Dune: Part Two (Movie)

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    Golden Globes 2025: ‘Emilia Pérez’ Leads Nominations, Plus Nods for ‘Conclave’ and ‘Wicked’

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    The movie received 10 nods, leading the field. Angelina Jolie, Timothée Chalamet, Pamela Anderson and Zendaya drew acting nominations.The point of the Golden Globes has become clearer in recent years: It’s a cash register masquerading as an awards show — an opportunity to sell advertising, promote winter movies and flog designer gowns.Celebrity attendance makes the whole thing run, of course, and so trophies are dangled as bait. On Monday, the companies behind the Globes announced the 2025 list of nominees, and — ka-ching! — there are a ton of stars on it, including Angelina Jolie, Timothée Chalamet, Zoe Saldaña, Nicole Kidman, Jamie Foxx, Jake Gyllenhaal, Ariana Grande, Keira Knightley, Pamela Anderson, Zendaya, Demi Moore, Glen Powell, Selena Gomez, Daniel Craig, Kate Winslet, Miley Cyrus and Denzel Washington.Netflix’s “Emilia Pérez,” a Spanish-language musical exploring trans identity, received 10 nominations, the most of any movie, including one for best comedy or musical. “The Brutalist,” “Conclave,” “Wicked” and “Anora” will be among the other films contending for the top prizes, with “The Bear,” “Shogun,” “Only Murders in the Building” and “Baby Reindeer” among the programs vying for the TV equivalents.Notable nominations included Winslet, a surprise double nominee for “Lee,” a little-seen biopic with mediocre reviews, and “The Regime,” a poorly reviewed HBO mini-series. The best director category included Coralie Fargeat for her satirical body horror film “The Substance” and Payal Kapadia for “All We Imagine Is Light,” about a Mumbai nurse; both women will now figure more prominently in the Oscar conversation.And the notable omissions? Danielle Deadwyler (“The Piano Lesson”) and Marianne Jean-Baptiste (“Hard Truths”), both perceived as potential Oscar nominees, were among several Black performers who did not make the list. Similarly, the prison drama “Sing Sing” was largely passed over, although its star, Colman Domingo, received a nod.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      Golden Globes Snubs and Surprises: Jon M. Chu, Danielle Deadwyler, ‘The Substance’ and More

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      Female directors were well-represented, while “Dune: Part Two” and “Sing Sing” didn’t do as well as expected.The 82nd Golden Globes nominations were announced Monday morning and the unconventional musical “Emilia Pérez” had plenty to sing about: The Netflix film topped all movies with 10 nominations, followed by “The Brutalist” and “Conclave.” Here are some of the most notable takeaways from this year’s field.Ryan Reynolds rebuffedRyan Reynolds wasn’t nominated for “Deadpool & Wolverine.”20th Century Studios/MarvelBefore a series of recent scandals prompted the Golden Globes to diversify its voting membership, you could count on this show to favor celebrity over critical consensus: Every year, the list of nominees included A-list megastars who were recognized even when their projects were not up to par. The old Globes voters, for instance, would have been eager to nominate the “Deadpool & Wolverine” star Ryan Reynolds for best actor in a comedy or musical, if only to lure Reynolds and his wife, Blake Lively, to their red carpet. The new Globes voters proved more resistant to his charms, though they did find room for the Marvel blockbuster in their dubious box-office achievement category, added last year.A ‘Sing Sing’ setbackClarence Maclin, left, and Colman Domingo in “Sing Sing.”A24Just last week, the A24 prison drama “Sing Sing” had a strong night at the Gothams, picking up wins for lead performance (Colman Domingo) and supporting performance (Clarence Maclin). The Globes proved less enamored: Only Domingo scored a nomination, and both Maclin and the film were snubbed. After an acclaimed but quiet run in theaters earlier this summer, the “Sing Sing” awards-season relaunch just took its first notable hit.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      At the Movies, the Apocalypse Has Already Arrived

