Dune: Deluxe Edition

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Faneditor Name:
Original Movie/Show Title:
Fanedit Type:
Original Release Date:
1984
Original Running Time:
137 minutes
Fanedit Release Date:
Fanedit Running Time:
155 minutes
Time Cut:
1 minutes
Time Added:
19 minutes
Available in HD:
image
Synopsis:
The addition of various scenes from The Extended Edition from the Collectors 2 disc set, brand new shots, expansion of surround sound fidelity where possible, additional sound design, trimming of various original elements and a re-scored and re-edited finale. There has also been extensive repair, re-composition, grading and clean up work put into the project.
Intention:
A long held desire to give the theatrical print a little contextual elbow room without losing the general aesthetic in contrast to it's other incarnations - "Official" and fan edit alike. Also to improve the grading and detail quality of many scenes whose FX or composites were weak or suffered from too much particulate dirt or damage at the time it was scanned. This is not a top to bottom restoration by any means, but many elements do look better now.
Other Sources:
"Dune" - Der Wüstenplanet - Collector's 2 Disc Edition
"Dune" (Original Motion Picture Soundtrack) Original and Extended Version
"Green Screen Sand Storm 2 Views" - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0Doo3TGTzsY
"Green Screen Footage || HD Thunder" - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=67Dd6o2iP-M
"Heavy_Rain_UK_Cambridge_2.wav" - https://freesound.org/people/alexkandrell/sounds/316893/
"Sound of Wind - Nature Sounds" - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uIXI8lM76dA
"Violent Thunderstorm sound effect mp3" - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Fz1SAYd7js0

"Koyaanisqatsi" (1982) Godfrey Reggio - Documentary
"Visual Soundscapes" - Deserts | Planet Earth II - Documentary
"Samsara" (2011) - Documentary
Special Thanks:
The universe in some fashion - for the time needed to finish this edit... "Now I can get out of here ...If I can find a way"

Alex Kandrell - https://freesound.org/people/alexkandrell/
Nature Sounds - https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC_bDidXYgR_tpgqnf_2Ej8w
LifeInPixels - https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCHq9Hhi3wZP8dGgtyuygbVA
Green Screen Fisher - https://www.youtube.com/user/STIPE767
Bruce Leech - https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCchaCJg5U-QMaE0x0bpDcgA

TM2YC and Last Impressions for giving me reliable info on Dune releases.
Flubly for his info on machine learning with upscaled imagery - Alas my ancient machine was not receptive to the software I tried.
lapis molari for his enthiusiasm.

Release Information:
Digital
Editing Details:
In General
This is an expanded Theatrical Cut with updated FX and re-cut sequences. This is to give it a little elbow room by extending or adding a few extra scenes and to render epic circumstances a little more visually epic where I can. It is not an attempt to adhere more closely to the book's narrative by any means. The book's fine. The film's fine. They can be different. It's allowed.

This edit uses some portions of Mr Smithee's version, as the additional scenes have been upscaled quite well in it's particular special edition German release. Well enough to prompt this edit in fact. I have also used a few techniques to further tighten the softened detail in these shots before adding them to the edit (Thanks to TM2YC for pinpointing the version I needed). These clips have been trimmed down a little on occasion, with focus also on the sound design that had some poor choices, so they needed updating to suit the theatrical. It's all editing fit and finish essentially. The deleted scenes we are all familiar with do not make it into this edit. I believe the quality of the Extended footage used here will not entirely destroy the suspension of disbelief, but those deleted shots really do. They're not even up to badly encoded VCD quality, so they were never in the running. Plus many of them were crap scenes anyway. Thufir Hawats end scene, for example, was a truly excellent and compelling moment from Freddie Jones, but not so much from Kyle or the overall scene direction. To include it also broke the final act up too much and shifted too far into the sentimental at that stage, considering this is Muad'Dib's epic moment of eclipsing, then surpassing the dominance of The Guild.

All scene changes and the majority of individual cuts, carried heavy splicing that required clean up or image rebuilding for the frames immediately after, and sometimes before the splice. The splices show in the bottom then top of each frame as they pass through the film gate. In fact they often jump a little in the gate, creating an orientation distortion of the whole image for a frame or two. So I had to resample whatever image data I needed from surrounding frames but also retain the unique details of each frame in question. Many needed bespoke masking shapes and re-scaled pixel nudging etc. There are prints with cleaner splices/frames on other Blurays, but from my research, no picture seemed as sharp and well detailed as this edition - Which is also not smeared with noise reduction artifacting either. Some of the worst dirt instances I have cleaned when I spotted it during the splice clean up, but the many small iterations did not get any treatment, or else this would never have been completed. Plus the fact that fixing clouds of small scale dirt usually destroys far too much granular detail and draws attention any way, depending on your software/expertise etc.

The sound has been tinkered with a lot, mostly by using the the expanded soundtrack score. I made a surround mix and dipped into it when I needed to fix or embellish a scene. An objective review of all formats can tell you one thing about DUNE, it's audio quality is a bit crap compared to today's standard. The art and craft in it's audio creation is spellbinding, but it was seemingly never archived particularly well, and aside from a collection of now refurbished, incomplete consumer sound tracks that don't always reflect or often even appear in the film, there is no available audio that didn't come from a circulation print to my knowledge – And no temperature controlled archives are waiting to release a painstakingly re-assembled surround mix from reel to reel master tapes that I've heard of. Of course, the centre channel does have some lovely quality in the dialogue and foley etc for the most part, and the left and right front channels are pretty good generally. I've never handled a DUNE 35mm print and I don't know if it had a 70mm edition or if it played in the handful of cinemas at the time that could play back surround channel sound or in which formats etc. But the crumbling rear tracks sound as though they were taken from well used magnetic strips that have left it's best on projector playback heads across the world etc. But I digress. I've done what I can with it from what was available to me.

The grading has been changed to rid it of the ruddy skin tones and steely blue hues. It is far more akin to the very dark edition that many have commented on in the Bluray forums, but of course this edit has shadow detail and a more rounded palette. The grimy dusty greens of the still suits are retained etc, but the reds feature well enough and the skin tones don't venture too far into the yellow. For example, The Lady Jessica, The Shadout Mapes or the Baron's complexions could not each dictate how skin tones are regraded in general, but a compromise is always sought. Overall it looks more like a 35mm print than a typical noise reduced Bluray, so the remaining dirt and fluctuations are in keeping - I did a lot of dirt clean up for specific sequences, but to do the whole feature was never a plan. This print was nearly discarded for it's dirt, but ultimately was embraced for it's detail.

