The world of Dune is wild. On any given day, you’ll have psychic sororities stabbing you in the throat, giant spicy worms, and Javier Bardem spitting on your floor—and I haven’t even gotten started on the really weird stuff. It’s not easy to capture the tone and feel of this eccentric setting, and while I don’t mind getting a long monologue from Virginia Madsen, the right sound direction can better lay the foundation for a sci-fi epic. And music has always played an important role in the various adaptations of Frank Herbert’s Dune universe in films, television and games.
The soundtrack to David Lynch’s 1984 dune The adaptation features a stirring orchestral soundtrack by Toto. Brian Eno also made a special appearance, recording the more atmospheric and haunting pieces. dune is the only soundtrack Toto ever worked on, and how they got the film is a much longer story that you can read more about here A Masterpiece in Disarray (David Lynch’s Dune – An Oral History).
The soundtrack for the 1984 film is just as epic as Hans Zimmer’s score for the 2021 film, but takes a different approach. At the time, the works of James Horner and John Williams dominated science fiction films at the box office and were the subject of the original dune The film takes a similarly bombastic approach, but avoids some of the more upbeat tunes (a specific request from Lynch).
Much like the atmosphere of the film itself, the original’s score is far groovier than that of the later adaptations, relying heavily on synthesizers punctuated by guitar riffs. The main title suite sounds like a rock opera version of “Ride of the Valkyries,” while Baron Harkonnen’s theme immediately brings to mind Mike Oldfield’s haunting “Tubular Bells.” However, if you just need the CliffsNotes, the score is best summed up with the sci-fi rock ballad “Take My Hand,” which plays the film’s closing credits and runs through the score’s most important movements in under three minutes.
While Zimmer’s score for Denis Villeneuve’s Dune films is certainly a drastic departure from Lynch’s film, there are still echoes of the 1984 soundtrack to be heard in it. The title “Stillsuits,” in particular, is a direct homage to the opening bars of the original film’s main title. While the score doesn’t deviate massively from Zimmer’s work on countless other blockbusters, it does place more emphasis on appearing unique.
I’m a pretty big fan of Hans Zimmer, and while a lot of his work sounds a bit repetitive, I would doubt his score for the 2021 film Dune: Part One is among his best works. Zimmer’s identity is still very present dunewith aggressive instruments and percussion, but the score places a greater emphasis on vocals and unconventional instruments that sound otherworldly when combined on top of each other.
The score for Dune: Part One is best described as very dry and very old, as it deliberately uses woodwinds and hollow percussion to convey not only Dune’s dry environment, but also its enigmatic atmosphere. These words often sound like a bad thing, but here it really works. The deep, heavy rhythms of tracks like “Armada” and “Leaving Caladan” are most reminiscent of Zimmer’s earlier work. However, it’s tracks like “Sanctuary” and “Ripples in the Sand” where these feelings of mystery and wonder really shine through.
The soundtracks for the Dune video games are a completely different matter, but they are important to discuss because not only do they hold a crucial place in video game history, but they were also written by some of the gaming industry’s most prolific composers.
1992s Dune 2: Building a Dynasty, from the now-defunct Westwood Studios, is perhaps the most famous game based on the Dune series and is often cited as the game that popularized the real-time strategy genre. The soundtracks for Dune 2 and its 1998 remake Dune 2000 The director was Frank Klepacki, who was also responsible for scoring all entries in the legendary Command & Conquer series.
Klepacki’s work Dune 2 was intended to emulate the soundtrack for Cryo Interactive’s original Dune adventure game. And while the soundtrack is solid, it definitely pushes the technical limits of music production for a game with a file size of under 5MB. However, when Klepacki revisited the classic score, he had the freedom to not only recreate higher fidelity versions of his original Dune 2 soundtrack, but pepper it with homages to Toto’s work on 1984’s dune Movie. This becomes clearest when you listen to this Dune 2000 Track “Rise of Harkonnen”, a remastered version of Dune 2is “The Lords of Arrakis,” with an opening that effectively pays homage to Toto’s “Baron Harkonnen” theme.
The newest Dune game title, Dune: Spice Wars, featured a soundtrack composed by Jesper Kyd, whose credits include work on franchises such as Hitman, Assassin’s Creed and Borderlands, to name a few. While Kyd hasn’t mentioned any specific inspirations for him Spice Wars The soundtrack reflects the style of the game, drawing on concepts and themes from throughout the existing franchise without sounding derivative. The two-hour score features atmospheric, dreamlike tracks reminiscent of Brian Eno’s 1984 work dune film, but also contains rhythmic synthesizer beats that will be familiar to fans of classic Westwood titles.
Frank Herberts dune was originally published in 1965, and it is remarkable that almost 60 years later – and across the spectrum of adaptations – each composition manages to evoke similar feelings in audiences. Whether it’s the appropriately epic work of Toto, the more original version of Hans Zimmer, or the outstanding video game soundtracks, Dune has inspired a variety of composers and musicians to give Frank Herbert’s strange and enigmatic universe a cohesive sense of identity.
