Dune: Extended Edition

February 12, 2006

Rated: PG-13 Runtime: 177 min Rating: 3 out of 5 stars

In 1984 when David Lynch released Dune in its original theatrical cut, he was asked to explain his film in one word, he said �complex� - and he was right. The movie Dune is not typical sci-fi like Star Trek or Star Wars where you can just sit down and watch it regardless of your knowledge of the back-story. Dune requires at the very least a basic understanding of Frank Herberts Universe. Let me put that in perspective for you; Imagine JRR Tolkien’s Lord of The Rings Middle Earth multiplied by 10 and you will come close to the complexity and depth of the world of Dune. This is not a problem for die hards; It can however really suck for the casual viewer, but at least David Lynch took all of that into consideration when editing the theatrical cut. Too bad Lynch’s replacement “Allen Smithee” didn’t consider the same thing when editing this one.

Dune: Extended Edition I will not go over the original movie and its plot because as you can tell by the first paragraph; Dune is too complicated to explain and must be seen to fully understand it anyway, so what would be the point. I love Dune in it’s original form so try not to assume I hate the movie itself when you read this review; I just didn’t like this cut and in my opinion Lynch was right to distance himself from it.

In the original cut the scenes although foggy for some, flowed. This time the scenes are cut together in a way that does not make sense! Chronologically speaking, the scenes almost feel like they are out of order now and as a fan it irritated me a bit. Let’s get to it; The Good first and then the Bad.

The best thing about the extended edition is the opening and the narration for the entire back-story of Dune. This narration is accompanied with stills and production art that covers the battle with the machines all the way to the beginning of the film, which is a pretty cool addition. Deleted scenes with an introduction from Rafaella De Laurentiis and lastly, the battle scenes are more graphic and intense… and that is it!

The bad however is too much to bother with but I will try. The sound is inconsistent between the new scenes and the original cut, the transfer quality is grainy as hell at times and the pacing of the new version just bored me to tears. I could go on but if you plan to buy it you will, and if you have no idea what I’m talking about, you will forget this movie and this review in 10 minutes so let me save both of us and stop now. Oh, I almost forgot there is one other redeeming quality to this Extended Edition DVD; You do get the original edition with updated DD 5.1 track on side one which is the only reason I am giving 3 stars instead of 2.

Posted by J.C. Edwards | Filed Under 3 Stars, DVD, Kyle McLachlan, PG-13, Patrick Stewart, Richard Jordan, SciFi, Sean Young, Sting