An utter travesty

It's funny. I've seen both Lynch's version and this one, and it's like they both made the opposite mistakes. But this one weirds me out becuase it spent so much time on some relatively trivial issues, and not enough time on others.

For example:

Yueh's special training that made him such an impossible choice for the traitor was almost totally ignored.

The explanation for the poison tooth was missing; he just shows Leto the tooth and says "remember it". At least in Lynch's version, he explained what it was and you saw him put it in.

Paul spends two years raiding Harkonnen camps; it's barely touched on. In fact, had it not been for the mention of his baby and his sister, I'd have had no idea any time had passed at all.

Thufir seems to have totally dissapeared and was such a minor character as to be totally forgettable.

Now, things this film did well that Lynch's did not:

The Baron comes across as a much more refined, intelligent and capable man than the acne-covered monstrosity that was Lynch's.

The Fremen look and act more like you'd expect them to.

Ornithopters don't look like garbage cans.

There's no stupid sonic-weapon trained Atreides army sub-plot.

More of the scenes from the book are included (the dinner-party, the assassination attempt on the Baron by Feyd, etc.)

See what I mean? If they took aspects of both, they could do a great film, but on their own, both seem to really be lacking.

I watched each part as I read the book, and ultimately I believe the miniseries did a much better job than Lynch's version. of course things had to be cut out (as much as i liked Thufir Hawat I must agree that he isn't absolutely needed after the first part because for the rest of the book he plays a subtle background part mostly).

People talk about Spider-man 3 moving along at a fast pace, that's nothing compared to Lynch's version of Dune. even the 4 1/2 hour miniseries had to move pretty quick. the '84 version moves along at a breakneck speed and you barely know what just happened.

The acting in both versions are fairly decent actually (as far as the dialogue will allow). the only actor I didn't like was Alec Newman, he was just very uninteresting and a typical coming of age hero, which the book version of Paul Atreides isn't at all.

one bit of awkwardness i found in the miniseries (at least the Directors Cut) was when Paul looked over and saw Chani topless and his mother says "shes the one in your dreams, i can tell by the way you stare at her"... sure, thats why he was staring at her :) I realize that is the real reason but with a modern audience they shouldn't have arbitrarily shown Chani topless in that scene.

The only other real problem I had were some of the costumes. The final scene is the shining example, everyone's costumes are so ridiculous that you can't help but mutter "what the *beep*?" Feyd-Rautha has a triangle behind his head... whats up with that?

The Lynch movie was horrible. THis mini-series is just bad. While the mini-series does a better job at telling the story, it's too choppy. The music is terrible and the acting is subpar. The Lynch movie was so boring. The acting wasn't a whole lot better with McLaughlin and Sting. Sting was so miscast-he would have been better in something like Mad Max or Road Warrior.

Why can't you like both of them? I did. They are fastly different films made from the book, but with different intentions. They both have drawbacks, but they both have some pretty ridiculously great stuff. To me it's like Batman Returns vs. The Dark Knight: very different but essentially both great.