Dune 2020 director spent over a year getting the sandworms just right

This December, Blade Runner 2049 director Denis Villeneuve will debut his highly anticipated Dune movie in theaters. Frank Herbert’s seminal science fiction novel is about royal Houses battling for dominance thousands of years in the future, with the desert planet of Arrakis, or Dune, at the center of all. Dune has been adapted a couple of times over the years, but with how good this one is looking, it might just be the definitive version.

Dune follows young Paul Atreides as he and his family leave their lush and verdant planet of Caladan to take up governance of Arrakis, which is dangerous and inhospitable. Part what makes Dune so precarious are the giant sandworms that inhabit the planet’s open desert. Getting those behemoths looking just right will go a long way to making the film a success. Here’s how they looked in David Lynch’s 1984 movie version:

“We talked about every little detail that would make such a beast possible, from the texture of the skin, to the way the mouth opens, to the system to eat its food in the sand,” Villeneuve told Empire Magazine. “It was a year of work to design and to find the perfect shape that looked prehistoric enough.”

One of the few things David Lynch’s 1984 version of Dune got right was the awe-inspiring size of the sandworms. With today’s technological advancements in VFX, there should be no reason Villeneuve can’t improve on Lynch’s achievement.

Dune is a desert planet, so naturally, Villeneuve found a real-life desert to film his movie. The sands of Abu Dhabi and Jordan stand in for Arrakis. As the director put it, “They didn’t make Jaws in a swimming pool.”

Dune 2020 has an all-star cast, with Timothée Chalamet at the top of the bill as Paul Atreides. Villeneuve compared Paul to another famous movie character who became a reluctant leader. “Paul has been raised in a very strict environment with a lot of training, because he’s the son of a Duke and one day… he’s training to be the Duke,” Villeneuve told Empire. “But as much as he’s been prepared and trained for that role, is it really what he dreams to be?”

"That’s the contradiction of that character. It’s like Michael Corleone in The Godfather – it’s someone that has a very tragic fate and he will become something that he was not wishing to become."

That’s a unique comparison I’d never thought of before, but it tracks.

"His survival depends on being able to make the right decisions and adapt to different dangerous situations. It’s a very beautiful story about someone that becomes empowered. Like any young adult he is looking for his identity and trying to understand his place in the world, and he will have to do things that none of his ancestors were able to do in order to survive. He has a beautiful quality of being curious about other people, of having empathy, something that will attract him towards other cultures, and that’s what will save his life."

Denis Villeneuve’s Dune movie will hit theaters on December 18, barring any setbacks caused by the coronavirus pandemic. I know I’m eager to see this story done right.

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h/t Syfy Wire