Denis Villeneuve Talks Dune after an Early Screening!

Denis Villeneuve has crafted something truly remarkable, a flawless and bold telling of Frank Herbert’s classic novel Dune. This gorgeously epic (read our review here) is visually stunning and fueled by a wonderful script and a gorgeous score. Starring Timothee Chalamet, Rebecca Ferguson, Jason Momoa, Dave Bautista, Josh Brolin, Oscar Isaac, Zendaya, David Dastmalchian, Javier Bardem, Stellan Skarsgard, and many more. It’s the kind of movie that is made for IMAX in every way possible. Recently, we had the great pleasure of getting a very early look at the film as it makes it’s way to the Venice Film Festival. And even better, a small group of journalists had the great pleasure of sitting down with Mr. Villeneuve over Zoom to discuss the filmmakers approach to the material, the casting of Paul Atreides, and bringing a sumptuous visual display along with a brilliant score from Hans Zimmer to life. We’ll have much more Dune talk coming your way in the next few weeks before the film’s October 22nd release.

Thank you so much for taking the time today. And congratulations on this film. It is just absolutely stupendous.

Denis Villeneuve: Thank you. Thank you. I would like to say that I’m starting right now a long marathon, I’m starting press. And you guys finally saw the movie and you’re the first ones. I’m kicking this off with this long journey of junkets. And I’m super happy that it’s with you guys. I just want to say that I’m so happy. So finally you saw the movie.

On the adaptation process, with the realization that there’d be multiple movies:

The thing is that from the start, I knew that I’d have to focus on some specific elements because when you adapt [from source material], necessarily, you transform. I mean, the idea was to be as close to the spirit of the book as possible, to be as close to the poetry. I am a massive fan of the books. It’s a book that has stayed with me for over 35 years. So it’s a book that I deeply know. But the more that you go into the adaptation, you realize at one point that the goal was to make a movie that will please the hardcore fans, the people that know Dune by heart, and also my mother that never read Dune. So to find that equilibrium was not easy. And we first of all, that their focus was, of course, I said to my partners and screenwriters that we need to focus on Paul.

As you know, Dune was written where you visit the different planets and you have all those families. But for this movie, we were mostly focused on Paul Atreides. I want the movie to be as immersive as possible and to be from the boy’s point of view.

The second decision that I made, I said to Eric Roth, who had to crack the beast at the beginning, I said, Eric, I’m asking you, what will be the most important element? What will be the thing you would like me to focus on as I attack the adaptation? And I said to him, women, I think that in Dune, women are very important. I think they were very important for Frank Herbert. And I think that the audience should be upfront. I would love Lady Jessica to be not the main protagonist, but just be behind. So it was very important that the movie would be focused on Paul and the relationship with his mother, and that we try to develop Lady Jessica as much as possible.

Now, the beauty of making the movie in two parts, that was the decision I made right at the start as well, is that there are some elements that I didn’t explore in this first part that I will have the chance to explore in the second part. Dune takes all its power into details. So that was part of the challenge.

When you make a move in two parts, necessarily, when you do the first part, you have to know what you’re going to do in the second part. I mean, it has to have the structure. It has been a dream. It has been mostly designed in a way that there’s a lot of elements that are [prepared] so I would say that I would be fairly ready to go quite quickly.

How close are you if the second film is greenlit immediately? Is it ready to go into production already?

Now you go quickly in a movie of that size. You still need to make sets, the costumes, we are talking about months. But I would be if ever the movie is greenlit sooner than later, I would say that I would be ready to shoot in 2022 for sure. Which I would love because I am ready to go and I would say that I would love to bring it to the screen as soon as possible.

But we know the first thing, I really had time to make sure that it was exactly the way I wanted it to be. And I would love to have the same feeling when I make the second part. So that would be the priority. Quality will be the priority.

On the inspiration to create such impressive alien worlds:

I will tell you something I said to my crew, right at the beginning, I said, guys, I would love, please for you to stay as much as possible [away] from the Internet. I would love you to meditate. I would love you to dream. I would like this movie to come from inside us and not from other influences outside. I would like us to find our own path into our mind, to try to bring something. We were very arrogant. We wanted to try to bring something new there. And then there are a lot of sci-fi movies made before us. But we were really wanted… And one of the key [elements] was nature, to try to be as close to nature as possible.

You know, to be frank, when I saw the very first Star Wars in 1977. My favorite scenes were the ones that felt the most natural, like the ones when we see the droids at the beginning. There was something about the strength of nature. I’ve been raised doing documentaries where nature is your most powerful ally, and I try to bring that into what I do.

