Join us every week for a trip into the weird and wonderful world of trailers. Whether it’s the first teaser for the latest installment in your favourite franchise, an obscure preview for a strange indie darling, whether it’s good, bad, ugly or just plain weird – your favourite pop culture baristas are there to tell you what they think.
Julie: As listeners of our podcast will know, I am one of those people who love the 1984 Dune, for all its flaws and problems. Mostly because the book, and the world it describes, is so engrossing. So I have been on tenterhooks about the new effort: its director and its cast are all so incredibly talented. But will Villeneuve be the man to helm a project that has eluded colossal talents Like Lynch and Jodorowsky for decades? As this film only spans half of the first book, might the material be more manageable? Will the second part ever get made? We do not yet know. One thing is not in question though: I am legitimately geeking out. This trailer looks astounding and I can not wait.
Alan: The prospect of watching an epic science fiction film on a huge big screen in a few months time is one of the things helping me get through lockdown, and this trailer does nothing to stop that growing excitement. It’s all there in all the necessary epic-y epicness, If there was one slight disappointment is that the trailer felt a bit generic – it had all the required beautiful visuals, but the music felts like a functional blockbuster mix of swells and booms and all the (admittedly impressive) cast get introduced in a gallery of stock action blockbuster poses, either cockily swaggering or earnestly thinking. There wasn’t an unexpected ‘wow’ moment but that’s a minor niggle for an efficient trailer.
Eric: It is now very much impossible to separate Paul Atreides’ face from special agent Dale Cooper’s who, as everyone must know, is Lynch’s most famous character as well as the one who inspired this site’s name. (Do I get bonus points for this bit of obscure trivia?) However, we must reckon with this future that substitutes Dale’s visage for the face of one Timothée Chalamet, emoting like a cinderblock sinking in a pool of slow-set cement while Hans Zimmer soundtracks the proceedings to a cover of Eclipse from Dark Side of the Moon. Beyond making Pink Floyd personae gratae for folks who had somehow not heard of them, this future looks fairly bright. Denis Villeneuve’s star has only been rising in recent times, and with Dune, the only planet that could eclipse it is the film’s own namesake.
Matt: It comes as no surprise that Villeneuve’s trailer looks beautiful – but to be entirely honest, I think my take is similar to Alan’s: this is pretty much what I expected, in terms of tone and aesthetic. It’s epic and oh so po-faced, which, again, is what can be expected based on the original material, but I have to say that I kinda miss the strangeness that Lynch brought to the proceedings, or that Jodorowsky would’ve added in spades. Perhaps it’s also this year: I don’t altogether feel like big, serious epics, no matter how gorgeous they look or how fantastic the casting. Having said that: I am looking forward to seeing this at the cinema, provided that’ll be possible come December!
A Damn Fine Cup of Culture 