The millions of people who've seen the recent Dune movies without having read Frank Herbert's book beforehand probably noticed an overwhelming number of similarities to other storied franchises. That's not a coincidence. The 1965 novel isn't the origin point of sci-fi or fantasy literature, but it's arguably the most successful and influential in its category.

Dune represented a huge step up in terms of epic worldbuilding and episodic storytelling, and it introduced plot arcs, character archetypes, and genre elements that are so common today, that Herbert's originality can easily be taken for granted. Countless books, TV series, and films have been inspired by Dune, including Star Trek, The Chronicles of Riddick, Miyazaki's Nausicaä of the Valley of the Wind, and even Futurama. The following five franchises, however, did more than riff on Herbert's ideas or parody the tropes he created. Each one has such strong parallels to Dune that without it, they may never have existed.

Updated on March 25, 2024 by Robert Vaux: Dune's influence spreads well beyond five projects. The article has been updated with five additional entries — famous and well-respected science fiction — that owe at least a small debt to Herbert's Dune. In addition, the formatting has been adjusted to meet current CBR guidelines.

The following contains spoilers for Dune: Part Two, now playing in theaters

Stargate Re-envisions Sci-Fi In The Desert

Roland Emmerich hasn't always been brilliant, but he was rarely better than the original Stargate, in which proof of alien influence on early human cultures was discovered in Egypt. Once the titular device is uncovered, a team is sent through to the desert world on the other side. There, an advanced alien lives as the god Ra, holding sway over the descendants of human slaves brought there thousands of years ago.

Emmerich's film is pure pulp, but it has an engaging energy and a fun core idea that spawned a very successful franchise. And while it works very well on its own terms, it's not difficult to spot Dune's influence in its alien world covered with sand. The ending, in particular, feels more than a little like Herbert, as the Earth forces lead a popular uprising against their alien oppressors.

2001 Explores Theological Science Fiction

2001: A Space Odyssey is widely regarded as one of the greatest science fiction movies of all time, But while it has little on the surface in common with Dune, the two share some very deep concepts. Herbert's Spacing Guild, for instance, operates by folding space-time, a concept that director Stanley Kubrick repeats in the film's climactic journey through the stargate.

Besides that, both projects play heavily on the idea of the divine. Dune features Paul Atreides rising to the status of messiah and its sequels depict his son undergoing a transformation into a sandworm. Similarly, in 2001, Dave Bowman is transformed into a divine "starchild" at the end of the film before returning to Earth in the cryptic final shot.

Alien Shows The Fruits Of An Earlier Dune Project

Alejandro Jodorowsky's adaptation of Dune is one of Hollywood's most storied failed productions. The surreal director assembled all of the pieces for what looked to be a wild take on the Herbert novel. Shooting never began, despite the massive amounts of money spent in development. As detailed in the 2013 documentary Jodorowsky's Dune, it produced a lot of conceptual material from artists such as Moebius and H.R. Giger, which ultimately influenced subsequent sci-fi projects.

Ridley Scott's classic Alien bears the imprint of that project on a number of levels. Giger, for instance, was tasked with conceptualizing the sinister Harkonnens and their home planet for Jodorowsky. Reflections of that design can be seen both in the Xenomorph itself and the crashed alien vessel carrying its egg. Screenwriter Dan O'Bannon worked on both projects as well, co-writing the script for Alien after recovering from the devastating failure of the Dune production.

Ridley Scott Departed Dune For Blade Runner

The success of Alien gave Ridley Scott an opportunity to tackle a new version of Dune, thanks to his creative association with O'Bannon. Scott worked with producer Dino Di Laurentiis — who eventually produced the 1984 David Lynch adaptation — as well as with key creative figures like Giger before leaving the project in order to direct the movie Blade Runner.

As with Alien, traces of that influence can subsequently be seen in Blade Runner's urban neo-noir. The notable influence of Moebius on that project can be traced back to the Jodorowsky version of Dune, as can its vision of a future in which technology has advanced, but humanity hasn't.

Star Trek Shows Herbert's Influence In Key Moments

The novel version of Dune was published just a few years before Star Trek's Original Series began its celebrated "five-year mission." Initially, the two had little in common beyond a certain high-mindedness. The Dune books represented science fiction at its most elevated, which Star Trek intended to emulate. While it didn't directly borrow from Herbert's classic story, shared influence can be seen in its meditations on divinity, religion, and the political machinations of various in-world empires such as the Klingons.

Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan takes more direct influence in its depiction of Ceti Alpha V: the barren desert planet where Kirk exiles Khan at the end of their first encounter. He and his followers look very much like Fremen in the movie as they emerge from the planet's swirling sands. And the horrifying Ceti eels bear the stamp of Dune's sandworms, albeit in exponentially smaller form.

