Denis Villeneuve is currently doing the press rounds, working on what’s likely to be a full-tilt Oscars campaign for Dune: Part Two. That’s good news for us, in so far as Villeneuve is typically pretty funny and candid when in conversations with press, unafraid to have a little fun with the hype machine that’s wrapped itself around his Frank Herbert adaptations. That includes responding to recent comments from fellow director Quentin Tarantino, who recently said he skipped Villeneuve’s Dune films because he’d already seen David Lynch’s version back in 1984. Villeneuve’s instant response: “I don’t care.”
Getting big laughs for the casual response, Villeneuve—who was addressing a room of film school students in Montreal—acknowledged and agreed with Tarantino’s wider point about the current glut of remakes and sequels filling Hollywood’s schedules. “It’s true. I agree with him that I don’t like this idea of recycling and bringing back old ideas.” But he also pointed out the obvious objection to Tarantino’s weirdly harsh stance on the topic of revisiting older stories: Villeneuve’s movies are, despite sharing a base plot, radically different films from the one Lynch made, from their visuals to their scope all the way to their handling of their main character. (Part of the reason Dune: Part Two is genuinely interesting is because, unlike the Lynch film, it follows Herbert’s footsteps in rejecting the manufactured hero’s journey Paul Atreides undergoes, essentially revealing its own main character to be the villain of the duology by movies’ end.) Or, to put it in Villeneuve’s own words: “What I did was not a remake. It’s an adaptation of the book. I see this as an original. But,” he added, getting a big laugh from the crowd, “We are very different human beings.”
For a director with strong auteur credentials, Villeneuve has worked more firmly in non-original IP than most; in addition to Dune, he notably made the mildly heretical decision to direct a movie sequel to Ridley Scott’s Blade Runner a few years back. And while he has expressed his mild disappointment about the way his friends and collaborators have been treated in the press and by the awards committees—he’s still pushing for Hans Zimmer to get another Oscar for his Dune: Part Two soundtrack, and is still irritated that Amy Adams didn’t get an Oscar for Arrival—he does seem pretty chill about criticisms of his own work.
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