Denis Villeneuve defends the run time of ‘Dune: Part Two’
Following the release of Dune: Part Two, which has a runtime of close to three hours, director Denis Villeneuve has defended his decision to make such a long movie.
The blockbuster, starring Timothée Chalamet, Zendaya, Javier Bardem, Josh Brolin and Austin Butler, has already become one of the highest-grossing releases of the year so far despite being in cinemas for less than a week.
The new film comes three years after Villeneuve’s first Dune movie, and joins a line of recent productions that are over two and a half hours long. For example, Martin Scorsese’s 2023 movie Killers of the Flower Moon runs for three and a half hours.
When asked about movies, such as Dune, having long run times, Villeneuve told The Times, “I trust the audience.”
Dune is adapted from Frank Herbert’s novel of the same name, which David Lynch transformed for the big screen in 1984. However, the surrealist filmmaker was criticised for failing to tell such a dense story properly.
Thus, Villeneuve has told Herbert’s story in two parts, adding, “This was the only way I could succeed.”
He believes that audiences are not opposed to lengthy movies these days. “There is a trend. The youth love to watch long movies because if they pay, they want to see something substantial. They are craving meaningful content.”
The director also used Christopher Nolan’s Oppenheimer as a recent example, stating, “It is a three-hour, rated-R movie about nuclear physics that is mostly talking. But the public was young – that was the movie of the year by far for my kids.”
In a four-and-a-half-star review of Dune: Part Two, Far Out wrote: “Dune simply has to be seen on the big screen to be truly experienced; any lesser viewing negates its Lawrence of Arabia-indebted cinematography, captivating action sequences and a score of a stultifying, almost deafening quality.”
Watch the trailer below.
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