Legend has it that David Lynch turned down George Lucas’s invitation to direct Star Wars: Return of the Jedi. Instead, he ended up taking the helm of the long-awaited film adaptation of Dune, which never went into production with previous director candidates Alejandro Jodorowsky and Ridley Scott. Fresh off his Academy Award-nominated The Elephant Man (1980), Lynch was the talk of the town, and his career was on the rise—until Dune happened, and a lot of things went south.

To put it simply, packing Frank Herbert’s sprawling novel into a 137-minute film was a near-impossible task, and Lynch was ultimately hamstrung by his lack of say in the final cut. The resulting film, a big-budget space opera about a young man’s path to messiah on a planet full of ‘spice’, was panned by critics and tanked at the box office.

Lynch had long asserted that Dune was the biggest failure of his career because his vision was not respected. Surely, the film has its fair share of narrative shortcomings, but looking back now, it also serves as a reminder of a time when Hollywood was willing to take big risks and make strange decisions. Despite this huge setback, Lynch would eventually rebound with Blue Velvet (1986), starring his Dune leading man Kyle MacLachlan, and continued an illustrious career without compromising his artistic vision for a studio project again.

Modern day sci-fi may excel in polish, but few films exhibit the unique qualities that one will always see in any David Lynch film—even a ‘failed’ one.

David Lynch (1946–2025, United States) was a director, musician, artist, and author. After dropping out of university where he had studied painting, he studied filmmaking at the American Film Institute (AFI) in the early 1970s, where he started to film his debut feature Eraserhead (1977). The surreal horror was not successful during its initial release but eventually became a cult favourite at midnight screenings. His next feature The Elephant Man (1980) was a critical success, but his third film Dune (1984) was not well received by audiences and critics. He then revived his career with Blue Velvet (1986), which eventually led to his influential and popular television series Twin Peaks (1990–1991, 2017). His 2001 film Mulholland Drive won him Best Director at the Cannes Film Festival. Lynch was also known for making electronic pop music and reporting the weather on YouTube.