Text | Kai yin
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It seems difficult to determine who translated the English term Science Fiction into "science fiction" in Chinese, but in fact the original meaning should be "scientific fiction". Corresponding to this is a series of fictional stories that have emerged in the field of literature and film since the 1940s, taking place in the world of the present and the future, related to science and technology beyond human capabilities.
In the field of film, the more famous such films in the early years not only included "The Day the Earth Stopped" and "The Magic Flower Outside the Sky", but also the famous "2001 Space Odyssey" and "Third Type Of Contact" and so on.
But after the advent of the novel Dune, we seem to see another world of "science fantasy": it is externally built in the future high-tech era, but the internal operating structure returns to the medieval European aristocratic sub-feudalism, and even mixed with psychic, magical and supernatural depictions, much like the "Lord of the Rings" trilogy with spaceships.
The cover of the April 1958 issue of the science fiction magazine Imagine depicts a scene of a space opera.
After the unprecedented success of the film Star Wars, such a genre became popular in Hollywood, and film professionals began to use another term, Science Fantasy, to define the genre.
Marvel and DC series movies that have been hyped up in the 21st century generally fall into this genre. Of course, looking at the different versions of Dune film and television works with this vision, they undoubtedly belong to the most traditional type of "scientific fantasy" film in terms of content.
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Dunes is also closely associated with the socio-political picture of the world in the 1960s, symbolizing the conquest and plundering of third world countries with oil as its target, with spices in the desert and a history of extraterrestrial colonial warfare.
Spices can be used to aid interstellar travel, especially as a symbol of oil.
Such expressions of "relics" can also be seen everywhere in this version of the film, the uniforms of some senior officers in the film are similar to the uniforms of the British army that colonized the Middle East, and when the young Paul gives up his aristocratic status to join the ranks of the desert natives, it is difficult not to remind people of the famous "Lawrence of Arabia".
Interestingly, although the original work is "traditional", "Dune" attracts the most avant-garde and exploratory filmmakers in the field of film, and their focus often goes beyond the socio-political framework and expands in the direction of the soaring imagination.
The legendary Chilean-Mexican director Alessandro Zodlowski spent a lot of time and energy preparing for "Dune", and the film's storyboard sketches and art design alone influenced the aesthetic conception of the entire generation of science fiction films from Blade Runner to Alien; David Lynch, who rose rapidly in the American film industry in the 1980s with a strange and crazy imagination, was also entrusted with the responsibility of shooting "Dune". Although the filming process led to a series of contradictions and conflicts between the creator and the producer, the final film carried a certain gorgeous and frivolous pop sense, and it was also an eye-catching alternative "scientific fantasy" style.
Designer H· R. Giger conceptualized Jodulovsky's Dune, and he later visually designed Alien.
It is conceivable that when the remake fell on the Canadian Quebec director Danny Villeneuve, he not only received a lot of content, experience and unfinished ideas from the filmmakers of his predecessors, but also faced the challenge of what personal imprint "Dune" should give to make it stand out from the many popular popular "science fantasy" films.
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In 2008, Danny Villeneuve won the Best Short Film Award at the Cannes Film Festival for his four-seated short film "The Next Floor". The film portrays a bizarre situation with a gothic horror atmosphere: in an empty building, a group of luxuriously dressed and retro diners sit around the table and chew greedily at the hearty food – even if the floor collapses layer by layer and the characters can't help themselves, they can't stop their mechanized feeding action.
The film is a wonderful satire of human engulfing greed, but it also shows Villeneuve's unique personal style of imagery: his attention to the overall atmosphere shaping is far greater than the laying out of the storyline; the camera lens captures the extremely rich details of the expression while trying to avoid the blunt, impulsive and casual tone of the picture; it maintains a calm distance from the characters, focusing on discovering the contrasting sensory impact in the cold and cold visual atmosphere.
The visual design of "Dune" such as the cold tone and the huge giant object all play a role in maintaining the distance between the audience and the characters.
In Villeneuve's subsequent Hollywood productions, whether it is "Prisoner", "Old Enemy", or the much-praised "Border Killer" and "Arrival", he can inject such a cold atmosphere into the work in a cinematic way to form a distinctive personal label. When Blade Runner 2049 came to the screen with a uniquely gorgeous gloomy and sensual breath, we all realized that Villeneuve had become one of the few authors and directors who had made commercial films in Hollywood but could still maintain their personal style.
Blade Runner 2049 won the Academy Award for Best Visual Effects and Best Cinematography that year.
The vast majority of Chinese audiences' expectations for "Dune" are actually "Star Wars" + "Marvel" mode, which is also the most familiar type of scientific fantasy. Starships battle fiercely in space, electric flint spaceships flying between abrupt CG graphics and cheap sensational scenes, in the context of the simple and clear story that is explained, the superhero who receives a specific mission is sprayed with fire and flying around on the screen. The simple and clear story drives large-scale fierce confrontation scenes, which stimulate the audience with a variety of ways, from bizarre and spectacular special effects scenes, whimsical fights and unheard of use of weapon props, or sudden emotional catharsis and incitement.
One of the most sensual thrilling battle scenes in "Dune" is not like other commercial blockbusters with long-term, large-scale, and fierce confrontation scenes that satisfy the audience's appetite.
In such films, spectacle, visual impact, and action scenes perform their respective duties, and although they are broken or even unbounded, they all aim at the emotional G-spot that the audience is most susceptible to infection. It's like school-age children playing with Lego bricks, making up huge models with a mosaic feel from standard parts, but these parts can be removed at any time and mounted on another model. The reason why Marvel movies can derive so many series is thanks to the modular management of the building block thinking.
