I'm already giving $20 (Imax 3D), two hours of my time, and an open mind. After that, ask not what else I can give to the movie, but what the movie can give to me.

If she prefers Episode I, then... "you need some space but you still want to be friends"

Wow... over $100M in ticket sales on the 3D re-release.

"Nobody ever went broke underestimating the intelligence of the... public"

- HL Mencken

It's also fascinating how Pirates of Silicon Valley started with Steve Jobs being a drugged out hippy while Bill Gates was a ruthless unscrupulous businessman/nerd, and yet it turned out that Gates (through his philanthropy in Africa) actually walked the talk, whereas Steve Jobs' desire to 'give something back' was never apparent right up to the very end.

PoSV paints Jobs like a unstable Californian religious guru. If not Apple, then an Evangelical mega-church.

Watched this for the first time last night.

However radical, bold and impressive it must have been when first released, it seems dated in that 1980s Reagan-era far-right Republican way: the government law enforcement bureaus are useless, only a lone vigilante with a gun can get the job done, heroes are dumb working class all-American schmucks, while villains are culturally sophisticated and classically educated, due process of law is a waste of time. Bruce is the hero even though he killed more people than the bad guys did.

Anyway, it had frequent use of a trope which I don't think has been given a formal name but I've seen it everywhere:

The good guy is in a room and the bad guy is about to come in. There's a cut to the bad guy entering the room, and then another cut to the good guy who is now hiding in a completely different place, for example a closet in an adjoining room. The thing is, the good guy has had NO TIME to get to the hiding place as the editing cuts were done in real time.

Does anyone know if that trope has a name?

Cool fan concept art. I'm guessing the Lady Jessica and Duke Leto looking at the Guild removalist van.
So long as Hayden Christiansen is not Paul Atreides. And Adam Sandler is not Gurney. And Will Ferrell is not Duncan. And Mike Meyers is not the Baron Harkonnen.

Even Fincher admitted in an interview here in London, that GWDT was 'one for the studio' as opposed to 'one for himself'.

Not much variety in endless sand dunes. They'd have to be huge - like mountains. Dunes do photograph well with the sun low and shadows over the ripples but that would get dull quickly as there's no variety.

LOTR had meadows and forest and mountains and lakes and waterfalls and plains and underground mines.

Avatar had bio-luminescence so the forest looked liked a cool night-club or bar. And floating mountains. And giant trees. Hard to beat that.

Maybe if you brought in the other planets in the Dune universe as some intrigue takes place on them. Every House has its home world. That would generate some variety.

The aesthetic of Dune (a retro future with robes and aristocracy and priesthood and no technology) fits nicely with the modern genre trends.
Even since it became apparent space travel wasn't going anywhere, it's fantasy that's overtaken hard sci-fi in movies, novels and TV shows: Game of Thrones, LOTR, Narnia, Camelot, Harry Potter, superheroes, etc.
What few proper sci-fi movies there have been recently (Sunshine, Event Horizon, Supernova, etc) are just haunted houses in space rather than a vision about the future. In the 1950s & 1960s was the golden era of hard sci-fi (with shiny jump-suit uniforms, comparing & contrasting various utopian civilisations, impact of technology, etc)

So a movie adaptation of Dune can be made to fit more with the fantasy elements (giant sandworms and period costume) rather than the hard sci-fi elements.