I did do a pass through the project at the end to rectify some of the dialogue sync issues. Sometimes these would clash with diegetic or foley sounds and so they were either shifted too, or took second place to dialogue placement if it wasn't a glaring issue.

I also replaced the ball of cheese moon with something a little more spherical and opaque. Various scenes – no need to list each one below. I'm sure some Lynch fans would prefer I kept the plasticine moon, as it carries his vibe, but it's composite translucence was a common enough complaint.
Cuts and Additions:
More specifically

Added a longer zooming sound for Irulan's intro starting in the rear speakers. Also a subtle lick of sitars, surround score mix and Regraded desert footage to lighter, less contrasting tones.

The secret report from the guild graphic was very dirty. The other prints/blurays have a cleaner version of the Kaitain graphic zoom that has suffered from some form of format conversion distortion and the grid lines are visual unstable as they scale up. So couldn't use any of that. I used the dirty Bluray I started with, that at least carries far more detail in the first place. Frame by frame clean up of the worst offending dirt and the animated portion has been roto-scoped and recomposited in order to stop background/foreground sources wobbling quite so much.

Slightly improved the flicker/desaturation issue for Kaitain landing shot, but without flooding the shot with an obvious tint there's little flicker software can do with a regulated causal frequency to disperse.

Added surround score mix and clearer sea wave audio to Caladan intro to smooth out the ragged surround audio. Also altered the narration introducing Paul so as to better place the words around the score and to simply introduce Jessica's "son" without naming him. Made good use of the hovering light unit audio in the left front speaker before the pan to Paul.

Re-composited or reframed all squashed shots on the Caladan 'Ipad'.

Gurney's face articulates far too much before saying “Soon we leave...”, So I rotoscoped and tweaked his presence in those few frames leading up to the dialogue and used distortion filters to get his profile to animate less and flow more smoothly into the next shot. It's not seamless, but it's far less distracting than before.

Re-cut the training fighter footage and audio to incorporate Extended version shots and dialogue.

Added surround score for the introduction to Leto.

Removed "super being" reference from Gaius Helen Mohiam chastising Jessica in Paul's room/And from Paul's echoed thoughts. Added a little re-purposed score.

Added what I could gather and conjure for the surround track mix for 'The Box' scene. Removed Jessica's thoughts of relief when she sees Paul is alive.

Re-composited the elements in the second establishing shot on Geidi Prime (billowing face chimney & approaching cable car) to stabilise and clean it up. Darkened and desaturated Piter's establishing composite shot and added mesh to his side windows where it had all but been erased by the composite process. Also masked/re-composited & reanimated the wide shot of the cable car entering the building to clean up the gate weave and excessive dirt. Also cleaned up the side shot of his view to the left that used to be paused for a few frames at the cut.

Re-composited parts of the Guild heighliner shot above Caladan to smooth out the optical composite disparities and frame weaving over the first few frames and to remove a couple of Atreides ships to better match the following shot of their approach to the loading aperture. Originally the animators chose to illustrate the ships entering at a different position to that shown in the following shot.

Indeed the following shot needed quite some work too. Dirt dancing all over it, flat contrast and flickering between red and blue hues in an odd non-regimented frequency that simply couldn't be tweaked with plugins. So I channel tweaked the fluctuations as best I could and cleaned most of the bad dirt without hindering too much detail ect. Now with some contrast, the golden gateway has a lustre to match the shot that this one fades into. Still a little noisy/patchy overall, but better.

The whole folding space sequence, including the arrival at Arrakis, also includes the surround score mix.

The internal shots of the "control rooms of spice gas" are now tinted orange/red and overlaid with footage of bellowing particles/dust/gas including the shots of the navigator whose eyes are also now rendered in subtle blue.

The appearance of the heighliner at Arrakis uses a replacement image of the heighliner. Here there is much more of the original score used in order to add extra desert footage from the 'Koyanisquatsi' and 'Samsara' art documentaries - the music and desert compliment each other so well I always felt this establishing sequence was far too brief and the shots far too ropey. This incorporates selected narration from the Extended version, culminating in the scenes we are familiar with as we are introduced to the Fremen reverend mother.

Added Duncan Idaho delivering a Fremen message to Leto from the Extended version.

Did a little wire removal for the hunter seeker scene

Added the longer briefing scene after the attack on Paul from the Extended version and placed it before the Inspection trip to the spice harvester. Though here I edit the discussion between Leto and Thufir Hawat to take out just a little of the excessive acting by Prochnow. There are no thoughts by Leto for the audience in this scene. I've subtracted the music except for the very end, where it is incorporated from the soundtrack more boldly in order to segue into the 'thoper hangar scene. Also reintroduced some acoustic hums and echoes consistent with the location.

Re-composited the Ornithopter taking off to improve lighting and texture of the craft. Also trimmed some of the green optical artifacting around the rotoscoped 'thopter as it emerged through the house shield.

The first half of the flight out to the spice harvester has been heavily updated. This includes lots of masking and colour alteration to present lighting changes to better tie the cockpit to it's exterior, the masks create the effect of light and shadow passing across the actors faces signifying movement in orientation, and additional shots are created by compositing interior cockpit windows against new desert vistas from BBC nature documentary footage. There are re-used sound effects, surround score mixing and regrading to bring the sequence up to spec a little. The positioning of the craft and it's flight path now better illustrates the journey up and over the shield wall - Using a shot that was misrepresented in the theatrical cut that features the crafts' top and bottom respectively as it passes the camera but as though it were oriented incorrectly in horizontal flight. This is now used aptly to show lift with the addition of a photoshopped matte 'painting' of a cliff face animated through the alpha masked windows of the interior cockpit to reveal a plateau at the top of it's climb. A similar creation is used as they drop into the open desert - replacing the poorly scaled close-up shot of loose sand and sculpted foam-rock that was previously used.

Dr Yueh now only says "My Message..."

The second half of the spice harvest flight is graded similarly to the first half to match the surroundings - casting a dark brown to the previous red tones of the cushioned wall interior and more masking to emulate directional light. The lighting is left a little flatter and brighter as they climb above the thunder of the worm, as their orientation does not change while they watch and the air is cleaner/clearer etc.

