Humor Me While I Drool Over The Dune Trailer
I very, very rarely write an article that simply states what anyone with a YouTube account can see for themselves — a new trailer or teaser for some upcoming piece of nerd entertainment has dropped. But in this case that new trailer is for Denis Villeneuve’s adaptation of Dune, the classic science fiction epic from Frank Herbert. And to say I am even more excited than before is a serious understatement.
Before I get into some of the highlights of the trailer, which is embedded at the end of the article in case you actually haven’t seen it, let me explain a bit about my history with Dune. In high school it became a running gag for my friends to randomly shout out in the hallways, “Hey Rodney, how many times have you read Dune?” The answer, which at that time was actually more than a dozen, was an ever-increasing count that eventually went way over 1,000,000. That copy literally fell apart in my hands a few years after college.
The 1984 version directed by the brilliant David Lynch also helped cement the impression among my friends that I could read their minds. One very late night at Denny’s my movie theater-owning friend Tom said that he just read in some industry mag that they had cast Feyd-Rautha and I would never guess who. He gave me the single hint that he was famous but not for movies, and I said after a few seconds, “Must be Sting.” His “How the f___ did you know that?!” curse-filled tirade almost got us kicked out.
But about that trailer. First, the cinematography. Villeneuve this time picked Greig Fraser as director of photography, instead of Roger Deakins (Blade Runner 2049) or Bradford Young (Arrival). And yet it is amazing how much this trailer evokes imagery from both of those movies, an indication of just how clear Villeneuve’s vision is in the final product of all his movies. Fraser was DP on Let Me In, Zero Dark Thirty and Rogue One: A Star Wars Story. Only Rogue One, as I recall, has anything like the visual sense of massive scale we see in this trailer.
Second, the production design. While Lynch’s 1984 version seemed to take cues from Imperial Russia, Germany and other turn of the 20th century looks in clothing, technology and architecture, this trailer shows an almost Soviet brutalist aesthetic in all three of those areas. When I first saw the stills that came out months ago, I was a little disappointed that a universe in which the main power is the Padishah Emperor that sits on the Golden Lion Throne (clearly a reference to the Shah, the traditional title of the ruler of Iran once Persia and the Peacock Throne) was rendered in such drab blacks and grays. But now that I see it in action and in situ, I think it was a smart decision.
Third, the action. The fighting scenes look amazing, and I absolutely love the look we get at Gurney Halleck (Josh Brolin) and Paul Atreides (Timothee Chalamet) fighting in fast and brutal training with kindjal and Holtzmann shields. The fight scenes with Duncan Idaho (Jason Momoa) and what I assume are the Beast Rabban’s forces also look fantastic. Speaking of Rabban, Dave Bautista looks amazing and frightening, as he should. And we finally get a couple of quick looks at Stellan Skarsgard as the Baron Vladimir Harkonnen and the production team also nailed it with his design.
Rebecca Ferguson as the Lady Jessica, Oscar Isaac as Duke Leto Atreides, Javier Bardem as Stilgar, Zendaya as Chani — they all look amazing in action, not just on-set production stills.
Finally, the sandworms. Neither the 1984 movie nor the 2000 miniseries truly captured the scale, majesty and terror of the sandworms. But this trailer chooses to have the reveal of the sandworm design and Paul’s first encounter with one as the final scene, before the name and credits roll. And it pays off — the sandworm is the most accurate to date to Herbert’s descriptions in the novel and just as mind-blowing as my imagination first pictured it back when I was 12.
If there is a God and it’s not just some millennia-long plot by the Bene Gesserit then I pray on an Orange Catholic bible that the pandemic is clear enough by this December to allow me to see Dune in theaters. This trailer hasn’t exactly made me willing to risk my life to see it, but it’s at least making me consider it.
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