By G.R. Nanda
So, the Dune (2020) trailer dropped and I am writing this post the day after to gush over it. This blog post will be different from my usual posts as in it is is not a chapter in my novel or a long form essay or article of my lengthy thoughts.
I wouldn’t even take this as as seriously as my articles and novel chapters because as I said before, this is a lot of fanboying.
I have been waiting so freaking long for this trailer; really ever since Vanity Fair released the first stills from Denis Villeneuve’s upcoming blockbuster. The stills were carefully chosen, picked to limit any huge revelations like sand-worms for example.
None of the crazy moments from the trailer like wide shots of flying ornithopters, spacecrafts coursing through dusty wind storms or sand-worms were revealed.
SO……once they were, it seems like the millions of fans of Dune and sci-fi literature came out of the woods strewn with Frank Herbert novels and pouring onto the internet to gush.
A collective gush.
Because it’s fucking Dune. What else do you expect us to do? Especially now, when it seems like one of the best working directors and one of the best science fiction directors working is going to give justice to the book.
Also, it’s not another generic action movie.
Not that I’m not looking forward to watching Robert Pattinson as Batman because I totally am. I’m just tired of the barrage of the overly formulaic movies. I like certain comic book movies. It’s just that Spider-Man: Far from Home left a tired aftertaste for CGI ridden superhero movies with little to no cinematic artistic flair.
I’m tired. Of COVID too.
And the new Black Widow prequel movie isn’t the kind of escapism I’m looking for. I mean, I’m always open to surprising quality, but do we really need a Black Widow prequel? I mean, she’s already dead for crying out loud!
Black Widow was just a sexy femme fatale in the MCU. She was probably there to balance off Robert Downey Jr’s boyish playboy masculinity (which isn’t a bad or cheap creative choice).
She’s really only there to be some kind of connecting thread between the real players like Iron Man or Captain America. I mean, let’s not kid ourselves. The side characters don’t have nearly as much definition or importance to the plot as most of the middle aged white guys (save for Black Panther).
And even the middle aged white guys aren’t super different. How many more quippy tech/science literate men who make one liners at least once every five minutes can we bear?
Black Widow is one of the few side characters with more definition. It’s Bucky Barnes, the winter soldier, and then Black Widow. In that order too. Falcon and War Hammer are just the placeholder token black side-kicks. They’re basically interchangeable.
Black Widow served her purpose. She was a glue between the big players Tony Stark and Steve Rodgers. Alongside Nick Fury, she had a bit of an outsider perspective to the superhero team given her background as a spy. She sacrificed her life in a tragic and sad end, for Hawkeye and the rest of her friends in Endgame (2019).
So, do we really need a Black Widow prequel?
Avengers: Infinity War (2028) and Avengers: Endgame (2019) were good movies. The franchise culminating finale of connected films and plot threads was all an impressive payoff for the barrage of sometimes trite superhero origin stories.
The MCU had certain great content and movies. It’s just that Marvel movies have become less contained. They’re stretched out and repetitive.
That is why we need filmmakers like Denis Villeneuve. When trailers like Dune’s drop drop and they’re number one on YouTube’s trending page, it’s exciting and I find myself hopeful that these movies will be a turning point in the culture, turning the tide away from the mainstream generic and more towards the auteur.
Of course, if Dune is a successful mega hit and super culturally influential, we might end up seeing a bunch of lazy Dune ripoffs pumped out by Hollywood just as the first Star Wars was.
Now enough about my pretentious pop culture rants and more about the trailer, the reason that I’m writing this blog post in the first place.
Hans Zimmer never disappoints. He is one of the best film composers of our time and trailers are super slick when they go to his music.
After Paul puts his hand in “the box” we hear a twang of Middle Eastern infused music which I am so pumped about. It’s what I was hoping for in the soundtrack. I hope there are more Arab influences to the whole soundtrack.
The visuals look beautiful. Denis’s biggest artistic merits include his visuals. His movies have great cinematography and this trailer definitely shows.
Roger Deakins did a great job as the cinematographer for Villeneuve’s last movie Blade Runner 2049 (2017)and while he didn’t return for Dune, Greg Frasier has taken the helm. Fraiser is responsible for the cinematography of the two most visually interesting, striking and unique Disney Star Wars live action pieces: Rouge One (2016) and The Mandalorian (2019). Rouge One has sweeping scenes of beautiful landscapes and imperial sites all with a tone and display of grittiness and grimness. It was very grounded.