Strangely, I tried to do a sci-fi movie a bit like a documentary using nature as a strong ally instead of fighting against it. That’s what I would say, I don’t know if that is an answer to your question, but I hope.

On creating the score and working with Hans Zimmer:

The thing is, right from the start, Hans was very, very ambitious with the score because he was like me, [it was] one of his oldest dreams. I remember the first people I talked to about making this adaptation. I remember having dinner alone with Hans, and it was his birthday. And we were alone in a Montreal restaurant. And I said I would love you to do the Dune score and said, this is my oldest dream. And I will say, yes. But he said… I’m just afraid maybe this is a very dangerous idea to tackle your oldest dream, but let’s try it. And the thing is that for that, we decided right from the start that we will not use any instrument that we could recognize. Mostly, they will be like an instrument that either he will create himself or use an instrument in a new way.

We were trying to distort the sounds so we will not recognize where it’s the source and using as much as possible the power of female voices. And that’s the idea of community. That was so important to me and it was so important to Hans as well.

And then I will say that right from the start of it like in my other movies, we agreed, both of us, that the sound design and the music should be blended. And right at the beginning of the conception, with the music process, Hans and my sound designer worked very closely together. It’s not like sound design was made on one side and the music [on the other]. We all worked together to try to bring this specific score to life, so Hans will not be in competition with sound effects all the time. So there was a way to try to find a balance with sound design, and it was a beautiful artistic dance between sound and music. It was more designed, I will say from the editing room with Hans Zimmer and the sound design team.

In regards to exploring the villainous faction of this world throughout the story:

The thing is that for me, a Sardaukar needed to be like soldiers that will have equipment designed to fight under any conditions. So they are half knights, half astronauts. That’s the idea that they got these guys. You can launch a Sardaukar Army on any planet at any time, and they are ready to go in any kind of environment. This was the idea of the armor with the Harkonnen. And I want to say that it’s an exploration that we started to do to try to bring an idea of total artificiality, total disconnection from nature, a world that will be, totally artificial, and totally about the exploitation of natural resources.

And I will say it’s thanks to my production designer Patrice Vermette who’d push, push, push to make sure that I would be happy at one point with the result. It was like a long exploration to find a balance. And I would say that it was an old dream of mine to work with a world that will use only the black color and the exploration of that.

What are his plans going into the future of the cinematic take on Dune:

I’m going to be very honest. The thing I envision is the adaptation of two books, “Dune” and “Dune Messiah.” That for me was, I said, okay, as a filmmaker, I know as a screenwriter, I know how to do this. So I decided that we’d split the first novel in two. So now we have two or three movies.

Those movies are very long to make. So for my mental sanity, I decided to just dream about three movies after that because I’m a big fan of all the novels. After that, I see where I am. But I will say that I want to focus on the aspect of these three movies right now. By the way, I’m not dreaming about “Dune Messiah”, and I’m focusing on launching Dune Part One and hoping that there will be a Dune Part Two. And that that’s my main plan.

And that’s enough. I mean, doing the first one was by far the most challenging thing I’ve ever done. And the thing that I think that we were able to to bring it to life because we all, me and the team, just did that for two years and a half full time, 24 hours a day, seven days a week. We were dreaming about Dune Part One. That’s the way I can make them. And then I can start to have a long term. I need to be there now and not think too much about the future.

Was there any sequence that he was not able to use, something he’d hoped to be a part of the first part:

OK, I will say something to you guys… yeah, I have one. There’s one thing that is painful for me. It’s Gurney Halleck’s baliset. It’s something that I shot. It’s something that exists and just was awesome, but I could not, for several reasons, was unable to put it in part one.

Now what? The thing I changed from the book that I feel is… I don’t want to go into spoilers, but I will say that there’s something about the way we approach Paul’s relationship with the future. His visions. That’s where I want them a bit more personal in the way. I was inspired by Frank Herbert’s book, but that’s where I took a bit more liberties, and I’m pretty proud of what I did there. I would say.

If you are familiar with the book, there is a perfect place to separate the two movies. What inspired his choice to go in a different direction than that:

There was a natural point you could have ended there, but it would have made the first movie too long. I didn’t want to sacrifice elements. And already I was shoveling, if I may say things, elements like the character, like Feyd Router. I was watching for his introduction to the second part. But if we tried to go to that jump, the movie became monstrously long. And I was feeling that there is a limit. So where we end right now, I thought was the perfect way to feel that Paul had a completed arc, as a character in this first part. The first part is his relationship with his mother.

