Denis Villeneuve names his favourite Steven Spielberg movie
In the space of less than a decade, Denis Villeneuve has made short work of establishing beyond all doubt that he’s inarguably one of the finest sci-fi filmmakers the genre has ever seen, with the results speaking for themselves, and it’s something he’s managed to accomplish in the space of just four features.
His existential cosmic drama Arrival took a ground-level approach and put a scientific slant on the prospect of an alien invasion, yielding eight Academy Award nominations, including ‘Best Picture’ and ‘Best Director’ along the way.
Taking on the sequel to one of the greatest sci-fi stories ever told was about as tall as orders get for any director, and even if Blade Runner 2049 under-performed at the box office, it nonetheless exists as a worthy – and two-time Oscar-winning – successor to Ridley Scott’s seminal classic.
Frank Herbert’s Dune had already stumped David Lynch, but any notions of the source material being too tricky to realise in live-action were blown away when Villeneuve’s sprawling intergalactic epic became a critical, commercial, and awards season favourite, with the incoming Part Two standing every chance of reaching similar heights.
It’s not that Villeneuve entered his career of choice with designs of dedicating such an extended stretch of his career exclusively to sci-fi, but it nonetheless makes perfect sense considering the films that inspired him to become a filmmaker in the first place.
As well as naming Steven Spielberg’s Close Encounters of the Third Kind as one of his favourite sci-fi flicks, Villeneuve described it as a “big, big, big smash for me”. Not only that, but he explained how his “birth of the love of cinema was born with Close Encounters and 2001, those sci-fi movies I saw when I was a little kid.”
In addition to his unwavering adulation, Villeneuve has also praised John Williams’ unforgettable orchestral accompaniments, having spoken on the importance of the music on the special features of the 40th anniversary home video release. “The score is not only a perfect dance within the storytelling, it’s more,” he said. “It’s a language.”
Spielberg and sci-fi have always gone hand-in-hand and delivered, as evidenced by not just Close Encounters of the Third Kind, but E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial, A.I. Artificial Intelligence, War of the Worlds, and Ready Player One. It’s a sandbox he always finds himself returning to on a semi-regular basis, but for Villeneuve, there’s only one title that comes out on top.
Once Dune: Part Two is in the rear-view mirror, its director has already hinted at a potential third instalment to expand it into a trilogy, while he’s also attached to helm an adaptation of Arthur C. Clarke’s Rendezvous with Rama. Either way, he won’t be leaving sci-fi behind anytime soon.
