Dune (1984)

I've wanted to read the novels and see this film as well as the SciFi Channel's late 1990s Dune miniseries for a long time.

So, having no time to read for pleasure, I rented the extended cut of this film from Netflix. The opening sequence had obviously been tacked on as extra prologue/exposition, because it was a series of paintings with a voice over that sought to explain EVERYTHING at the very beginning. It would have been forgivable if not for its rushed nature and the incomprehensible names, planets, and terms tossed around with no frame of reference. At least "Mordor" and "Gollum" are names I could spell out phonetically...

Needless to say I was asleep before the prologue was finished.

Upon its release, critic Roger Ebert gave Dune one star out of four and wrote "This movie is a real mess, an incomprehensible, ugly, unstructured, pointless excursion into the murkier realms of one of the most confusing screenplays of all time."

Needless to say, despite my initial encounter with the film and Mr. Ebert's blurb, I am always intrigued when a director tries to tackle an epic from literature, and while they tend to fail miserably, perhaps with Dune having no love or familiarity with the source, I'll find something redeeming ina film with a troubled production history and generally negative reviews.