Maybe Morel can spice up the action with parkour … Kyle MacLachlan and Sting in David Lynch’s version of Dune. Photograph: c.Universal/Everett/Rex Features
It’s common knowledge that Hollywood studio executives are not, concerning the most part, excessively inventive. After the barnstorming box-office success of The Dark Knight in 2008, it looked for a while probably every comicbook franchise under the sunshine would be shoehorned into a sombre, noirish mould reminiscent of Christopher Nolan’session Batman sequel. Today, the pre-eminent movie is James Cameron’s Avatar, and haply we can expect a slew of movies depicting a mysterious, semi-messianic stranger who galvanises the native population of an exotic planet into action against their more technologically powerful aggressors.
Which brings us to Dune. It’s hardly surprising that a remake of David Lynch’s 1984 film, based on Frank Herbert’s 1965 book, is being rushed into production. Frenchman Pierre Morel, a cohort of Luc Besson’s who is best known for last year’s slick but dumb Liam Neeson revenge thriller Taken, now looks set to take the reins, and he spoke to MTV earlier this week relating to his plans.
“[My movie] is all about the first book,” said Morel. “I’fight trying to be very civil to the pristine uncommon, but it’s a challenge; there’s a exalted number of expectation, all the readers will be waiting for me through their shotguns.
“All the non-readers elect besides be waiting for us, on this account that it’s such a complex, rich novel and you regard to make it accessible to those who have not read the book. So, it’s a tough challenge on the contrary I’m very excited all over that.”
Morel said his film would be very different to the earlier version. “As a David Lynch movie, I loved it,” he said. “As a Dune fan, I was not such a big fan.”
Lynch’s Dune fell foul of the novel’s expansive timeline – it takes arrange over several years, not great for building tension. Moreover, the practice of internal dialogue to describe hero Paul Atreides’s vital visions of the past, present and future, as well as to let the audience know what pretty much every other character of note was thinking, created a laughably clunky script that made a mockery of the talents of its fine cast. For me, there was nothing much wrong with the film’s oft-criticised art direction – it’s admittedly lurid, goal that fits the novel’s decadent warring clans perfectly.
Given that Lynch is considered one of the world’s best film-makers, if one whose method has get increasingly idiosyncratic and absurdly romantic being of the kind which time has gone on, one wonders exactly what Morel has in his arsenal that has got Paramount convinced he can adapt what many consider every unfilmable work.
Of course, unfilmable books desire existed before. Peter Jackson did a fine job on The Lord of the Rings, and Zack Snyder’s Watchmen proved last year that directors with hack reputations can show previously unheralded appearance whereas given the just subject quantity. Yet Morel doesn’t just now seem to be cut from the corresponding; of like kind woven fabric as either of the above.
His District 13 was a snappily reach Gallic crime thriller which nicely shoehorned the fiercely watchable art of parkour into an entertaining, if throwaway, action movie, while the otherwise pretty hideous Taken’s superb fight sequences at least proved Morel’session abilities for example a sharp shooter of close combat to opponent the likes of the Bourne films’ Dan Bradley. Yet a successful film adaptation of Dune is going to require more than technical nous.
It looks likely that the Frenchman will be operating from a completed screenplay by (the previously planned adviser) Peter Berg and Josh Zetumer, so it may be that workable methods or devices are already in place to work around the novel’s inherent snags. Morel enjoin be to hone the script, but given that he has no great screenwriting experience and came up from one side the ranks as a cinematographer, one has to wonder if he’session the man for the job. Surely Dune requires an auteur film-maker, a writer-director who can furnish us with a unified vision worthy of what remains the bestselling science-fiction novel of every one of time.
Finally (and here’s the clincher) Morel is the director after forthcoming John Travolta spy thriller From Paris With Love. It’s often foolish to badmouth a movie on the basis of its trailer, but this one looks like it may actually rival everyone’s favourite Scientologist’s previous career low, Battlefield Earth, for sheer pompous, master-piece vapidity.
What are your views? Is Dune inherently unfilmable, and if not, is Morel the one to fortunately take it on? If not, who would you rather see directing the movie?
