The Only David Lynch Movie The Director Himself Was Sickened By
Call it iconic or call it one of the biggest flops in the history of cinema.
David Lynch's Dune was a big, ambitious project, an attempt to bring an obviously difficult-to-film book to the big screen. Unfortunately, it went into the history of cinema as a big failure, which is often attributed to the studio's meddling and refusal to provide budget which was required for the more spectacular scenes.
Consequently, the film bombed in the box office, was largely hated by the book's fans, remained barely comprehensible to those who did not read Herbert's book, got panned by critics, and won the Stinkers Bad Movie Award for the year.
Opinions on it hadn't changed much since then, at best people consider some parts of its cinematography impressive.
And this is true for David Lynch's own opinion as well.
To this day the thoughts of that movie leave him dejected, as evidenced by his recent interview, when he answered to a question about whether he would like to re-edit any of his films.
"…people have said, "Don't you want to go back and fiddle with Dune?" And I was so depressed and sickened by it, you know? I want to say, I loved everybody that I worked with; they were so fantastic. I loved all the actors; I loved the crew; I loved working in Mexico; I loved everything except that I didn't have final cut." (via)
He continued: "But the thing was a horrible sadness and failure to me, and if I could go back in I've thought, well, maybe I would on that one go back in."
Of course, the possibility remains purely in the realm of fantasy – as Lynch himself immediately admitted, his personal cut is not going to happen, and that his Dune was too deeply flawed to be fixed, as he sold out to the studio and compromised his vision too much.
"And so it might be interesting—there could be something there. But I don't think it's a silk purse. I know it's a sow's ear."
No wonder that with sentiments like this David Lynch even wanted to remove his name from credits of the final theatrical cut. Dune remains such a bad memory to him that he reportedly refused to even watch the first part of Villeneuve's new Dune adaptation, much less to comment on it.