‘Dune’ director Denis Villeneuve has been storyboarding the film since he was 13: NPR

After much anticipation and delay, Dune: Part Two is in theaters March 1. It’s been a long time coming for Canadian filmmaker Denis Villeneuve, who remembers reading Frank Herbert’s 1965 science fiction novel. Dune for the first time when I was 13 years old.

“The idea of ​​a child finding home in another culture, of feeling comfortable in a foreign country, that really touched me at the time,” Villeneuve says.

As a child, Villeneuve dreamed of making Dune in a movie. He and his best friend would write and draw stories from the book. Then, in 1984, David Lynch’s adaptation of Dune He came out and Villeneuve felt excited, but also a little dissatisfied.

“There were some options that were very far from my sensitivity,” he says. “I remember watching the movie and saying to myself: Someday someone else will do it again.”

Villeneuve became a filmmaker, with a string of successful hits, including Arrival, Blade Runner 2049 and hitman. He was drawn to science fiction, which he describes as a “very poetic way” of digesting and exploring reality.

Throughout his career, Villeneuve continued to wait for someone to visit him again. Dune – he simply never imagined that he would be the filmmaker in charge of the project.

“I’m still pinching myself,” he says about making Dune: Part One, which had commercial and critical success in 2021, and now Dune: Part Two.

Villeneuve describes Dune: Part One as a meditative film, centered on Paul Atreides, a young man (played by Timothée Chalamet) who finds himself stranded on a strange planet after his father is murdered by a rival family. In Dune: The second part, the character becomes more active, taking control of his own destiny. “The second movie was meant to be more of an action movie.” explains Villeneuve.

Interview Highlights

On why he prefers as little dialogue as possible

If I could have made films without dialogues, it would have been heaven. Dialogue for me belongs to theater or television. I’m not someone who remembers movies by their lines. I remember movies for their images, for the ideas that develop through the images. That is the power of cinema. For me, it’s not about dialogue. I hope one day to be able to make a film with as little dialogue as possible. That’s why silent cinema was so powerful and… still the best cinema today. Normally, a great movie should be watchable without sound. And that is the ultimate goal.

On the complications of filming in the desert with hundreds of crew members

The heat was our enemy. I mean, there was a period of time in the middle of the day where it was soup mode, you felt like your brain was cooking. I had to move the crew away from the sun in the middle of the day. …I wanted to shoot the movie with as much natural light as possible. We shot exclusively in natural light in the desert, which meant that, in order not to make aesthetic concessions, I drove my first assistant crazy because it meant that, depending on the positions of the sun, the entire shooting schedule had to be deconstructed according to the position of the sun. position. And that was a pretty crazy conundrum for my main cinematographer and for the actors (and for me).

On how to portray the desert tribes known as Fremen riding sandworms

I fell in love with the idea that you could know the presence of sandworms just by suddenly seeing the landscape changing in the distance. You didn’t hear (anything), but suddenly a sand dune appeared. I love how not seeing the beast is scarier than actually seeing it. Jaws It was a very important reference for the sandworm.

This moment where someone rides a sandworm is a very important moment in the book, but it is somewhat suggested. …(But it’s) pretty vague how to get to the worm. So that was one of the first things I had to do (was) decide how I’m going to make this believable. …First of all, I had to decide to think about the behavior of the beast. For me a sandworm is a powerful creature, but it is a very shy creature… it is a creature that does not want to be on the surface… a creature of the underground. You want to expose yourself as little as possible. …

I studied extreme sports, like people who jump on skis… or a motorcycle racer. And then I designed the way someone could jump on a worm. I made the diagrams and explained it to the crew. (It was) like a seminar where I explained to my team how to assemble the sandworm.

On sandworm riding scenes requiring their own cinematic unit

I didn’t want to make any commitments. I wanted to be as real as possible. And to do this we had to use the most powerful tool we had in our hands, which is natural light. It meant that this sequence would be shot over many weeks. To do it, I had to find a way to separate myself, because if I had (filmed) that worm myself, I would still be filming right now. So it meant I would have to be in two places at the same time. I was running my main unit (and) there was what we called a worm unit. …That was the hardest thing for me. Because cinema is an act of presence. I’m used to working with one camera at a time. I’m very old-fashioned in that sense. And (having) split in two was the hardest thing I’ve ever done in my life.

about how Jaws, Close Encounters of the Third Kind and Duel inspired him to become a filmmaker

There was always one name associated with these movies and this name was Steven Spielberg. And then I started to get more interested in what it meant to be a director. At 13 or so, absolutely fascinated by the idea and power of the camera tool. I never had a camera in my life, but I was fascinated. There was something so romantic, so powerful about making movies. I became obsessed with the idea of ​​(becoming) a filmmaker

Heidi Saman and Susan Nyakundi produced and edited this interview for broadcast. Bridget Bentz, Molly Seavy-Nesper and Beth Novey adapted it for the web.