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      In “Joker: Folie à Deux,” “Megalopolis” and more, the sense of an isolated and fearful humanity pervades this season’s films.The apocalypse started earlier this year.Back in March, “Dune: Part Two” picked up the story of Paul Atreides, set 10,000 years after a war with artificial-intelligence beings nearly obliterated humanity. The “Dune” saga suggests history is cyclical, even if the details rearrange themselves. Paul’s world once again teeters on the brink, though the characters don’t know just how close to the edge they are. No matter. The precarity is plenty palpable.Hollywood has sustained a long love affair with tales of apocalypse — look no further than the Marvel Cinematic Universe’s obsession with the end of the world. But frequently, the storytelling fits a familiar template. Humanity faces some great threat: aliens, viruses, zombies, meteors, nuclear devices, megalomaniac villains in shadowy lairs. Governments are incapable of dealing with the threat. Only some hero (a retired cop, a retired soldier, a retired superhero) can save the day. He does, and we all cheer.The “Dune” saga feels different, though, and not just because Paul Atreides is not your typical popcorn-movie messiah. This world is darker; the fate of humanity is not guaranteed. The biggest threat to life is not a single clear menace, but a mysterious confluence of factors that nobody, not even the most savvy of characters, quite understands.Here apocalypse moves away from the meaning we usually ascribe to it — mass destruction, curtains on humanity and so on — and toward its older meaning. The English word “apocalypse” comes from the Greek “apokalypsis,” which means revelation. It’s a moment of unveiling, of the hidden things becoming clear. The curtain blows aside briefly and reality becomes lucid. Apocalypse is not always world-historical. Our lives are full of personal apocalypses; our nations experience them repeatedly, often in times of great distress. We learn who we are, what we stand for and what really matters in apocalyptic times. What comes next might be dystopian, or utopian. Most likely, it will be a bit of both.So perhaps it’s unsurprising that cinematic apocalypse, so visible everywhere, has been diversifying. (After all, the movie business is itself fast reaching an apocalyptic moment.) In March, the best picture Oscar went to “Oppenheimer,” a movie about how we arrive at moments of apocalypse. Soon after, “Civil War” — a movie set in a country in the midst of disintegrating — kicked up arguments about its politics. But its real insight was that habitually looking at trauma has changed the characters’ relationship to humanity itself, an apocalyptic realization if there ever was one.“Megalopolis,” with Adam Driver and Nathalie Emmanuel, explores the difference between expedient relationships and those that endure.LionsgateWe are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      The Careful Crafting of Austin Butler

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      There’s a scene early on in the new film “The Bikeriders” that functions like a stress test for stardom.While drinking at a 1960s pool hall, a woman named Kathy (Jodie Comer) is unnerved by the menacing bikers in the room and grabs her purse to go. She’s only stopped dead in her tracks when she catches sight of Benny, another biker, alone. The young man’s muscles are rippling, his hair artfully mussed, his gaze troubled but beguiling. As Kathy stares at him from across the crowded room, the jukebox music and biker chatter fade away, and all you can hear is her stunned gasp as she realizes she’s fallen in love.No visual effects are required for this scene, just a man who can hold the screen and make a woman hold her breath. It’s the sort of role you might have filled in past decades with the likes of Marlon Brando, Paul Newman or Brad Pitt. But who from today’s cohort of young stars has their presence?That’s what worried the director Jeff Nichols two years ago as he embarked on casting the character. He had written Benny as someone who feels mythic even to his fellow bikers, but no contemporary actor was even close to coming to mind. So Nichols wasn’t expecting much when he met with Austin Butler, whose breakthrough film “Elvis” was, at that point, still months from release.What he found, even as Butler walked up, was someone who looked and felt exactly like the character he had written, someone with beauty, gravitas and easy masculinity.Or, as Nichols put it, “I was like, ‘Oh, I’m talking to a movie star.’”Jodie Comer and Austin Butler in “The Bikeriders.”Kyle Kaplan/Focus FeaturesWe are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      Denis Villeneuve Answers All Your ‘Dune: Part Two’ Questions

