Former Dune Director Criticizes 2020 Movie Trailer As Too Predictable

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Former Dune Director Criticizes 2020 Movie Trailer As Too Predictable

A former Dune director criticizes the trailer for Denis Villeneuve's 2020 adaptation, saying it's too predictable. An avant-garde filmmaker known for his cult movies El Topo and The Holy Mountain, Alejandro Jodorowsky in the 1970s became the first director to go to work on adapting Frank Herbert’s classic novel of the far future.

As was related in detail in the memorable documentary film Jodorowsky’s Dune, the ambitious filmmaker indeed had big plans for his version of Herbert’s story. Most infamously, the director wanted Salvador Dali to play the Emperor, and when the famed artist asked an exorbitant fee, Jodorowsky planned to replace Dali with a full-sized puppet. Jodorowsky also had big ideas about his movie’s soundtrack, intending to hire Pink Floyd to compose music (Pink Floyd of course finally became associated with Dune when a cover of their song "Eclipse" was used in the recent first trailer for Villeneuve’s film). Unfortunately, Jodorowsky’s plans were far too ambitious and his version of the movie never came to life beyond a book of elaborate and beautiful storyboards.

Now, decades after Jodorowsky’s failed attempt to mount a film version of Dune, the director has weighed in on the recently released trailer for Villeneuve’s adaptation. Perhaps not surprisingly given his reputation as an uncompromising artist, Jodorowsky sees Villeneuve’s Dune as mere corporate filmmaking with nothing visionary or surprising in it. As the famed director told the French publication Le Point (via Heroic Hollywood):

“I wish his Dune would be a great success, because Denis Villeneuve is a nice director, about whom I have been told a lot of good things. I saw the trailer. It’s very well done. We can see that it is industrial cinema, that there is a lot of money, and that it was very expensive. But if it was very expensive, it must pay in proportion. And that is the problem: there is no surprises. The form is identical to what is done everywhere, the lighting, the acting, everything is predictable.”

Jodorowsky then extended his criticism to modern cinema in general, saying “Industrial cinema promotes entertainment, it is a show that is not intended to change humanity or society.” Jodorowsky of course saw his own version of Dune as a movie that would change humanity or society, but sadly he never got a chance to deliver whatever message he intended to convey, as no one in the 1970s was willing to put up the budget his take on Herbert’s story would have needed to be brought to life. Indeed, it wasn’t until George Lucas’ massive success with Star Wars that studios began spending huge amounts of money on science fiction properties.

And of course, Dune was one of the first major sci-fi novels to get the big budget treatment in the early 1980s with David Lynch at the helm. That version of Dune, which Jodorowsky has also criticized, ended up failing at the box office and causing Lynch to become deeply disillusioned with studio filmmaking. It remains to be seen if Villeneuve will succeed where Lynch failed, but at least going by the first trailer, his version of Dune is visually impressive and has the potential to be the truly inspiring intelligent sci-fi epic fans have long craved. However, it seems Jodorowsky has already made up his mind that even if Villeneuve delivers the goods with his version of Dune, the film will be mere empty entertainment and not a truly visionary work. Jodorowsky of course likely still harbors a lot of bitterness about his own failure to make Dune h