Add Blade Runner to the above list of "Cinematography + Music trumps Story"

I think Blade Runner would be a great one to do, especially as opinion is divided as it so often is with the film.  I'm firmly in the "love it" camp, but I digress...

Dune - the novel, was divided up into several parts i.e. 'books' and the 1984 movie really needed the 3 x 3 hour LOTR treatment to convey all the richness of Frank Herbert's vision.

The other political issue with DUNE today is that it makes the Fremen proxies for the Taliban/insurgents i.e. religious desert people fighting a foreign invader that wants to exploit them for their resources (used for transport).

As for the intended remake, which studio is going to greenlight a big budget for a movie that romanticises fundamentalist freedom fighters? Last one was Rambo III.

I've noticed a difference between British v USA sci-fi since the 1980s & 1990s, in that the perspective of rebels versus empire is much more prevalent in England (Blakes 7) whereas USA sci-fi (Star Trek, Stargate, etc) generally the perspective is from the military/empire/centre of power.

Firefly/Serenity tried to flirt with the rebels v empire theme, but it didn't really get that political and then got cancelled anyway. They were more smugglers trying to earn a living rather than guerillas/terrorists blowing up government installations in cause of liberty.

So if a DUNE remake was greenlit, you'd have a sequence of desert-dwelling religious freedom fighters engaged in a systemic sabotage campaign of shutting down spice (oil?) supplies. Unless the screenplay writers just de-emphasised that, like Firefly did.

I'm a big fan of Dune, but if I re-read it now, I couldn't help associating the Fremen with the Mujahideen.

The case of Avatar is an interesting one, as there's considerable overlap with Dune. Religious natives having their lands exploited for their resources, a dude going native and leading them to overthrow the empire. However there was no sabotage campaign - which would have undermined the simple black v white morality (actually pink skin v blue skin). The 'message' of ecological stewardship was prevalent.

Only in the very beginning, when Jake first arrived on Pandora, did you see arrows in a giant truck's wheels - the only subtle hint of a concerted resistance.

Since the Soviet Union collapsed, and there's only one superpower, I don't think movies like Rambo III would be possible today.

>However, Dune was written by a particular man in a particular time frame, with specific ideas in mind.

I wonder how much Herbert was inspired by Lawrence of Arabia. He wrote Dune in the mid-1960s and the Lean film came out early 1960s. Once again, an outsider leads religious desert-dwellers to overthrow a powerful, corrupt empire. There's a sabotage campaign, there's uniting the tribes, there's 'going native'.

Yes, I'd love to see the battle of Arrakeen on film - giant sandworms breaching a gap in the cliffs created by atomic weapons and pouring into a city. The 1984 movie forgot to add in the city during this sequence. It'd be expensive.

I just watched that for the first time last night.

...I have no interesting watching that movie again, even for comedy purposes. 

RE: DUNE
To give it justice, they'd have to include all that political intrigue and powerplay between the various Houses, the Guild, the Bene Gesserit, and half a dozen other institutions, then there's all the religious commentary (manipulating the gullible with hocus pocus), the background of the Butlerian Jihad, as well a great adventure yarn of mother & son in the desert. The screeplay writer will have his work cut out for him - it's at least as challenging as the LOTR screenplays, which needed a prologue and lengthy exposition at Bag End and the Council of Elrond.

But the reality is, the bigger the budget the more it boils down to good guys in the red corner, bad guys in the blue corner, and they slug it out, in between hour-long chase sequences.

I'd love to see it happen (i.e. 3 x 3 hour treatment) but I'm sceptical.