Jodorowsky's Dune

I'm really looking forward to seeing this. Not sure how the movie would have turned out. He had some very, shall we say, "bizarre" ideas for the film. Certainly departed greatly from the book.
 
yeah,this will be a really interesting doco.would have been an incredible movie and bizarre for sure.
can you imagine what all visual effects would have looked like....and i'm sure there would have been some incredible miniatures built as well.
apparently ridley scott was looking at making a film version as well,after the jodorowsky version fell through.
he gave up and went on to alien !!
 
I've never understood the logic behind letting Jodorowsky have Dune. The result would have been a pretentious, chaotic visual spectacle with little to no narrative structure. The mind boggles.
 
I actually think the film had great potential.

Jean Giraud (a.k.a. Moebius) and Jodorowsky are a great team that have worked on some terrific graphic novels together. At the very least it would have promised great original visual design. If you're familiar with Moebius' work you'd recognize his influence in films, like Blade Runner. Scott readily acknowledges him as a primary influence. (Scott himself is a pretty good illustrator and his work actually looks a lot like Moebius').

Besson's The Fifth Element borrowed heavily from Moebius and Jodorowsky's graphic novel, The Incal. The subsequent lawsuit was lost but the influence to is really unquestionable. Just read The Incal and see for yourself.

I'm a Moebius fan and my faith is admittedly based on his affiliation with the project. His creative vision is pretty amazing. Don't be put off by Jodorowsky's hyperbolic descriptions - I think he would have pulled it off with something beautiful.

Not to take away from Lynch's brand of self-referential Dadaism, but I think the Jodorowsky film promised much greater potential and likely would have been a sci fi classic. (Actually, without Sting chewing up the scenery I'm certain it would have been better.
 
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Moebius was an artistic genius, no argument there. But I'm basing my opinion on Jodorowsky on his cinematic output. Oh, and on this alleged quote: "If you are great, El Topo is a great picture. If you are limited, El Topo is limited." Pretentious ass.
 
I'm not as optimistic as Dascoyne. I think this looked like it was going in a horrible direction.

The problem that I see is that this desire to "change the world" is misplaced. That book was a masterpiece. I have always felt that if there was a movie (or series) made that CLOSELY FOLLOWED the actual book, it would be a perfect film. It has every thing that makes up a legendary experience. I don't know where these desires to spin and change things come from. You practically have an entire movie treatment right before you, and if followed in the proper spirit, it could become one of the best movies ever made. IMO.

The visuals are the first step. Herbert was not vague or shy when making descriptions of his characters or environments. He paints a very specific image of people and places. Just seeing snippets of concept art in this short video I was already convinced that this project was going waaay in the wrong direction. I'm 100% for creativity, but this story is NOT an ambiguous piece of literature up for interpretation by the vision of the director. It's a solid universe with established details.

As much as I hated Lynch's Dune, when it came to the visuals, it was more or less correct-feeling. Apart from the stillsuits, which I pictured very differently...

The comparison that I often make is with Peter Jackson and the Lord of the Rings (NOT the Hobbit). Tolkien and Herbert had similar writing and storytelling styles, both very descriptive and large in scope, leaving nothing unaccounted for. They created very specific worlds.

When Jackson made LOTR he paid obscene attention to the details in the book, and the worlds Tolkien had created in words came to the screen flawlessly. The first time I watched the fellowship I was blown away - it was like someone took the images in my head whilst reading the book and put them on screen.

I've always thought that if someone could use that approach to Dune, we could finally have the movie this book deserves. It's catered to the Peter Jackson approach.

I'll probably be eating my words soon, this documentary will probably become so popular the movie will get greenlit.
 
MFP 2020 said:
Moebius was an artistic genius, no argument there. But I'm basing my opinion on Jodorowsky on his cinematic output. Oh, and on this alleged quote: "If you are great, El Topo is a great picture. If you are limited, El Topo is limited." Pretentious ass.
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Did he actually say that? Gad.

My understanding of the defunct Dune film was from a Moebius documentary I saw a while back. I remembered being impressed with Jean's vision. I would like to think he would have reigned in the director. Jodorowsky and Jean work well together but my bias is that Jean is the creative powerhouse of the two and AJ is just there to help sculpt a story from Jean's ideas and grab credit.
 
Lutso said:
I'm not as optimistic as Dascoyne. I think this looked like it was going in a horrible direction.

The problem that I see is that this desire to "change the world" is misplaced. That book was a masterpiece. I have always felt that if there was a movie (or series) made that CLOSELY FOLLOWED the actual book, it would be a perfect film. It has every thing that makes up a legendary experience. I don't know where these desires to spin and change things come from. You practically have an entire movie treatment right before you, and if followed in the proper spirit, it could become one of the best movies ever made. IMO.

The visuals are the first step. Herbert was not vague or shy when making descriptions of his characters or environments. He paints a very specific image of people and places. Just seeing snippets of concept art in this short video I was already convinced that this project was going waaay in the wrong direction. I'm 100% for creativity, but this story is NOT an ambiguous piece of literature up for interpretation by the vision of the director. It's a solid universe with established details.

As much as I hated Lynch's Dune, when it came to the visuals, it was more or less correct-feeling. Apart from the stillsuits, which I pictured very differently...

The comparison that I often make is with Peter Jackson and the Lord of the Rings (NOT the Hobbit). Tolkien and Herbert had similar writing and storytelling styles, both very descriptive and large in scope, leaving nothing unaccounted for. They created very specific worlds.

When Jackson made LOTR he paid obscene attention to the details in the book, and the worlds Tolkien had created in words came to the screen flawlessly. The first time I watched the fellowship I was blown away - it was like someone took the images in my head whilst reading the book and put them on screen.

I've always thought that if someone could use that approach to Dune, we could finally have the movie this book deserves. It's catered to the Peter Jackson approach.

I'll probably be eating my words soon, this documentary will probably become so popular the movie will get greenlit.
Click to expand...
The Jodorowsky film would have been a complete departure from the Frank Herbert novel, for sure. I have no doubt that Herbert fans would have been outraged. Still, film classics like Blade Runner and 2001: A Space Odyssey also diverged from the source materials so I wouldn't dismiss it based on that.

I guess I should be more precise and say that I can see the movie being great or a tremendous WTF. They're equally plausible but I want to believe in what might have been.

Unfortunately Moebius died in 2012 so I don't think there's much point to this project today.
 
I think this movie would have been a highly entertaining epic mess. I really wish we could have had the chance to see what they did with it.
 
Lutso said:
Except for the "highly entertaining" part...
Click to expand...

I am a huge DUNE fan and I actually enjoy a lot of what is in the Lynch film even though it is so different from the book, especially his disturbing take on the Baron. I really loved the Sci-fi miniseries.
 
Bryancd said:
I am a huge DUNE fan and I actually enjoy a lot of what is in the Lynch film even though it is so different from the book, especially his disturbing take on the Baron. I really loved the Sci-fi miniseries.
Click to expand...

I did too to an extent (I also liked the Baron), but overall I thought the scope of the film was anything but entertaining. I was bored and confused by most of it. I feel like the only reason I was able to find anything salvageable at all in the film was because I knew the book so well. If you HAVEN'T read the book and you watch the Lynch film...well, good luck with that, haha! Just IMO.

The Sci-Fi series...now THAT was good. If only that loving attention could be transplanted into a larger production.
 
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