Steven Spielberg Says DUNE: PART TWO Is "One of the Most Brilliant Science-Fiction Films I’ve Ever Seen"
Steven Spielberg is a huge fan of director Denis Villeneuve’s Dune: Part Two and Spielberg had nothing but praise for the film while he was interviewing Villeneuve in the latest episode of the DGA’s “Director’s Cut” podcast.
Spielberg shared with Villeneuve that, “You have made one of the most brilliant science-fiction films I’ve ever seen.” This is incredibly high praise coming from the man behind E.T: the Extra-Terrestrial and Close Encounters of the Third Kind.
Spielberg continued to praise the director of Dune: “It’s an honor for me to sit here and talk to you. Let me start by saying there are filmmakers who are the builders of worlds. It’s not a long list and we know who a lot of them are. Starting with [Georges] Méliès and Disney and Kubrick, George Lucas. Ray Harryhausen I include in that list. Fellini built his own worlds. Tim Burton. Obviously Wes Anderson, Peter Jackson, James Cameron, Christopher Nolan, Ridley Scott, Guillermo del Toro. The list goes on but it’s not that long of a list, and I deeply, fervently believe that you are one of its newest members.”
As you might imagine, Villeneuve was in awe and humbled as he was given this compliment. Spielberg went on to specifically call out the scene in Dune: Part Two where Paul rides a sandworm for the first time, saying it’s one of the greatest things he’s ever seen.
Spielberg said: “This is a desert-loving story, but for such a desert-loving film there is such a yearning for water in this movie. For all the sand you have in this film, it’s really about water. The sacred waters that are yearning for green meadows and the blue water of life. You film the desert to resemble an ocean, a sea. The sandworms were like sea serpents. And that scene surfing the sandworms is one of the greatest things I have ever seen. Ever! But you made the desert look like a liquid.”
Villeneuve previously revealed that it took him 44 days to shoot that sandworm riding scene. The crew built the worm into a 90-foot-long by 24-foot-wide set piece. All of the work that went into bringing this scene seen to life paid off, and it was pretty damn spectacular.