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      He explains why Lady Jessica’s face is so heavily tattooed, whether Paul considers himself the Messiah and what he thinks of those Javier Bardem memes.This weekend, “Dune: Part Two” muscles back into IMAX theaters with the verve of Timothée Chalamet rodeo-riding a giant sandworm. After nearly two months in theaters, the film is the current champion of this year’s box office race, with a total take of more than $680 million. (It’s also available to rent or buy on some streaming platforms.) The film’s success is thanks in part to audiences that have returned over and over to get lost in the rocky warrens and spiritual reckonings of the planet Arrakis. One admirer reports he’s seen the movie 25 times to date.That there’s so much to explore in “Dune: Part Two” is a credit to its writer and director, Denis Villeneuve, who boldly reshaped Frank Herbert’s complex and cerebral 1965 novel “Dune.” Villeneuve split the book and its themes into two films: “Dune: Part One,” released in 2021, focused on the political struggles between two families, the Atreides and the Harkonnens. “Part Two” delves into religious fervor as the two surviving Atreides, young Paul (Chalamet) and his mother, Lady Jessica (Rebecca Ferguson), ingratiate themselves with Arrakis’s Indigenous desert tribe, the Fremen, by allowing the locals to believe that Paul is their Messiah — a prophecy that, if it comes to pass, will mean the slaughter of billions of victims across the galaxy.Villeneuve has yearned to tell this story since he was a teenager in Quebec. His devotion is palpable; every frame feels steeped in monkish contemplation. Yet, he’s also a visual dramatist who doesn’t want audiences to get tripped up by too much exposition. His scripts give only passing mention to core concepts like spice, a psychedelic dust that powers everything from space travel to Paul’s clairvoyant hallucinations.Though Villeneuve doesn’t want to overexplain, he was willing to provide some answers in an interview via video where every question about the film — even silly questions! — was on the table.Does Chalamet’s Paul Atreides actually believe he’s the Messiah? What’s the meaning of Jessica’s face tattoos? Villeneuve also got into the erotic lives of his desert dwellers and the extra narrative weight he threw behind Paul’s Fremen love interest, Chani, played by Zendaya. As Villeneuve said with a grin, “Chani is my secret weapon.”Here are edited excerpts from our conversation.The last time we spoke, you weren’t sure what to make of the sandworm-shaped “Dune” popcorn bucket. It went on to be so popular that it sold out in cities before opening day and is being resold online for around $175. What do you think of it now?We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      The Invention of a Desert Tongue for ‘Dune’

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      Language constructors for the movies started with words Frank Herbert made up for his 1965 novel but went much further, creating an extensive vocabulary and specific grammar rules.In Denis Villeneuve’s sci-fi “Dune” movies, Indigenous people known as Fremen use a device to tunnel rapidly through their desert planet’s surface.The instrument is called a “compaction tool” in Frank Herbert’s 1965 novel, “Dune,” on which the films are based. But the professional language constructors David J. Peterson and Jessie Peterson wanted a more sophisticated word for it as the husband and wife built out the Fremen language, Chakobsa, for “Dune: Part Two,” which premiered earlier this month.They started with a verb they had made up meaning “to press” — “kira” — and, applying rules David Peterson had devised for the language before the first movie, fashioned another verb that means “to compress” or “to free space by compression” — “kiraza.” From there, they used his established suffixes to come up with a noun. Thus was born the Chakobsa word for a sand compressor, “kirzib,” which can be heard in background dialogue in “Dune: Part Two.”For language constructors — conlangers, as they are known — such small touches enhance the verisimilitude of even gigantic edifices like the “Dune” series. If the demand for conlangers’ work is any indication, filmmakers and showrunners agree.“There’s a very big limit to what you can do with anything approaching gibberish,” said Jessie Peterson, who holds a doctorate in linguistics. “If you just shouted one word in gibberish, that would probably be fine. If you shouted a phrase of two words, OK. But if you tried to do a whole sentence structure in gibberish, it would fall apart very quickly. If somebody needed to respond or repeat information, it won’t cohere.”Other languages are a significant part of the “Dune” films as well. For “Part One,” David Peterson devised a chant for the emperor’s fearsome military forces, the Sardaukar, and the sign language of discreet hand gestures employed by the central Atreides family.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      Christopher Walken’s Hidden ‘Dune’ Connection

