With Dune: Part Two, director and co-writer Denis Villeneuve is in the homestretch of realizing an ambition he's had since age 14: to transfer his vision to a movie screen; to capture the survival of the Fremen in the inhospitable deserts of Arrakis amid the spice harvesters and ruthless House Harkonnen; to capture the giant sandworms' majesty, and to tell the love story between Paul Atreides (Timothée Chalamet) and Fremen warrior Chani (Zendaya). With Villeneuve now headed toward an inevitable third installment, Dune: Messiah, he discusses the benefits and difficulties of shooting in the desert heat and his love of Frank Herbert's work.
DEADLINE: Watching Timothée Chalamet reminded me of watching Tom Cruise as he grew into manhood. How close has he come to your hopes when he was boyish and you set him for the first film?
DENIS VILLENEUVE: We have to remind ourselves that he had done the work before, tremendously strong work. Like for instance, the work he did on The King, where David Michôd put on absolute display of power that I knew that he could tap into. Some kind of inner power that I would need for the second film, as an actor, and that authority inside him. The truth is, casting is a gamble, but I knew we would be able to do it. I had seen it before. But there was nothing to prepare me for the day when we did a big scene and I saw him exploding in front of the crowd, in a very Shakespearean way. I was really proud of what they all did on that day.
DEADLINE: It's also Zendaya's film. Her Chani provides the moral compass and makes the romance feel real.
VILLENEUVE: Paul is the main character, but Chani is our moral compass. It's a big difference. That's where the movie differentiates itself from the book. In the book, she's a believer, she's in Paul's shadow, but I decided to transform our character in order to bring this idea that the movie will be a cautionary tale and not a celebration of his ascension. When the first book was released, Frank Herbert said he was disappointed by the way the book was perceived by some readers who saw in Paul a hero, and saw the book as a celebration of Paul. Herbert wanted to do the opposite. He wanted to do a cautionary tale, a warning against the embrace of charismatic figures. In order to correct this perception, he wrote a second book called Dune Messiah, that made sure that his initial intentions will be more clear. And me knowing this, I made this adaptation having this knowledge. I tried my best to be, let's say, more faithful to Frank Herbert than to the book.
And for me, in a way, this is where the story of Dune gets so interesting. Where it becomes a tragedy is what Paul will betray. He loves the people, and their culture, and he will betray what he loves in order to rule, to get power. In fact, the book is inspired by the story of T.E. Lawrence...
DEADLINE: The character played by Peter O'Toole in the most revered of sandy epics, David Lean's Lawrence of Arabia...
VILLENEUVE: In Lawrence of Arabia, he fell in love with the Arabic culture and asked the Arabic people to fight for England. And at the end, he betrayed that culture and that kills him, it breaks his heart. And it's that tragedy, that betrayal... I wanted it to be very clear for the audience. In order to do so, I gave Chani much more substance, and I gave her her own political views. The movie is seen through the lens of their relationship, the birth of their love, how their love grows, as Paul discovered the culture, learned about the culture. And then how their love is tested by the politics of the world and where there's a separation between both of them. And in the third part, we suddenly follow from her point of view, which becomes our moral angle, the moral compass, as you described it.
DEADLINE: Why did you make that choice?
VILLENEUVE: So, the audience could understand that Paul is moving in the wrong direction and she feels betrayed. I felt that Chani had that beautiful charisma, and anything she does on screen, she's a movie star. She has that. As you've said, you cannot take your eyes from her. She is very magnetic, but I love actors that are good listeners, people that, when everybody is talking in the scene, you can keep your camera on. Like Zendaya, you can feel all grammar unfolding in the way she reacts and deep inside her eyes. I put a lot of chips on it, I put a lot of pressure on her shoulders because I removed all... she has no lines toward the end. The third act is almost there as a presence that reacts emotionally to what's happening, and to the betrayal. I kept saying to my crew, "If we don't believe in their love story, there is no movie." So, my focus, the entire movie view, was to make sure that I will protect that journey between both characters, and to make sure that the relationship will come to life.
DEADLINE: Well, she doesn't need words to get her point across. I feel like that last look from her, I've gotten that one from my wife. What did you say to her?
VILLENEUVE: Listen, she's a tremendous actress. She knew it was clear, from the screenplay. What's important for me is that she can convey in her attitude that she's been betrayed as a woman, but also as a Fremen. It's a dual betrayal. Paul betrays her love, but more importantly, I think for her, is the fact that he takes power in the name of another culture. The idea was that they were supposed to bring Fremen to power, to relieve them from colonialism. And now Paul will embrace again this colonialist approach. That is the big betrayal, the political betrayal. I wanted both to be intertwined, embedded one into the other. It's the end of the nobility, a very cruel moment where a human being is fighting to keep their dignity.
She's trying to keep her dignity. I absolutely love the moment where we go from where the society will bow in front of the emperor, and we go straight into the intimacy of the interaction between both characters, and then the ones that are still standing are this princess who will become his wife for political reasons, and Chani, who is betrayed and leaves the room. It's a moment that was essential to nail on the day as I was directing, and I am very deeply happy about how Chani brought it to the screen, and also how Paul ultimately did it. That was a deep sadness they brought to life.
DEADLINE: You first got hooked on Frank Herbert's books at age 14?
