There are some gruesome inaccuracies in the film (which, by the way, I have always felt was vastly underrated by the critical establishment). As an example, you raise the point of the rainfall at the end of the movie. This will sound a tad trainspotter, but bear with me - the whole point of the planet Arrakis is that there's no precipitation. Not a drop. An ecosystem, attuned over millions of years to a rainless climate, would suffer an environmental catastrophe of Biblical proportions if you suddenly sprayed it with water.
I've just re-read that, and it sounds more than a "tad" trainspotter-ish. Ah well.
I think one of the problems the film has faced is that it was seen as an expensive bomb by the studio, and therefore tarred not only with the brush of incomprehensibility, but also failure. Even now it's still seen as one of the great bombs of all time, up there with Heaven's Gate and Waterworld. It effectively ended the production hegemony of the De Laurentiis brothers, Dino in particular, and was certainly used by more than one Brit reviewer as an excuse to bash our American cousins for their lack of sophistication and attention span.
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