The producers so misunderstood this scene in Dune 2 a.k.a Dune: Part Two that they asked for changes. But fortunately, it was too late to change anything.
SPOILER ALERT!
The career of Dune 2 is almost finished in cinemas, and it is indeed a success. With almost 710 million at the worldwide box office (including 281 on the domestic side), the sequel with an official budget of $190 million obviously does better than the first Dune (407 million in 2021, but with a hybrid release in cinemas and on HBO Max). But the film above all achieved a classic blockbuster score, even though it escapes many of these codes.
While the series Dune: Prophecy arrives in 2024 and Dune 3 is preparing, the team continues after-sales service, particularly for the DVD and Blu-ray release of the film. It is in this context that director of photography Greig Fraser returned to one of the most memorable pieces of Dune 2 : black and white scenes on Giede Primethe planet of the Harkonnen, which slightly scared the producers.
dune in black and white
It was one of the most intriguing ideas of Dune 2 : shoot images in black and white, and in infraredto reflect the fascist state of the Harkonnens and the hostility of their planet Giede Prime, which orbits a low-intensity sun.
Cinematographer Greig Fraser had already used this technique in Rogue One: A Star Wars Story And Zero Dark Thirtybut not in scenes of this magnitude.
Gladiator 2
And he explained to Screen Rant that this bias had given rise to some debates with the producers, who simply did not understand what they were seeing. When they discovered the images, they thought there had been a problem:
“It was a bit daring to shoot in this format, because the worry was, indeed, that people who weren’t there were going to see the images, and say to themselves: ‘What the hell?’ Suddenly, we had calls saying: “Can we fix this? Can we fix this in post-production? Can we add color?”. But we had made a choice and we just answered: “We made a choice. It’s in black and white, no color, we can’t do it in color. We can’t go back. We made a choice.” That, for me, was probably the biggest… I won’t say challenge, but the biggest reflection, where we couldn’t go back. »
Warner’s boss after the phone call
no going back
In just a few years he became one of the most coveted directors of photography, thanks to Cogan: Killing Them Softly, Zero Dark Thirty, Rogue One And The BatmanGreig Fraser explained that these scenes of Dune 2 imposed exceptional conditions:
“All the choices we make on a film, we can more or less find a way out of it, we can go back on the colors, we can find a way out of it in editing. This scene left us exposed, literally and figuratively, because there was no way to change it afterwards if we decided it was a bad idea. »
Triangle of Sadness
However, no regrets:
“I’m glad we stuck together. Because there was a point where maybe we weren’t going to do it. Instinct is funny, because your heart says something, your brain says something else, and our brains tell us, “We shouldn’t do this,” but our hearts tell us, “We should do this.” So yes, we listened to the heart, and not the head. »
Currently in full preparation of The Batman 2 (which was postponed to September 2026), Greig Fraser should logically return for Dune 3, since he worked on the two films directed by Denis Villeneuve. The director of First contact And Sicario has, for his part, already warned that he would pass the torch to someone else if a fourth film Dune had to happen.
