Is ‘Dune: Part Two’ Denis Villeneuve’s ‘Empire Strikes Back’? He Feels That He Never Left Arrakis

 This image released by Warner Bros. Pictures shows Timothee Chalamet in a scene from "Dune: Part Two." (Warner Bros. Pictures via AP)
This image released by Warner Bros. Pictures shows Timothee Chalamet in a scene from "Dune: Part Two." (Warner Bros. Pictures via AP)
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Is ‘Dune: Part Two’ Denis Villeneuve’s ‘Empire Strikes Back’? He Feels That He Never Left Arrakis

 This image released by Warner Bros. Pictures shows Timothee Chalamet in a scene from "Dune: Part Two." (Warner Bros. Pictures via AP)
This image released by Warner Bros. Pictures shows Timothee Chalamet in a scene from "Dune: Part Two." (Warner Bros. Pictures via AP)

Denis Villeneuve doesn’t feel like he came back to Arrakis for “Dune: Part Two.” In his mind, he never left.

The sequel, which opens in theaters on March 1, is the culmination of a six-year filmmaking journey, preceded by 40 years of dreaming about it. Realizing Frank Herbert’s novel for the big screen is a feat that has bested and befuddled some of the greats, including David Lean, Alejandro Jodorowsky and David Lynch, the only one who actually got to make a film, which was such a flop that its two sequels were quickly abandoned.

Villeneuve finally got his chance at one of the more turbulent times in Hollywood history, facing two delayed releases (one because of the pandemic, the other because of the Hollywood strikes), an historic shift to streaming and zero guarantee that he would get a “Part Two” at all.

“The conditions could not have been worse to release (Part One),” Villeneuve said in a recent interview with The Associated Press. “And still the movie did a decent box office.”

Even in that limbo time, he never stopped working on the script for “Part Two” knowing that if they got the greenlight, he wanted to be ready to go. By the time his cinematographer Greig Fraser was picking up the best cinematography Oscar for “Dune,” they were deep into pre-production for the second. And everyone was soon back in Budapest with cameras rolling by July. But though they’d conquered the desert in “Part One,” new challenges awaited.

“We all walked at the beginning into this project feeling confident,” Villeneuve said. “And that confidence quickly eroded.”

“Dune: Part Two” would be much more technically challenging, with at least seven major action sequences compared to two in the first. It picks up with Timothée Chalamet’s Paul Atreides in the aftermath of the calculated and devastating attack by a rival house on his family and followers who had just established control of the mineral rich desert planet Arrakis. With his father dead, Paul and his mother Jessica (Rebecca Ferguson) retreat to the desert where they establish a tenuous alliance with Arrakis natives known as the Fremen (including Zendaya). Paul trains to fight alongside them against the Harkonnen invaders.

Among the challenges: Filming Chalamet “surfing” on a sandworm in a way that is thrilling and transportive and not at all silly – something that Villeneuve had to figure out how to translate from what he’d imagined into words that would make sense to all the craftspeople working to make it happen in the brutally hot sun.

But none of those stresses seemed to transfer to the atmosphere on location in Wadi Rum, Budapest and Abu Dhabi. In fact, Chalamet said, it was the opposite. Villeneuve appeared to be having fun while making it.

“Denis is so playful. It’s like the greatest evidence of self-confidence to me,” Chalamet said. “It’s ultimately a playful, creative exercise to get to direct any movie. The man who takes himself too seriously, is more focused on the people around him, the audience, than the actual product reeks of a movie that’s pretentious.”

Josh Brolin, who has now worked with Villeneuve on three films, including “Sicario” and both “Dunes,” where he plays Atreides warrior Gurney Halleck, said it takes a unique personality to be a great filmmaker, but that Villeneuve is right up there with the Coen brothers in his ability to do it well.

“Great filmmakers that I’ve had the gift of being able to work with are misfits. They’re true misfits. They’re not cool people. They’re socially totally inept,” Brolin said. “And they found this medium to be able to work through, (where) they can express themselves wildly and specifically. And what’s going on in their head that we never were privy to? Now we get to experience it.”

Villeneuve has almost gotten used to delayed releases – and both times his films have benefitted from the cushion. The first was held almost a year because of the pandemic, which allowed him to tweak and perfect. This time, he got to do something different: Make a film transfer so that it could be projected on IMAX 70mm and 70mm, even though it was shot on digital.

“It’s the ultimate viewing experience and the ultimate format,” Villeneuve said.

“Dune: Part Two” cost a reported $122 million to produce and is arriving in theaters not a moment too soon. The marketplace is a little emptier than usual because of the residual effects of the labor standoff in Hollywood last year, and it's also a landscape where superheroes are no longer the trusty “tentpoles” that they once were.

But “Dune” is a different kind of franchise. The first “Dune” made just over $400 million even though it was also released day-and-date on Max (then HBOMax). And Villeneuve is more hopeful this time around. Audience appetite for theatrical is stronger than it was in late 2021, after all. He also believes “Part Two” is both more broadly entertaining and can be enjoyed without having seen the first.

“Part One was more meditative,” he said. “We were following a boy discovering a culture. Now we are with the boy avenging his father, falling in love. And it’s more of an action movie.”

He knows that “Part Two” “has a soul” as well, but he’s not quite ready to step back and enjoy it as the 13-year-old boy who started him on this path in the first place. It’s one of those paradoxes of adapting something you love, that in order to do so, you have to sacrifice some or all of that, and it will no longer mean what it once did to you.

