Over the 56 years of its existence, Dune has earned a reputation for being “unfilmable.” But that’s not the most accurate way to describe the continuing struggles that filmmakers have faced in bringing the book(s) to the screen. Even if it were possible to film a definitive interpretation-and that’s a massive, sandworm-sized if-would there ever be enough of an audience consensus to recognize it as such? A story more uncontainable than unfilmable But it’s ultimately what confounds us, too. The seemingly limitless approaches to the source material and all of the possibilities that arise from it are part of what draw artist, reader and viewer alike to Dune. My own Dune experience is something else entirely. The other cathartically wept over an exchange between two people in the final pages. One was impressed by the world-building, and fascinated by how effectively Herbert kept him invested in the characters despite cultivating little in the way of emotional attachment to any of them.

A few years ago, I happened to know two people who were reading Herbert’s fifth book, Heretics of Dune, at the same time. Even among the most dedicated Dune nerds, these viewpoints can be wildly divergent. That work then joins the rest of the canon in creating the various impressions held by its audience.

Dune 2000 full movie