Thelasko shares a report from Ars Technica, written by Peter Opaskar: Frank Herbert’s 1965 sci-fi novel Dune gets a new film adaptation — this one helmed by Denis Villeneuve (Arrival, Blade Runner 2049) — later this month. But before Ars Technica reviews the movie, there’s the matter of its predecessor: 1984’s Dune, made by a then up-and-coming filmmaker named David Lynch. Detractors call Lynch’s saga — a tale of two noble space families 8,000 years in the future, fighting over the most valuable resource in the universe amidst sandworms the size of aircraft carriers — incomprehensible, stilted, and ridiculous. It lost piles of money. Yet fans, especially in recent years, have reclaimed Lynch’s film as a magnificent folly, a work of holy, glorious madness.
So which group am I in? Both. Am I about to describe Dune as “so bad it’s good”? No, that’s a loser take for cowards. I once half-heard a radio interview with someone speculating that the then-current artistic moment was not “so bad it’s good,” and it wasn’t “ironic” either — it was actually “awesome.” (I didn’t catch who he was, so if any of this sounds familiar, hit me up in the comments.) Art can speak to you while at the same time being absurd. The relatable can sometimes be reached only by going through the ridiculous. The two can be inseparable, like the gravitational pull between a gas giant and its moon — or Riggs and Murtaugh.
The example the radio interviewee gave was of Evel Knievel, the ’70s daredevil who wore a cape and jumped dirt bikes over rows of buses. Absurd? Heavens, yes. A feat of motorcycling and physicality? Absolutely. But beyond that, we can relate to Knievel’s need to achieve transcendence at such a, shall we say, niche skill. We might also marvel at our own ability to be impressed by something that should be objectively useless but is instead actually awesome. A more contemporary example might be Tenet. It’s a relentless international thriller about fate and climate change and the need for good people to hold evil at bay. But it’s also a “dudes rock!” bromance between Two Cool Guys in Suits spouting sci-fi mumbo-jumbo. It can’t be one without the other. “I have faith in Denis Villeneuve and his new version of Dune starring Timothee Chalamet,” says Opaskar. “But it will probably be a normal movie for normal people, in which characters with recognizable emotions talk in a recognizable way and move through a plot we understand to achieve clearly defined goals. Which is all fine and good, but how likely is it to inspire sick beats for ’90s kids doing ecstasy?”
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