Before they started on the first, composer Hans Zimmer, also a lifetime fan of “Dune,” asked him a question to this effect.

“He said to me, ‘is it a good idea to try to life a dream that we had when we were kids? Is it meant to fail?’” Villeneuve said. “There’s part of the movie that when I look at it, it’s closed the dream. Other parts are new because it’s an adaptation and I have to make choices and distort really the reality of the book in order to make it fit into a film format.”

“It’s mixed emotions,” he said. “It’s joy and pain.”

But even if he can't yet experience it as a fan, his peers can. Christopher Nolan recently compared it to “The Empire Strikes Back.” Villeneuve demurred, but the internet went wild.

“There’s a tremendous amount of visual imagination and worldbuilding on a scale that I have not seen before in a very long time,” Nolan said. “It’s somebody using all of the advantages of cinema in a way that doesn’t often happen.”

Villeneuve has left the door open for more, too. Herbert kept writing books, after all. But for now, he’s going to step back and let “Dune” breathe a little. He's looking at his movies in the macro, in a way that might ensure the future of the medium he loves so much.

“What I tried to do with my last three movies is to push forward this idea of event and the grand scale,” Villeneuve said. “I think that’s the way movies will survive.”



How the World’s Press Rated Paris’s Olympics Opening Ceremony

Former French football player Zinedine Zidane holds the Olympic torch during the opening ceremony of the Paris 2024 Olympic Games in Paris on July 26, 2024. (AFP)
Former French football player Zinedine Zidane holds the Olympic torch during the opening ceremony of the Paris 2024 Olympic Games in Paris on July 26, 2024. (AFP)
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How the World’s Press Rated Paris’s Olympics Opening Ceremony

Former French football player Zinedine Zidane holds the Olympic torch during the opening ceremony of the Paris 2024 Olympic Games in Paris on July 26, 2024. (AFP)
Former French football player Zinedine Zidane holds the Olympic torch during the opening ceremony of the Paris 2024 Olympic Games in Paris on July 26, 2024. (AFP)

Paris broke with tradition on Friday by turning the Olympic Opening Ceremony into a parade down the River Seine rather than a stadium-based show.

TV viewers around the world were treated to a spectacle performed on bridges, the riverbank and rooftops, culminating with French athletes Marie-Jose Perec and Teddy Riner lighting the Olympic cauldron and a performance from Canada's Celine Dion.

However, the 6,000-odd athletes, 3,000 performers, 300,000 spectators and dozens of world leaders had to endure heavy rain for much of the event.

Here's how the world's media judged Paris's ambitious ceremony:

FRANCE

Newspaper Le Monde wrote in a rave review that director Thomas Jolly "succeeded in his challenge of presenting an immersive show in a capital transformed into a gigantic stage".

Right-leaning Le Figaro said the show was "great but some of it was just too much". It said viewers "could have been spared" images including an apparent recreation of the painting of The Last Supper of Jesus and his apostles in front of a fashion show.

UNITED STATES

"Opening Ceremony Misses the Boat" headlined the New York Times's television review.

It wrote that the river parade "turned the ceremony into something bigger, more various and more intermittently entertaining. But it also turned it into something more ordinary — just another bloated made-for-TV spectacle".

The Washington Post was more glowing, noting that the organizer's "bold thinking" brought a shine back to an event that has seen its popularity wane in recent years.

CHINA

China's Xinhua state news agency said the ceremony succeeded in showcasing France.

"There were Can-Can girls, a homage to the reconstruction of Notre Dame and of course the French Revolution, with fireworks, heavy metal and singers who appeared to have lost a battle with the guillotine.

"If there was a downside to the ceremony, it is that any event performed over such a long distance has to struggle with continuity, and the big difference between this ceremony and others is that the parade of athletes was mixed in with the performances."

SOUTH KOREA

South Korean media noted the "impressive" imagination of using the whole city as the backdrop but the event was overshadowed by the country's team being misintroduced as North Korea.

South Korea's CBS radio said while the incident was no doubt an honest mistake, it was disappointing the Paris organizers failed at what should have been a very basic part of the event.

GERMANY

"As beautiful as it was mad," wrote Germany's Frankfurter Allgemeine. "France revolutionized the opening ceremony ... by the end even the rain had been defeated."

Tabloid Bild was bowled over by Celine Dion's return to the stage after four years, defying illness to "sing just as in the best of times. She deserves a gold medal for this performance."

BRITAIN

British tabloid The Sun joked "Wet The Games Begin!" on its front page alongside an image of the Eiffel Tower surrounded by laser beams, and described the ceremony as spectacular.

The Daily Mail's headline read "La Farce!", mainly in reference to the train disruption earlier in the day, but the paper also judged Paris's gamble on the weather had "backfired spectacularly".

A writer for the Guardian newspaper described the parade of boats on the Seine as "like watching an endless series of weirdly nationalistic office parties" but concluded Celine Dion had rescued the event with a "jaw dropping" performance.

ITALY

La Gazzetta dello Sport said the ceremony was "something unprecedented, even extraordinary. A great show or a long, tedious work, depending on your point of view and sensibility."

The mainstream Italian newspaper Il Corriere della Sera likened the show to a contemporary art performance, noting that "some (spectators) were bored, others were amused, many found the spectacle disappointing".

The left-leaning Italian daily La Repubblica said the ceremony overshadowed the athletes.

"A lot of France, a lot of Paris, very little Olympics.... a mirror that the immortal Paris turned on herself and discovered that she was so much, too much and soaking wet".