We feel that there’s something that is not a closure, but something relevant there. And to keep enough stuff for the second one, that’s the way I would see it. But if you want to know, it’s yes, that was not always… there was a lot that happened in the writing. It’s something that I explored with Eric Roth and with John Spaihts. John and I spend a lot of time brainstorming. And if I have to find that equilibrium, it was not easy, honestly.

In regards to the storytelling trope called, the “white savior trope” in which a Caucasian person goes into a foreign land to act as a rescuer. On whether or not he felt that was something that came into mind while creating the film:

It’s a very important question. And it is why I thought that Dune when I was reading it, is so relevant. It’s critical of that. It’s not a celebration of a savior. It’s a condemnation, a criticism of that idea of a savior of someone that will come and tell another population how to be and what to believe and try to tell them. And so it’s not a condemnation, but a criticism. So it’s like that’s the way I feel. It’s relevant, and that can be seen as contemporary. And that’s what I will say about that. It’s frankly, it’s the opposite. Yeah.

When it came to casting both Timothee Chalamet and Rebecca Ferguson:

I just had a list, a secret list. And most of the people that you are seeing on screen were on that list. It was amazing the level of enthusiasm that the actors and actresses had with the book, with the source material. There’s a lot of love for Dune out there. And it’s a project that really brought a lot of passion to the actor’s community, I will say that. And right at the start, I remember sitting in Mary Parent’s office and we were like, okay, who should play Paul. And we both said it’s Timothee Chalamet. It has to be Timothee. It does. And there was no plan B. I said that earlier in an interview, I think, but there was no plan B. That was the truth. I know.

I didn’t say that on the day, of course, but I wanted for so many reasons, he was for me Paul Atreides. This was the incarnation, the physical incarnation of what could be the most fantastic Paul Atreides ever.

The next decision was to cast his mother. And Rebecca Ferguson came to my mind because I was always mesmerized by what I was seeing on screen. She had all the qualities I was looking for as an actress.
And physically, too, I felt that she looked like Timothee. There was something in her eyes, that physicality. And I truly believed that she had that regal quality, that mysterious quality that she could bring all the complexity to, all the layers. Lady Jessica is the most complex character in this story. And I wanted an actor that would be able to bring all the layers up front and play with them. And I think it’s probably the most with all the most difficult part to play. So when once I found my duo, then my body relaxed, my soul relaxed, and we brought Oscar Isaac on board.

Oscar fits the description of the Duke. When you read the book, you describe Oscar. And I wanted to work with Oscar for a long time. And by the way, he sent me a text message one day saying, hey, by the way, I love Dune. Was I telling you there were like these tingles? So it was like a very, I will say, exhilarating, exciting process, the casting on this movie, because there was so much enthusiasm coming from the acting side.

What did he learn from the first film that may carry over into the second film:

The tough task here was to introduce you guys to the world, to the ideas in this world, to the cultures, the different families, the different planets that, now once this is done, it becomes an insane playground. So it will allow me to go berserk and really create.

Dune One is like an appetizer. Dune Part Two is the main meal where we can have much more time. So that’s what I can say. Dune Part One was by far my most exciting project ever. Dune Part Two is already getting me even more excited, that’s what I can say. And I don’t lie right now.

When it came to making this film as enjoyable for new viewers in addition to fans of the source material:

That was the big challenge, my friend. That was the challenge, because, I know the book. I read the book I don’t know how many times, it’s just been beside my bed for the past 35 years. So it’s like I had to make the movie for other people, people that were not familiar. So that’s where I go to introduce this world without being too much didactically, that it becomes like a lesson that becomes almost like homework for the part of the audience I was trying to reach. So that’s where we had to find ways that will feel respectful to the book, but kind of a little bit different.

So it’s all about choices and sometimes tough decisions. But it was like I would say that, again, it’s not something that was done in five days. It took something that evolved as we wrote the film. And as I shot, and it’s something that evolves as a sculpture will evolve. And for me, it was a very fascinating process, a filmmaking process that I really enjoyed from that space to explore, to make sure that I would find the right path to tell that story. But that was not the path I found very quickly.

About his personal influences regarding nature, and finding the elements he appreciates in the book on his own and putting into the film:

I will say the truth here, I was raised in a small village where I was in a relationship with the horizon and the St. Lawrence River. And it was like that line and that massive sky. Skies that bring humility. You know, you are so small as a human being when you have that kind of horizon around you and that the power of nature.

I was raised also by a grandmother that taught me to be mesmerized in every day, in a daily way, every day, to be mesmerized by nature, by a flower, by everything. It was something that I once asked her. I said, Grandma, you go to church, how do you pray [here]? And she said to me, I pray every time I’m in my garden to be in relationship with the plants, and nature. That’s where I feel the most, the power of this. If God exists, that’s where I feel this power. And that’s something from when I was a kid hearing of her true, sacred relationship with nature, it’s something that mesmerized me, and I became fascinated with biology.

