Special feature of 1905 film network Three years later, the screen epic hit again!
The film broke through $100 million in six days in North America, and quickly surpassed the total box office of the first film in North America in the first week. After landing in the mainland cinema, Douban scored 8.2, setting the third highest score for the director in the mainland, and its reputation was bursting.
Magnificent classical adventure narrative and top-notch audio-visual production of Hollywood blockbusters, Dune 2 is a movie that truly belongs to the cinema. As the director said, "Dune 2 is all about making the audience get the most shocking viewing effect with the cooperation of the big screen and sound effects, so as to impress them!"
The second part tries to make the audience who haven’t seen the first part understand it basically. The story begins a few hours after the end of the first part. Paul and his mother Jessica blend into the freeman tribe and join hands with them to fight back. On the road of revenge, Paul fell in love with Cheney, but he also foresaw a terrible future and fell into a choice.
The length of 166 minutes, many characters and complicated clues, how to better understand Dune 2? The 1905 movie network specially sorted out the details of 10 knowledge points to help everyone go deep into the dune universe and better understand this film.
(Note: The following contains spoilers, so it is recommended to read them after watching the movie.)
From "dream" to "spice"
The opening words before the first feature film of Dune are: "Dreams are messages from the deep". "Dune 2" also continued the opening way: "Who controls the spice will control the universe" (Power over spice is power over all). These two sentences reflect the different themes of the two films.
The key word of the first film is "dream". Paul’s broken dreams appear repeatedly in the film, and his potential consciousness of predicting the future pushes him to become a "chosen son".
The key word of the second part is "spice". In the world of sand dunes, spices are the most important rare resources, which can help to prolong life, develop the ability of prediction, analysis and calculation, and master the technology of interstellar travel, etc. However, spices are only produced on the planet Elacos, which has become a battleground for all families.
Therefore, the opening remarks of the second part point to the theme of this film, which is about how Paul grew up and seized imperial power.
Regarding the change of the theme before and after, director Villeneuve explained: "In the first movie, we followed Paul to discover a world, which was more meditative, more meditative and more in contact with nature. In the second movie, he became a man, a guerrilla fighter who fell in love and wanted to avenge his father. This is more like an action movie. "
What is Paul thinking?
In Villeneuve’s view, Paul in Dune 2 became a "dark and powerful savior."
He was recognized by freeman people, killed Baron Harkonan in revenge for his father, and won the throne from the emperor, thus completing a wonderful "Revenge of the Prince".
An interesting echo is that in the first part of Dune, the Virgin Helen used "voice control" to make Paul kneel down, and at the end of the second part, Paul scolded the Virgin Helen with "voice control" skills and humiliated her on the spot. This revenge detail points out the transfer and replacement of power.
At the same time, the prophecy tells Paul that the coming jihad will bring chaos and disaster to freeman people, and he faces a moral dilemma. In fact, Paul doesn’t want to be a ruler or be regarded as a savior, but the desire and temptation of revenge drove him into prophecy, and perhaps he also wanted to reverse prophecy, which is his life tragedy and dilemma.
In the second novel of Dune series, it is reflected that Frank Herbert, the author, does not want to portray Paul as a hero who successfully retaliates, but rather wants to tell the cautionary story that the savior was caught in the temptation of imperialism. Director Villeneuve integrated this into Paul in Dune 2 in advance.
Why did Paul have such a huge psychological change? His inner world needs more excavation and explanation in the third part to form a more complete arc of characters.
"Lissan Al Gheb"
Freeman people keep shouting "Lisan Al-Gabe", which means "the voice from the sky". This is their name for the savior. I believe Lisan Al-Gabe will lead his people into a paradise full of oases.
The legend of Lissan Al-Gabe is actually a superstition spread by the sisters of Beni Jessilit. Steiger, the leader of freeman people, also hoped that Paul was a "chosen man" and could lead his people to get rid of oppression and be free. He also made use of religious belief to make freeman people worship Paul crazily, and the means taken by the film to him was ironic with a certain black humor.
The truth about sorority
The Sisterhood of Benny Jessilit unveiled the mystery in Dune 2.
They try to guide the fate of human beings, and through high-quality gene mating from generation to generation, they produce a superman savior with strong predictive ability — — Que Satz Jadraque. Sisterhood is hidden behind the scenes and skillfully manipulates political operations.
The sorority originally planned to let Lady Jessica give birth to a daughter and marry Fred Rosa Harkonan to give birth to a prophet. However, Mrs. Jessica violated the century-old plan of the sorority and gave birth to her son Paul.
After turning herself into a virgin, Lady Jessica used her strength to help Paul become the Lisan Al Gabe in freeman, the prophet Que Satz Jadraque and the emperor of the empire. She and Helen, the top lady of the sorority, are completely on the opposite side.
Mrs. Margo, a new sorority member, approached Fred with the instructions of the Virgin Helen and tried to combine with his genes, thus ensuring that even if Paul was out of control, they could continue their new excellent blood line.
Another emerging character, Princess Ilerang, is the daughter of Emperor Padisha and a disciple of the Virgin Helen. She participated in this political game in order to keep her family in power.
The biggest adaptation of Cheney
Cheney is a very large adaptation of Dune 2 compared with the original work.
In the novel, she is a obedient and silent wife of Paul, who gives birth to a child soon, but unfortunately dies. In the movie, she is the embodiment of strong, independent and free women’s power, and she is not carried away by power and extreme fanaticism.
With Paul’s sincere integration into the life of freeman people, Cheney gradually fell in love with him, but gradually hated everything behind him.
Cheney doesn’t believe in Lady Jessica’s "mental brainwashing" of freeman people, and she doesn’t understand the drama of Paul drinking the water of life and performing "suspended animation" with Jessica. She doesn’t accept Paul’s leading freeman people to wage war as a savior, and she hates these machinations.
