"A beginning is the time for taking the most delicate care that the balances are correct," opens Frank Herbert’s 1965 science-fiction epic Dune. Herbert says of the novel’s beginnings, "It began with a concept: to do a long novel about the messianic convulsions which periodically inflict themselves on human societies. I had this idea that superheroes were disastrous for humans." The concept and its subsequent story, which took Herbert eight years to execute, won the Hugo Award, the first Nebula Award for Best Novel, and the minds of millions. In his 2001 book, The Greatest Sci-Fi Movies Never Made, chronicler of cinematic science-fiction follies David Hughes writes, "While literary fads have come and gone, Herbert’s legacy endures, placing him as the Tolkien of his genre and architect of the greatest science fiction saga ever written." Kyle MacLachlan, who played Paul Atreides in David Lynch's film adaptation, told OMNI Magazine in 1984, "This kind of story will survive forever."

Writers of all kinds are motivated by the search and pursuit of story. A newspaper reporter from the mid-to-late-1950s until 1969, Herbert employed his newspaper research methods to the anti-superhero idea. He gathered notes on scenes and characters and spent years researching the origins of religions and mythologies. Joseph Campbell, the mythologist with his finger closest to the pulse of the Universe, wrote in The Inner Reaches of Outer Space: Metaphor as Myth and as Religion (1986), "The life of mythology derives from the vitality of its symbols as metaphors delivering, not simply the idea, but a sense of actual participation in such a realization of transcendence, infinity, and abundance… Indeed, the first and most essential service of a mythology is this one, of opening the mind and heart to the utter wonder of all being." Dune is undeniably infused with the underlying assumptions of a powerful mythology, as are its film adaptations.

After labored but failed attempts by Alejandro Jodorowsky, Haskell Wexler, and Ridley Scott (the latter of whom offered the writing job to no less than Harlan Ellison) to adapt Dune to film, David Lynch signed on to do it in 1981. With The Elephant Man (1980) co-writers Eric Bergren and Christopher De Vore, Lynch started over from page one, ditching previous scripts by Jodorowsky, Rudolph Wurlitzer, and Frank Herbert himself, as well as conceptual art by H.R. Giger (who had designed the many elements of planet Giedi Prime, home of House Harkonnen), Jean Giraud, Dan O’Bannon, and Chris Foss. Originally 200 pages long, Lynch’s script went through five revisions before it was given the green light, which took another full year of rewriting. “There’s a lot of the book that’s isn’t in the film,” Lynch said at the time. “When people read the book, they remember certain things, and those things are definitely in the film. It’s tight, but it’s there.”

Lynch’s Dune is of the brand of science fiction during which one has to suspend not only disbelief in the conceits of the story but also disbelief that you’re still watching the movie. I’m thinking here of enjoyable but cheesy movies like Logan’s Run (1976), Tron (1984), The Last Starfighter (1984), and many moments of the original Star Wars trilogy (1977, 1980, 1983), the latter of which owes a great debt to Herbert's Dune. I finally got to see Lynch's version on the big screen in 2013 at Logan Theater in Chicago, and as many times as I’ve watched it over the years, it was still a treat to see it the size Lynch originally intended.

Dune is not necessarily a blight on Lynch’s otherwise stellar body of work, but many, including Lynch, think that it is. "A lot of people have tried to film Dune," Herbert himself once said. "They all failed." The art and design for Jodorowsky's attempt, by H.R. Giger, Moebius, Chris Foss, Dan O'Bannon, and others, was eventually parted out to such projects as Star Wars (1977), Alien (1979), and Blade Runner (1982). When describing the experience in the book Lynch on Lynch (2005), Lynch uses sentences like, “I got into a bad thing there,” “I really went pretty insane on that picture,” “Dune took me off at the knees. Maybe a little higher,” and, “It was a sad place to be.” Lynch’s experience with Dune stands with Ridley Scott’s Blade Runner, and Terry Gilliam’s The Man Who Killed Don Quixote (2018) as chaotic case studies in the pitfalls of novel-adapting and movie-making gone difficult-to-wrong. As Jodorowsky says, "You want to make the most fantastic art of movie? Try. If you fail, is not important. We need to try."

[Denis Villeneuve and Rebecca Ferguson on the set of Dune. Photo by Chiabella James.]

