I wanted to write and let you know that you are the first B-Movie site I've seen that has had the guts to review this movie.  Yes, I freely admit that I am one of the 'geeks' you referred to in your review.  Yes, I have read the book, yes, I understood it, and yes, they cut a LOT of things out.

Since you've already seen the movie, most of what I'm about to tell you won't exactly be spoiler material, but maybe it'll help explain a few things that were cut from the movie but are extremely important to the plot...and maybe you could spout off some of this knowledge to shut your geek friends up for a while.

DUNE:  The REALLY Abridged Version by FusionAddict

Basically, we start out with the Emperor.  The "landsraad" is basically this council of nobles in this big galactic community, like the feudal system in medieval Europe.  Duke Leto is beginning to become extremely popular with the other nobles, and the Emperor sees this as a threat to his power.  So, the Emperor removes the Harkonnen clan from their holdings on the planet Arrakis, and gives the planet to the Atreides family, in order to gain Leto's trust and that of the other nobles.  However, the Emperor had no intentions of letting Leto KEEP the planet.

Now, exactly WHY is Arrakis do damned important?  Because it is the galaxy's only source of "melange", a drug which has age-defying properties, and gives some people psychic abilities.  That is why it's important to the Spacing Guild...its navigators use it to increase their mental prowess in order to "fold space", a more technical term for "hauling ass across the void".

So...we come now to Leto's son, Paul.  Paul is 15 in the book, but appears to be around 25 in the movie.  His mother, Jessica, is a member of an order called the "Bene Gesserit", who are trying to create a superbeing, called the "Kwisatz Haderach", through selective breeding.  Paul is unusual, because he has been trained in mental and physical skill and endurance by his mother.  This is rare, because these are techniques usually taught only to members of the Bene Gesserit order, who happen to all be female.  The Reverend Mother, aka the All-Powerful Grand High Muckity-Muck of the group is concerned, because he may be either the answer and final result of all the various breeding projects, or he could be millennia of work spoiling on the vine.  Oh, and she also works for the Emperor.

Now...back to the story.  It turns out that the Emperor only gave Leto and the Atreides family their holdings on Arrakis so he could have the Harkonnens take the planet back.  This would make the whole situation look perfectly normal.  A)The Atreides (and specifically Leto) will be out of his hair, B)the Landsraad will keep happy, thinking this is all part of the normal routine, and C)the Harkonnens will be able to finally get rid of their mortal enemies.  So, with the help of a spy inside the Atreides camp, specifically Dr. Yueh, the Harkonnen forces manage a sneak attack on the Atreides HQ.  But Yueh has plans of his own.  He plans to assasinate Baron Harkonnen by implanting the dying Leto with a poison gas capsule, imbedded in a false tooth.  However, the plan fails.  But Yueh's plan enables Paul and Jessica to escape into the desert, where they are taken in by the local clan of native warriors known as "Fremen".

Okay.  This is where the plot's methods pretty much take an entirely different turn away from the book, but the ends are the same.

Once safe withing the Fremen camp, the leader of the group realises that Paul's actions directly line up with a prophecy they have about a coming messianic figure, known as "Muad'dib".  But the problem lies with the fact that Paul has had visions about this very thing.  He KNOWS that he is this messiah, but it is a destiny he wishes to deny, because he is afraid of the bloodshed that will take place in his name.  However, he and his mother know that they can never go back to the outside, because they are now fugitives on an enemy world.  So, the Fremen try to assimilate them into their culture.  This is where the whole worm-riding thing comes into play.  It is part of the coming-of-age ceremony for the Fremen, and Paul knows he will never be accepted into the group until he can successfully ride a sandworm, which the Fremen worship as a god and call "Shai-halud".

The Water of Life thing is pretty interesting.  The Fremen religion is a warped version of her own Bene-Gesserit heritage.  The tribe's leader, also referred to as a "reverend mother" is growing old, and soon will need to transfer her knowledge and power to a new leader...specifically Jessica.  The Water of Life is actually the bile of a sandworm, which it wharfs up after being drowned (water is highly poisonous to sandworms, and is the only known way to kill one).  This bile is a deadly toxin to most humans, except for a very few who are able to transform it within their bodies into a harmless drug.  During a scene which was deleted from the final picture, Stilgar, the leader of the Fremen, actually takes Paul into the chamber where Water of Life is being extracted from a baby sandworm.  A ceremony takes place in which the old and new Reverend Mothers drink the Water of Life, creating a psychic link between them, where the old Reverend Mother transfers her powers into the new one.  Assuming everything goes according to plan, the stuff is tranmuted, a bit is collected and the entire bottle becomes potable.  Everybody takes a hit, everybody gets high, everybody parties like it's 6358399.  Problem is, everything DOESN'T go according to plan.  You see, Jessica has a little surprise for the galaxy.  More on that later.

