Ten movies that (probably) wouldn't exist without ‘Dune’

Let’s start with the biggie. Indeed, author Frank Herbert was so incensed by the parallels between his novel and George Lucas’s film that he not only compiled a list of 16 points of ‘absolute identity’ between the two, he also half-jokingly joined fellow sci-fi writers in a club called the ‘We’re Too Big To Sue George Lucas Society’. It’s hard to argue: the tale of a lad on a desert world who undergoes mystical experiences and takes up arms against an all-powerful Empire, Star Wars really is a pretty straightforward (ahem) homage.

Dune-isms: Desert planets, dune seas, evil Empires, faceless soldiers, sand-people, ancient religions, mystical combat, gigantic slimy villains… we could goes on.

This one’s more behind-the-scenes: in the early 1970s, cinematic visionary (and total madman) Alejandro Jodorowsky set out to adapt ‘Dune’ for the screen. The project would, inevitably, collapse – there’s a great documentary about it – but the indirect result would be the greatest sci-fi monster movie of them all. Alien was the brainchild of screenwriter Dan O’Bannon, whom Jodorowsky had cherry-picked to work on the effects for his Dune movie; it would also feature designs by HR Giger, who actually reused some of the work he’d done on the ‘Dune’ project, and was directed by Ridley Scott, who himself had tried to mount an adaptation of ‘Dune’.

Dune-isms: Powerful corporations, interstellar mining, human-robot hybrids, howling storms.

What could the connection possibly be between a galaxy-spanning space opera and a weird little DIY horror comedy set in small-town USA? Well, filmmaker Don Coscarelli was just 24 when he wrote and directed this fiendishly inventive little shocker, and like every other youngster in ’70s America he was deeply into ‘Dune’, packing the film with oddball references from a dive bar called ‘Dunes Cantina’ to a scene where young hero Mike has to put his hand into a box of pain held by a mysterious old woman. And we won’t spoil the deeply batshit ending, but let’s just say there’s more than a hint of Arrakis in there.

Dune-isms: See above.

In a world turned to desert by the apocalyptic effects of climate change, the survivors are forced into fierce battles over ownership of the most powerful substance known to man – gasoline. Frank Herbert knowingly took inspiration from the extraction and exploitation of crude oil in his creation of the spice melange, the substance that makes interstellar travel possible, so it’s perhaps not surprising that George Miller’s thunderous petrolhead action sequel features more than a few links to Herbert’s work.

Dune-isms: Priceless resources, desert landscapes, malformed villains, climate change, reluctant heroes.

Chosen One stories may be ten a penny, but most of them tend to owe at least a passing debt to ‘Dune’, a novel which both explores and undermines the very idea of the Messiah figure. Cyberpunk classic The Matrix is no exception, with Keanu Reeves as the hacker hero whose coming has long been foretold, and which promises to liberate a hidden tribe of rebel warriors from oppression. Later films take another leaf out of Herbert’s work by undercutting the messianic nature of Reeves’s character.

Dune-isms: Oracles, messiahs, cave-dwelling revolutionaries, traitors, technologically advanced enemies, loads of nerd-friendly lore.

Pitch Black was a blast: a punchy Alien clone about a galactic renegade named Riddick – growlingly played by Vin Diesel – battling a swarm of light-phobic beasties. Its success guaranteed a sequel, but neither writer-director David Twohy nor Diesel himself would be content with a simple re-run. Instead, they chose to expand the Riddick-verse, pitting their rugged hero against a horde of religious fanatics on the Islamic world of New Mecca. Someone clearly had a copy of ‘Dune’ in their back pocket throughout – but the result was neither popular, nor particularly entertaining.

Dune-isms: Religious wars, Islam in space, multi-planetary civilisations, prison worlds.

Frank Herbert had been dead for nigh-on a decade by the time this silly but enjoyable sci-fi romp was released, or director Roland Emmerich might well have found himself on the receiving end of another angry list. The story of a group of American soldiers who travel to a far-flung planet and end up delivering a race of miscellaneous, god-fearing desert types from tyranny may mask its debt to ‘Dune’ with a lot of ancient Egyptian imagery, but it was still the most obvious knock-off since Star Wars.

Dune-isms: Desert worlds, oppressed people, galactic empires, religious iconography, tribes of old Earth transported to outer space.

It’s been described as ‘anime’s answer to Dune’: writer-director Hayao Miyazaki’s animated adaptation of his own manga comic series is set in a post-apocalyptic world overrun by huge but tameable creatures, and features a long-prophesied teenage hero who must overcome a powerful technological force in order to bring about an ecological revolution. The differences are equally obvious - Miyazaki’s wilderness is a jungle, not a desert; there are no spaceships or psychedelic spices – but both works notably keep climate issues front and centre.

Dune-isms: Prophecies, overgrown critters, young heroes, powerful women, repairing a damaged climate.

It may also bear notable similarities to cinematic masterpieces like Dances With Wolves, Lawrence of Arabia and The Smurfs: The Legend of Smurfy Hollow, but James Cameron’s blue-tinted tale of intergalactic resource extraction, indigenous rebellion and wilderness-taming is absolutely a child of ‘Dune’. Not that Frank Herbert would probably appreciate the comparison: a band and predictable tale of good-vs-evil, Avatar lacks the moral complexity and in-depth world-building that make ‘Dune’ so enduring.

Dune-isms: Corporate mining interests, Native American symbolism, wilderness exploration, climate preservation, white saviours who ‘join the tribe’.

If Paul Atreides had worn a checked shirt and cowboy hat instead of a stillsuit, might he have resembled Kevin Bacon’s character Valentine McKee from this enjoyably goofy horror throwback? Probably not, but there’s no overlooking the similarity between the villains of Tremors – a race of voracious desert-dwelling worm-monsters snappily christened Graboids – and the equally deadly, but somewhat larger and more dignified Giant Sandworms of Arrakis.

Dune-isms: Oversized man-eating worms who hang out in the desert.

‘The Worlds of Dune: The Places and Cultures that Inspired Frank Herbert’ is available to buy now from Bookshop.org.