The trailer begins with glimpses of Chani in the desert, calling to Paul and my god– do those glimpses look splendid with her standing against a backdrop of a hot desert sun with curtains of sand blowing below.
Just everything; the colors and lighting.
The flying soldiers who I assume are Harkonnens, look great dropping onto a desert landscape while the sky behind them is pure black.
So many shots are just eerie, awe inspiring or both in their scope.
The ornitophters look very unique for aircrafts in a space opera movie.
The landscapes, costuming and production design of what I saw so far is so incredibly promising. I have been nerdgasming so much over this trailer. On the day it was released, I watched it at least 20 times.
The production design and scope of the landscapes do look different from Blade Runner 2049, a Villeneuve movie that blew me away. It was the production design, cinematography and visuals that did so (as I have decided is one of the main attraction at a Villeneuve movie). Everything was kaleidoscopic, cramped and congested. The architecture was incredibly complex and modern.
It perfectly caputured cyberpunk and the feel of the original Blade Runner.
What I’ve seen from this trailer is not like that. That is becuase Dune is not cyberpunk. It’s a fuedalistic space opera set in a time after computers were banned. The world is supposed to feel ancient, futuristic at the same time.
I’m impressed that Villeneuve can totally switch mindsets when it comes to moving on to another project. I’m glad he’s really trying to make this movie its own thing and aesthetic.
The world of Dune appears to be more spacious and some of the architecture, especially what we saw on Caladan appears to be comparatively primitive in an almost medieval way. While the architecture in much of the trailer is sleek and futuristic, the spaciousness makes it appear ancient in its style.
I am totally on board with that.
So much looks ornate and regal.
It looks like Shakespeare in space.
Once again, I am totally on board with that.
Dune is Shakespearean science fiction.
The aircraft that appear at 1:51 of the trailer are reminiscent of the vehicular beasts of Blade Runner 2049 that had glaring headlights and protrusions. That’s cool.
I remember watching Blade Runner 2049 knowing that the director was working on Dune. I got to the part where Ryan Gosling and Harrison Ford’s characters are caught by agents of Wallace who arrive at the deserted Vegas casino that serves as Rick Deckard’s (Ford’s character) home. They come in these huge sleek flying cars with lights that seem to pierce the orange smog. Looking at this, I remember thinking, “holy shit, this tech looks cool, imagine what he’s gonna do with Dune!”
The imagery looks super crisp and the colors pop out. The color grading looks great. The blacks are really pitch black (nod to the video essayist Patrick H. Williams and his video on the color grading of superhero movies).
The effects for the shield practice between Paul and Gurney Halleck are splendid. If I’m going off of my superhero tirade, the effects don’t look like bad CGI lightning energy or something.
They almost look like video game characters glitching in a video game, their edges vibrating while they move abnormally fast.
The ornithopters look great. They’ve really taken on a unique design, resembling helicopters, but still appearing alien in their design.
The cast itself seems to be made up of great choices.
Thimothy Chalamet is young looking enough to be Paul Atreides. Just as was described by Frank Herbert, Paul has an aquilline face. Timothy’s face is appropriately curved and his over all proportions are small enough to show that is still in his adolescence phase. I’m 16 and he looks bigger than me in the trailer, but it’s still an apt casting choice compared to previous castings for Paul Atreides.
He’s not so young or soft looking that there is no intensity to the character’s appearance (he doesn’t have a baby face).
I could go on an on about the cast. The main characters seem so appropriately cast by their actors’ physique and reputations on screen.
Many of the characters of the antagonizing forces have an unearthly feel to them. The Harkonnens are super pale and hairless. The Baron is sickly and intimidating amidst gas and when he’s coming out of a slime/liquid substance.
And my GOD! That sandworm at the end!
We didn’t get to see the sandworm moving freely and really LIVING and acting in its environment. That would take a scene of the sandworm which I wouldn’t want a trailer or any preview of this movie to spare.
We only get shots. And that is great.
Save us the real majesty and motion of the sandworm living on the planet Arrakis for the actual movie.
Shots are used sparingly, but all provide us a glimpse of the scope of the sandworm. While it was incredibly brief, it looked epic, awe inspiring and truly monstrous in its sheer size against the humans in still suits.
The final shot of the sandworm’s mouth and its long skinny teeth retracting inwards is truly awesome.
Everything in the desert looks visually interesting. The dark colors and light colors seem carefully contrasted.
The Fremen stand out amidst the desert.
