Before the new version, let’s revisit 1984’s Dune—the greatest movie ever made.

I wouldn’t say “greatest,” but it’s a really damn good film and below is one of the reasons.

I love Dune because it feels just as alien as something set 80 centuries in the future should. (To put that span of time in context, remember that 8,000 years in the past would still be 3,500 years before the Great Pyramids were built.) To create this feeling, Lynch blurs the novel’s plot and characters into a Spaceballs “ludicrous speed” lightshow.

That is also why I love Lynch’s Dune. You have no idea why any of those people are doing what they are doing and that’s the way I like my far-future science fiction. It seems the characters do have reasons that motivate them, but they are incomprehensible to us — as would be true for events that are happening 8,000 years hence.

There’s just so much glorious strangeness in that film, as there should be.