With “Dune: Part Two,” director Denis Villeneuve did the unthinkable. He made a Hollywood sequel — really, the second part of his adaptation of Frank Herbert’s influential 1965 novel — that was more satisfying than the first. Everyone returned to the desert planet Arrakis, including Timothée Chalamet, Zendaya, Rebecca Ferguson and Josh Brolin, this time joined by new characters played by Austin Butler, Florence Pugh, Christopher Walken and Léa Seydoux.
The movie feels both bigger and more intimate than before, full of action and just as much emotion. It’s a more complicated, nuanced piece of machinery from one of our most talented filmmakers and one of the more riveting big-screen spectacles of the year.
2021’s “Dune” was nominated for 10 Academy Awards, including Best Picture and Best Adapted Screenplay, and won in six categories, including cinematography, production design, score and visual effects. What makes this accomplishment even more impressive is how many directors tried and failed to get an adaptation of Herbert’s masterpiece into theaters in the years since David Lynch’s doomed 1984 production.
TheWrap: Starting in on “Dune: Part Two,” did you have a list of things you wanted to accomplish? And how many of those things on your list did you actually get done?
Villeneuve: It’s a good question. There was something about trying to increase the momentum of the pacing of the film. I was feeling that ‘Part One’ was, by definition, a more contemplative film. It was a film where we were following a boy discovering a planet, a culture, and we were embracing that boy’s point of view. That boy was a victim of the event. In ‘Part Two,’ that boy becomes an adult and becomes a leader. He takes his destiny into his own hands. And I felt that there was an opportunity to create something that will be more action-driven and something I had not done before, and that really excited me. That was my, let’s say, bucket list. And that was something that I feel we achieved.
Something I haven’t heard you talk about is how funny “Dune: Part Two” is.
I’ve been talking about this movie for a year, and it’s true that not a lot of people mentioned that. The story is pretty dark, and it was important for me that the audience love Stilgar (Javier Bardem) — that they have empathy and they will want to get familiar [with] and embrace that character’s point of view. Not embrace, maybe, but get closer to him. In order to increase the empathy for this character, one way is humor, feeling that he has a candor that brings liberty. It’s something that Javier beautifully embodied. What is nice is to see the balance between Stilgar’s candor and the way Paul Atreides, played by Timothée, perceives Stilgar as strange. It’s about culture shock, which I think is always a good territory for humor.
You seemed to embrace the action this time, too — particularly in that sequence where Paul and the rebels are taking down a hulking Harkonnen vehicle, running between its big, spidery legs.
That’s a lot of fun to do. It required a lot of infrastructure and it created a lot of logistical problems because it’s not easy to create those machines in the desert. More specifically, [cinematographer] Greig Fraser and I were obsessed with natural light and how to bring realism to the scene in order to create the scope of this machine, the size of this machine, that dance of those legs that are moving the machine forward. To create those two massive movie shadows, we had to create the real legs that were moved by tractors. It was a big challenge. Details that could seem obvious at first can become quite tricky sometimes. But it brings the level of realism I was looking for.
It’s amazing how clear everything is in that sequence, too.
Something that I’ve learned from the great directors is that clarity is very important in order to bring tension, and that it’s all about storytelling. For me, action can, if taken seriously, become quite cinematic and poetic and meaningful. Also, it’s said you can see the development of the character through an action scene. This idea of the geography is super important, and it’s something that is embedded in the DNA of the screenplay — to make sure that the path that the character [takes] will inspire the camera work and should be very clear on the page. But then there’s a step for me that is tremendously important, which is the storyboarding, where I’ll focus on the point of view and making sure that my mother knows exactly who is who and who is where and when. If you can create that, people don’t question. If they are not lost, then they can only focus on the tension.
Looking back on the experience of ‘Dune,’ what strikes you the most?
When I saw “Part Two” finished, finally, I realized that that was it. I’d done it. I’d done an adaptation of “Dune.” And that is something that is an incredible privilege. I’m very grateful to have the chance to have done it. I think my biggest surprise about this is that I don’t want to run away from Arrakis. I’m still inspired to go back. That’s the thing that I was the most surprised by. I felt that after “Part Two,” I would need a break. I thought that I would want to go write a few films or do a couple of things before going back to “Dune: Messiah.” But the images that kept coming back to my mind, the appetite is absolutely intact. That’s the biggest surprise. I still want to go back to Arrakis.
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