No. That sentence is about having limited set size and that they had “to come up with a couple tricks” to cope with it. They did not decide to build partial sets out of fabric and augment them with CG out of any consideration for the narrative; they did it to save a fuckload of time, labor and money.
WTF? The still I posted was of a partially built, full-size set that was augmented by CG. This was done to save on production costs, as actually building that set and employing all those extras would have been insanely expensive. That was - and still is - my argument and it is the point made by the production designer (“…just for budgetary reasons.”)
In this case, any technique preferences are irrelevant. The only other viable/cost-effective way I know to have done that scene - keeping the same or similar quality - would have been to use green screen, but a decision was made before production began not to use it. See the two links at the bottom of post #517.
So it’s got Tim Blake Nelson in it with no role listed. IMDB presumes that he is Count Fenring. That would be weird. But who knows, maybe he’ll be really good.
IMDB also listed a couple of people playing a “Harpy.” I have no idea what that is about. I don’t remember any harpies from the book.
Lea Seydoux is listed as Lady Margot, Fenring’s wife. They had that crazy secret humming language, IIRC, so it might be entertaining to listen to the two of them humming back and forth at each other.
My totally uninformed guess for the Harpies is that they’re replace the Fedaykin, the Death commandoes who were Muad-Dib’s personal bodyguard.
I’ve read that Villeneuve plans on making Dune Messiah as the 3rd film of the trilogy. No word on Children, I’d assume since Paul & Chani aren’t in it (well, mostly) that it would be a “Phase 2” type of thing.
I saw something that mentioned that there may be a third movie but it wouldn’t happen for a few years to allow the actors to age into the appropriate age range. I have no idea if that is accurate but it would be cool.
IIRC, Count Fenris is described in the books as a forgettable, harmless-looking nebbish of a man, and something of an aristocratic twit; part of what makes him so deadly is that he’s easy to underestimate. Tim Blake Nelson always has a slightly goofy air about him, which fits with the casting.
The Dune wiki says harpies are “mythical shadow demons lying in ambush.” So maybe they feature in Paul’s visions? Of course, Villaneuve can do whatever he wants, and that definition can fit the Fedaykin as well. But I’d be surprised if they named two of the Fedaykin “harpies” and only credited those two.
There is also speculation that they could be servants of Feyd-Rautha. There is a brief shot of him in the trailer with two black-shrouded figures behind him.
I knew harpies weren’t in the original Frank Herbert novels (I re-read them all in prep for the movie), but those wikis even include the dreck put out by his son and his hack partner, so I don’t think they’re from that pile of hot garbage either.
It’s a bit complicated. At the end of Messiah, a blind Muad-Dib walks into the desert to die. Nine years later in CoD, there’s a character called “The Preacher”, who preaches against the Atreides family and Alia specifically. He’s rumored to be Muad-Dib returned from the desert. At the end of the novel it is revealed that he is Muad-Dib, but IIRC he’s only actually in 2 or 3 scenes in the whole book. But the “is he or isn’t he Muad-Dib” mystery is fairly important. Which would be difficult to film - either you recast the role completely, and at the reveal everyone says “What the heck, that isn’t Timothee Chalamet.” Or you cast Chalamet again, and totally kill the mystery of his identity.