Denis Villeneuve’s preference for practical effects and real sets is to key to the grounding of his science fiction. His choice to shoot in the real desert shows his appreciation for nature and the actors’ immersion. In an interview, he explained, “my argument was they didn’t shoot Jaws in a swimming pool.”
Villeneuve’s past films and their acute ingenuity, unique stylistic flair and cerebral qualities make me certain that Dune can be a movie propelled by artistic vision rather than market driven studio meddling (cough* I’m taking about you, Disney. Cough* And your Star Wars sequel trilogy. Cough* Cough* Cough*).
He has described himself as a lifelong science fiction fan and avid reader of science fiction since his adolescent days. His art has proven itslef over and over again and it seems as if his career has been leading up to this pinnacle.
Yes, it’s only a trailer. And yes, I haven’t even seen the movie yet, but it seems like there’s something special in store for us. It’s possible. It’s possible that we have the movie of a generation awaiting us. A movie that will do for the culture what Peter Jackson’s Lord of the Rings movies and the original Star Wars trilogy did.
Online hype culture has indeed gotten tiresome over the years. If you find my gushing to be trite or even shallow, what I have to say is, at least I’m not basing my entire online presence through videos of me overreacting to trailers. That shit is trite, super old and a pathetic way to make money online.
Trailer reactions mixed in with videos of actual commentary and perhaps thoughtful commentary sprinkled within a trailer reaction is respectable as opposed to people who record themselves making loud unintelligible noises of over-excitement about a movie trailer.
This isn’t a trailer for The Rise of Skywalker (2019) or the next Disney MCU movie. This isn’t a trailer for yet another franchise installment or extension of yet another washed out generic action or superhero movie.
This is a trailer for yes, a reboot, but one of something that hasn’t been tried out fully– fleshed out fully.
There have been some adaptations of Dune, but Frank Herbert’s universe is huge and there is a thirst for a faithful on screen adaptation to spawn stories from the universe and interest in it.
And if there’s anyone I trust to make a film adaptation that’s as mind blowing and artistic as Frank Herbert’s novel, it’s definitely the guy who was able to make a sequel to Blade Runner (1982) that lives up to the accomplishments of the original, kept its tone and expanded the scope of the already established story and world.
I’m hoping that films like this will shake things up in Hollywood. While it’s possible to see trite copycat movies, it’s also possible that many doors will be opened for science fiction entertainment.
As I said in a prior post, the success of the Harry Potter movies caused a frantic hurrying from producers to find more middle grade fantasy books to adapt.
It might not be the worst thing if more classic science fiction works from the 20th century are adapted.
Many of the classics like the Foundation trilogy and Dune have been so hard to adapt because their hyper speculative nature is expensive for the screen. It not only takes big budgets and impressive filmaking technology to adapt classic sci-fi. It also takes ingenuity on the page of the screenplay as well as the way the movie is shot and directed in order to capture the cerebral and extraplotive themes found in the pages of an Asimov or Herbert book.
Not only has technology and CGI caught up to the wonders of fantasy and science fiction, but Denis Villeneuve has proven himself time and time again to have quite the knack for ingenuity.
If Villeueve is successful, this Dune movie will tackle a scope, design and ambition on par with The Lord of the Rings movie trilogy. Peter Jackson alongside the Harry Potter filmmakers are responsible for the fantasy genre’s elevation from an obscure sub-culture to the mainstream culture.
Its possible that we wouldn’t have gotten a Game of Thrones show from HBO if it weren’t for Peter Jackson.
Perhaps, we will see a science fiction renascence in the aftermath of Dune where classic sci-fi worlds and stories will see the light of the screen in the hands of a new generation tackling old stories in a new light with diverse characters.
The also hard to adapt Foundation trilogy has finally seen technology catch up, as is seen in the trailer for Apple TV’s Foundation television series.
So, we never know.
It’s quite satisfying to have seen the Dune trailer trending at number one on YouTube. Amidst all the corporate hogwash that’s usually on the trending page, there lay the tease of a world that fans of science fiction books have been clamoring for since the 1960s.
I was glad for my community; the science fiction and fantasy community that’s filled with bookworms who are ready to join in masses online to celebrate our beloved art and culture.
But in case, I’m hyping this movie so much to the point that the excitement will cloud the actual viewing of this movie, I’ll leave with this Dune (the book) quote:
“Hope clouds observation.”
And in case I have clouded my own or your chances at real observation, ignore much of what I said because all it is really just fanboying. I can still be excited though.
https://www.goodreads.com/work/quotes/3634639-dune
G.R. Nanda 