I was as skeptical as anyone would be when Denis Villeneuve's adaptation was announced, even though I'm a big fan of Villeneuve's work and his aesthetic. Everything from the foreboding of Enemy (2013) and the family drama of Prisoners (2013) to the abject and arid borderlands of Sicario (2015), to the damp alienness of Arrival (2016) and Blade Runner 2049 (2017) all seem to prepare Villeneuve to tackle the historical weight of Dune. In an era when it's difficult to imagine any single story having any kind of lasting impact, reviving a story from over 50 years ago seems as risky as trying to come up with something new. Sarah Welch-Larson writes at Bright Wall/Dark Room,

The movie is weighed down by the reputation of the novel that inspired it, by the expectations of everyone who’s loved the story, by the baggage it carries with it. The plot of the original novel is ponderous enough, concerned as it is with ecology and politics and conspiracies to breed a super-powered Messiah. Add 56 years of near-religious reverence within the science fiction community, plus a mountain of fair criticism and a history of disappointing screen adaptations, and any new version of Dune would be justifiably pinned under the weight of its own expectations.

One word that seems inextricable from Villeneuve's Dune is scale. The scale of the planets, the ships, the interstellar travel, the desert of Arrakis, the massive Shai-Hulud, and even Baron Vladimir Harkonnen are all colossal, the sheer size of the story and its history notwithstanding. It's an aspect of the story that the other adaptation attempts don't quite capture. To be fair, Lynch's original cut was rumored to be four hours long, and Jodorowsky had a 14-hour epic planned. The fact that this two-hour movie is only the first part of his version gives us first indication that Villeneuve being realistic but also taking the size of it seriously.

[Rebecca Ferguson is Lady Jessica. Photo by Chiabella James.]

I've now seen it in the theater five times, one of those in IMAX, and the attention to scale is appropriate. The movie is nothing if it isn't immense, as wide as any of Earth's deserts, as dark as any of its oceans. It looms over you like nothing else you've ever seen. In a cast that includes Timothée Chalamet, Jason Momoa, Javier Bardem, Josh Brolin, Oscar Isaac, Sharon Duncan-Brewster, Stellan Skarsgård, Dave Bautista, Stephen McKinley Henderson, and David Dastmalchian, it's Rebecca Ferguson's performance as Lady Jessica that stands out. As powerful and dangerous as she is, she's also the emotional center of the movie. Chalamet's Paul Atreides might be the one you follow, but Ferguson is the one you feel. She's mesmerizing in the role.

In light of the new movie, Herbert's novel continues to spread the story. The designer Alex Trochut did the cover designs for Penguin’s Galaxy series of hardbacks, including well-worn volumes like William Gibson's Neuromancer, Arthur C. Clarke's 2001: A Space Odyssey, Ursula K. Le Guin's The Left Hand of Darkness, and Herbert's Dune. Trochut's Dune logo is perfect. Not only do all of the letters work as a 90-degree tilted version of the same U-shaped form, but the logo itself works when spun to any side. Weirdly, this version appears on the back of the book. Why you would display the word "dune" any other way after seeing this is beyond me.

Beginnings are indeed delicate times, and Frank Herbert knew not what he had started. "I didn’t set out to write a classic or a bestseller," he said. "In fact, once it was published, I wasn't really aware of what was going on with the book, to be quite candid. I have this newspaperman’s attitude about yesterday’s news, you know? 'I've done that one, now let me do something else.'" He went on to write five sequels, and his son Brian and Kevin J. Anderson have written many other novels set in the Dune universe. Even for its author, the mythology of Dune proved too attractive to escape.

ICYMI:

In case you missed them, I have three (3!) new books out this year! They make great Christmas gifts!

• Follow for Now, Vol. 2: More Interviews with Friends and Heroes (from punctum books)

• Fender the Fall (a sci-fi novella from Alien Buddha Press)

• Abandoned Accounts (poetry collection from First Cut)

And one coming early next year (Boogie Down Predictions, an edited collection about hip-hop, time, and Afrofuturism from Strange Attractor Press), which is available for preorder, and one coming out next summer (Escape Philosophy: Journeys Beyond the Human Body from punctum books). In case you missed the former, there’s more about it in this newsletter. More on the latter soon!

Thank you for your continued interest and support! It is appreciated.

Hope you're well,

-royc.

http://roychistopher.com