The baliset scene from the Extended version is included, and Dr Kines eyes are recoloured blue.

Leto's thoughts don't mention the shields after Yueh tranquillises him. The "house shields de-activating" announcement is now timed a little differently as Yueh approaches, so Leto just thinks out loud that "we are wide open"

Thufir's thought-out-loud over "the weirding modules" does not now include "destroyed"

The Betrayal/Harkonnen attack sequence includes scenes from the Extended version, with repurposed score, audio effects and a little trimming and editing to smooth various parts out and tighten it up a bit.

On the shuttle craft Jessica only says "He's trying the voice" the rest about the reverend mother's comments is removed

When Paul takes control of the craft, I have used extensive masking to knock back the overpowering warm/yellow lighting to a far more neutral colour to keep the control console looking dull and dirty rather than like a yellow submarine. Also the view of the cockpit and the desert from behind Paul, through the front port, now has a much more realistic grading with colours between the composite parts balanced.

The composite shots of the shuttle from behind is now made up from multiple layers seen through various filter settings in order to create a bolder photographic contrast and create more physicality for the craft as it breaks it's fin squeezing through the rock peaks.

As Paul tells Jessica about his waking dream I take out the specific comments regarding the Emperor and Baron. Also included here is the appropriate portion of the surround score mix to fix the crumbly rear channels.

Introduced bolder lightning in a few shots with a hue to match the colour of the lit surroundings, but left the worm-sign as it is.

Removed the blue screen composite of the stand-ins for Paul and Jessica as they turn to look back to the worm.

Greatly increased contrast and composite colour balance during the cliff crevice worm attack.

Removed some shots of Paul's fall during the worm's attack. Cut down the first shot where Jessica starts to shout “Paul” which now is made audible and cuts to her close-up to finish it off, so no more double take. Removed the latter portion of the toppling rock with the obvious chute/slide carved into the reverse, removed the rock painted cushioned landing for the stunt man halfway through the fall, and shortened and improved the speed and colours of Paul against the vertical rear projection as though free-falling. Overall the pace of the fall is less farcical.

The fight with Jamis is included, as is his funeral, The portions of the surround score is used for each respectively and featured again more prominently following these scenes as they stand and view the water cache. Fremen eyes were coloured blue for these added sequences.

The scene where Paul is informed of Liet's death as Chani passes by is included. The surround score for the next scene comes in much earlier here to augment the audio.

For Jessica's water of life ritual, there is no thought dialogue from Paul or Leto. It is slightly shorter to achieve this and the slightly different version of the same score is used here from the suite surround mix.

The scenes where Paul shows the Fremen his weirding techniques were damaged in this print. There was a heavy red colour cast to the right of the image for about the length of a film reel, maybe less. Like the splices mentioned earlier, there are prints that don't have this issue, but I was committed to the consistently higher quality scan from this print. So I had to mask off and recolour these scenes. Which is fun on panning shots.

For the riding of Shai Hulud I included the Extended scene and also introduced a lot of overlaid wind/dust/sandstorm imagery. The palette here also is greatly changed from the original. Gone is the dark orange cartoonish desert – this is more realistic and consistent now. The sky is masked off with a filter layer and now acts/looks like it is the source of diffused light rather than a dirty heavy handed watercolour pigment. It now takes much more of a dusty western look which is almost monotone – this aids the poorly ageing blue screen composites to some degree when they all get onto the worm and rotoscoped hastily. The soundtrack/score is also repurposed and lengthened to create some continuity with the added footage. The dialogue recording for the extended portion sounds poor still with the wind howling metallic through the equipment/tubing they were clutching, but I tarted it up as best I could.

To round off the Shai Hulud Sand riding scenes I painstakingly patched up and cleaned up the gaping worm mouth when Paul pulls up on the reigns. This does not look perfectly smooth and seamless by any means, but is a massive improvement over the scrappy footage I started out with. I'd kick myself if there is a version out there that didn't need the work doing to it, but I'd be surprised.

The lighter/brighter masked off grading I used for the open desert scenes continue here, but with a little less of a diffused sandstorm vibe when openly fighting the Harkonnens. In a scene where a composite is used for a group of Sardokar running from a burning harvester, I use a large puff of overlayed sand timed with an explosion to mask the lighting division between the foreground rotoscoped composite element and the background footage. Also colour corrected the shot.

The milking of the newborn worm scene is included, but cut a little shorter without the intro. Fremen eyes are coloured blue.

There is some slightly more consistent grading for Paul's water of life ritual, but most of the changes are audio, where I added the surround mix and remixed portions of the center channel – Notably taking out the Atreides fanfare and inserting more subtle aubible FX. Also rebuilt the two rising moons shot from the film's trailer in HD and inserted it into Paul's water of life ritual.

There was more red tint to mask off and recolour for the long live the fighters speech.

Regraded the Harkonnen ship approaching the Palace to balance the composite shot colours.

Repurposed a shot of the shield wall into a partial pan to cue Paul, Gurney and Stilgar trotting down the steps to the control room. I've also re-purposed and extended the steadily building score to lead up to this point.

The extra footage of the Emperor talking to the Baron about the defeat of his Sardukar is included. This is re-edited to get it to flow in addition to the theatrical footage and the Baron's reaction shots

All of the composite shots of the Fremen on Worms approaching the Emperor's ship have been heavily regraded to match the lighting and surrounding shots. This often features sandstorms/rifts of cloud & dust etc overlaid on certain shots that helps combine foreground and background colour mismatches. I masked off certain areas and pulled the blues back out of the eyes that the gading greatly thinned out.

The Baron's exit through the wall composite shot was never cropped properly, but is now.

As the Baron Harkonnen is floating towards the worms mouth, I repaired the score that is interrupted with one of the Atreides fanfares to focus on Paul witnessing the Barons death. This was always jarring to me, but now plays out a little more smoothly.