VILLENEUVE: There was something about the idea of a boy that finds home in another culture that I thought was absolutely beautiful. The idea that it's like if you find yourself in another country and suddenly you feel that the culture, the habits, the behaviors of that culture feel more like home and you consolidate your identity into it. And you become an adult in that society. I thought that was a beautiful idea. I loved the idea of how Frank Herbert used biology to create and to go deep into the description and creation of the ecosystem on this planet. He brought so much detail and reality and love into it that it felt so real, so rich. And the way he explored the impact of this ecosystem on the culture, and how the Fremen learn to adapt to the desert. How they develop and use technologies, to how the desert impacted their religion, their ways of belief, their behaviors, their culture in general, even art. There's something about that that when I was a kid, I was amazed, just floored by the poetry of it.
DEADLINE: Now you are onto the third film, your last. You've set the stage here to at least temporarily leave the sand behind. What are you most excited by?
VILLENEUVE: That's the thing about Frank Herbert, it was quite precise, the way he approached the idea of colonialism, exploitation of natural resources, the danger of language and politics together. There's something about all the power of AI, that was after the book, but there are things in there that feel even more relevant today than when it was written. I cannot comment on the next movie because when movies are in the process of being written, they are very fragile. But let's say that it is absolutely deeply inspired by the book, Dune Messiah. I think there is the potential for a very strong movie there, and I absolutely believe in it.
DEADLINE: The first film fell into Operation Popcorn in the pandemic, where Warner Bros. put theatrical films on streaming. Then you jumped right into Dune: Part Two. How did the time after this film differ from the rush after the first?
VILLENEUVE: When the second film was finished, I did feel that I had finished the journey. I feel that I said that I will one day do the adaptation of Dune, and I had finished it, and that was a very beautiful, profound feeling of deep joy and melancholia because you are facing your success and your failures. I'm still pinching myself that I had the privilege to do this, and I'm still digesting that. There's two sides of me; the active side that is the filmmaker that works, but sometime I take some distance and I say, "Whoa, that's wild."
DEADLINE: Leonardo DiCaprio told me that during The Revenant, at certain points on location it was so cold that the crew would look to him to tell his director it was too much. You are drilled down creatively in the moment, shooting in the extreme heat. Did you need someone to remind you your brain was turning to mush?
VILLENEUVE: Heat and cold are very different in some ways. I would say that when we did Part One, there were moments where when we shot in Abu Dhabi where we were in a high season where it was very hot and I had to shoot early mornings and late evenings, but the middle of the day was too dangerous to bring a film crew. And I'm someone that, my crew, they are my people, and as the director, I'm also there to protect them. Because when you make films, you bring your crew in the environments, or you do stuff that is unnatural. Sometimes you flirt with danger if you do an explosion, for instance, or stunts things. And as a director, I have a responsibility. I'm like the father of the crew, and I take that very seriously. I understand that with the cold problem is, the cold paralyzes you. Being Canadian, I know what they went through. I think working in the cold is worse in a way, because there comes a point where your brain stops to function, your body stops. I would like to not comment on The Revenant. I wasn't there, but I have a lot of respect for what they did.
DEADLINE: What were the most challenging aspects of shooting in the desert?
VILLENEUVE: The heat. There was a moment in the day where the brain felt like a bowl of warm soup. An hour and a half in the middle of the day where I was feeling that actors, myself, everybody, was getting a bit numb and stupid because of the power of the heat. So that I took very seriously. We brought the crew to rest around noon. It was too hot to work, even though we were in a cooler season. Those environments, the heat, is taxing and you get tired very quickly under these circumstances. And also, it sounds silly, but to create shadow in the desert is not a given. You need powerful infrastructures to do that. And the wind is so powerful. You need debris, strong devices that will be able to create shapes of shadow where the character will evolve. If you have, for instance, an attacker under the harvester, we build just a little part of the machine, you cannot build the whole machine. It means we have to create shadows that will bring a reality, and those shadows are not easy to create. That sounds silly, but it's not a small detail.
DEADLINE: What could you not have replicated on a soundstage?
VILLENEUVE: I would not have captured the sense of the movie, which is the impact of that landscape on the minds of the characters. It would've been impossible in most of the shots to bring the scale on a stage. Mother Nature is the main character of the book, and I wanted Mother Nature to be the main character of the movie. When I first met with the studio, my only condition was that I wanted to shoot in the real desert. I wouldn't do it on a backlot. I wanted to be inspired by the impact of those landscapes, and for my actors and the cinematographer and all the artists on the film seeing the impact of nature. I remember when we did Part One, we started to have a brief shoot in Budapest, then went to the desert for a couple of weeks. When we came back to the desert, my crew was different. They knew what it was. They knew what dust was. They knew what a sandstorm was. They knew the impact, the grandeur and the humidity; what it brings in your heart when confronted by the infinity of the desert. I wanted to capture that impact on screen. And the only way to do it was to capture it on camera, and sorry, but to do that, the only way to bring it to the screen was to be there for real. I'm a hundred percent convinced that that's the only way I was able to make that happen.
DEADLINE: Is it fair to say this was an unforgettable life experience?
VILLENEUVE: I don't want to speak for my crew, but we saw things that were quite spectacular and memorable. As filmmakers, one of the beautiful things is that it is an adventure, making movies. And this was a real adventure.