SPICE WORLD

RETURN TO ARRAKIS WITH CAST AND CREATIVES FROM DUNE: PART TWO

- DARREN SCOTT

"POWER OVER SPICE IS POWER over all…”. So begins Part Two of Denis Villeneuve’s epic Dune saga, narrated by Florence Pugh as Princess Irulan. The director says he’s tried to “bring the words in a more cinematic way” and that “The movie is slightly different, the movie could be seen as more tragic than the book”, aiming with this iteration to bring it closer to the intention of Frank Herbert.

Filmmaker and friend Christopher Nolan has likened Part Two to The Empire Strikes Back. It seems, then, that the original movie wasn’t a hard act to follow – except, of course, for those bringing it to life.

Paul Lambert, visual effects supervisor on both movies, says to expect “a heck of a lot more action.” He’s not wrong – the scope and scale of Part Two seems incredibly ambitious. One scene in particular, which Lambert reflects on as being the very first discussed once the film was confirmed, sees Paul Atreides learning to ride a sandworm.

“Denis came up with this absolutely amazing idea when he was pitching us,” Lambert recalls. “Basically, whenever a Fremen wants to ride a worm they put a thumper on top of a dune, the worm comes, takes the thumper, the dune starts collapsing, and as the dune is collapsing the Fremen then get onto the worm. He pitched this, I thought, ‘This is such an amazing visual – how the heck are we going to do this?’”

Spoiler: they did it, and it’s breathtaking. Lambert reveals it’s a mixture of real elements that are enhanced and CG shots. “We always try to shoot everything, even though we end up having to augment or replace a vast part of the frame.”