Jodorowsky's Dune

A documentary about a film that was never made. In the mid-1970s Alejandro Jodorowsky set out to adapt Frank Herbert's Dune. It was not merely an adaptation; the director believed the film would change the world, and he says so repeatedly in the documentary. The team he assembled is startling in retrospect: the comics artist Moebius on visual design, Chris Foss on spacecraft, H. R. Giger on the Harkonnen planet. Dan O'Bannon was on effects. Salvador Dalí, Orson Welles and Mick Jagger were considered for the cast. Pink Floyd were approached about the music. The team drew the entire film scene by scene, producing a thick storyboard book. That book was sent to the Hollywood studios. Nobody took the production on. The documentary's real claim is this: the project was not filmed but it did not disperse; the people on it worked on other films in the years that followed, and that design language passed into science-fiction cinema from there. Frank Pavich directed. Jodorowsky is at the centre and the telling runs largely on his energy. One of the most enjoyable documentaries of recent years for anyone interested in film history and unrealised projects. For a viewer expecting an even-handed assessment, the film largely accepts Jodorowsky's own account as given.