With grisly thrillers like Prisoners and Sicario and thought-provoking sci-fi gems like Arrival and Blade Runner 2049, Denis Villeneuve has quickly become one of the most acclaimed and sought-after directors in Hollywood. Last year’s Frank Herbert-based opus Dune was Villeneuve’s long-awaited passion project.
Despite fears it would bomb like his last studio tentpole, Dune ended up becoming by far the biggest box office hit of Villeneuve’s career. It earned $400 million worldwide in spite of a concurrent HBO Max release. On top of its financial success, Dune is also a strong contender for Villeneuve’s best film to date – with 10 Oscar nominations to back it up.
Dune Is The Best
A Fully Immersive Moviegoing Experience
Dune justifies its lengthy runtime and cerebral pacing with a true sense of immersion. With lucid editing, dazzling visuals, and mesmerizing music, Villeneuve brings Frank Herbert’s Dune-iverse to life.
It’s a lot darker and moodier than the average escapist blockbuster, but Dune does provide audiences with plenty of escapism as they’re taken across the stars and transported to the dusty, sun-drenched world of Arrakis.
Dune Is Villeneuve’s Most Ambitious Film
From inventing an alien language to introducing the Blade Runner version of Las Vegas, Villeneuve’s films usually have ambition up the wazoo. But Dune is arguably his most ambitious work to date.
It plunges audiences into a whole new world. It introduces the hierarchy of power and all the different factions struggling under the Emperor’s rule. Dune takes place across several planets, each realized in gorgeous detail, and sets up a much larger story arc for the future.
There’s No Dead Weight In The Sprawling Ensemble Cast
Timothée Chalamet and Rebecca Ferguson deftly anchor Dune in their first blockbuster leading roles as Paul Atreides and Lady Jessica, and there’s no dead weight in the star-studded ensemble around them. Every supporting performance, no matter how small their role is, manages to stand out.
Jason Momoa gives a typically badass turn as unstoppable warrior Duncan Idaho. Charlotte Rampling plays Paul’s creepy witch-powered grandma with a torture box. Javier Bardem hammers home the social commentary with his nuanced turn as the Fremen tribe leader.
It’s Accessible To Both Diehard Herbert Fans And Newcomers
Blade Runner 2049 was somewhat alienating to audiences who weren’t already big fans of the Ridley Scott original. But Dune is just as accessible to viewers who have never heard the name Paul Atreides as it is to obsessive Frank Herbert fanatics who know exactly how the sweat converters work.
This is a very tough balance to strike when a filmmaker is dealing with a beloved franchise with deep, complex worldbuilding, but Villeneuve makes it look effortless in Dune.
Villeneuve Tells An Epic Story Through An Intimate Lens
Dune is such an epic tale that Villeneuve could only fit the first half in his two-and-a-half-hour movie adaptation. But one of the film’s strengths is that it framed this mega-scale interstellar saga through an intimate lens.
The story of a messianic Christ figure reckoning with his grandiose destiny is told as the story of an angsty kid who wants to do right by his demanding parents.
Alternatives
Polytechnique (2009)
One of the early movies that put Villeneuve on the map before he crossed over to mainstream Hollywood filmmaking, Polytechnique, is a haunting dramatization of the 1989 École Polytechnique massacre. There’s a sobering realism to Villeneuve’s portrayal of this harrowing tragedy.
Critics praised the film for addressing the horrific crime’s misogynistic motivation head-on. Villeneuve shot Polytechnique in black-and-white to mercifully minimize the effect of on-screen blood.
Prisoners (2013)
Villeneuve’s first big Hollywood hit was grisly cat-and-mouse thriller Prisoners, starring Hugh Jackman as a father who will do anything to get his daughter back when she’s abducted on Thanksgiving. The movie goes to some really dark places as it pushes this desperate father to his limits.
Jake Gyllenhaal co-stars as the detective working the case, who gradually becomes just as suspicious of the girl’s dad as any of the suspects in the kidnapping case.
Sicario (2015)
Villeneuve followed up Prisoners with an even darker, even more intense, even more violent crime thriller. Sicario takes the visceral thrills of Michael Mann’s Heat across the border with gritty realism, engaging action, and shocking violence.
This gruesome, action-packed gem is anchored by the spectacular performances of Emily Blunt as an FBI agent in over her head, Josh Brolin as a grizzled, morally dubious CIA officer, and Benicio del Toro as a brutal lawyer-turned-assassin.
Arrival (2016)
Adapted from the Ted Chiang short story “Story of Your Life” and nominated for eight Academy Awards (including Best Picture), Arrival is one of the most acclaimed alien visitor movies ever made. Arrival follows the Spielbergian tradition of peaceful aliens. Alien spaceships appear all around Earth, but they don’t want to annihilate the Eastern Seaboard or wipe out the human race; they need help.
Amy Adams stars as the linguistics expert tasked with translating the E.T.s’ language. The final twist pulls the whole movie together in a way that is both heartbreaking and heartwarming. Arrival is one of the most profound and life-affirming sci-fi films of all time.
Blade Runner 2049 (2017)
Dune was praised for its ambition, but before helming Dune, Villeneuve directed a sequel to an untouchable 35-year-old masterpiece widely regarded to be one of the greatest movies ever made – and, against all odds, he managed to pull it off. Not only is Blade Runner 2049 not the complete disaster that fans expected it to be; it’s every bit as captivating, thought-provoking, and visually stunning as its groundbreaking predecessor.
The Blade Runner sequel flips the script on the original tech-noir story. In the original Blade Runner, Harrison Ford played a supposed human who began to suspect he was a replicant. In the 2049-set sequel, Ryan Gosling plays a supposed replicant who begins to suspect he’s a biological human.