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      The actor who plays the malevolent emperor in the new film actually brought an element of the saga to life once before. Remember “Weapon of Choice”?If you turned on MTV for any length of time in 2001, you almost certainly saw Christopher Walken flying around the lobby of a Marriott in Los Angeles. Even in an era when music videos were far more hotly discussed than they are now, it was a weird sight. Walken’s trim shock of gray hair matched his gray suit, punctuated by a red tie; he looked less like the movie star he was than some guy on a long layover.The music was Fatboy Slim’s “Weapon of Choice,” a weird little ditty that did make you want to dance. Having trained as a dancer in his youth — and done a great deal of tap and more in “Pennies From Heaven” (1981) — Walken was well equipped for the concept that the video’s director, Spike Jonze, had cooked up: Normal-looking man hanging out in a hotel lobby hears the song, starts dancing, then flies off a mezzanine before, eventually, returning to his seat. The video was a hit, winning several MTV Video Music Awards and a Grammy.The lyrics to “Weapon of Choice” (sung by Bootsy Collins) are heavily distorted — the point isn’t the words so much as the hypnotic beat. But if you listen closely, you can pick up the line “Walk without rhythm/and it won’t attract the worm.”Yes, it’s a reference to “Dune.”In Frank Herbert’s 1965 novel, giant ancient sandworms that live beneath the desert on the planet Arrakis are hugely dangerous to humans, though their power can be harnessed for travel and other purposes. They’re one of the most famous elements of the story, so instantly identifiable that they were made into a dubiously conceived popcorn bucket for the release of Denis Villeneuve’s new “Dune: Part Two.” And they’re attracted to rhythmic thumps on the surface, so the Fremen — people who live in the Arrakis desert — walk in strange, loping, arrhythmic steps to avoid accidental detection.In the video, Walken even seems to be imitating those steps:These lyrics also appear. They could mean anything, of course.Don’t be shockedby the tone of my voiceCheck out my new weaponweapon of choiceBut it certainly would make sense if it was a reference to “the voice” (or is it THE VOICE?), a powerful vocal distortion that the mystical sisterhood Bene Gesserit use to control people in “Dune.”This was all a funny reference in 2021, when the first installment in Villeneuve’s adaptation of “Dune” appeared in theaters. But it got much funnier in “Dune: Part Two.” In the new film, the role of Emperor Shaddam — who engineered the extinction, or so he thought, of the House Atreides, making him technically the baddest of the bad guys — is played by Walken himself.Coincidence? Maybe. Delightful? Absolutely. More

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      The ‘Dune’ Popcorn Bucket and the Golden Age of Movie Merch

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      The hilariously suggestive misfire is a reminder of the days when too-weird-to-be-true film mementos could be found in every kitchen cupboard.When I first encountered an image of the popcorn bucket that AMC Theaters is selling to promote Denis Villeneuve’s “Dune: Part Two,” I stared at it for a beat trying to process what I was looking at. The item is supposed to represent a giant sandworm, the beasts that slither under the desert planet Arrakis. On top of the normal container sits a lid that depicts the cylindrical body of the creature emerging from the ground. The opening where you are ostensibly supposed to reach in to snatch some kernels is fashioned like the worm’s maw with its many tendril-like teeth, here rendered in plastic. The bucket is intricately designed, but appears, well, especially anatomical — to put it politely — and somewhat difficult to use to actually get treats into your mouth.The “Dune” popcorn bucket has become a genuine mini phenomenon. The film’s cast and crew have been asked to comment on it, and Villeneuve even told The Times, charmingly, “When I saw it, I went, ‘Hoooooly smokes.’” There was a “Saturday Night Live” sketch that rhymed “bucket” with a phrase that is unprintable here. Yet, the more I followed talk of the bucket, the more I wanted to possess it. (And no, not for the reasons you’re thinking. Get your mind out of the gutter, please.) As a fan of movies and their ephemera, I began to feel as though I needed to have this piece of hilariously suggestive memorabilia in my home.The bucket, both in its sheer strangeness and in the way it has become a cultural moment, reminded me of an earlier era of collectibles — of tie-ins like those McDonald’s “Batman Forever” mugs with badly drawn versions of Jim Carrey’s Riddler that seemed to be a mainstay in 1990s cupboards. But it also is reminiscent of the too-weird-to-be-true marketing misadventures of yore, things that are so unintentionally off-putting that they are also sort of amazing. See the Jar Jar Binks lollipop in which the Gungan alien’s mouth opens to reveal a candy tongue that you are supposed to suck. Ew, to say the least.In some ways the “Dune” bucket is “ingenious,” said Griffin Newman, an actor and merchandise obsessive, because it inspires people to go to movie theaters to buy it. Tony Cenicola/The New York TimesThere’s even a history of this with “Dune” itself. When David Lynch’s 1984 version of the Frank Herbert epic was released, you could buy a sandworm action figure that, once again, looked unnervingly phallic. (There’s one on eBay if you’re willing to shell out.)Not all of my nostalgia is for the unsavory. The recent frenzy reminded me of the things I used to covet when I was a wee fan starting to fixate on film. My main obsession was Peter Jackson’s “Lord of the Rings” trilogy, so when Burger King released a line of light-up goblets with the visages of characters like Aragorn and Arwen etched on their sides, I knew I needed them. (I had other “LOTR”-themed glassware as well, including mugs that revealed the inscription on the Ring of Power when you filled them with hot liquid. Pretty sure those are still in my parents’ house.)We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      ‘Jodorowsky’s Dune’ Documentary Chronicles the Movie Adaptation That Never Happened

