I've read that it took Frank Herbert six years of research and writing to complete Dune. The story was turned down by 23 publishers before making it to print in 1965 and has now sold over 20 million copies worldwide. The book has won the top two science fiction writing awards, the Hugo and the Nebula, and has now been adapted for the screen twice. Herbert went on to write five more novels set in the Dune universe, many of which became best sellers as well.
Dune is set in a universe controlled by an emperor who rules over a number of powerful royal houses, each with their own regions of space. In this vast empire, space travel is controlled by the Spacing Guild who alone have the power to travel and more importantly navigate in hyperspace. Their unique abilities are only possible through the use of a "spice" found on only one planet in the universe, a planet called Arrakis that is also known as Dune. The spice allows the navigator to see into hyperspace and therefore determine a safe path between worlds. Spice also has another extremely valuable property, its ability to prolong the life of those who ingest it, at the cost of addiction. It has also allowed some humans to develop additional powers such as a limited ability to see a possible future and an ability to determine if someone is speaking the truth. Spice is truly the most valuable commodity in the universe and control of its mining and distribution is a prestigious and profitable assignment.
Traditionally, spice harvesting has been controlled by the great house Harkonnen, but their arrogance, decadence and lack of proper management has seen a decline in spice production. The emperor has assigned a new house to take control of Arrakis and increase the efficiency of spice production. This new house, Arteides is hated by house Harkonnen and they face many dangers in accepting the challenge of managing spice production.
The idea for a new film adaptation of Dune came from producers Richard Rubinstein and Mitchell Galin who decided to have a go at adapting the novel to the small screen. They enlisted the help of John Harrison to develop a screenplay for a production that would run for between four and six hours. The idea was successfully sold to the SCI-FI Channel and production commenced in early 2000 in Prague.
The success of Dune as a book was a boon for the producers, as it attracted some very talented people to the project both in front of and behind the cameras. The cinematographer for the series was Vittorio Storaro (Apocalypse Now and The Last Emperor) who used a new, alternative film format called Univisium to save on film costs and to better balance the compositional needs of the widescreen format and the traditional 4:3 format used for video. He also worked in conjunction with director John Harrison and other members of the production crew to create a rich colour palette for each of the different locations in the story. The production designer for this project was Czech Miljen Klijakovic, who built some wonderful looking sets that look quite convincing on screen despite the modest budget available to him. Another key collaborator on this project was Academy Award winning costume designer Theodor Pistek (Amadeus) who created some amazing looking, beautifully crafted costumes for each of the different houses or clans in the story.
The end result of their work is an entertaining and faithful adaptation of Herbert's triumph that just falls short of being great. What keeps this production from being great is its budget. There was not enough money available to allow for location work and this has resulted in the extensive use of what are called Translights. Translights are huge backdrops of images designed to look like real landscapes. The Translights are strung around the stage to provide a back drop. Unfortunately the extra resolution of DVD all too frequently reveals these as what they are, a flat representation of landscape rather than an actual landscape. This combined with some ordinary CG effects sometimes took me away from the story.
On the whole this 1.78:1, 16x9 enhanced transfer looks pretty good.
While by no means reference quality, the level of sharpness and detail revealed by this transfer is not too bad and remains consistent across each disc. The black level is good and the shadow detail, I think, reflects the director's intention as a tool for creating mood.
The level of colour saturation in this transfer is high with each world having its own dominant colour. The Harkonnen wear bright, bright red costumes and are often bathed in a warm red/orange light while the colour of the emperor is a bold and bright blue. This transfer will certainly give your display device a work out.
Unfortunately this transfer does introduce some minor MPEG artefacts in the form of some pixelization in certain scenes and some posterization on a few faces. You will also see some film-to-video artefacts in the form of aliasing. This occurs in a number of places, but is nearly always minor and in many cases away from the main point of interest. One of the more obvious artefacts is edge enhancement, which you will see throughout, most notably around faces. Perhaps this was done to combat the strong use of colours such as red or blue which can cause a reduction in detail on some displays.
Film artefacts are occasionally visible, but are always small and easily ignored.
The second disc in this set is dual layer, but I didn't notice a layer change. I suspect that the extras are on one layer with the feature on the other. Discs one and three are single layer discs.
The single audio track available on this disc is Dolby Digital 5.1 and pretty good it is too!
All of the channels in your system get some work in this transfer although the overall focus is with the front. During important sequences the soundstage is nice and full with simple split channel effects occurring on occasion. The subwoofer is kept busy supporting both the score and effects but never overpowering either.
