Thanks to Denis Villeneuve, Dune enters the era of franchises (review)

The director of Sicario and First Contact delivers an impeccable and overwhelming blockbuster.

TF1 is taking advantage of the release of the second part of Dune -and of its hit in theaters !- to broadcast, for the first time unencrypted, Denis Villeneuve's first film. A success, released on the big screen at the end of 2021.

Better: the channel actually devotes its evening to Rebecca Fergusonwho plays the mother of the hero Paul Atréides (Timothée Chalamet) and who will return from midnight in Reminiscence alongside Hugh Jackman. First recommends these two films to you: our review of the thriller can be found hereand that of Dune can be read below.

Dune: meeting with Rebecca Ferguson, the mother of the messiah

What is left to write about Dune ? What will you read here that hasn't already been written elsewhere? On the original work, as on its adaptations, it seems that everything or almost everything has already been said.

Even on David Lynch's film, which no one hates anymore (except Lynch himself, obviously) and which over time has become a nice alien artifact. Everything has been said – including Above all on his failed adaptations. No other work of what is called, somewhat weakly, “literatures of the imagination“, does not provoke so many fantasies, desire and envy. An enormous mass which therefore provokes a gravity, an attraction to its extent.

To evoke Dune, we must evoke the cosmic. In front of Dune and with the enormous quantity of things written on it, there is actually nothing left to write, to do: this feeling of helplessness joins the feeling of discouragement in the face of the American blockbuster (another vast and vague term; let's say popular cinema , general public, largely wealthy, skillfully cast), devastated domain over which Marvel reigns and in which there no longer seems to be anything to be done either (recent exceptions: Alita: Battle Angel, Terminator Dark Fate ?). Is everything finished? It's there that Dune arrived. At the end of the blockbuster, at the end of the author in a landscape of American cinema where everything becomes a franchise, Denis Villeneuve has finally seized the mothership.

“Dreams are messages from the depths”, growls violently the voice-over from beyond space which launches the film even before the slightest logo appears, to the sound of Hans Zimmer's bass. This haiku immediately places the film in a dreamlike trip tone, but things quickly recover. Dreams, visions, crazy plans of darkness and violence, but deep down, Villeneuve is a classic who does not want to screw up despite the immense creative freedom he would have benefited from.

By choosing to cut the book into two films, by subtitling the logo of his film in the first 5 minutes with a “Part One” which leaves no doubt (the cut is terribly frustrating in this respect), Villeneuve chooses the franchise. This was what was missing – from an industrial point of view – in Blade Runner 2049a fake mainstream film which was the sequel to Blade Runner by Scott which had never been a franchise blockbuster but an SF monolith which had become by circumstances a reservoir of visions from which the filmmakers would draw at will, as if they were consulting an oracle.

Villeneuve, heir de facto advertising and monumental cinema of the Ridley Scott 80's, consulted the oracle Dune and delivers his version ultimate : we constantly think back to Lynch's film (very faithful, like Villeneuve, to the novel), but motorized for 2020. More beautiful, more distinguished, totally less naughty. There is little room for chaos or madness. We are betting here that the Dune de Villeneuve will not erase the memory of Lynch, unlike Lord of the Rings by Jackson who transformed Ralph Bakshi's animated trip into a cinematic curiosity.

But if the Dune of 1984 will remain like a dream, and as yet another proof of the hubris of its excessive producer Dino De Laurentiis, the Dune de Villeneuve will remain as proof of the sense of the brutal image of the brilliant director of Sicario And First contact. Like its cast of box office Olympians (everyone, except Timothée Chalamet, has worked for Marvel, Disney, Star Wars, Impossible mission or DC), at the top of their form, the monument is immense, beautiful, distinguished, square, immediate, impeccable, overwhelming, serious, so much so that it will undoubtedly take more than one vision to take it in. No landscape plastered on a green background but the real horizon (the desert of Jordan), and sometimes hallucinatory visions – a dialogue between a father and his son in the middle of the graves, the murmurs of the natives convinced of seeing in the settlers the incarnation of their legends, elite warriors blessed by the blood of a slaughter… Definitely brutalist cinema, a bit frozen in the frame – which in this way sometimes makes you think again of the interesting Immortals by Tarsem Singh- like a block of reinforced concrete in the wild, like a message from the depths.

The oracle has spoken. Dune version 2020 chooses frankness and total domination. “Our plans span centuries”says the Reverend Mother of the Bene Gesserit, summarizing the general plot of Dune, or the creation from scratch of a Chosen One destined to dominate the galaxy. This questioning of the providential Chosen One is brilliantly evoked in the film, even if it will only take on its full dimension in the sequel to Dune (The Messiah of Dunethe second, much briefer novel in the cycle, is the tragic epilogue to Paul's destiny and could make for a fabulous film).

This realpolitik of the Messiah, seen as political manipulation based on religious propaganda and unhealthy eugenics, also constitutes, implicitly, the establishment of Dune as a film franchise (and TV, since the prequel series Dune: The Sisterhood designed at the same time as the film is coming soon). Yes, thanks to Villeneuve, Dune leaves the world of fantasies to enter the world of franchise. Or rather the opposite: we enter his world. Dune: Part One is a manifesto, a franchise pilot that affirms that yes, Dune is as big, as powerful on the big screen as Star Wars. Does this mean that Villeneuve is also leaving the cinema to only do Dune ? While waiting for the TV series, while waiting Dune: Part Two… Waiting The Messiah of Dune and its sequels… There is perhaps nothing left to write about Dunebut there is still much to see.