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      ‘Jodorowsky’s Dune’ chronicles a director’s determination to film his vision of the saga, one that would have included Mick Jagger and Gloria Swanson.This week sees the release of “Dune: Part Two,” the second installment in Denis Villeneuve’s eye-popping adaptation of the 1965 Frank Herbert novel. “Dune” was also adapted in 1984, by David Lynch, who hated his version (or the cut that made it to theaters, anyhow) so much that he disavowed it.Perhaps you’ve seen the Lynch version, which I find kind of charming in its flawed state. (Nobody should be that sweaty on the planet Arrakis.) But if you’re heading to “Dune: Part Two” this weekend, you owe it to yourself to be acquainted with another “Dune” adaptation that doesn’t technically exist and, somehow, is also larger than life.I’m speaking of the “Dune” we glimpse in Frank Pavich’s 2014 documentary “Jodorowsky’s Dune” (streaming on Max). It chronicles the “Dune” adaptation that never happened, the bright dream of the avant-garde filmmaker Alejandro Jodorowsky (who did make “El Topo” and “The Holy Mountain”).“Jodorowsky’s Dune” is a chronicle of a man — to mix my literary allusions — on a quixotic quest for his personal white whale. Jodorowsky was hired in 1974 to direct the adaptation, and his vision was gargantuan. Over the next several years, he worked with the producer Michel Seydoux (grand-uncle of actress Léa Seydoux, who appears in “Dune: Part Two”) to wrangle artists, musicians and actors for the project. Pink Floyd was set to record some of the music. He wanted Salvador Dalí to play the emperor. (Dalí asked for $100,000 per hour on set; I’d wager Christopher Walken, the emperor in the new film, did not quite reach those heights.) Jodorowsky also wanted Gloria Swanson, Mick Jagger, Udo Kier, David Carradine, Orson Welles and more to star. Jodorowsky cast his 12-year-old son to play Paul Atreides, the role filled in this version by Timothée Chalamet. To judge by his screenplay, the film would have lasted 14 hours.All of this is wild, but what makes the documentary so fascinating is the storyboards, which Jodorowsky created with the artist Jean (Moebius) Giraud — 3,000 images that covered the entire film and are just as psychedelic as you might expect. The production ran out of money and Jodorowsky’s vision never came to fruition. Eventually the film rights lapsed and were scooped up by Dino De Laurentiis, who, after his own long and winding road, hired Lynch.The documentary is almost certainly the only cinematic version of Jodorowsky’s “Dune” we’ll ever see. Through interviews with a bevy of people who were involved or who admired what it might have been, the documentary makes the case, pretty compellingly, that even the nonexistent movie had an outsize influence on science fiction. And the film is a great peek into how miraculous it is that any movie ever gets made — a fitting frame of mind to enter before seeing Villeneuve’s epic. More