Relocating is never easy—even when you’re one of the most powerful men in the galaxy. Maybe especially so.
But when the Emperor Shaddam IV offers Duke Leto Atreides the keys to the planet Arrakis—home to the spice mélange—it’s not a gig the duke can turn down. After all, mélange is just about the most critical substance in the galaxy: It not only makes longtime users’ eyes a vibrant shade of blue, but it lengthens their lives, expands consciousness and makes interstellar space travel possible.
The desert planet of Arrakis may not be much to look at, but whoever controls it will be immensely rich and powerful. Plus, His Majesty asked nicely, and you don’t refuse a request from the Emperor.
Of course, the Emperor has ulterior motives. Shaddam felt that House Atreides was getting a little big for its britches, and he had a plan to quash Leto and his whole pesky house for good. Step One: Take Arrakis away from House Harkonnen—a longtime rival of House Atreides—and give it to Duke Leto. Step Two: Secretly side with Baron Vladamir Harkonnen to help him retake the planet, including handing the Baron (despite his obvious evilness) the use of the Emperor’s own crack troops. Step Three (presumably): Sit back, watch the spice roll in and cackle with glee as House Atreides crumbles.
Duke Leto and the rest of his loyal team know that something’s up, of course. You don’t become one of the most powerful houses in the galaxy by accident. But Leto has his own plans. He’d like to recruit the Fremen—Arrakis’ shadowy indigenous people—to side with him against whatever’s coming. And he means to prepare his own son, Paul, for the gathering storm.
Yep, for Paul, this relocation certainly won’t be easy. He’s been studying up on the local wildlife—especially the sandworms that can grow longer than several Atreidian football fields. He knows that Harkonnen assassins might be lurking inside and outside the palace.
And then, of course, there was that weird, pre-relocation visit by the Reverend Mother Gaius Helen Mohiam, head of the mysterious Bene Gesserit order—an order to which Paul’s mother, Jessica, also belongs. She was saying something about … how Paul should’ve never been born? About how Jessica should’ve known better than to try to birth the Kwisatz Haderach, a sort of supreme being? Anyway, she forced Paul to put his hand in a box, and man, did that box hurt.
But the box was a test, and he passed it—much to the Reverend Mother’s surprise. Now it’s on to Arrakis for young Paul, where more challenges await.
And you thought going to a new middle school was tough.
When you’re dealing with the campishly evil House Harkonnen in this 1984 version of Dune, pretty much everyone else looks positive by comparison. Still, there is some legitimate do-gooding here.
Duke Leto seems nice enough in this version of Dune. Sure, Arrakis’ Fremen might initially see the guy as just another imperial overseer, tasked with keeping the spices flowing and the local population in check. But he actually seems more concerned with the safety of the people mining the spice than the spice itself—a refreshing change after the dastardly House Harkonnen.
Paul not only loves his pops, but he embraces Leto’s life-respecting ethos. When a hunter-seeker (essentially a floating, poisonous, hypodermic syringe) invades his bedroom, he decides not to call for help, because he knows that the hunter-seeker might kill whoever opens the door. And when someone does open the door, Paul uses his nifty reflexes to save the visitor.
That visitor, incidentally, is a Fremen servant, who warns Paul that there’s a traitor in the Atreides’ midst. It’s a risky admission—and one the poor woman pays for with her life.
Dune—the original book by Frank Herbert—has some dense and complex spiritual elements in play, and those elements are more or less mirrored in the 2021 film. If you want to get a good rundown of the religiosity baked into the story itself, I’d point you to Adam Holz’s dynamite spiritual section from his review of the 2021 movie.
The 1984 version of Dune has a lot of spirituality, too—but it’s a bit more muddled, and it diverts from the source material in significant ways.
The Bene Gesserit are members of a strict and mystical order. They’re sometimes called “witches,” and many of their abilities do look and feel like magic. Their most formidable power appears to be their ability to manipulate people by the use of “the voice,” but they’re also able to listen in on conversations in other rooms and communicate with each other, to some extent, telepathically. If they advance far enough along in their careers, they must drink the “Water of Life,” which is considered sacred and sounds much nicer than it is. It seems to cause great pain to the imbibing individual, but it can also wreak havoc on other Bene Gesserit around the galaxy—because, presumably, of the connection they all share. And for 90 generations, we’re told, the Bene Gesserit have been trying to get some genetic connections just right to breed the Kwisatz Haderach, characterized as a supreme being.