The Paul/Feyd fight is a sound design mess. There is an awfully truncated/occasional drum presence that was obviously all but abandoned after the drummers' appearance shot is done with. Also there is a low repetition of notes/tones accompanied by a hiss left over from an attempt at a percussive score or something – doesn't seem to match the unused Toto score either. It's interesting how I never picked up on it all until I inspected it closely, and evidently this was all getting chopped and changed at the time with leftovers and quick fixes muddled together on the final release. I stripped out as much bullshit as possible from the 3 front channels – leaving what dialogue and foley was strictly necessary. Rebuilt the drummers' track as though it were diegetic and featured it prominently in the surround mix after the drummers' close-up - to then last the whole fight. I then repaired the dialogue reverb from my centre/left/right channel butchery, added the room tones and the crowds outside now chant “Muad'Dib” slowly, and is heard somewhat gently inside getting louder and quieter as the shots require.

After Paul Kills Feyd, the rest of the ending has been completely re-edited and re-scored using 'Final Dream' from the expanded soundtrack surround mix and has new sound FX added for wind, rain and thunder. There is a new lightning FX shot in place of the old spindly worm sign effort that touches the top of the palace.

After all that I went back and overlayed footage from the brighter/washed out version - Reputedly from the original French film scan many discs came from in Europe. So this embellishment runs most of the full length of the edit to utilize a little of the luminance from it's fuller highlight gamut. It's colours in general are far too vibrant and there is barely any recognisable film grain, but the depth of spacial differentiation in the scan is very good indeed – That is to say that any areas not strictly in focus are not full of sharpened grain to the point you can't tell what the intended depth of field was supposed to be. It's sometimes far more glassy to have less grain and fuller tonal ranges, and then it's satisfying to see the dry grainy detail in other shots. With this overlay I attempted to get the best of both worlds for most shots.

The most notable remaining edit for those interested in context is the removal of Alia's rather on the nose announcement – It makes the whole event far less irritating.

And yes, as I might have already said - This is some biblical messiah rain bullshit and it's always played rather well as far I'm concerned, considering the Bene Geserit propaganda element - So really it's just thousands of Fremen water storage caches entering the ecosystem ;)


I started talking about this edit in my original post as though it would be a theatrical cut with elbow room, and I might have moved a little beyond that, but it's not too bloated. Also I might have missed a few things in this write up as this project took a “loooong time – a long time...” and it might be a mess of tense as it was added to in fits and starts.


Admittedly, after seeing the final output for this edit, I'm hoping there will be a remastered compilation of sorts from the original sources. The quality of this edit, despite my best efforts just could not compare to such. But this is a pretty watchable touch up.


Thanks for coming.

15MaF
dunedeluxe_disc
dunedeluxe_coverart
dunedeluxe_inner
Faneditor Name:
Original Movie/Show Title:
Fanedit Type:
Original Release Date:
1984
Original Running Time:
137 minutes
Fanedit Release Date:
Fanedit Running Time:
155 minutes
Time Cut:
1 minutes
Time Added:
19 minutes
Available in HD:
image
Synopsis:
The addition of various scenes from The Extended Edition from the Collectors 2 disc set, brand new shots, expansion of surround sound fidelity where possible, additional sound design, trimming of various original elements and a re-scored and re-edited finale. There has also been extensive repair, re-composition, grading and clean up work put into the project.
Intention:
A long held desire to give the theatrical print a little contextual elbow room without losing the general aesthetic in contrast to it's other incarnations - "Official" and fan edit alike. Also to improve the grading and detail quality of many scenes whose FX or composites were weak or suffered from too much particulate dirt or damage at the time it was scanned. This is not a top to bottom restoration by any means, but many elements do look better now.
Other Sources:
"Dune" - Der Wüstenplanet - Collector's 2 Disc Edition
"Dune" (Original Motion Picture Soundtrack) Original and Extended Version
"Green Screen Sand Storm 2 Views" - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0Doo3TGTzsY
"Green Screen Footage || HD Thunder" - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=67Dd6o2iP-M
"Heavy_Rain_UK_Cambridge_2.wav" - https://freesound.org/people/alexkandrell/sounds/316893/
"Sound of Wind - Nature Sounds" - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uIXI8lM76dA
"Violent Thunderstorm sound effect mp3" - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Fz1SAYd7js0

"Koyaanisqatsi" (1982) Godfrey Reggio - Documentary
"Visual Soundscapes" - Deserts | Planet Earth II - Documentary
"Samsara" (2011) - Documentary
Special Thanks:
The universe in some fashion - for the time needed to finish this edit... "Now I can get out of here ...If I can find a way"

Alex Kandrell - https://freesound.org/people/alexkandrell/
Nature Sounds - https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC_bDidXYgR_tpgqnf_2Ej8w
LifeInPixels - https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCHq9Hhi3wZP8dGgtyuygbVA
Green Screen Fisher - https://www.youtube.com/user/STIPE767
Bruce Leech - https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCchaCJg5U-QMaE0x0bpDcgA

TM2YC and Last Impressions for giving me reliable info on Dune releases.
Flubly for his info on machine learning with upscaled imagery - Alas my ancient machine was not receptive to the software I tried.
lapis molari for his enthiusiasm.

Release Information:
Digital
Editing Details:
In General
This is an expanded Theatrical Cut with updated FX and re-cut sequences. This is to give it a little elbow room by extending or adding a few extra scenes and to render epic circumstances a little more visually epic where I can. It is not an attempt to adhere more closely to the book's narrative by any means. The book's fine. The film's fine. They can be different. It's allowed.

This edit uses some portions of Mr Smithee's version, as the additional scenes have been upscaled quite well in it's particular special edition German release. Well enough to prompt this edit in fact. I have also used a few techniques to further tighten the softened detail in these shots before adding them to the edit (Thanks to TM2YC for pinpointing the version I needed). These clips have been trimmed down a little on occasion, with focus also on the sound design that had some poor choices, so they needed updating to suit the theatrical. It's all editing fit and finish essentially. The deleted scenes we are all familiar with do not make it into this edit. I believe the quality of the Extended footage used here will not entirely destroy the suspension of disbelief, but those deleted shots really do. They're not even up to badly encoded VCD quality, so they were never in the running. Plus many of them were crap scenes anyway. Thufir Hawats end scene, for example, was a truly excellent and compelling moment from Freddie Jones, but not so much from Kyle or the overall scene direction. To include it also broke the final act up too much and shifted too far into the sentimental at that stage, considering this is Muad'Dib's epic moment of eclipsing, then surpassing the dominance of The Guild.