Of course, this is also the reason why Martin Scorsese fiercely criticized Marvel movies: "science fantasy" is just a shell, and its interior is a collage printed by a series of assembly lines with scarce film technology.
Martin Scorsese once said in an interview with Empire Magazine that "Marvel movies are not cinema."
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Apparently, Danny Villeneuve, who would have left a personal label on the film anyway, was not prepared to "print" another such replica.
That's why we see the final presentation: despite the film's basic story frame of Dune, the two-and-a-half-hour-long film is sustained by a creeping melancholy of fatalism. Although the specific plot often appears irregular omissions and jumps (so that ordinary viewers often complain about not understanding the story), emotional extensions and renderings often dominate the overall direction of the film: it is not only often interspersed with fantasies and dreams that have no root in the film, but also the visual aesthetic treatment of the background and characters in the picture with almost no color temperature contrast, and the magnificent natural landscape under the deep and grand modern style soundtrack, we can even in the gap between desert storms sweeping the aircraft away. See the protagonist Paul's hand holding the steering wheel as the halo is reflected by the dazzling sunlight that penetrates the cabin glass.
Dune creates an oppressive, solemn atmosphere for the Haknan Legion.
These visual, aural, and aesthetic considerations, which we won't see in the Star Wars franchise, may not be able to meet the needs of Marvel fans seeking sensory stimulation, but they highlight the characteristics of Danny Villeneuve's consistent directorial style throughout his three-decade film career.
The white-knife battle of "Dune" was criticized by some viewers as "why will cold weapons be used in combat in the future".
First of all, from the vast salt flats of Salt Lake City, Utah in Villeneuve's debut film "August 32", to the subjective perspective shots in "Prisoner" filled with light reflections such as colorful windshields, to the abandoned casino full of yellow sand in "Blade Runner 2049", to the best panoramic aerial shot in the history of cinema in "Border Killer", Villeneuve is very good at using the special composition of the landscape on the screen and the formation of characters, giving the audience a special sensory vision that is different from the landscape attributes themselves.
This is taken to the extreme in Dune: what we see in the film is not only a grand scene processed by computer CG, not only the desert Gobi filmed in Jordan, but also a new vision feeling in the well-designed light and shadow atmosphere of the movement of the foreground and a static background; when we see the Saduka warrior silently landing from the night sky in front of a huge building, a cold and cold murderous breath emerges. Such a restrained but internally assertive film atmosphere is very rare in previous Hollywood "science fantasy" movies.
Dune's visual design for the Ertridi family is brighter than that of the Hakenam family.
Second, despite being in the most commercial Hollywood film industry, Villeneuve never indulged in unbridled fast-paced and cheap plot reversals. Instead, he tends to deliberately slow down the rhythm of scene segments, spawning new sensory experiences in a fluffy change. Many viewers complained that the narrative pace of "Dune" was slow, and the content content of the two-and-a-half-hour film was scarce, as if it had just begun to end. But from Villeneuve's point of view, storytelling has never been his point of interest, on the contrary, emotional atmosphere rendering is his strength.
"Dune" was badly reviewed by some viewers due to the slow pace of the narrative.
The film seems to contain only the most brief and backbone story framework, and Villeneuve fills the framework not with a thrilling and constantly reversing plot, but with the atmosphere of visual, musical and poetic lines. For example, the restrained grasp of the sense of rhythm also penetrates into the scene scheduling, and the design arrangement for the action scene is particularly unexpected. We can hardly see too many sounds and light in unison, dazzling and noisy battlefields.
On the contrary, the consciousness of static braking dominates the action scheduling design, and the tense atmosphere of the samurai confrontation is portrayed far more than the fierce confrontation after the real confrontation, and the real white-knife battle is shown by the simple action with a strong sense of reality, which finds the flashpoint of tension in the seemingly slow rhythm, and highlights the form of power in the consciousness of the mind in the silence. If Villeneuve still maintains the characteristics of an "author director", it is precisely through the cool atmosphere and sober sense of distance created by the distinctive "slow" tension that makes it emerge.
Director Dennis Villeneuve directed actor Timothy Chalmed on the set of Dune.
Finally, despite the apparent dominance of male characters in the original Dune, Villeneuve strives to create and highlight the contagious image of women in the film. Whether it is the mother of the protagonist Paul, or the female scientist Dr. Keynes, or the desert girl who constantly appears in Paul's dreams to guide him in emotional will, they are not the vase characters in Hollywood blockbusters, they all have their own strong will and fearless sacrifice spirit.
Rebecca Ferguson played Mrs. Jessica, who performed superb acting skills in Dune.
The heroic treatment of female characters, which gives them a unique intransigence in the deceitful male world, is also one of the constant themes that Villeneuve has been buried in the sequence since his debut novel "August 32" (represented by the female detective in "Border Killer").
All these distinctive stylistic features have been carefully preserved by Villeneuve and implanted in this "scientific fantasy" blockbuster, which does not focus on action scenes but emotional display, pushing an artistic core to the limits of mainstream commercial films.
As a high-grossing Hollywood blockbuster under heavy box office pressure, this is not easy to do. Therefore, whether commercially successful or not, it can be called an atypical scientific fantasy film, a rhythmic and dignified emotional grand and sonorous fantasy epic, and an absolute outlier in Hollywood films of the same type.