Oh yeah I remember that documentary “legends of a world war 2 fairytale” some french guy sorry but his name escapes me has a an alternate version of the film in his possesion. Although it’s still heavily marred by the Special effects guy dying whilst in production.
I totally agree Michael Mann should go back in on that he has done so on everything else pretty much. However “the keep” is probably harder to salvage than dune IMO but not imposdible.
I think with Dune it is all there on film and unreleased but it’s structured incorrectly as in scenes are in the wrong order or trimmed. The Special effects are both tremendous and lackluster bringing a very uneven feel to the visuals.
It seems to me from what I am reading in those articles that the extended TV broadcast is based off Lynch’s 3 hour cut but has incredibly bad audio mixing with 2 pieces of music playing simultaneously on occadion plus the guy who assembled the TV broadcast kept using the same piece of music again and again. The audio mix is completely horrid. So even if David Lynch merely rectified that it would be still a good thing. Putting the correct music back for the scenes would really improve the extended cut.
What remains to be seen is when it comes to the missing scene cards displayed in the film reels is there actual footage or elements for these parts?
The extended TV broadcast simply puts up paintings which look terrible or re-uses a shot over and over. The TV broadcast obviously had zero budget for Special effects hence the lack of blue eyes in all the extended footage.
My feeling is there will be some things that are available and there will be some that are not. I know that the building housing the miniature shooting did indeed burn down during post production. So yeah that posdibly ruined things a bit. There was meant to be more shots of ships and backgrounds placed into the landing fields. A lot of that world building is missing even in the theatrical version.
I’m not suggedting to “George Lucus” the film but it’s clear that it needs some matte painting work based on the production stills.
If they did indeed scan the models and CGI them I can’t see Lynch doing that though. I am far more intetested in the actual scenes with the actors in them but the special effects are the glue in the world building I guess.
There Is a channel on youtube by a guy called “Omnivant” he has being doing work for years on scenes. They look a bit cartoony but I guess these are not final versions. The work on the Ornithopters is rather good.
The other option is to lift model shots from other films to fill those gaps or film new ones. For instance the models from Battle beyond the stars are in around 7 films. Putting them in one more film would not be a big deal either.
That was how I would handle any misding stuff but with always going with actual production drawings and plans over revisionistic choices.