Neither the Lynch nor Sci-Fi channel versionlooks much like I envisioned it in my mind when I read the book about, say, a dozen times. But the Lynch is much, much closer. I agree with you Dan, it's probably not filmable without some painful alterations. Having said that, there are no shortage of wonderfully "cinematic" sequences in the book.
Oh, absolutely. The book, especially the first book, has some really "epic" moments that seem to scream "FILM ME!!" But they're only a part of the book, not the sum total, and the richness that the book has ends up lost most of the time because, well, you just don't have the time to get across all the appendices and sidenotes and opening chapter quotes and such, you don't have a glossary you can refer to whenever you please, etc.
Oh, and they desperately need to redub Alia's voice, I've always hated the one used, you can tell it's an adult trying to imitate a child's lisp.
I'm not so sure about that. I think it's actually Alicia Witt. If you've heard her speak as an adult, or even as a teenager (she appeared in one or two episodes of Twin Peaks), I could see where it was actually her voice.
Seen two myself. All I can think of them is 'the one with Patrick Stewart, and the one without.' Sadly, can't remember either that well, except that the one without I think had that stupid box. But the graphics were better. The one with Stewart, you could tell the era they made it in. I think the one without him is the scifi mini-series though.
Ok, we'll call it "two-and-a-half" versions.
There's two versions with Patrick Stewart (well, actually, there are supposedly more, but there are two versions readily available on DVD). Those are the Lynch version and the "Smithee" version (which is still, as I said, all stuff Lynch filmed, but mostly cut but which was stuck back in). Then there's the Sci Fi version.
Yeah, no film could possibly get everything from the book. Not happening anytime soon. Sometimes the "walking" can add to the passage of time, if done right.
It can be done, yeah. Musical montage, etc. But it's not just the walking or the "And a bunch of stuff happened in between here and there." Dune is...dense. Layered. It has a ton of background stuff going on that never even directly gets addressed. That's why the "Smithee" version has the incredibly long opening painting sequence. And even THAT didn't cover everything. There's still tons of terminology that gets tossed around and, without the handy-dandy glossary and/or appendices from the book, the audience is in the dark.
Example: in the Lynch version, the Baron shouts out "The forms of Kanly have been obeyed!!" Um....great? What the hell are the "forms of Kanly"? Turns out, from the glossary, that "Kanly" basically means ritualistic vendetta...which only tells you that these two houses hate each other, and doesn't even touch on WHY they hate each other (none of the books that Frank Herbert wrote do, at least not directly, as I recall).
So, now with that one line we've introduced confusion about terms and confusion about what the hell is going on. Now take that moment and turn it up to 11. You can have as much exposition as you want, but eventually it slows the film down and people tune out. You can try explaining stuff through context, but so much stuff just doesn't come through.
Could it be done well? Sure. As you say, the LOTR films were done well and referenced plenty of the lore that Tolkein wrote as backstory. But in many ways, I think LOTR is more straightforward. The lore is really an afterthough. A nice-to-have-but-not-necessary aspect. With Dune, the lore is intrinsic to understanding (A) what everyone's talking about and (B) why everyone's talking about it. Why the hell is nobody just firing up teh intarwebz? Why are there no robots? Well, the Smithee version explains...but in a show-stopping manner (and I mean that in a bad way). How do you get that kind of information across to the viewer without either saying "Ok, pause for a sec. Here's what you need to know before we go any further" or MAJORLY changing the book to, for example, include a bunch of exposition scenes. You could stick Paul in more educational scenes, but after a while it'll ring false. Like, shouldn't he already know this stuff since he's living in this world? WE'RE the ones in the dark, not him.
I think it could still be made as an "entertaining" film, but it'd lose a LOT of the depth and richness that the novel has.
The mini-series has it's own flaws. The budget is pretty low and it shows, the costumes are absurd at times, and some of the performances are awful.
But they had the right approach with the script. The mini-series format gives them enough time to develop all the characters and explore the story. There are no inner monologues; all of the book's themes, ideas, and important moments are externalized or translated into equivalent scenes.
Alec Newman is also an excellent Paul. The Lynch film really lacks the development of his character but the mini-series shows a Paul who starts out as a naive teenager and slowly transforms into a messiah.
Not just a messiah, but a messiah deliberately manipulating the populace for his own ends (and then later believing his own hype). But yeah, I think the SciFi series did the best at adapting the source material in an organic way. Although, even it had some issues with that.
The one thing I will say is that "Children of Dune" (actually Dune Messiah and Children of Dune combined) was VERY impressive to me in the sense that they did about as good a job as I could see of actually translating some pretty wacky stuff and some VERY dense political material into a decent-enough miniseries. In some ways, I found it more impressive than the original miniseries.
And yeah, low budget, but again, once I recognized that it was basically a theatrical show, it gets WAY more impressive.