Flashback Film Fest 3/5.

Dune, unfortunately, is a prime example, or perhaps even the prime example, of what happens when massive source material is adapted down with little to no regard for pacing or flow. I found this movie to be a very conflicted experience; Costumes, set design, and special effects are all done brilliantly, and you can tell that the story contains a world rich with wonder and intrigue that one could easily lose themselves in, if only the film had allowed the viewer the breathing room to do so. Lynch’s Dune is very much the inverse Star Wars: Where the gaps left by the original Star Wars Trilogy came to be padded with lore and further (mostly non-canonical) adventures, creating a large expanded universe within the world of the films, Dune started off as a massive saga that for some reason was drastically truncated down in order to fit within a single cinematic episode. The result is a baffling picture that moves back and forth from a slow burn that struggles to keep the attention of the viewer, to a relentless stream of exposition of events that have little to no bearing on the film because they’ve not been allowed any space to develop. It’s a shame, really, because as exhausted and unimpressed as I was walking out of the theater, I left Dune with a thirst for the source material, wanting for a way to better partake of the genuinely intriguing story that had been shoved down my throat, at a much more comfortable pace.