Dune director Denis Villeneuve recalls the moment he fell out of love with Star Wars

Star Wars is enjoying another burst of goodwill thanks to the new show Skeleton Crew on Disney+. I'm glad fans are enjoying that series, but historically, the franchise has a habit of dividing and disappointing people. Newer Star Wars fans who came on board with the 2015 film The Force Awakens got a taste of that when follow-up movies The Last Jedi and The Rise of Skywalker resulted in online firestorms. Before that, devotees of the original trilogy were upset over the 1999 release of The Phantom Menace. And before that, lovers of the original movie were upset with the 1983 release of Return of the Jedi. It's a tale as old as time at this point.

Denis Villenueve, the director of the hugely successful Dune movies, was one of the fans in that latter camp, as he explained on The Town podcast. He was 10 years old when the original Star Wars movie came out in 1977, which meant he was the exact right age to be absolutely blown away by it. "It went to my brain like a silver bullet," he remembered. "I became obsessed with Star Wars. I mean, The Empire Strikes Back is the movie that I anticipated the most in my life. I saw the movie a billion times onscreen. I was traumatized by The Empire Strikes Back. I adore Star Wars.”

Then came Return of the Jedi, which Villeneuve says "derailed" his infatuation. "I was 15 years old, and my best friend and I wanted to take a cab and go to L.A. and talk to George Lucas — we were so angry!" he recalled. "Still today, the Ewoks. It turned out to be a comedy for kids." It's interesting how history repeats itself, since complaints about Star Wars being too kid-friendly were also leveled at The Phantom Menace when it came out nearly two decades later.

In any case, Villeneuve never really recovered from that experience. It's obvious that Star Wars inspired him and influenced his own direction as a filmmaker, but he has no desire to make a Star Wars movie of his own. "Star Wars became crystallized in its own mythology, very dogmatic, it seemed like a recipe, no more surprises," he said. "So I’m not dreaming to do a Star Wars because it feels like code is very codified.”

Read the screenplay for Dune: Part Two!

Instead, Villeneuve turned to Frank Herbert's classic 1965 sci-fi novel Dune; that book was adapted for the screen in 1984, but that movie wasn't nearly as successful as Star Wars, so there weren't as many expectations when Villeneuve adapted the story anew in a pair of movies that came out in 2021 and 2024. Both of those movies became big hits, and Villeneuve is working on a third based on the sequel book Dune Messiah. I'm not going to say Villeneuve's Dune movies are the new Star Wars, but they've made an impact on the culture in a way that I'm sure makes Villeneuve happy.

Dune: Part Two is currently up for a bunch of Golden Globe awards, including Best Drama. People are talking about it again, as they should. If you're interested, Deadline has just released the script for the movie; take a look if you want to see what changed in the transition from page to screen.

As for Villeneuve, Dune: Part Three will likely be his final entry in the Dune universe, unless Warner Bros. Discovery can lure him back to take a crack at other Dune books like God Emperor of Dune, which I would be very curious to see onscreen. He's looking forward to returning to making original films, something he's very good at: he was also the director behind movies like Arrival and Sicario.

Whatever Villeneuve does, he doesn't want it to be on a streaming service like Netflix. “The big screen is part of the language, to share a story together, to receive the communal emotional experience of cinema in a theater,” he told The Hollywood Reporter. “We’re not meant to be alone, we’re meant to share together. … I believe the theater experience will prevail.”

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