The trailer for Denis Villeneuve’s new Dune adaptation dropped last week, and it got a lot of people excited – but one person was unimpressed. Alejandro Jodorowsky, the legendary filmmaker whose thwarted efforts to make a Dune adaptation of his own were chronicled in the 2013 documentary Jodorowsky’s Dune, has described the trailer as “predictable”.
Speaking to France’s Premiere magazine (and highlighted by IndieWire, translated to English), Jodorowsky said that he wished “great success” to Villeneuve, but felt that the trailer itself was uninspiring.
“I saw the trailer,” he said. “It’s very well done. We can see that it is industrial cinema, that there is a lot of money, and that it was very expensive. But if it was very expensive, it must pay in proportion. And that is the problem: There (are) no surprises. The form is identical to what is done everywhere. The lighting, the acting, everything is predictable.”
“Industrial cinema is incompatible with auteur cinema,” he continued. “For the former, money comes before. For the second, it’s the opposite, whatever the quality of a director, whether my friend Nicolas Winding Refn or Denis Villeneuve. Industrial cinema promotes entertainment, it is a show that is not intended to change humanity or society.”
Dune is due out on December 18. Watch the trailer yourself below.