So I had these two versions of Dune on tape and I tried to make a video composite that added all the good stuff from the Extended Edition. It had all this extra footage in it and I was fascinated. A got that from a collector, it wasn’t available any other way. It was dubbed from a rare Japanese laserdisc release. I remember around 1990 I bought this VHS tape of the Extended Edition. I was actually thinking about it for years before the tools were around to make it possible. When did you first get the idea recut the film?Ī. We talked about the journey and all things Dune. He spent years on his fan editing project, releasing two earlier versions before finishing his Redux cut in 2012. Spicediver (he says he prefers to stay anonymous) obviously knows the film and its backstory intimately.

Redux succeeds despite some of the film's more indelible problems - stiff acting, cheesy bad guys and a general sense that everyone is taking themselves a little too seriously.

Reviews at the Internet Fanedit Database paint a far more coherent and involving film than either the Theatrical Cut or the chaotic Extended Edition. As editor Antony Gibbs explained in the 2003 doco Impressions Of Dune: “David wanted a 3 hour movie and Dino wanted a 2 hour movie and Dino won….it broke David’s heart to have to cut it down to that length.” Lynch had little choice but to comply his contract didn't give him final cut, a creative compromise the director never made again.Īnd so we come to Dune: The Alternative Edition Redux, assembled and rebuilt by a fan to a professional standard. Stories from behind the scenes suggest that editing decisions - driven by post-production arguments between Lynch and producer Dino de Laurentiis - were largely to blame for this incoherence. Much has been made of the film's jumpy and confusing narrative, arguably the main reason for its critical and box office failure. Likewise, there is a pretty strong consensus among Frank Herbert fans that his classic novel deserved better. Despite its peerless literary source, Lynch fans typically dismiss it as his worst film. Lynch’s infamous big-budget science fiction feature is adapted from Frank Herbert's much revered novel, a complex tale of feudal politics, mystic religion and a desert planet of giant sandworms that's home to an all-powerful psychedelic spice called melange. I found that particularly true with David Lynch's Dune. Once you’ve watched a few fan edits (also known as fan cuts) of commercially released feature films, you come to appreciate the extraordinary power of editing to change a movie.

Fan edit database