Meanwhile on Arrakis, the Fremen have their own prophesied messianic figure—a “voice from the outer world” that will bring about “holy war” and carry the Fremen “out of darkness.”
Both of these messianic messages point right at Paul Atreides. He fulfills many Fremen signs, and his preternaturally advanced younger sister proclaims him the Kwisatz Haderach. And before the credits roll, Paul even causes rain to fall on Arrakis—a planet that hasn’t seen a drop of rain since—well, since forever. The movie proclaims that “Muad Dib (the name Paul took for himself among the Fremen) had become the hand of God.”
Many of those messianic drumbeats can be found throughout Herbert’s original book, too. But Herbert brought those themes in with a different purpose and a touch more ambiguity. And while he gave Paul plenty of powers, the power to conjure miracles was not among them: In his short-story collection Eye, Herbert wrote that he appreciated the 1984 movie, but that he had his “quibbles” with the film’s religiosity. “Paul was a man playing god, not a god who could make it rain,” he wrote.
We hear other references to God and gods, too. At one point, someone says that “God created Arrakis to train the faithful; one cannot go against the Word of God.” At another juncture, two people talk about the hand of God.
Arrakis’ spice can give its users what seem like supernatural abilities, including the ability to prophesy and the ability to detect someone thousands of light years away.
We’re told that Jessica is Duke Leto’s “bound concubine.” But the affection the two have for each other is far more than physical, and Leto expresses sorrow that he never married Jessica. We see them in bed together briefly, apparently unclothed under the covers.
Paul strikes up a relationship with a Fremen woman named Chani. The two swap sloppy kisses and regularly sleep together (we see them lying next to each other, exposing bare shoulders while the rest of their bodies are covered).
We see some cleavage- and shoulder-baring gowns. Paul is told that “moods are things for cattle and loveplay.” Feid-Rautha, part of the evil House of Harkonnen, steps out of a bit of mist wearing only what looks like a plastic loincloth.
The evil Baron Harkonnen seems to have some homosexual (and potentially incestual) leanings, and he leers at Feid (his nephew) in that mostly unclothed form. He also suffers from a seriously uncomely skin disease—an illness we don’t see in the book and one that some critics believe was a reference to the AIDS epidemic largely affecting the LGBT community and making headlines in 1984. Harkonnen’s doctor shows a disturbing affection for either the baron or the disease itself, telling Harkonnen that it’s “so beautiful,” and that he’ll lovingly care for the condition for “all eternity.”
How the baron’s leanings impact the story … well, let’s deal with that in the section below.
OK, here it is: Buckle up.
Baron Harkonnen, as he expounds a portion of his evil plans, leers at a very frightened young man arranging flowers. The servant—as is the case with all Harkonnen’s lackeys, apparently—has been fitted with a “heart plug” that, if pulled, would allow the victim’s blood to gush out of the open orifice. Harkonnen, licking his chops, floats over to the man (he’s wearing an anti-gravitational suit due to his obscene, hard-to-move-with weight) and forces himself upon him while pulling the heart plug. Blood sprays the walls and covers the Baron as the victim dies. Film scholar Robin Wood, who accused Dune of being “obscenely homophobic,” pointed specifically to this scene as evidence.
The 1984 version of Dune revels in other gross-out scenes. In an early moment, when Paul sticks his hand into the Reverend Mother’s box of pain, we see what Paul imagines is happening to his hand: The skin breaks and blisters, turns crispy and falls off, revealing bloody grossness underneath. (When he withdraws his hand, though, it’s just fine.) Another scene features a severed head sitting in the middle of the floor, as if on display. Some humanoid interpreters have wires coming out of their heads, and the skin surrounding these implants has formed deep crevasses leaking orange pus. A cat and a rat have been stitched together for no discernable purpose. Syringes are stuck in Harkonnen’s blister-like pus pockets.
