Frank Herbert apparently liked David Lynch’s Dune, probably more than Lynch did. Then again to that then again, Herbert was also near death in 1984.

Well he was only 65 when he died. He had cancer and then died of a pulmonary embolism while recovering from surgery. It’s not like he was an old man with dementia when he saw the movie.
I’m surprised that he liked the movie because not only was it a mess, but it also had that weird ending where Paul makes it rain. I still can’t imagine what the version of Dune Messiah that was supposed to follow that movie would have been.

I wonder if anything beats that for the most mangled version of a book that the author actually liked.