Dune (1984) The Alternative Edition Redux | Special 1080p Edition

Best possible job with the material available. Issues stem from there just isnt enough filmed material to make the story coherent for the uninitiated.

Amazing!

I hold Dune in very high regard. The original David Lynch film was one of my formative cinematic experiences, inspiring me to read Frank Herbert's original book series by the time I got through middle school. As soon as I learned about the art of fanedits, I sought out a version of Lynch's film that better represented the book's story and tone.

Spicediver's fifteen year journey in completing this edit is commendable. Drawing upon as much material as possible and putting in an immense amount of effort to complete effects, he's created the fullest version of Dune possible, While there is some visual incongruity between video sources, he's gone to great lengths to incorporate them into the film as naturally as possible.

While the majority of the internal narration is thankfully excises, my only suggestion is to eliminate these sections further, even some of the Virginia Madsen narrative moments - The story offered, I feel, is complete set up well enough that I feel the audience can be trusted to understand the narrative.

Still, this fanedit is one of my favorite discoveries, and my definite go-to when the Dune mood strikes.

This is the only way I would want to watch Lynch's Dune. Spicediver has put an incredible amount of work into this edit, going far beyond simply adding in deleted scenes and such. This include building new in-world exposition scenes, fixing a lot of audio effects, and even some video effects, Some of the deleted scenes have poor video quality but the audio is still fairly smooth which makes the seams less jarring.
Lynch's Dune has a number of flaws, but it also has a huge number of strengths (for example the art design, important plot elements left out of New Dune, and the Atreides actors). Unfortunately the theatrical version is unwatchable. Spicediver has done the worlds a massive grace by constructing a worthy cut of Lynch's vision.

I've watched David Lynch's 'Dune' more times than I can remember since I was a kid, in various different versions and transfer qualities (sadly never at the cinema... yet). This time it was Spicediver's 'Alternative Edition' fanedit (which I've seen before) included on the big 6-disc German UHD/blu-ray boxset, in mostly lovely 1080p (due to some rare deleted sequences varying in resolution). In my opinion (not widely held), Lynch's 'Dune' is near perfect already, so it doesn't need changing but I'm happy to have more of the thing I love. e.g one of my favourite moments in all of cinema is "...also known as Dune... DUUH DUUH DA DAAAAH!!!" so having that changed, however beautifully edited and audio mixed by Spicediver, isn't what I'm ideally looking for in a fanedit. Lines are removed, music is changed, scenes are reordered to flow differently with new ones etc. 15MaF's 2.5-hour, all-HD, mostly just extended 'Deluxe Edition' fanedit is more my speed, it's the TV cut stuff but polished to the Lynch high standard. However, moments like Thufir's death are beautifully integrated here by Spicediver, even if the source video quality is very poor. Thankfully all of these different cuts can co-exist on my hardrive together (and now in my blu-ray collection), so the 'Alternative Edition' is great for the times when I want a different and more fulsome take on the material available.

There is a black frame at 38.29 (on the mkv time stamp, or thereabouts on the blu-ray), soon after the line "Mother tell me", so I've knocked a point off Visual Editing for that. Otherwise the editing is fantastic. Another point off for Enjoyment, for reasons I already explained above and a point off Video Quality to reflect the lower res material that is occasionally dropped in (although it's presented as best it could be).