One of my favorite books is the book about the human body. I mean, that’s sci-fi. When you look at just what your brain does to do that with this with your finger [bending his finger up and down]. I mean, that’s where it’s biology. For me, it was one of my first, biggest loves with cinema. And at one point, I had to decide whether I would become a biologist or a filmmaker. And it was really a very important moment in my life. I just love nature. So it’s not something that came from when I was a kid in my village. I think I would say.

On whether or not his previous work shaped Dune:

Definitely. I’m the accumulation of all my movies. First of all, when I do a movie, I’m trying a new movie. I’m trying to bring something new. I’m trying to put myself in front of challenges that I think that I have never done before. I’m trying to really approach cinema, the medium, with different tools. I’m trying, on Dune as an example, it was the first time I was really shooting for IMAX. It was the first time that I was studying the use of slow motion.

There were ideas, like a handheld camera that was like all a lot of technical layers that I was trying to make, how can I say, my cinematic language evolve? But I’m the same guy. And so, yes, there’s a strong influence, definitely from Incendies to Enemy, or even from Arrival to Blade Runner, that all the movies that I did before Dune are an accumulation of knowledge that, again, brings experiences.

That’s where Dune is like a selfie of myself. How connected? Yeah, that’s where I am right now. That’s yeah, it’s by far, honestly, I think it’s my most personal movie. Strangely, there’s something that’s a connection with this movie that I never felt before. It’s like it feels as if I’m so close to it. It’s very warm for me.

When it came to balancing his fandom to create a well-crafted feature:

The thing is that it’s a process, that the equilibrium was like we were trying to reach it in the screenwriting process. But I will say that it’s something that has evolved through time, even as I was shooting something that was changing elements or trying to make sure to find the most efficient and cinematic way to express complex ideas, to make them as accessible as possible.

I’m sorry, my answer is a bit boring because it’s like, it’s just it was just a lot of work for me through to the end. And a lot of brainstorming. And there are elements, for instance, that I feel that you cannot calculate in advance or that I would like to have the music the way we approach music in the movie is, as Hans Zimmer would say, is we were trying to express some of the inner journeys of that, you know.

The book is very internal. Most of the book is often about two guys going into a room and starting a conversation together. And then you heard them talk. And you know what? They are thinking of each other and is like a game or a confrontation going from just knowing their stuff, you know? And so I couldn’t do that with the movie. So it was all to express this inner world, of the inner world of the character of that thought process. And I use that.

And signals are used in the music as well, to try to give a clue of where the character stands in this scene. It was like Hans played with the music this way. It’s like trying to create music that will be about the expression of the entire journey of the characters, but all of that is something that I looked at that I did in that tool of music when I was writing the movie.

It is just an example, among others, of things, layers that I think the movie found its equilibrium at the very end when all the elements came together, and then it clicked. But before it clicked like that, it was a long journey.

On what was the most difficult sequence to take on once filming began:

With the movie I had made before, there were days where I was saying to myself on the schedule, I’m doing this today, it’s going to be easier. But on Dune, there was no such a day, every day had its challenges, either a very intense technical challenge, or something that dramatically was very challenging for the actors to do. It was my responsibility to bring them into that mental space. There was always something difficult to do on a daily basis.

I will say that the final sequence is when Paul meets the Freman. Why? Because Greig Fraser and I had the brilliant idea that we will not use any artificial light in the desert. It looks good on paper, but when you do try to shoot nighttime… So we used shadows. When I found I would like to make a short answer, but when we found the place where finally people will meet with the Freman, SPOILER ALERT, that the place looked exactly as I envisioned it when I read the book, and it was a perfect, perfect, perfect place and a plus it was to be surrounded by cliffs, like in the descriptions in the book.

That allowed us to shoot without sunlight, but just for three hours a day. So we had to shoot a very complex scene over the course of a week. But just three hours this week means that we were rehearsing all these scenes and then shooting like mad. Guys, for three hours, it was very, very, very intense. It was the most intense shoot of my life. It was so fun to do.

I will not do that for part two. I just it was too intense to prep all day and then shoot. You know, technically, that was very difficult to do. But it’s maybe boring for you, but for us, it was not easy to do to try. Why? Because I wanted the planet to feel real. I didn’t want the light to feel wrong. I didn’t want to look like it was made artificially. I wanted the audience to feel that we are there. Nighttime on Arrakis with a big full moon that is bright enough so you can see and to create that effect was not easy.