Wanderer, is Dune the one about the spice and some desert place? The movie goes for three hours, I remember Dad putting it on and then falling asleep and missing half the movie. So he starts the movie all over again :@ I don't know if he has actually managed to finish the movie.
nightwatcher
Yes, that's the one.
I should point out that even fans of the novel tend to dislike the 80s movie version - both the two hour version that was released to cinemas, and the three hour "Special Edition" that you just described.
You might be amused to note that the director of the film was so ashamed to be associated with the "Special Edition" that he had his name taken off the credits.
(the opening credits for the 3 hour version say the film was directed by "Alan Smithee", it was, in fact, directed by David Lynch - who is probably best known for
The Elephant Man,
Twin Peaks and
Mulholland Drive - he's still willing to take responsibility for the 2 hour cut of the movie, though)
There was a sci-fi channel mini-series of
Dune which goes for six hours - it was better received by fans of the book, though casual viewers tend to scoff at it's bad special effects and the poor acting of William Hurt in a pivotal supporting role... it was followed by a sequel,
Children Of Dune, which had somewhat more convincing production values and received some acclaim for the high quality of acting. James McAvoy appears in one of his earliest roles. This mini-series is also very long, however.
The first six books in the series (
Dune, Dune Messiah, Children Of Dune, God Emperor Of Dune, Heretics Of Dune and
Chapterhouse Dune) were written by Frank Herbert, and I found them worthwhile, although everything after book three gets very trippy indeed, and I'd think people would do well to stop at book three... or even just stop at book one since that's the best one and the sequels didn't really need to exist...
Frank Herbert's sixth book ends on a massive cliffhanger, so the pen was taken up by Brian Herbert and his friend, Kevin J Anderson.... the various sequels/prequels/interquels that these two wrote are at best mediocre space operas... at worst they consist of bad writing that closely resembles fan-fiction. Except that a lot of fan fiction out there is actually better than what these two came up with.
In my humble opinion, that is.
