wELCOME cONSUMER

When I was 12 years old I picked up a copy of Frank Herbert’s “Dune” because it’s supposed to be “one of the monuments of science fiction” and generally one of the best damn things since sliced pie. I hated it. I hated it because I was 12, and who would win in a fight between the geopolitical ramifications of resource starvation within a galactic economy and a TIE fighter? (hint: it’s the one with the lasers). So, after having tossed the book over my shoulder with a “Pfft, ain’t no F@%&# lasers” at an early age, I picked it back up years later and I loved it. Couldn’t put it down. Funny how that works. It quickly became a favorite of mine, and I truly believe it could make a good movie one day.

The intuitive reader could garner from that last sentence that I’m not a fan of David Lych’s 1984 film adaptation. They’d be right. Way to intuit! Just because a story takes place in a desert setting doesn’t mean that every single thing on the screen needs to be the color of turd. Also, he’s responsible for putting Sting in his underpants and filming it, and that’s not right in any galaxy. I can say all this without fear of being attacked by David Lynch fans because the only person who likes David Lynch’s “Dune” less than me is David Lynch.

Years later, the Sci-Fi channel produced a mini-series based on the book, and although it is technically more accurate in its telling, it’s much more “meh”. It can’t even commit to being awful, and although the story’s closer in it’s details, the acting is blander than Hayden Christensen eating tofu in a white room. It’s definitively mediocre; the Mellow Yellow of sci-fi film adaptations.

So, here we are, 2007, and there are whispers in Hollywood (if you can hear them over the shouts of “Strike!!”) of another possible big screen version being in the works. Seems a director has been interested in the project for quite a while, and since producers have figured that if computers have reset buttons then film franchises must as well, we may get yet another swing at the same story. So who is this mystery director? Who’s the person with the magical film karate to bring this story the cinematic delivery it deserves? That director is…Peter Berg? As in, Peter Winkler Berg, director of Friday Night Lights and that vehicle for The Rock? Really?? If you say so, Hollywood. Admittedly, he also directed Very Bad Things, which I liked a lot, and the newly released The Kingdom, which I haven’t seen, but I just get the feeling this idea may be either a) poor, b) horrible, or c) scorpions-in-your-ass awful. Does he have the chops to make this, or should they even try it again? Sci-fi is a very tricky genre, and things usually end up being either seminal works that triumphantly show the strength and ingenuity of the human spirit, or “The Island”. So, what’s your opinion? Can it be done, or should Hollywood keep their meddling mitts out of Arrakis for good?

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