My Review of "Dune (1984)"

Dune has showed up on my Netflix suggestions so many times that I gave in and watched it. I was in for a heck of a show. It was confusing, mesmerizing, captivating, and it took me a little while to process what I just watched by the end of the movie. I have to remember that this movie had come out in 1984 so I can't really judge it to the levels of special effects we have today.

I definitely know why they're going to remake this movie for 2020 because it's due for an upgrade. I'll try to describe this movie the best I can because there is so much backstory that watching this movie for the first time confuse the heck out of you.

This movie takes place in the year 10191. I don't see how the year makes a difference because it doesn't have anything to do with Earth at all. There's this space spice called "melange". It's said that this spice can prolong your life and is the key to traveling without moving. What do I mean by traveling without moving? It's sort of the same concept as Intersteller where space folds and you are able to go to far off distant space. With those types of benefits, melange is obviously a hot commodity.

Everyone wants the spice and the only place where this spice can be mined is this world called Arrakis aka Dune. Whoever has control over Arrakis pretty much controls the universe.

There's this noble family named the Atreides who is gaining popularity because the Duke of the family is a guy that's compassionate for people. The Atreides have a rival family known as the Harkonnen. The Harkonnen are basically a group of barbarians that are greedy for power. The two families are ruled by an Emperor and he's been pitting the two families against each other. In the beginning he's been told by the Guild Navigator to kill the son of the Duke of Atreides named Paul. They don't know why Paul needs to be killed but they may fear that Paul is the chosen one to drink the water of life and bring order to Arrakis.

There's a narrator that explains all of this to you in the beginning of the movie but it's long and kind of drags along for a while. It was kind of hard for me to keep up with what was going on in the beginning of the movie.

With Paul's training and visions you obviously know something is up with this guy. You don't know what exactly is up with this guy but they keep talking about a chosen one sort of like the Matrix and Neo. I kind of know what's going to happen but was just going with the movie.

When the movie does drag there is a lot of beautiful visuals to keep you interested. I have to say that this is one of the most imaginative and creative worlds I've ever seen in a movie. This was done way back in 1984 as well so I can't imagine what will happen with the newest update of this movie. I have high hopes for it after seeing this movie.

One of the weirdest things in this movie is that a lot of the characters will have inner monologues. It was almost like watching a soap opera in a space movie. They would literally do the staring scene that you know so well in soap operas and they would have inner monologues of what the character is thinking. This was really weird but it happens a lot and I guess you sort of get used to it after a while.

I can see a lot of similarities between this movie and the Matrix and I wonder if the Matrix took some of the ideas presented in this movie. In fact, I think this movie has been seen by a lot of people because I started understanding references in a lot of pop culture. The term traveling without moving is a name for an album by the band Jamiroquai. There are countless other references to Dune that I'm just starting to understand. They either really liked the book or this movie.

Overall, I was almost exhausted after I finished watching this movie. The beginning was so confusing but then I was enamored by the movie. Set pieces were wild and imaginative. It really felt like they were on a living breathing world and this was probably a difficult feat back in 1984. I had to appreciate the work that was done. The last half of the movie really picked up and I got into it afterwards. I have to give this movie a 7 out of 10 though. It was great as a one time watch but I would not want to go through it again even though I really appreciated how much work went into this movie.