All scene changes and the majority of individual cuts, carried heavy splicing that required clean up or image rebuilding for the frames immediately after, and sometimes before the splice. The splices show in the bottom then top of each frame as they pass through the film gate. In fact they often jump a little in the gate, creating an orientation distortion of the whole image for a frame or two. So I had to resample whatever image data I needed from surrounding frames but also retain the unique details of each frame in question. Many needed bespoke masking shapes and re-scaled pixel nudging etc. There are prints with cleaner splices/frames on other Blurays, but from my research, no picture seemed as sharp and well detailed as this edition - Which is also not smeared with noise reduction artifacting either. Some of the worst dirt instances I have cleaned when I spotted it during the splice clean up, but the many small iterations did not get any treatment, or else this would never have been completed. Plus the fact that fixing clouds of small scale dirt usually destroys far too much granular detail and draws attention any way, depending on your software/expertise etc.

The sound has been tinkered with a lot, mostly by using the the expanded soundtrack score. I made a surround mix and dipped into it when I needed to fix or embellish a scene. An objective review of all formats can tell you one thing about DUNE, it's audio quality is a bit crap compared to today's standard. The art and craft in it's audio creation is spellbinding, but it was seemingly never archived particularly well, and aside from a collection of now refurbished, incomplete consumer sound tracks that don't always reflect or often even appear in the film, there is no available audio that didn't come from a circulation print to my knowledge – And no temperature controlled archives are waiting to release a painstakingly re-assembled surround mix from reel to reel master tapes that I've heard of. Of course, the centre channel does have some lovely quality in the dialogue and foley etc for the most part, and the left and right front channels are pretty good generally. I've never handled a DUNE 35mm print and I don't know if it had a 70mm edition or if it played in the handful of cinemas at the time that could play back surround channel sound or in which formats etc. But the crumbling rear tracks sound as though they were taken from well used magnetic strips that have left it's best on projector playback heads across the world etc. But I digress. I've done what I can with it from what was available to me.

The grading has been changed to rid it of the ruddy skin tones and steely blue hues. It is far more akin to the very dark edition that many have commented on in the Bluray forums, but of course this edit has shadow detail and a more rounded palette. The grimy dusty greens of the still suits are retained etc, but the reds feature well enough and the skin tones don't venture too far into the yellow. For example, The Lady Jessica, The Shadout Mapes or the Baron's complexions could not each dictate how skin tones are regraded in general, but a compromise is always sought. Overall it looks more like a 35mm print than a typical noise reduced Bluray, so the remaining dirt and fluctuations are in keeping - I did a lot of dirt clean up for specific sequences, but to do the whole feature was never a plan. This print was nearly discarded for it's dirt, but ultimately was embraced for it's detail.

I did do a pass through the project at the end to rectify some of the dialogue sync issues. Sometimes these would clash with diegetic or foley sounds and so they were either shifted too, or took second place to dialogue placement if it wasn't a glaring issue.

I also replaced the ball of cheese moon with something a little more spherical and opaque. Various scenes – no need to list each one below. I'm sure some Lynch fans would prefer I kept the plasticine moon, as it carries his vibe, but it's composite translucence was a common enough complaint.
Cuts and Additions:
More specifically

Added a longer zooming sound for Irulan's intro starting in the rear speakers. Also a subtle lick of sitars, surround score mix and Regraded desert footage to lighter, less contrasting tones.

The secret report from the guild graphic was very dirty. The other prints/blurays have a cleaner version of the Kaitain graphic zoom that has suffered from some form of format conversion distortion and the grid lines are visual unstable as they scale up. So couldn't use any of that. I used the dirty Bluray I started with, that at least carries far more detail in the first place. Frame by frame clean up of the worst offending dirt and the animated portion has been roto-scoped and recomposited in order to stop background/foreground sources wobbling quite so much.

Slightly improved the flicker/desaturation issue for Kaitain landing shot, but without flooding the shot with an obvious tint there's little flicker software can do with a regulated causal frequency to disperse.

Added surround score mix and clearer sea wave audio to Caladan intro to smooth out the ragged surround audio. Also altered the narration introducing Paul so as to better place the words around the score and to simply introduce Jessica's "son" without naming him. Made good use of the hovering light unit audio in the left front speaker before the pan to Paul.

Re-composited or reframed all squashed shots on the Caladan 'Ipad'.

Gurney's face articulates far too much before saying “Soon we leave...”, So I rotoscoped and tweaked his presence in those few frames leading up to the dialogue and used distortion filters to get his profile to animate less and flow more smoothly into the next shot. It's not seamless, but it's far less distracting than before.

Re-cut the training fighter footage and audio to incorporate Extended version shots and dialogue.

Added surround score for the introduction to Leto.

Removed "super being" reference from Gaius Helen Mohiam chastising Jessica in Paul's room/And from Paul's echoed thoughts. Added a little re-purposed score.

Added what I could gather and conjure for the surround track mix for 'The Box' scene. Removed Jessica's thoughts of relief when she sees Paul is alive.

Re-composited the elements in the second establishing shot on Geidi Prime (billowing face chimney & approaching cable car) to stabilise and clean it up. Darkened and desaturated Piter's establishing composite shot and added mesh to his side windows where it had all but been erased by the composite process. Also masked/re-composited & reanimated the wide shot of the cable car entering the building to clean up the gate weave and excessive dirt. Also cleaned up the side shot of his view to the left that used to be paused for a few frames at the cut.

Re-composited parts of the Guild heighliner shot above Caladan to smooth out the optical composite disparities and frame weaving over the first few frames and to remove a couple of Atreides ships to better match the following shot of their approach to the loading aperture. Originally the animators chose to illustrate the ships entering at a different position to that shown in the following shot.

Indeed the following shot needed quite some work too. Dirt dancing all over it, flat contrast and flickering between red and blue hues in an odd non-regimented frequency that simply couldn't be tweaked with plugins. So I channel tweaked the fluctuations as best I could and cleaned most of the bad dirt without hindering too much detail ect. Now with some contrast, the golden gateway has a lustre to match the shot that this one fades into. Still a little noisy/patchy overall, but better.

The whole folding space sequence, including the arrival at Arrakis, also includes the surround score mix.

The internal shots of the "control rooms of spice gas" are now tinted orange/red and overlaid with footage of bellowing particles/dust/gas including the shots of the navigator whose eyes are also now rendered in subtle blue.

