Tomorrow I go to see the latest adaptation of Frank Herbert’s classic Sci-Fi novel Dune. This work has been adapted twice before in 1984 by idiosyncratic director David Lynch for Italian Producer Dino de Laurentiis. This version was a critical and financial failure. Rumor have reported that the first cut of this film was something like five hours long, but the theatrical release was just two hours and seventeen minutes and that the heavy use of voice over in the final cut was a product of this butchering. Whatever the reasons this film pleased neither those who were new to the story nor the fans of the novel.

In 2000 the Sci-Fi network aired a miniseries adaptation of the novel titled Frank Herbert’s Dune. The expanded time worked in this adaptation’s favor, but the limited budget and production restrictions held the final product back and while better received than Lynch’s strange yet unforgettable film this too failed to catch fire with fans.

Adaptations are tricky beasts. A novel or short story is a very different medium than a film. One of not inherently superior to the other, both have their strengths and their weaknesses, and it is foolish and unfair to expect an adaptation to be fully faithful to its source material. An adaptation can wildly deviate from the source material and still be a good or even great adaptation if it captures the tone, theme, and heart of the source. Sometimes it’s best to throws out the subplot that enrich a novel but only drag a film down to a slow death. The mafia sub-plot that explains why the mayor will not close Amity’s beaches in jaws is an excellent example. It makes the mayor’s actions more understandable, more like what a person who is facing harm or death might do to make sure they have the money the mob wants, but in a film, it would be too many scenes away from our central characters in which we spin wheels waiting for the plot to get moving again.

We shall have to wait and see if Dune captures the tone, theme, and heart of Herbert’s dense novel. We do know that this adaptation is incomplete, covering only about half the novel and if successful only then will we be allowed to have the whole story.