"The first part was more contemplative. It was the story of a boy victim of events who tried to survive together with his mother Jessica. This second part is more visceral, more muscular, I wanted to make a more emotional film and I hope that this is felt emotion".
So from London, director Denis Villeneuve talks about Dune 2, the second chapter of the saga inspired by the famous novel Dune by Frank Herbert, in theaters from February 28th with Warner Bros, which starts exactly from the end of the first part.
That is, with the armies of Baron Vladimir Harkonnen (Stellan Skarsgard) retaking the desert planet of Arrakis, including control of the supply of that precious psychotropic commodity known as Spice.
"We went from the first part directly to the pre-production of the second to bring it to the world as quickly as possible - underlines Villeneuve -. Rewatching your last film makes you only see the mistakes you made, at least that's what happens to me. For the first time, however, I had a second chance: I could go back, revisit a world and do it better."
In this part two of the saga Paul Atreides (Timothée Chalamet), heir of House Atreides in search of peace, and his mother Lady Jessica (Rebecca Ferguson) flee into the desert.
Here Paul meets Chani (Zendaya), a girl he has seen in premonitions, and joins the Fremen who now increasingly see him as a messiah, a predestined on the path of revenge against the conspirators who destroyed his family.
Chalamet instead says: "Paul is the same person as in the first film, but he evolves. He is no longer the childish figure we met at the beginning, he is a young man who receives a call to the role of leader that he is not necessarily enthusiastic about but that he embraces. amidst many doubts."
The most difficult scene?
"The duel. The training started from day one. I learned the fight choreography with the character of the Prince of Harkonnen in Los Angeles. Austin Butler, who played him, was an incredible fighting partner. And the whole sequence it was simply epic, I can't find any other way to describe it."
Throughout the film there are clashes of civilizations, a diseased ecosystem in which water is more precious than gold, the danger of religious fundamentalism and, finally, the enormous desert sand worms that can, with great courage, be ridden once recalled or swallow entire villages and mountains.
Rebecca Ferguson then says of her character Lady Jessica: "Right now she's a woman who has lost everything - her husband, her home, her people, her planet - and has been thrown into the unknown, so she couldn't be in a more vulnerable state. She goes from being a protective mother to taking charge when she becomes a reverend."
Finally, Zendaya highlights her character Chani and her complicated emotional relationship with Paul Atreides: "She didn't know what was coming into her life. She just met this stranger, Paul Atreides, who beat one of her friends, Jamis, and he and his mother have nowhere else to go to be safe, so they take them with them. But she's apprehensive. She treats him like someone who has to earn respect for being a Fremen, so she's a little harsh on him. She understands then that he could be the one the elders are talking about and that he should save them. And then little by little his heart begins to feel something he has never felt before."
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