Venice Movie Competition: ‘Dune’ Leaves Us With 3 Significant Inquiries

The spice need to circulation. But will audiences go?

Denis Villeneuve’s extremely predicted “Dune” premiered Friday at the Venice Film Festival, an strange area to debut a sci-fi franchise-starter that charge upward of $160 million. Then once more, “Dune” is not your regular tentpole.

It is something dreamier and weirder, a movie that straddles the line involving auteurist artwork-film and studio blockbuster so provocatively that even soon after looking at it, I cannot very predict how “Dune” will fare when it will come out in theaters (and on HBO Max) on Oct. 22. When I still left my screening, the to start with critic I spoke to was entirely besotted. The 2nd fled the theater as if Villeneuve experienced planted a bomb there.

Nevertheless, following a ten years of Marvel videos made with high-stage craftsmanship but several official challenges, it is bracing to get a film of this scale that can take these kinds of significant artistic swings. Right here are three thoughts that saved swimming around in my head following looking at it.

Can ‘Dune’ become a major-display strike?

Even though “Dune” is centered on a typical sci-fi novel by Frank Herbert, diversifications of it have barely set the world on hearth. David Lynch’s 1984 adaptation was a popular catastrophe that the director disavowed, though two mini-sequence variations were being much more notable for stuffing wonky blue get hold of lenses into the eyes of a younger James McAvoy than for inspiring any sizeable pop-cultural response.

But “Dune” has robust bones, and they’ve been picked in excess of considerably given that Herbert’s novel was published in 1965. So many films had been motivated by “Dune” that the contours of the story may well truly feel familiar now: A young man (Timothée Chalamet) is despatched to an unique planet that is becoming mined for a important pure source — in this situation, the hallucinogenic “spice” — but he ultimately decides to throw in his ton with the Indigenous folks and battle again from their well-militarized oppressors.

Yes, that’s in essence the same plot as “Avatar” … and hey, it’s possible which is a fantastic matter! Immediately after all, “Avatar” was a history-placing blockbuster, and even though Chalamet is new to main this style of motion picture, Villeneuve has surrounded him with a solid of veterans: Jason Momoa, Dave Bautista and Josh Brolin have all done their time in the superhero salt mines, Oscar Isaac is new off a “Star Wars” trilogy, and Rebecca Ferguson has turn into the top woman of the “Mission: Impossible” franchise. If so several other tentpole films have stolen from “Dune,” the the very least “Dune” could do is steal some thing back.

Nevertheless, even with that pedigree, “Dune” faces some major obstructions. The movie completed principal photography more than two many years back and was originally set for launch in November 2020 right up until Warner Bros. decided to hold off the movie for approximately a 12 months. The expectation was that the force would location “Dune” in a put up-Covid film landscape the fact is that the continuing havoc wreaked by the Delta variant has movie studios spooked enough to shove some big flicks (like “Top Gun: Maverick”) into 2022.

In some ways, this could be a very good factor for “Dune”: With fewer manufacturer-pushed blockbusters in the market, “Dune” could stand out and draw curious viewers who are keen for a little something significant to observe. But to Villeneuve’s vocal consternation, the movie will also premiere on HBO Max at the identical time it bows in theaters, which could reduce into box-business receipts and threaten the odds that a sequel will be greenlit.

It could affect the initial round of buzz, way too: The audience that will go see “Dune” in theaters is extra inclined to be invested in it (and will experience its visual and sonic pleasures on the most significant feasible scale), though the bored, curious and unfamiliar who simply click in excess of on HBO Max may not be as partial to Villeneuve’s mise en scène. The initial major motion sequence, a sandworm attack, does not get there until an hour into the film. Are at-property audiences going to be as keen to see factors by way of as the persons who eagerly paid for their possess tickets?

Will ‘Dune’ be a important Oscar participant?

