Dune
is finally in French theaters.
Originally scheduled for December 2020, Denis Villeneuve's film has been postponed for a year, and will be seen in the United States both in theaters and on HBO Max.
Less inconvenience for a cursed work and a novel by Frank Herbert deemed unsuitable, despite David Lynch's film and the Syfy series, and like the whimsical and abortive project of Alejandro Jodorowsky.
Moreover,
Denis Villeneuve's
Dune
is a dream that has become half reality, the film being only the first part of a diptych and covering only half of the original novel.
Studio Warner is waiting for the box office results to launch the sequel, at the risk of leaving it there and feeding the curse.
The
Dune
monument
intimidates readers, spectators and Hollywood alike.
An already intimidating and complex novel for readers
"
Dune
, the novel, is already an intimidating work," comments Lloyd Chéry, journalist and instigator of the
Tout sur Dune
mook
published by L'Atalante and Leha. It is complex, not very accessible at the beginning. Frank Herbert has a Shakespearean style, relates the events more than he describes the action. He also uses a vocabulary that can surprise, with a lot of Arabic, and is not afraid to go far, in detail, in the evocation of the ecosystem of Arakis and the Fremen. A bit like
The Lord of the Rings
where, for many, you have to go beyond the first sixty pages to finally feel at home, in Middle-earth? “There is that, with an unprecedented, proto-medieval world in the year 10,000. But I find
Dune
more accessible than
The Lord of the Lambs
, and Tolkien's long descriptions, his work on language.
Dune
is more modern, more incisive.
"
For the specialist, it is with the cult scene of the gom jabbar test, where Paul Atréides puts his hand in a box, that the reader is caught.
“The hero is immediately put in danger,” he explains.
Then comes the discovery of the planet Arakis, the big action scene in the middle of the novel, and we find ourselves in a real big adventure story.
This is also where Denis Villeneuve's film ends.
“What can scare readers too, adds Lloyd Chéry, is the smell of sulfur from film adaptations, accursed adaptations.
"
Denis Villeneuve's film makes Paul the viewer's landmark
Would the
viewer of
Dune
be as intimidated as the reader? "He will enter a universe that he does not master well, that's for sure," reacts the author of
Tout sur Dune
. Denis Villeneuve does everything to make his film as accessible as possible, but also requires intellectual work on the part of the public. There is a lot of information to process. The viewer is used to ten years of Marvel, it will make them all funny. The Canadian filmmaker also has the good idea to center everything on Paul, and his charimastic interpreter Timothée Chalamet, where David Lynch stirred more broadly, more vague too. "
Dune 2021
goes, logically, visually further than the
Dune
from 1984, complete Lloyd Chéry.
The special effects of Lynch's film did not follow, at a time when we had
Return of the Jedi
and
Blade Runner
.
"
If the 2000 mini-series is faithful, it also accuses its budget.
"But it allowed to show that there was a potential for adaptations of classics of SF, tempers the journalist.
The Syfy channel then launched into
Battlestar Galactica
.
"
The long desert crossing from "Dune" to Hollywood
Special effects, budget and technology would be the reasons that made
Dune
cursed, long unsuitable in Hollywood? Not only. “We must not forget that Paul's career echoes that of the Prophet Muhammad, illuminates Lloyd Chéry. All this could have scared Hollywood. Moreover, the term Butler jihad is absent from Denis Villeneuve's film to avoid any controversy. But one of the real surprises and great qualities of the film is the Middle Easterniation of the world of Dune. We have never seen so many veiled men and women in a Hollywood blockbuster. I'm curious to see how the film will be received, by countries in the Middle East in particular. "
But the long journey through the desert from
Dune
to the screens has less to do with
Dune
himself than with Hollywood. "Since the 1980s and the end of New Hollywood, the industry has become a financial market, subject to the laws of marketing," says the specialist Dunien. It has become difficult to make ambitious films, out of the nails.
Matrix
, for example, was produced by an independent.
Dune
is also coming out now, because movie studios need to compete with streaming platforms. The best sci-fi is on the small screen, from
The Expanse
on Prime Video to
Westworld
on HBO to the upcoming
Foundation
on Apple TV +.
Warner wants his big franchise to be able to compete with Disney and Marvel on the big show.
Warner would like to make
Dune
the great saga of the 2020s, whose themes on ecology, technology, women and minorities are contemporary, but does not assume 100%.
Dune
is thus a
Dune - Part 1
, the continuation of which depends on the results at the box office and on HBO max.
But Lloyd Chéry is confident: “I think they are reassured and that an agreement will soon be found, if it has not already been done.
Following the controversy over the simultaneous cinema / platform release of their films, Warner has already lost Christopher Nolan.
They cannot afford to lose Denis Villeneuve as well.
»The Dune Cinematic Universe is launched.
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