When the Oscar nominations were revealed this week, Dune came in behind The Power of the Dog with a total of ten nominations, including Best Picture. While that is an incredible feat, noticeably absent from that list of ten was Denis Villeneuve’s name in the Best Director category. He was arguably the biggest snub of the day because he seemed a sure thing for a nomination but he was ultimately overlooked. One Dune cast member, Josh Brolin, has become the first of the film’s production to speak about the snub and he definitely has a bone to pick with the Academy.
Brolin posted a Twitter video where he saluted Legendary, Warner Bros., and “everybody” who recently secured Oscar nominations for their work on the Frank Herbert adaptation. Once he was done praising the team, he then went on to slam what he saw as “the unbelievable, almost numbing, flummoxing” snub of the film’s director, Denis Villeneuve. Here is what he had to say:
“It’s just one of those things that you just go, ‘Huh? What?!‘ I don’t know how you get 10 nominations and then the guy who’s done the impossible with that book doesn’t get nominated. It makes you realize that it’s all amazing and then it’s all f***ing totally dumb. So, congratulations for the amazing accomplishments that these incredibly talented people have been acknowledged for, because it’s all really, really dumb.”
I believe Brolin has a point. I too was perplexed by Villeneuve’s omission because he took a book that many felt couldn’t be filmed into a proper movie and made a true visionary masterpiece. He was the one that had his hand in just about everything so for the film to get a Best Picture nomination and other technical notices and yet the director is shut out, it just seems a bit odd. I’m still scratching my head as to how he was snubbed for such fantastic work.
Do YOU agree with Josh Brolin’s assessment of the Denis Villeneuve “snub”?