Critical response
Dune received mostly negative reviews upon release. Roger Ebert gave one star out of four, and wrote: This movie is a real mess, an incomprehensible, ugly, unstructured, pointless excursion into the murkier realms of one of the most confusing screenplays of all time. The movie's plot will no doubt mean more to people who've read Herbert than to those who are walking in cold... and the worst movie of the year. On At the Movies with Gene Siskel and Ebert, Siskel began his review: It's physically ugly, it contains at least a dozen gory gross-out scenes, some of its special effects are cheap—surprisingly cheap because this film cost a reported $40–45 million—and its story is confusing beyond belief. In case I haven't made myself clear, I hated watching this film. The film was later listed as the worst film of 1984 and the "biggest disappointment of the year" in their "Stinkers of 1984" episode. Other negative reviews focused on the same issues and on the length of the film.
Janet Maslin of The New York Times gave Dune a negative review of one star out of five. She said, "Several of the characters in Dune are psychic, which puts them in the unique position of being able to understand what goes on in the movie" and explained that the plot was "perilously overloaded, as is virtually everything else about it".
Variety gave Dune a less negative review, stating "Dune is a huge, hollow, imaginative, and cold sci-fi epic. Visually unique and teeming with incident, David Lynch's film holds the interest due to its abundant surface attractions, but won't, of its own accord, create the sort of fanaticism which has made Frank Herbert's 1965 novel one of the all-time favorites in its genre." They also commented on how "Lynch's adaptation covers the entire span of the novel, but simply setting up the various worlds, characters, intrigues, and forces at work requires more than a half-hour of expository screen time." They did enjoy the cast and said, "Francesca Annis and Jürgen Prochnow make an outstandingly attractive royal couple, Siân Phillips has some mesmerizing moments as a powerful witch, Brad Dourif is effectively loony, and best of all is Kenneth McMillan, whose face is covered with grotesque growths and who floats around like the Blue Meanie come to life."
Richard Corliss of Time gave Dune a negative review, stating, "Most sci-fi movies offer escape, a holiday from homework, but Dune is as difficult as a final exam. You have to cram for it. [...] MacLachlan, 25, grows impressively in the role; his features, soft and spoiled at the beginning, take on a he-manly glamour once he assumes his mission. [...] The actors seem hypnotized by the spell Lynch has woven around them—especially the lustrous Francesca Annis, as Paul's mother, who whispers her lines with the urgency of erotic revelation. In those moments when Annis is onscreen, Dune finds the emotional center that has eluded it in its parade of rococo decor and austere special effects. She reminds us of what movies can achieve when they have a heart, as well as a mind."
Film scholar Robin Wood called Dune "the most obscenely homophobic film I have ever seen"—referring to a scene in which Baron Harkonnen sexually assaults and kills a young man by bleeding him to death—charging it with "managing to associate with homosexuality in a single scene physical grossness, moral depravity, violence, and disease". Dennis Altman suggested the film showed how "AIDS references began penetrating popular culture" in the 1980s, asking, "Was it just an accident that in the film Dune the homosexual villain had suppurating sores on his face?"
Critic and science-fiction writer Harlan Ellison reviewed the film positively. In his 1989 book of film criticism, Harlan Ellison's Watching, he says because critics were denied screenings at the last minute after several reschedules, it made the film community feel nervous and negative towards Dune before its release. Ellison later said the performances were generally good but McLaughlan, while a "competent actor", was "not a thespian" and thus often outclassed by the other cast. In summary, Ellison declared "It was a book that shouldn't have been shot. It was a script that couldn't have been written. It was a directorial job that was beyond anyone's doing ... and yet the film was made" and yet Lynch's Dune manages to be engaging and is still discussed after decades. Daniel Snyder also praised elements of the film in a 2014 article which called the movie "a deeply flawed work that failed as a commercial enterprise, but still managed to capture and distill essential portions of one of science fiction's densest works." Snyder stated that Lynch's "surreal style" created "a world that felt utterly alien [full of] bizarre dream sequences, rife with images of unborn fetuses and shimmering energies, and unsettling scenery like the industrial hell of the Harkonnen homeworld, [making] the fil[m] actually closer to Kubrick (2001: A Space Odyssey) than [George] Lucas. It seeks to put the viewer somewhere unfamiliar while hinting at a greater, hidden story." Snyder praised the production and stated that Herbert had said he was pleased with Lynch's film.
Colin Greenland reviewed Dune for Imagine magazine, and stated, "Anthony Masters's magnificent design features none of the gleaming chrome and sterile plastic we expect of space opera: instead, sinister paraphernalia of cast iron and coiled brass, corridors of dark wood and marble, and the sand, the endless sand..."
Science-fiction historian John Clute argued that though Lynch's Dune "spared nothing to achieve its striking visual effects", the film adaptation "unfortunately—perhaps inevitably—reduced Herbert's dense text to a melodrama". Conversely, Slovenian philosopher Slavoj Žižek referred to the film as Lynch's "neglected masterpiece, with genuine moments of breathtaking poetic beauty," and has cited it as his favorite of Lynch's films.
On review aggregator Rotten Tomatoes, Dune has an approval rating of 36% based on 117 reviews, with an average score of 5.6/10. The site's critical consensus reads, "This truncated adaptation of Frank Herbert's sci-fi masterwork is too dry to work as grand entertainment, but David Lynch's flair for the surreal gives it some spice." On Metacritic, the film has a weighted average score of 41 out of 100 based on 20 critic reviews, indicating "mixed or average" reviews.
As a result of its poor commercial and critical reception, all initial plans for Dune sequels were canceled. David Lynch reportedly was working on the screenplay for Dune Messiah and was hired to direct both proposed second and third Dune films. Lynch later said:
I started selling out on Dune. Looking back, it's no one's fault but my own. I probably shouldn't have done that picture, but I saw tons and tons of possibilities for things I loved, and this was the structure to do them in. There was so much room to create a world. But I got strong indications from Raffaella and Dino De Laurentiis of what kind of film they expected, and I knew I didn't have final cut.
In the introduction for his 1985 short story collection Eye, author Frank Herbert discussed the film's reception and his participation in the production, complimented Lynch, and listed scenes that were shot but left out of the released version. He wrote, "I enjoyed the film even as a cut and I told it as I saw it: What reached the screen is a visual feast that begins as Dune begins and you hear my dialogue all through it. [...] I have my quibbles about the film, of course. Paul was a man playing god, not a god who could make it rain. [...] It's my opinion that David's film of Dune will also be alive and well long after people have forgotten the potboilers that come out of corporate boardrooms. This is based partly on the reactions of everyone who worked on the film: They were sad to be parting when it was over and glad they had done it. The wrap party was a rare scene of happy nostalgia."
Alejandro Jodorowsky, who had earlier been disappointed by the collapse of his own attempt to film Dune, later said he had been disappointed and jealous when he learned Lynch was making Dune, as he believed Lynch was the only other director capable of doing justice to the novel. At first, Jodorowsky refused to see Lynch's film, but his sons coerced him. As the film unfolded, Jodorowsky says he became very happy, seeing that it was a "failure", but that this was certainly the producers' fault and not Lynch's.
Mick Martin and Marsha Porter's 2005 DVD and Video Guide said "That the only good thing about the movie version of Dune is that it makes one want to read (or re-read) the book, otherwise it's a 47 million dollar mess".
