Much like the clever muad’dib itself—the desert mouse who evades predators, stays alive, and then, whoops, you’ve got a holy war on your hands—Denis Villeneuve and composer Hans Zimmer are continuing to persevere in their efforts to get Zimmer another Oscar. Warner Bros. has reportedly submitted Zimmer’s work on Dune: Part Two for consideration for Best Original Score, despite an independent review stating that the score wasn’t original enough. (Which is to say, that it incorporated too many themes and too much material from Villeneuve’s first Dune movie—which Zimmer won an Oscar for—to be in contention for another.)
Per Variety, both Villeneuve and Zimmer have discussed the controversy, with the director stating that, “I don’t think this is over yet… I was there when Hans wrote the music, and he did a tremendous amount of music. Part Two is a new score. I don’t accept this because it’s one of the most beautiful scores Hans has ever written, and I would love it, at least, to be considered.” Zimmer, meanwhile, says that it would have been ridiculous for him to write whole entire new themes for the film’s characters in the first place, since he and Villeneuve both view Part Two as just that, a second part of one story, rather than a sequel. “The story starts the second we finish the first movie,” Zimmer said. “We are still within that story, those characters, and it would be foolish and completely uncinematic to go and write new themes for the characters instead of enlarging the theme.”
Even if the Academy—which requires that “In cases such as sequels and franchises from any media, the score must not use more than 20% of pre-existing themes and music borrowed from previous scores in the franchise”—rejects Zimmer’s work on Dune, he’s still in the awards season mix this year; he’s also submitting his work in Steve McQueen’s World War II film Blitz.
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