cramming it all into one (poorly)? Or remove the "connection" so we could just enjoy the movie as an "offshoot" instead of a real "interpretation"? The movie was fun. I have a copy at home. It was NOT "Dune" though. :)

Why not do a "Dune - Part I" ending with Paul joining the Fremen and the rest being "Dune - Part II"??

jjg: Give In to the Dune Side ... Books On Tape!!!

lelle: There IS no 5 hour version. The longest version is 3 hours - yours must have been chock full of commercials!!

Bill: Yes, that is the 3 hr "expanded" version. It was done using cut scenes from the "real" movie. The director hated it so much that he *refused* to have his name on this "expanded version" and they had to put a "filler name" in its place. The link at the top of this question goes through that whole situation.

bill: I didn't check any answers because none of them were true ... this doesn't seem against the survey creator's wishes, as they had only 'yes' boxes and no 'no' boxes. Perhaps multi-choice no-checked-boxes surveys should be considered conforming?

I really didn't like the movie, but the scene where Baron Harkonin gets the puss sucked out of his sores will stay with me forever.

Never saw it, never read it. You needed this category.

Dune (movie) is still pretty much the worst movie I've seen. I've never read the book. I've been told that I saw a version that is much longer than the standard one (the one I saw was over 5 hours long). I just thought it was extremely boring.
lisashea: no commercials, it was a videotape (not that they have commercials on Swedish TV anyway). It was definitely longer than three hours.

DuneTM was a stylistic masterpiece with little functional literary value. I guess you could compare it to an ornate gold leaf toilet.

DuneTB had many themes completely ignored in the movie. It needs to be redone.

i consider Dune (TB) to be one of the two best science fiction novels ever (with zelazny's Lord of Light). when i first saw the movie at the theatres, shortly after reading the book, i hated it. i recently saw it again, and this time i enjoyed the movie. however, i enjoyed it in the same way i enjoy many really bad/cheesy sci fi movies, because that is what it is, a cheesy sci-fi movie that comes nowhere near the book. some of the movie portrayed particular scenes from the book quite well, particularly visually (and the "voice" was well done too). the "voice weapons" were a really, really stupid idea. why these made the fremen so powerful i can't imagine. give me a blaster with a regular old trigger any day. i thought the movie portrayed the harkonens just fine. what problem did you have with them?