Star Wars Is Basically A Dune Remix

The Star Wars saga borrows from Dune so thoroughly that it feels like a remix. Single ecosystem planets? Check. A young, white male savior imbued with mystical powers? Check. Desert homeworld with two celestial bodies on the horizon where moisture is scarce, patrolled by hostile, nomadic natives and giant, ravenous sand creatures? That's all here, too. A scheming Emperor with a terrifying underlord whose body is compromised and who spends time in curative vats of liquid? Yep and yep. A mostly faceless army of Imperial troopers? A self-righteous, mind-controlling religious order that's worked its way into intergalactic politics? A princess? A trade guild? A shocking revelation of a main character's actual parentage? The similarities stack up quickly.

To be fair to George Lucas, Star Wars goes on to tell a very different story than Dune, one that's more simplistically about good and evil, often more fun and accessible, and definitely more appropriate for children. Lucas also drew inspiration from World War II, Vietnam, Samurai movies, and spaghetti westerns, while Herbert was inspired by Middle Eastern cultures and environmentalism, and used his book series to interrogate the ethics of power. Fans are surely happy to have both franchises, but the fact that Dune paved the way for Star Wars is undeniable.

Game Of Thrones' Ned Stark Is Essentially Duke Leto Atreides

George RR Martin's A Song of Ice and Fire series — and the HBO adaptation Game of Thrones — is a product of the author's interest in the War of the Roses and classic fantasy literature. But Herbert's Dune was clearly of interest, too. Though they take place in different worlds, both revolve around great houses — each with its own crest, colors, and forces — making political and militaristic plays for the throne. Both authors created long histories and vast settings, with generations of religious lore and prophecies that may or may not turn out to be reliable. A modest amount of mythical creatures and magical realism show up in both Dune and Game of Thrones, as opposed to franchises like Lord of the Rings and Star Wars, where fantastical elements are more prevalent. Most of the people are just people, even if they've learned some cool tricks.

Westeros has Dune's loyal sword trainers, mystic advisors, eunuchs, witchy women and, yes, more misunderstood nomadic desert people and another young, white male 'chosen one.' In Dune Messiah, the ability to reanimate the dead is introduced, as happens with GoT's Gregor Clegane. But what it copies and pastes most obviously is the character of Ned Stark. Ned's personality and his plot arc are almost exactly the same as that of Duke Leto Atreides. Lastly, Dune set the standard for the surprising frequency of main character deaths that Game of Thrones came to be known for.

Avatar Has Undeniably Similar Themes To Dune

James Cameron's Avatar is theoretically a franchise, though only the first film has actually been released. Part Two has finished filming and is scheduled to come out in December of 2o22, with Part Three currently in production. Anyone who's seen the 2009 blockbuster will have picked up on its not-so-subtle themes. Another young, white male protagonist goes to an exotic, foreign planet to help harvest its resources. Then, he meets the locals, learns their ways, falls in love with one of them, and becomes something of a 'chosen one.'

The specifics aren't a one-for-one. Like Arrakis, Pandora is beautiful and dangerous, but in the exact opposite way. It's lush, with flying banshees instead of subterranean sandworms and unobtainium instead of spice. But thematically, it's perhaps the closest match for what Herbert was interested in exploring. Whether the Avatar films will subvert those themes, as Herbert does in subsequent volumes of Dune, remains to be seen until the long-awaited sequels finally come to theaters.

Mad Max And Dune Have Similarly Bleak Worldviews

George Miller's Mad Max movies are dystopian more than they're science fiction or fantasy, but there's a post-apocalyptic sense to Herbert's work, too. Dune takes place thousands of years in the future, after humanity has relied too heavily on technology, squandered its resources, and all but collapsed. Minus the timescale, that's the setup for Mad Max, in which Max Rockatansky tries to survive and figure out his own personal ethics in a world that might be beyond saving, and eventually becomes — you guessed it — another messianic figure.

Dune and Mad Max share some superficial elements, like their harsh, sandy locales and their grotesque, resource-hoarding villains. The franchise starts to mirror Paul and Jessica's Dune escape from the Harkonnens into the desert with Mad Max: Fury Road, as it becomes more overtly about environmentalism and powerful women. But it's the bleak worldviews of these two stories that make them virtually interchangeable. Both are unsentimental examinations of how humans organize themselves into societies, and both come to the conclusion that there's no perfectly altruistic way to go about it.

Tremors Turns Dune's Sandworms Into An Iconic '90s Horror Staple

Inspiration doesn't have to be layers deep with meaning. Tremors took Dune’s most iconic visual and spun seven movies out of it. Herbert's sandworms are a reverent presence on Arrakis; the Fremen call them Shai-Hulud, which in their fictional language means "old man of the desert" and in Arabic closely translates to "thing of immortality." But they aren't actually in the books or the movie that much, despite their looming threat and importance to spice production.

Tremors solves that problem by making its version of the creature, called a Graboid, the monster in a comedy-horror franchise that's been going strong since 1990. Tremors isn't the only property to draw heavy inspiration from the sandworm, either. Beetlejuice famously has them, which just goes to show how universal Dune's influence has been over the last 55 years.

Dune, Part Two is now playing in theaters.