Dah-Dah-Dah- DUNE!

In the year 1965 Frank Herbert released a book that became considered one of the greatest science fiction books of all time. That book was Dune. It was 19 years later that the movie Dune came into theaters. It has since become a cult classic of the sci fi genre. I saw it and am now going to do my best to review it.
Let me start off by saying I haven't read the book. I'm just gonna review it and not complain about how they didn't include this and that. The most I've done was listen to the Iron Maiden song based off of Dune. I'm going into this unclouded.
Dune has a sweet cast. No one is particularly bad at acting which is not true for most fantasy and science fiction movies. They got Brad Dourif (sweet), Patrick Stewart (yeah Picard), Sting, and even the legend Max Von Sydow. There are also some female who I didn't bother to learn their names. I swear I'm not sexist it's just they don't have too great an impact in the film. There's the lady from Blade Runner and the principal from Kindergarten Cop. The problem with this cast is that the parts are generally so small. Sting, to my amazement, seems to have no problem acting but really only says any lines at the end of the film. There is also a scene with him kind of just posing in a space speedo. The word unnecessary isn't strong enough to describe this.
So yeah, this movie has a plot. Not a bad one too. Basically everyone is secretly against the House Atreides. The emperor of the universe gives them the planet Arrakis and plans on using the House Harkonnen to take it back and knock House Atreides down a peg or two. The planet Arrakis is like the most important planet in the universe because it is the only place you can get the spice melange. The spice makes interstellar space travel possible. So the Atreides royal family goes to the planet, they get betrayed and the Harkonnens come and mess them up and Paul Atreides runs away into the desert. The whole planet of Arrakis is a desert, forgot to mention that. Paul ends up finding these people called the Fremen and they fight a war to take back Arrakis and get some sweet sweet revenge. Not a bad story.

Here are some of the stuff I thought were cool about the movie. The costumes were all done well and so was all the different scenery. The sand worms were cool (look at my picture). Also the Space Guild was cool. There is this guy who talks through a staff that translates what he's saying. There is also this mutant guy who has to stay in a zero gravity chamber to move around.

What's not so good about it? Well, the pacing is not so good. Whenever you make a movie from a book you either take out a bunch of stuff or you have pacing problems. From what I understand this movie did both. I can't really blame the movie for this though. The book was 412 pages long. Honestly I would rather have had a more well paced four hour movie than something that felt rushed. If it's good enough I'll hold out on a long run time.

I thought the weapons were a bit lame. They pretty much have microphones connected to guns that turn their shouts into lasers. Now that I type that out it sounds even dumber than seeing it in the movie. As it turns out, this was completely created for the movie. I bet the fan boys didn't care much for that. I don't blame them.

There was some stuff that was just weird. Paul ends up having a super powered two year old sister who can walk and talk perfectly as well as use crazy powers. There are these ladies known as the Bene Gesserits who are kind of like psychic space nuns. Oh, and at the end of the movie Paul becomes the Kwisatz Haderach. I say that so often know because it just sounds cool. What this means is that he becomes so powerful that he can kill people just by saying, like, "you're dead."

The movie was 137 minutes long and it was an ok movie. I feel if it was polished and paced better it would have been a great movie. They did come out with an extended version which was 189 minutes so it's possible that my main complaint with this film has already been addressed. The extended version does not have the approval of the film's director so I don't know of it's quality. Oh, well. Maybe one day I'll see the extended version and write a better review. Or make my own version with puppets!