The duel between Paul and Fidel is actually a game of mixed power and emotion. Paul not only wants to seize the imperial power, but also takes his life to keep Cheney’s reluctance and love in the duel. But Cheney in the movie is not Cheney in the novel, and she finally turns away.
The first part of Dune begins with Cheney’s narration, and Dune 2 observes Paul’s loss through Cheney’s perspective, and the last scene returns to Cheney. As the screenwriter said, "Cheney represents the freedom of freeman people — — It is not only the freedom to resist colonial rule, but also the freedom to resist prophecy. "
In front of Paul, who obeys fate, and the sisterhood, who manipulates fertility and political games, Cheney is more contemporary and more advanced in female consciousness.
A glimpse of Arya
Aria, Paul’s sister, has only one shot in the movie, but it creates a very surprising and mysterious effect.
Because Mrs Jessica drank the water of life when she was pregnant, she got all the memories of her ancestors and became a real virgin, and Aria in her womb also inherited this powerful force.
In the novel, Aria was born before Paul launched the revenge war, and even she personally killed her "grandfather" Baron Harkonan, instead of Paul in the movie.
In Dune 2, Aria mainly appears as a fetus and talks with Jessica across the abdomen. This visual design can be reminiscent of director Villeneuve’s favorite sci-fi movie ending in the image of a cosmic baby, which may be a reference to pay tribute.
The most complicated scene: Paul riding a worm.
Dune 2 is more complex and grand than the first film Dune. According to patrice Ouimet, the scenery is 40% more than the previous film. And instead of using the first set, it was all redesigned in the desert.
In the film, the imperial garden of Emperor Paddy was set in the Briant family cemetery, which is a masterpiece of Italian architect carlo scarpa and a poetic garden built for the dead. Shooting the emperor’s scenes in the cemetery may indicate the failure of his abdication.
The Briant family never let the crew shoot, even refused the request, but this time it made an exception for Dune 2.
Paul riding a worm is the most complicated scene in the whole film. In the interview, I deeply remember that this is "the 62nd scene, the passage of the worm, which took three months to shoot."
Under Steiger’s guidance and training, Paul successfully harnessed the giant worm, which was like an adult ceremony, showing the dominant power of the "chosen son", and he gradually gained the recognition of freeman people.
Interestingly, behind the scenes, director Villeneuve also demonstrated how to ride a worm, and all the actors who performed riding a worm in the film went to learn from him in advance. Villeneuve said that the last thing he wants to compromise and restore is the scene of riding a worm. "It is very experimental and much more complicated than the paragraphs I have taken in the past."
A unique black-and-white image
The appearance of the villain Fidel Rosa Harkonan and the paragraphs of the arena fighting adopt a very unique black and white image style.
This eerie black-and-white picture highlights the horrible totalitarian atmosphere of the Harkonan family. Translucent skin and deep eyes also highlight the fierce and morbid image of Fidel, which is creepy.
Villeneuve and Greig Fraser, the director of photography, had a lot of discussions about the light source design of the main star of Jadi in Harkonan, and they decided to shoot with the modified infrared camera to create a very surreal black-and-white effect.
On the dark planet Jedi, light does not exist in a way that we can perceive. A visible light cutting filter is added in front of the lens, and an infrared cutting filter is taken out from the camera, so what the camera sees is infrared.
Villeneuve said that the fascist and totalitarian environment of Harkonan gave them the opportunity to create this visual image, which he described as "like an old fascist film of World War II."
Faster rhythm than the first one.
Compared with the first part of Dune, the narrative rhythm of Dune 2 is obviously accelerated.
Editing director Joe Walker won the Oscar for best editing with Dune, and Dune 2 was his fifth collaboration with Villeneuve. He said that the most talked about this time is how to shoot Dune 2 faster and cut it faster.
In addition to making the second film closer to the setting and imagination of "action movie", Villeneuve also said in the interview that he wanted to create motivation in this story, put pressure on Paul and create an internal rhythm in the tense atmosphere of the film.
Especially after Paul drank the water of life and decided to become the spiritual leader of freeman people to launch a war, he could feel the rhythm of each scene getting faster and faster, and he also felt the great pressure on Paul. Villeneuve said, "I need to compress time to create this pressure."
Ongoing soundtrack
"When the first credits appeared, I looked at the book and found that we only got to page 156! Haven’t really started yet … "
The composer said that many of the soundtracks of Dune 2 were written by him at the end of the first part of Dune, and after the first part was filmed, he continued to create music for Dune Universe.
Following the main theme of the first book Dune, the second book can clearly hear Hans Zimmer’s different styles of music for freeman people’s world, Harkonan’s world, the female voice of Benny Jeslitt’s sisterhood, and the love melody of Paul and Cheney. Villeneuve said that he cried the first time he heard the love theme song of Paul and Cheney.
On the second day of filming Dune 2, Villeneuve put Dune 2: Dune Messiah, his second novel, on Hans Zimmer’s desk, indicating that he would continue to compose the music for Dune 3.
From an early age, there are still many unknown suspense in predicting Dune 3 — —
Will Princess Illang, who married Paul, have a plot to assassinate him? Will Mrs. Margot, who made a short appearance, be pregnant with Fred Rosa’s child? Will Duncan, the strongest soldier of the Cui Di family, come back from the dead? What new story line will Cheney leave Paul completely different from the original? How strong will Aria be when she grows up? What kind of messiah dilemma will Paul face? ……
"Dune 2" has more details worthy of the audience to brush and taste, and I hope that "Dune 3" can be filmed as soon as possible and come as soon as possible!
