The first of two upcoming Dune movies is “a fully standalone epic”

Later this year, we’ll all get to see director Denis Villeneuve’s (Arrival, Blade Runner 2049) take on Dune, Frank Herbert’s science fiction masterpiece. Dune takes place thousands of years in the future, after mankind has sworn off dangerous thinking machines and colonized the universe, and follows the heir of a royal house, young Paul Atreides (Timothée Chalamet), as he acclimates to life on the desert planet Arrakis, aka Dune.

There are a lot of moving parts to the story. Paul’s father Duke Leto (Oscar Isaac) is playing a dangerous political game with the Padishah Emperor and his rival the Baron Vladimir Harkonnen (Stellan Skarsgård), there could be a spy in their midst, Paul’s mother Jessica (Rebecca Ferguson) is a major player, there’s the native Fremen people of the planet to deal with, and more. It’s a lot to fit into one movie, and indeed, Villeneuve’s version will come in two parts.

Now, you might that means the movie is going to slow things down unnecessarily — no one wants another Hobbit situation — but Dune is more than enough book to make this work, and without giving anything away, there is a natural stopping point about halfway through. Speaking to Collider, cinematographer Greig Fraser assured fans they have nothing to worry about. “It’s a fully formed story in itself with places to go,” he said. “It’s a fully standalone epic film that people will get a lot out of when they see it… It was quite an adventure visually. It was a beautiful experience making it.”

Image: Dune 2020/Warner Bros.

Fraser, who is obviously doing good work on the project based on how good some of these pictures look, talked a lot about the movie, including the relationship between Dune and Star Wars (Fraser also worked on the Star Wars show The Mandalorian). “It was quite fun because I had to forget a lot of Star Wars when I was making Dune,” he said. “It wasn’t hard, though. Denis and I spoke clearly about how the film should look and should feel, and the formats and this and that, so it was not hard to swerve and change lanes.”

"There were some similarities like the deserts. I mean listen, ultimately I’m positive George Lucas was inspired by Dune when he made Star Wars. I don’t know if that’s sacrilegious to talk about, but there are a lot of similarities in some areas, so you could tell he was definitely influenced by that. So I had to be careful doing both [Dune and The Mandalorian] and not to repeat myself. Also not just for the sake of the movie, but for fun. I hate to do the same thing twice."

It’s pretty widely accepted that Lucas borrowed ideas from Dune when making Star Wars, so I think Fraser is in the clear there.

The cinematographer also heaped praise on the all-star cast. “The people involved with it, I was overwhelmed,” Fraser continued. “Some of the actors, as well as being insanely talented actors, are just lovely, lovely people who I’ve become very close to since then.”

The cast really is ridiculous: we’ve already mentioned a few heavy hitters, and you see Jason Momoa as Atreides sword-master Duncan Idaho up there. You’ve also got Zendaya as the Fremen girl Chani, Josh Brolin as Atreides strategist Gurney Halleck, Javier Bardem as Fremen leader Stilgar, Charlotte Rampling as Reverend Mother Gaius Helen Mohiam, Dave Bautista as Glossu “the Beast” Rabban Harkonnen, and more.

And it wasn’t just the cast that Fraser was enamored with. He got along swimmingly with Villeneuve, too. “I can tell you that Denis is a master and a lovely human being who is passionate and wild and sensitive and loving. What I love about Denis is French-Canadians and Australians tend to have a lot of similarities in that we can get a bit passionately aggressive when we need to be. The French-Canadians can be very, very passionate about life and things, so I found getting on with him really well on that, and also Patrice [Vermette] the production designer.”

"I think we all had the same thing of, if something wasn’t good, it’d be like, ‘That’s bullshit!’ and Patrice would be like, ‘Yeah, that’s shit!’ They wouldn’t pull punches, which I found awesome, and we had the same relationship."

Dune is still slated to hit theaters on December 18. Let’s hope that stands.

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