The appearance of the heighliner at Arrakis uses a replacement image of the heighliner. Here there is much more of the original score used in order to add extra desert footage from the 'Koyanisquatsi' and 'Samsara' art documentaries - the music and desert compliment each other so well I always felt this establishing sequence was far too brief and the shots far too ropey. This incorporates selected narration from the Extended version, culminating in the scenes we are familiar with as we are introduced to the Fremen reverend mother.

Added Duncan Idaho delivering a Fremen message to Leto from the Extended version.

Did a little wire removal for the hunter seeker scene

Added the longer briefing scene after the attack on Paul from the Extended version and placed it before the Inspection trip to the spice harvester. Though here I edit the discussion between Leto and Thufir Hawat to take out just a little of the excessive acting by Prochnow. There are no thoughts by Leto for the audience in this scene. I've subtracted the music except for the very end, where it is incorporated from the soundtrack more boldly in order to segue into the 'thoper hangar scene. Also reintroduced some acoustic hums and echoes consistent with the location.

Re-composited the Ornithopter taking off to improve lighting and texture of the craft. Also trimmed some of the green optical artifacting around the rotoscoped 'thopter as it emerged through the house shield.

The first half of the flight out to the spice harvester has been heavily updated. This includes lots of masking and colour alteration to present lighting changes to better tie the cockpit to it's exterior, the masks create the effect of light and shadow passing across the actors faces signifying movement in orientation, and additional shots are created by compositing interior cockpit windows against new desert vistas from BBC nature documentary footage. There are re-used sound effects, surround score mixing and regrading to bring the sequence up to spec a little. The positioning of the craft and it's flight path now better illustrates the journey up and over the shield wall - Using a shot that was misrepresented in the theatrical cut that features the crafts' top and bottom respectively as it passes the camera but as though it were oriented incorrectly in horizontal flight. This is now used aptly to show lift with the addition of a photoshopped matte 'painting' of a cliff face animated through the alpha masked windows of the interior cockpit to reveal a plateau at the top of it's climb. A similar creation is used as they drop into the open desert - replacing the poorly scaled close-up shot of loose sand and sculpted foam-rock that was previously used.

Dr Yueh now only says "My Message..."

The second half of the spice harvest flight is graded similarly to the first half to match the surroundings - casting a dark brown to the previous red tones of the cushioned wall interior and more masking to emulate directional light. The lighting is left a little flatter and brighter as they climb above the thunder of the worm, as their orientation does not change while they watch and the air is cleaner/clearer etc.

The baliset scene from the Extended version is included, and Dr Kines eyes are recoloured blue.

Leto's thoughts don't mention the shields after Yueh tranquillises him. The "house shields de-activating" announcement is now timed a little differently as Yueh approaches, so Leto just thinks out loud that "we are wide open"

Thufir's thought-out-loud over "the weirding modules" does not now include "destroyed"

The Betrayal/Harkonnen attack sequence includes scenes from the Extended version, with repurposed score, audio effects and a little trimming and editing to smooth various parts out and tighten it up a bit.

On the shuttle craft Jessica only says "He's trying the voice" the rest about the reverend mother's comments is removed

When Paul takes control of the craft, I have used extensive masking to knock back the overpowering warm/yellow lighting to a far more neutral colour to keep the control console looking dull and dirty rather than like a yellow submarine. Also the view of the cockpit and the desert from behind Paul, through the front port, now has a much more realistic grading with colours between the composite parts balanced.

The composite shots of the shuttle from behind is now made up from multiple layers seen through various filter settings in order to create a bolder photographic contrast and create more physicality for the craft as it breaks it's fin squeezing through the rock peaks.

As Paul tells Jessica about his waking dream I take out the specific comments regarding the Emperor and Baron. Also included here is the appropriate portion of the surround score mix to fix the crumbly rear channels.

Introduced bolder lightning in a few shots with a hue to match the colour of the lit surroundings, but left the worm-sign as it is.

Removed the blue screen composite of the stand-ins for Paul and Jessica as they turn to look back to the worm.

Greatly increased contrast and composite colour balance during the cliff crevice worm attack.

Removed some shots of Paul's fall during the worm's attack. Cut down the first shot where Jessica starts to shout “Paul” which now is made audible and cuts to her close-up to finish it off, so no more double take. Removed the latter portion of the toppling rock with the obvious chute/slide carved into the reverse, removed the rock painted cushioned landing for the stunt man halfway through the fall, and shortened and improved the speed and colours of Paul against the vertical rear projection as though free-falling. Overall the pace of the fall is less farcical.

The fight with Jamis is included, as is his funeral, The portions of the surround score is used for each respectively and featured again more prominently following these scenes as they stand and view the water cache. Fremen eyes were coloured blue for these added sequences.

The scene where Paul is informed of Liet's death as Chani passes by is included. The surround score for the next scene comes in much earlier here to augment the audio.

For Jessica's water of life ritual, there is no thought dialogue from Paul or Leto. It is slightly shorter to achieve this and the slightly different version of the same score is used here from the suite surround mix.

The scenes where Paul shows the Fremen his weirding techniques were damaged in this print. There was a heavy red colour cast to the right of the image for about the length of a film reel, maybe less. Like the splices mentioned earlier, there are prints that don't have this issue, but I was committed to the consistently higher quality scan from this print. So I had to mask off and recolour these scenes. Which is fun on panning shots.

For the riding of Shai Hulud I included the Extended scene and also introduced a lot of overlaid wind/dust/sandstorm imagery. The palette here also is greatly changed from the original. Gone is the dark orange cartoonish desert – this is more realistic and consistent now. The sky is masked off with a filter layer and now acts/looks like it is the source of diffused light rather than a dirty heavy handed watercolour pigment. It now takes much more of a dusty western look which is almost monotone – this aids the poorly ageing blue screen composites to some degree when they all get onto the worm and rotoscoped hastily. The soundtrack/score is also repurposed and lengthened to create some continuity with the added footage. The dialogue recording for the extended portion sounds poor still with the wind howling metallic through the equipment/tubing they were clutching, but I tarted it up as best I could.

