David Lynch’s Dune: The Third Stage Edition

A great edit of Dune. The deleted scenes were cleaned up as much as could be expected, and integrated well enough. You could tell where they were, but there's only so much that could be done and it's not jarring. The audio was excellent, no issues there at all.

My only real quibble is it seems something was missing from the Paul meets the Fremen scene. It felt a bit jarring & quick. I swear I recall a bit more to it in other versions. Other than that, it all flowed smoothly.

There are many, many Dune edits out there, and this is a very good one. My thoughts on the film and the fanedit in a more general, thematic way are here: https://boxd.it/3d7HvB

In technical terms, this fanedit shows its age and age of the source material. The added footage has supposedly been cleaned up and had special effects added/completed, but I caught a number of shots without that. The footage shows a huge difference between sources at times. The audio work is much stronger though, with reworked themes from both major cuts to produce a smooth soundscape here.

Much of the added material comes in the beginning, which can make the earlier part of this feel slow and then make the ending seem rushed. That said, it's not ALL character development; there are some more action shots and that great knife fight scene in the desert. If you can get over the difference in video quality, this is a version I'd recommend over the theatrical version or the 'official' extended version.

April 29, 2009
*This rating was given before reviews were required*

June 29, 2012

Very good. Still occasionally painful to watch, especially towards the end, but the best cut of this movie I’ve seen so far. (The pain is entirely due to David Lynch. Can’t say I’m a big fan of his take on Dune – Frank Herbert’s books deserve a Peter Jackson. But the Lynch version is by far more interesting than the TV series, for ist strangeness alone.)

April 12, 2010
*This rating was given before reviews were required*