Another Dune, Like It or Not
They say the third time is a charm, though in the case of Dune I have my doubts. Regardless of what I think, Variety confirms that Peter Berg (The Kingdom) is attached to direct another version of Frank Herbert’s award winning epic sci-fi novel about the fight over a desert planet.
David Lynch took a crack in 1984, but his vision was cut off at the knees and dumped into a wood chipper. The merits of the result are debated. I think it has some terrific moments and fantastic production design, but the only real good to come of it was Lynch swearing never to work without final cut again.
In 2000, the Sci-Fi channel aired a six hour miniseries starring William Hurt and photographed by Vittorio Storaro which borrowed some from the look of the Lynch film but remained more faithful to the source material..
We’ll see how this one goes.
Source: Variety
Filed under: News, Upcoming
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Ach, no!
Why? Why? Why?
If David Lynch couldn’t swing it in a theatrical version and a six-hour miniseries failed to really grab the world’s attention, how the FRAK is Peter Berg going to dent this sand worm?
Hollywood never ceases to mystify me.
Could be interesting…Berg’s work in “The Kingdom” didn’t impress me, but I liked the visual quality of the film. It was a noble effort…but ultimately one too preoccupied with thrills than ideas.
I’ve never seen either version or read the book, so I’m pretty ambivalent about it…I’ll reserve judgement until I see it.
Berg needs to realize that he’s best at more intimate Hollywood formula stuff. Friday Night Lights and The Rundown were decent pieces of entertainment. But if The Kingdom was too big a bite for him to chew, this is going to be a fiasco.
I must admit, I love Peter Berg as a ‘light’ director. The Rundown is one of my Top 10 films (I succumb to the guilty pleasure of it). Hancock looks equally light, but they certainly have my money come summer. I’m in for this one. Berg hasn’t done me wrong yet.
I forgot about “Friday Night Lights,” I was surprised at how much respect I had for that film.
I enjoyed the Rundown for being a throwback to old-school Ahnold action movies of the early 80’s and Friday Night Lights wasn’t bad although I think the TV series (in it’s first season) was better than the movie, but Berg is nothing more than a servicable mainstream director to me. He has an eye for visuals and his sense of pacing and editing are pretty good (far better than most of the mainstream directors working in genre films these days), but his grasp of character and drama still seem weak to me.
I really disliked the stupidity of much of The Kingdom, even if technically it was well-constructed. It begins by imposing the impression that its going to take the politics behind the story seriously, then spends its entire running time ignoring the politics while dragging out all the tired cliches of thrillers past. The characters rarely elevate themselves to the capabilities of the actors cast in the roles, which was massively disappointing.
I shudder to think what sort of Narnia/LOTR knock-off Berg will make of Dune. He should stick to big-budget action and thrillers, which is what he does best.
I guess we won’t know until he has a chance to branch out…this could provide that for him.
I’d like to think this is where Berg becomes a successfully ambitious filmmaker but I fear this is where he gets too big for his own good and the final product will stink.
I liked The Rundown okay when I saw it, and the same goes for Friday Night Lights (I really liked the book and I thought that the movie did a fairly good job of capturing the most important elements of the book–I’ve never seen the TV show, however).
I loathed The Kingdom.
I have no official opinion of Berg, but I think another Dune is probably a bad idea. There’s always a problem in translating a novel to the screen and sometimes its pulled off remarkably well, but so much of what’s great about Dune is in the details…the very things that are going to get cut out so they can trim it down to 2 hours.
On the other hand, if they can do it I’ll be very happy.