To round off the Shai Hulud Sand riding scenes I painstakingly patched up and cleaned up the gaping worm mouth when Paul pulls up on the reigns. This does not look perfectly smooth and seamless by any means, but is a massive improvement over the scrappy footage I started out with. I'd kick myself if there is a version out there that didn't need the work doing to it, but I'd be surprised.

The lighter/brighter masked off grading I used for the open desert scenes continue here, but with a little less of a diffused sandstorm vibe when openly fighting the Harkonnens. In a scene where a composite is used for a group of Sardokar running from a burning harvester, I use a large puff of overlayed sand timed with an explosion to mask the lighting division between the foreground rotoscoped composite element and the background footage. Also colour corrected the shot.

The milking of the newborn worm scene is included, but cut a little shorter without the intro. Fremen eyes are coloured blue.

There is some slightly more consistent grading for Paul's water of life ritual, but most of the changes are audio, where I added the surround mix and remixed portions of the center channel – Notably taking out the Atreides fanfare and inserting more subtle aubible FX. Also rebuilt the two rising moons shot from the film's trailer in HD and inserted it into Paul's water of life ritual.

There was more red tint to mask off and recolour for the long live the fighters speech.

Regraded the Harkonnen ship approaching the Palace to balance the composite shot colours.

Repurposed a shot of the shield wall into a partial pan to cue Paul, Gurney and Stilgar trotting down the steps to the control room. I've also re-purposed and extended the steadily building score to lead up to this point.

The extra footage of the Emperor talking to the Baron about the defeat of his Sardukar is included. This is re-edited to get it to flow in addition to the theatrical footage and the Baron's reaction shots

All of the composite shots of the Fremen on Worms approaching the Emperor's ship have been heavily regraded to match the lighting and surrounding shots. This often features sandstorms/rifts of cloud & dust etc overlaid on certain shots that helps combine foreground and background colour mismatches. I masked off certain areas and pulled the blues back out of the eyes that the gading greatly thinned out.

The Baron's exit through the wall composite shot was never cropped properly, but is now.

As the Baron Harkonnen is floating towards the worms mouth, I repaired the score that is interrupted with one of the Atreides fanfares to focus on Paul witnessing the Barons death. This was always jarring to me, but now plays out a little more smoothly.

The Paul/Feyd fight is a sound design mess. There is an awfully truncated/occasional drum presence that was obviously all but abandoned after the drummers' appearance shot is done with. Also there is a low repetition of notes/tones accompanied by a hiss left over from an attempt at a percussive score or something – doesn't seem to match the unused Toto score either. It's interesting how I never picked up on it all until I inspected it closely, and evidently this was all getting chopped and changed at the time with leftovers and quick fixes muddled together on the final release. I stripped out as much bullshit as possible from the 3 front channels – leaving what dialogue and foley was strictly necessary. Rebuilt the drummers' track as though it were diegetic and featured it prominently in the surround mix after the drummers' close-up - to then last the whole fight. I then repaired the dialogue reverb from my centre/left/right channel butchery, added the room tones and the crowds outside now chant “Muad'Dib” slowly, and is heard somewhat gently inside getting louder and quieter as the shots require.

After Paul Kills Feyd, the rest of the ending has been completely re-edited and re-scored using 'Final Dream' from the expanded soundtrack surround mix and has new sound FX added for wind, rain and thunder. There is a new lightning FX shot in place of the old spindly worm sign effort that touches the top of the palace.

After all that I went back and overlayed footage from the brighter/washed out version - Reputedly from the original French film scan many discs came from in Europe. So this embellishment runs most of the full length of the edit to utilize a little of the luminance from it's fuller highlight gamut. It's colours in general are far too vibrant and there is barely any recognisable film grain, but the depth of spacial differentiation in the scan is very good indeed – That is to say that any areas not strictly in focus are not full of sharpened grain to the point you can't tell what the intended depth of field was supposed to be. It's sometimes far more glassy to have less grain and fuller tonal ranges, and then it's satisfying to see the dry grainy detail in other shots. With this overlay I attempted to get the best of both worlds for most shots.

The most notable remaining edit for those interested in context is the removal of Alia's rather on the nose announcement – It makes the whole event far less irritating.

And yes, as I might have already said - This is some biblical messiah rain bullshit and it's always played rather well as far I'm concerned, considering the Bene Geserit propaganda element - So really it's just thousands of Fremen water storage caches entering the ecosystem ;)


I started talking about this edit in my original post as though it would be a theatrical cut with elbow room, and I might have moved a little beyond that, but it's not too bloated. Also I might have missed a few things in this write up as this project took a “loooong time – a long time...” and it might be a mess of tense as it was added to in fits and starts.


Admittedly, after seeing the final output for this edit, I'm hoping there will be a remastered compilation of sorts from the original sources. The quality of this edit, despite my best efforts just could not compare to such. But this is a pretty watchable touch up.


Thanks for coming.

15MaF
Cover art by 15Maf (DOWNLOAD HERE)
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Overall rating
 
9.7
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9.8(4)
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9.8(4)
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9.8(4)
Narrative
 
9.5(4)
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9.8(4)
(Updated: January 21, 2021)
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10.0
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David Lynch's 'Dune' has always been one of my favourite movies. I unreservedly love the theatrical cut but spicediver's 'Alternative Edition Redux' was a wonderful experience too but it's nearly a decade old and in SD. I feel some extended versions of 'Dune' unbalance the pacing because most of the new footage is from certain sections, plus some of the visual quality of the bonus scenes are rough. spicediver's cut had these problems to some extent but it was such an overall classy job, that I didn't mind too much.

So I was excited about 15MaF's new HD cut, which doesn't put all the available footage back in. I'm happy to report it's everything I hoped for, extending the film by 19 minutes but without spoiling the dreamlike pace of the original. It all looks and sounds fantastic, looking like a professionally released and finished version of the movie. 10/10 across the board. I'd seriously consider watching this version over all others in the future. Thanks so much 15MaF! and thanks to David Lynch for making the movie (even if he doesn't like it).