Element of what’s so striking about “Dune” is that Villeneuve has a perception of texture that’s unusual amid huge-finances filmmakers. When a character falls in fight, Villeneuve is besotted with the way the man’s eyelashes flutter as he dies. And in the course of the assault on a character’s compound, the camera drifts from the action to show us impressive palm trees that have been set aflame, their leafy crowns now a starburst of destruction.

However sci-fi videos can from time to time be a tough market with Oscar voters, I suspect that Villeneuve’s distinct eye will distinguish “Dune,” as the movie appears to be undeniably ravishing. A ton of below-the-line nominations are assured, such as Greig Fraser’s cinematography and the manufacturing design by Patrice Vermette. The rating (by Hans Zimmer), sound and modifying are all additional daring than this style ordinarily makes it possible for: The aural soundscape and artsy crosscutting sense nearly built to attract you into a spice-induced trance.

And I have not even gotten to the manner! The costume design (by Jacqueline West and Bob Morgan) is a stunner, and specifically through the to start with hour of the movie — with Rebecca Ferguson wearing outrageous room-nun sheaths and a veiled Charlotte Rampling dressed like the Eco-friendly Knight in Gaultier — “Dune” can feel like a moody higher-fashion shoot that from time to time involves spaceships. (I suggest this as a good thing.)

Villeneuve’s past film, “Blade Runner 2049,” scored five Oscar nominations and gained its cinematographer Roger Deakins a prolonged-overdue Academy Award. Nevertheless, the film couldn’t crack into the two major Oscar groups, greatest photograph and best director. Does “Dune” stand a better opportunity?

I’m having the wait-and-see strategy listed here. None of the actors from “Dune” are probably to be nominated, which would have assisted legitimize a film like this with Oscar voters, and an tailored-screenplay nomination is not a foregone summary, either. Nevertheless, right after 2020’s intimate area, I imagine the academy is eager to get a larger movie into the very best-image race. Villeneuve’s struggle to get his motion picture seen on the major screen may possibly also resonate with streaming-skeptical voters who see his stubbornness as a campaign worthy of backing.

Is ‘Dune: Part Two’ a positive issue?

Viewers who check out “Dune” expecting a complete practical experience might be thrown for a loop when the title card comes up: This isn’t “Dune,” it’s “Dune: Section Just one.”

Villeneuve has split Herbert’s book around in 50 percent, meaning that numerous of the important character arcs are just having started off when this movie comes to a close. And though Zendaya is plastered all about the marketing and advertising as the woman lead, it is genuinely Ferguson who gets that spotlight: Outdoors of a handful of dreamy visions of what is to occur, Zendaya’s character does not component into the story in a massive way just still.

Villeneuve intends to make “Dune” a two-parter and is doing work on the screenplay for the sequel, but Warner Bros. however hasn’t technically greenlit it. The studio has tried out the two-film gambit in advance of, splitting the Stephen King adaptation “It” into halves, but people movies opened two yrs aside and a prospective “Dune” sequel would probable just take much longer to mount. (It could also worry the studio that “It Chapter Two” built some $225 million a lot less around the globe than the initially movie, irrespective of an influx of major stars.)

Maybe Warner Bros. is using a wait around-and-see approach, too, and looking at the “Dune” box office prior to pulling the cause on a second movie, but the benchmarks of results look pretty distinctive for the duration of a pandemic and a simultaneous streaming operate. With a prepared HBO Max spinoff series focused on the Bene Gesserit (a secretive, all-female team that counts Ferguson’s and Rampling’s people between its acolytes), I’m shocked that the studio will not firmly dedicate to a sequel now, if only to engineer some momentum in advance of the film’s release.

It would also cue audiences to hope an unfinished story at the close of “Dune,” which rockets as a result of a pair of greater-octane climaxes right before landing on a fairly muted denouement. Villeneuve does lots of teasing: Numerous important functions to occur are glimpsed, as if the movie cannot hold out to get to the very good things. But how lengthy a wait around will that confirm to be?