Denis Villeneuve Is Right About Movies These Days…And Also WRONG

He’s a true film director at heart with these comments. Dune 2’s director Denis Villeneuve is 100% right about the decline and decay of movies these days, yet he’s also gone a little overboard with how he thinks movies should be made.

It’s tough to criticize a director as brilliant as him, but some of the stuff he said is a little bonkers.

With Dune 2 coming out in a few days and having seen MASSSIVE amount of praise from the previewers, director Denis Villeneuve has been WELL within his right to criticize the state of the movie industry today. But, some of the stuff he said leaves no question to whether or not he’s a purist movie director.

So, Denis Villeneuve essentially wants all movies to revert back to the silent film era if he could wish it so. Yeah, that’s a little crazy if you ask me, but let me give you some more context first.

In an interview with Variety to promote his upcoming Dune: Part II (aka: Dune 2) film (the 2nd of 3 Dune movies), Denis Villeneuve really went after the Hollywood studios and some of his directing colleges hard by saying that films today “have been corrupted by television”. And…he’s right. They have.

Now, not to glorify the past eras of filmmaking but with the rise of television’s golden age (the age we just went through, and are most definitely out of now), which Villeneuve was referencing to in this interview, it gave way to some of the best scripted, episodic shows in the history of entertainment with the likes of Game of Thrones, Breaking Bad, The Big Bang Theory, Downton Abbey, Doctor Who, The Sopranos (which did start in 1999, but it’s essentially the catalyst of the Golden Age), The Office, The Wire, Grey’s Anatomy, Stranger Things, Modern Family, Deadwood, The Wire, Sherlock, etc. dominating pop culture.

Were there still massive movies to come out during this time period? Most definitely. But television, for the first time in the history of the medium, was able to go toe-to-toe with the massive Hollywood blockbusters and Oscar winners and still come out on top in the eyes of the average entertainment-watcher.

So, what does this have to do with what Denis Villeneuve is saying? Due to the success of episodic, hard-deadline television shows, the major studios tried their best to emulate this formula onto the big screen and demanded harsher, more precise deadlines from their producers and directors for their films.

And that’s why we have been getting A LOT of rushed, poorly developed films crammed down our throats of late as the nature of filmmaking and the medium it’s in just doesn’t mesh well with episodic, hard-deadline requirements. Obviously, a studio can’t wait 10 years for a film, but it equally cannot expect a masterpiece to be completed within 4-8 months as you might reasonably expect a television production to wrap up.

And that’s what Denis Villeneuve is saying in part.

The other part, however, is him showing how much of a film purist he is at heart as he quite clearly wishes to make films just for the visual and auditory experience, rather than with intricate, clever, and thought-provoking dialogue scenes. Now, there’s absolutely nothing wrong with making films in this manner and nor do I have an issue with his preferences (to each their own as they say), but there’s a reason films left the silent film era.

People LOVE watching others act, react, communicate, monologue, and soliloquy about fictional and historical events on screen. To remove or deny the gift of speaking, which often separates the very best actors from the pack, from a film is to take away a TREMENDOUS aspect of the film: audible communication.

There’s a reason why people love talking so much and it’s down to the fact that our species is very social. And what is the best way to communicate and understand one another? Speaking.

So, I agree with practically everything Denis Villeneuve is saying about the state of movie these days, but not with his ideal world of silent movies. But to each his own, and Denis Villeneuve has more than earned the right to create silent films if he so wishes.

Images Source: Featured Image: (Warner Bros. Pictures) (Dune: Part Two | Official Trailer 2 – YouTube)

In Text Image 1: (Warner Bros. Pictures) (Dune: Part Two | Official Trailer 2 – YouTube)

Other Sources: (Variety) (Denis Villeneuve Says TV Corrupted Movies, Defends ‘Dune 2’ Runtime (variety.com))