So, as the Harkonnen reign of terror commences on Arrakis, Paul and a small militia of Fremen begin using guerrilla tactics to try to harm Harkonnen spice production as much as they can.  Now, in the movie they use "weirding modules" to kill the bad guys, which are these wacky voice-activated ray guns.  In the book, however, "weirding" means stealth.  All our heroes use in that case are daggers made out of sandworm teeth and a whole lotta badass attitude...think Mel Gibson and his tomahawk in "The Patriot".  So, obviously, this is a major divergence, and it really does bring Paul & Co.'s manliness down a few notches.

Now, a few years have passed since the Harkonnen invasion.  Baron Harkonnen had put one of his nephews, Glossu Rabban, in charge of Arrakis.  However, he is unable to quell the Fremen uprisings.  The Emperor decides to take control himself, and has Rabban executed.  The Baron and his other nephew Feyd Rautha, who it would appear is the Baron's chosen heir (and I sense a bit of gay incestuous lust on the Baron's part in the film version, which does not appear in the book), high-tail it to Arrakis to explain their screwups to the Emperor.

Paul, now accepting his fate as the deliverer, decides that he must take the ultimate step in fulfilling his destiny.  He takes the Water of Life.  Now, if you'll recall, the Water of Life is an essential part of the Reverend MOTHER ordainment ceremony...there ain't no Reverend FATHERS.  That's because ordinary men do not have the biological control over their bodies and minds that is required to survive the trauma that the ceremony produces.  But Paul is no ordinary man.  Thanks to both his Bene Gesserit training and his steady diet of melange, he is able to survive and recovers with new, unprecedented abilities.  That is because the ceremony is very introspective...it requires complete control over the emotions which only women normally have.  Hence the Bene Gesserit order and its psychic ability.  However, men have control over logic, critical thinking, planning, observation.  Hence the Spacing Guild and Mentat Orders, and their amazing intellectual abilities.  It is this aspect which is normally closed off to women during the ceremony.  However, because Paul was given Bene Gesserit training in addition to his natural intellect, he is able to combine the two and create a connection to both sides of the human mind, and develops new abilites as a result.

Now, because Paul IS a superbeing, he not only develops a rapport with the current Fremen Reverend Mother, namely Jessica, but also every Bene Gesserit in the universe.  Including his sister.  "Whoa," you say..."Where did this come from?"  Well, remember that Jessica's 'little surprise' I referred to earlier?  Turns out that, when she partook of the Water of Life, she was PREGNANT.  Some months later, little Alia is born with all the powers and knowledge of an ordained Reverend Mother.  The movie doesn't really dwell on her very much, but she becomes a much more important figure in the later novels in the Dune series.

Okay.  Now that you're pretty well bored to death, we'll get back to the action.  Paul manages to gather the entire Fremen race for a meeting.  It turns out that these peoples' numbers run into the billions, and they are all badass soldiers with a thirst for revenge on anyone who has wronged one of them.  So, when Paul says "We gotta go kill us some Harkonnens", they all start sharpening their knives.  So, they do some research and, come to find out, there's a big sandstorm headed toward Arrakeen, the capital of the planet.  Luckily there's a huge mountain range surrounding the city to keep it safe, right?  That is, of course, until the Fremen nuke it.  The storm breaks through, the Fremen ride in on their worms, and all Hell breaks loose.  The Emperor's palace is laid waste, and Alia manages to sneak in.  She intimidates him with speech that is quite advanced for a 3 year old, and then messes up his fatass-levitate-o-matic and sends him spinning out of control, through a hole in the roof, and into the gizzard of a conveniently-placed sandworm.

Paul then makes an entrance, and is challenged to a fight by Feyd-Rautha, who is pretty cheesed that his entire family is now dead.  But, Paul is a Nietzchean ubermensch now, so of course, he kicks ass and takes names.  He puts on his robe, announces that he is now in charge, the end.

And I won't bother saying anything about that crappy "rain in the desert" ending.

I do encourage you to pick up the book and read it, but don't attempt to do so in one sitting.  Much like Fight Club, it will take a few attempts to grow on you, but it does get pretty interesting.  If you manage to make it through, the next two books in the series are also great and continue the story of Paul and his children (who Alia later tries to murder).

Have a good one, and stay safe.

--Kenneth "FusionAddict" Hitt