Members of House Atreides are sometimes equipped with forcefield-generating personal shields. But those shields can be penetrated with a slow-moving blade. When Paul and one of his tutors (Gurney Halleck) spar, both wind up pushing their blades in each other’s shields. Gurney tells Paul that he would’ve given his pupil a scar to remember if Paul had not given the sparring his all. Another shield-bearer isn’t so lucky: We see a knife penetrate his skull in the middle of a battle, with the bloody wound obvious through the clear shield.
An evildoer prepares to sexually assault Jessica—pushing the woman’s garb past her knees before being forced to stop. Another man is stabbed through the chin, and streams of blood cover both sides of the guy’s neck. Drinking the Water of Life causes a bevy of Bene Gesserits some serious pain, and blood seeps out of eyes, ears and mouths. (One Bene Gesserit apparently dies after another sister quaffs the liquid.) A few characters are stabbed in various places. A couple of guys are poisoned by a tricky little pellet. Gigantic sandworms occasionally swallow up machines and men.
Two sprawling battles take place, featuring guns, blades, sonic weapons and plenty of explosions. Loads of people fall to the ground lifeless in these melees. We hear about suicide troops left behind on Arrakis. Corpses covered in wounds and scars are X-rayed. Someone rips meat off a dead beast and stuffs it in his mouth.
About four uses of the word “d–n.”
The spice Mélange is the very definition of a mind-altering drug, and the story seems to treat it with the same reverence that Timothy Leary treated LSD. Creatures known as “Guild Navigators” literally float in the stuff, and that allows these creatures to transport spaceships across vast distances almost instantaneously by “folding” the space itself.
And the drug is apparently critical to Paul’s own transformation from a young, talented heir to the messianic figure he becomes—giving him prescient dreams and psychic abilities. It also turns users’ eyes a radiant sort of blue and, we’re told, extends people’s lives. The books tell us that the spice is highly addictive, but the 1984 film glosses over that.
Wear whatever you want indoors in Arrakis. But if you’re going to go into the desert for any length of time, a stillsuit is a fashion necessity. The suit recycles water that the body supplies, including urine and liquid found in feces.
Almost as soon as Frank Herbert’s sci-fi novel Dune hit bookshelves in 1965, filmmakers had been trying to turn it into a movie. Cult film auteur Alejandro Jodorowsky was the most notable contender early on—hoping as he did to enlist the talents of Orson Welles, Mick Jagger, Gloria Swanson and surreal artist Salvador Dalí as the Emperor. Alas, when the script lengths were clocking in at the equivalent of 10-14 hour movies, funding dried up.
And indeed, the book—what with its intricate politics, complex civilizations and spiritual ruminations—would be a challenge for anyone to adapt.
And that helps explain why the 1984 version of Dune is such a mess.
Directed by David Lynch of Twin Peaks fame (and starring Twin Peaks’ Kyle MacLachlan as Paul Atreides), 1984’s Dune has its fans. And one cannot fault the film for playing it safe. But it’s also a movie that manages to be gross and boring. Despite being populated with floating villains, 400-foot-long sandworms and evil henchmen draped in the very latest in fashionable garbage bags, Dune is an unmitigated slog. It’s not Jodorowsky’s 14-hour-long epic, it just feels that way.
Dune’s cinematic sins go beyond its near-incomprehensible plot and odd penchant to have its characters whisper their innermost thoughts every 30 seconds, though. This is a violent, bloody, often disturbing film—one that might leave many a viewer more revolted than enraptured.
No matter how much spice is in play in the 1984 version of Dune, this cinematic stew is almost inedible.
Paul Asay has been part of the Plugged In staff since 2007, watching and reviewing roughly 15 quintillion movies and television shows. He’s written for a number of other publications, too, including Time, The Washington Post and Christianity Today. The author of several books, Paul loves to find spirituality in unexpected places, including popular entertainment, and he loves all things superhero. His vices include James Bond films, Mountain Dew and terrible B-grade movies. He’s married, has two children and a neurotic dog, runs marathons on occasion and hopes to someday own his own tuxedo. Feel free to follow him on Twitter @AsayPaul.