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This edit is a really impressive work. Reading the 'changes' section made me realize just how much love was put into fixing many of the inherent technical issues I had never even noticed in the theatrical cut or my personal favorite edit (Spicediver's Alternative Edition Redux). For that alone this edit almost got perfect 10s all around.
Almost. I deducted one point off of visual editing because of two or three glaring visual skips - two of which were in the TC but I think should have been fixed, especially given the amount of work already put in this edit. The third one (at 2:22:53) was also an audio editing glitch, but I couldn't deduct any points in this category after the beautiful fix to the Paul/Feyd fight. Wow. A total restructuring of the audio in that scene, and a nice workaround to circumvent Thufir Hawat's death.
Which brings us to the narrative in this edit. As others mentioned, the TC is clunky and not much can be done about it, but the extended editions added some context which I felt was missing from this edit.

So to summarize - a beautiful and loving treatment to a classic. Highly recommended,

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Dune is a great book. Herbert really nailed it (the later books in the series not so much).
Dune is a great movie. Lynch got the world building and atmosphere gorgeously right, and filled them with beautiful actors and mesmerizing music.
Sadly, the movie of Dune is also a mess on multiple fronts. The many dvd and blu-ray editions have visual and audio flaws. The Theatrical cut leaves out too much, the Extended cut is notorious for being thrown together by, seemingly, a Universal first-year intern. Lynch's unique style adds a love-it-or-hate-it weirdness.

In comes this Deluxe Edition, and it looks and sounds deluxe indeed.
The narrative is improved compared to both the Theatrical and Extended version. The pace is more balanced and the added shots and scenes increase our immersion in the world of Dune (without the weak bits that were added into the Extended).
Visuals are cleaner and more enjoyable across the board.
Audio is nicely improved in the richness of sounds and music.

15MaF's edit differs from my personal dream edit in only a few spots.
For the narrative, I would've left in Stilgar's line that Liet was Chani's father and trimmed his explanation of how to ride a worm (that's a tough monologue!).
For the audio I found three short transitions distracting, though the worst of that is native to the film. That's much better than either the Theatrical or the Extended versions, but falls short of complete perfection.

The minutiae of my criticism shows you that, yes, this is now my go-to version of Dune on any big screen and good stereo. My previous go-to, Spicediver's edit, is hereby relegated to small screen only.

(Full disclosure: I made English subtitles for this edit, so I am biased in its favor but also extra critical).

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There’s no way I could write an unbiased review of this movie at this point. I’m fairly certain the movie fails as a stand-alone work as it spends too much time on clunky exposition without actually making things make sense for the non-initiates. Having read the book, I know what is going on. And, strangely, I feel the book is both required reading for that purpose, but also you have to forget about the book entirely and enjoy the movie on its own merits. A tough thing to do. And that is what this movie is: a movie of contradictions. It’s too long and yet feels rushed in crucial places. It’s got some amazing aesthetics, but the effects are dodgy and seem afterthoughts.

Lynch, predictably, leans in on the weird and I think that is the movie’s greatest strength. But it does also get too cartoonish. As I said, I have no trouble following the movie but I can easily see why many would. In my opinion, the exposition heavy first half is much better than the rushed second half. Unfortunately, it’s the second half—once Paul and Jessica are in the desert—where the most interesting story developments exist. But the events happen so quickly without much development at all. Paul and Chani love each other... because they are supposed to because of a dream, I guess. I can’t imagine how all of that plays to someone who hasn’t read the book. In general, I have a soft spot for the movie. I love the aesthetic and the weirdness. But I think it’s reputation as a glorious mess is well earned as well. But I honestly feel sorry for those who only see the mess and don’t see its gloriousness.

There are many versions that circulate. I highly recommend the longer versions, which is what I’ve talked about here. I don’t even remember what the theatrical is like, but I have to imagine it amps up all of the flaws I’ve talked about here. I honestly wish someone could get the money to interest Lynch in restoring this to a four hour version. I know much necessary footage was probably never shot, but a man can dream.

For the edit, I think it’s very well done. There’s so many different versions floating around I can’t keep it all straight. The look is noticeably improved, even to eyes that hadn’t seen any version in quite some time. I tried to follow along with the published cut list and nothing really felt off. It still retains the flaws mentioned above, too exposition heavy in the first half; too rushed in the second half. The effects are still very wonky but dare I say they look less dated here. As is often cited for fan edits, there’s only so much an editor can do given the source material. But I can’t say I disagreed with any decision made here. The one caveat is I’m unsure what footage wasn’t used. I know there are longer versions, but I can’t remember what made them longer. This definitely does feel like the best version I’ve seen. And if you can allow yourself to experience it on its own merits and not as a book adaptation, I think there’s a lot to enjoy. I really want to see that second half feel more organic. Here’s hoping Villeneuve gets his shot at it.

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This was my first experience with the 1984 Dune and thought it was just tremendous. I had only heard negative to mixed things about it so I give 15MaF all the credit for this extremely positive viewing experience.

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I may have a new go-to version of this film now. I've always liked Dune, warts and all and I really enjoy the spicediver edit. But this one is my favorite so far.

The edits are very well done, no issues at all. Video quality is excellent and probably the best variation I have now. Same goes for audio. It's really nice to have a good surround track available and the updates are great. The recuts and trims help move the story along and remove the most egregiously annoying lines, smoothing out the story telling. Well done all around.

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(Updated: April 13, 2021)
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An incredible job. A great choice of additional scenes, some cuts, and some amazing work on sound and visuals.

I have always loved this film -- but in its theatrical cut incarnation. The various longer versions that floated around e.g. the two TV versions that changed some bits and threw in every bit of additional footage available (plus recycling some shots) did not, in my opinion, add much of value. They hammered the pace, and complicated the already complicated world-building with excessive details. Being as comprehensive as possible is not necessarily the same as being good as possible.

This edit is something else. What it adds matters; what it cuts works; quality is consistent; and indeed, and it does a better job on some key visuals than the official Blu-ray. A huge amount of work has gone into this, and it shows. Some incredibly recovery and rebuilding of visuals, some amazing sound work.

This will definitely be my go-to version.

Oh, and there is some amazing cover art if you want to burn this and put it on your shelf.

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(Updated: March 10, 2021)
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This edit is astounding. The amount of work that has gone into this is clear, and it really works. Personal preference wishes some of the cut scene remained, but I understand due to the quality issues, since this edit it all about quality. While Spicediver's 'Alternative Edition Redux' has few conceptual edits that I still prefer, the edit choices here are all masterful, and due to the quality it is the best way to experience this movie.
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This is simply the best way to experience David Lynch's Dune. There are couple of minutes, where it seems to lose resolution, but overall it's great.

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