Jodorowsky's Dune (2013)

Jodorowsky's Dune serves as an interesting companion piece to the most recent Star Wars movie. Alejandro Jodorowsky is a Chilean born film and theatre director, screenwriter, playwright, actor, author, poet, musician, comic book writer, spiritual guru and all around odd and interesting guy. He had tremendous cult success in the early 1970's with his surrealist features El Topo and The Holy Mountain, the former of which is often credited as the first 'Midnight Movie'. In 1975 Jodorowsky begin pre-production on his planned film version of Frank Herbert's epic 1965 science fiction novel Dune. Jodorowsky and his associates actually got surprisingly close to getting the ambitious project made, they had a script completed, lots of story art, had lined up skilled experts in production design and special effects, had preliminary locations scouted, major rock groups like Tangerine Dream and Pink Floyd set to do the music, and had assembled a diverse cast including David Carradine, Mick Jagger, Orson Wells, silent screen legend Gloria Swanson and the ultimate surrealist Salvador Dali as the mad Emperor of the Galaxy. They even managed to raise $10 million of the projected $15 million dollar budget. However studios not yet accustomed to making big budget science fiction movies, fearful of cost overruns and suspicious of the eccentric director at the head caused the whole project to unravel in 1976. The next year director George Lucas's first Star Wars movie was released, a turning point that to a large extent would redirect the course of the commercial film industry to the present day.

Jodorowsky's Dune is the path not taken, had his surrealist since fiction epic been made and released prior to Star Wars the whole course of the modern film industry could have looked significantly different. That may have been a good thing, or it may not have been, we'll never know. Even though it was never actually made Jodorowsky's Dune still managed to influence film making for years to come, its influence can be inferred in such later films as Alien, Star Wars, and The Terminator. In fact Dan O'Bannon, H. R. Giger, Chris Foss and Jean Giraud, talents that Jodorowsky had assembly for his Dune would later all be involved in creating the distinct visual styling's of the Alien movie franchise. A theatrical Dune movie would later be made by director David Lynch and producer Dino De Laurentiis and released in 1984, it would largely be thought of as both a box office and creative misfire, so maybe Jodorowsky was in fact lucky in his failure. The film about that failure however is a good one. ***