Dune: Why Did That One Doomed Character Appear In Paul's Visions? Denis Villeneuve Explains
Queue up your favorite Fleetwood Mac song, because we're talking about dreams, baby! Our boy Denis Villeneuve has been doing a ton of interviews about his process and the storytelling behind his latest film, "Dune," and while we intellectually know it's because of marketing and PR reasons, he does genuinely sound both very proud of the movie he's made and really in love with the source material, which gives every interview a little bit of spice. You can just tell he's having a good time, you know? And if he's not having a good time, then he's doing a great job at selling it.
In a recent spoiler-laced interview with Empire (you've been warned! Abandon all hope, ye who enter here!), Villeneuve dug into one of the wilder aspects of the "Dune" universe: protagonist Paul Atreides' ever-shifting prophetic dreams. From the hordes of soldiers killing in his name, to his introduction to Chani, Paul's visions are a guiding force — albeit one that feels a little more than chaotic for both the audience and Paul alike. Unsurprisingly, these visions were challenging for Villeneuve to translate from the page to the screen:
"I will say this – one of the challenges that I had was how to bring the idea, like in the book, where Paul can foresee a future that is shifting all the time. He can feel things, he has emotion toward what's coming. But intellectually, it's very difficult to articulate. He can have strong intuitions with images, but the images are like dreams that he has difficulty to decipher. And I wanted to bring this to another level in the movie, where it will really be like dreams."
Paul's Deadly Showdown With Jamis
We catch more than a few of Paul's visions throughout the film, but Villeneuve spoke at length about one of those dreams in particular. In the vision, Paul sees the Fremen Jamis, who is presented as his friend and guide. He even shows Paul the hooks the Fremen use to ride "Dune's" famous space worms. When Paul finally lays his non-dream eyes on Jamis, things don't go as foretold. As Villeneuve explains in the Empire interview, Paul's visions can't all be taken literally:
"Some of them will be more precise, others will be just poetic abstractions, and contradictory sometimes. I thought that will be a much more interesting, dramatic – that those dreams are warnings or hints, but they don't reveal exactly what will happen."
Paul's vision of Jamis is one of those contradictory visions (or, so we think). Paul's confrontation with Jamis certainly doesn't lend itself to the kind of lifelong friendship and mentorship that his dream promised ... Or does it? As with everything in "Dune," what you see is almost never what you get and there is always a deeper, stranger interpretation wriggling beneath the surface. Who knows is Jamis will make some sort of return in part two of "Dune" (or maybe even in the "Dune Messiah" movie? A girl can dream), but at the very least, Villeneuve had such a good time working with the actor behind Jamis, Babs Olusanmokun, that we got a little more of him than even Villeneuve intended:
"Jamis is part of those dreams, and honestly, is one of my favorite characters in this movie. I mean, Babs Olusanmokun, the actor, was an absolutely beautiful actor. I had so much great time working with Babs, and the more I was shooting, the more I was adding, adding, adding more and more, because I was too much inspired by that."
"Dune" is in theaters now.