Christopher Nolan Heaps Praise on 2024 Sci-Fi Epic ‘Dune: Part Two’: “Remarkable Piece of Work”

Christopher Nolan, the director of modern masterpieces like Inception and Interstellar, calls Dune: Part Two a “remarkable piece of work.” Not only did he say this, but he said it to the director himself, Denis Villeneuve. Nolan joins others who have shown their love for the sequel to Dune. Receiving such a compliment from the man who many say is modern cinema’s most important filmmaker left Villeneuve wearing a broad smile during his conversation with Nolan during a DGA panel in which the Oppenheimer director tries his best to pick the brain of the director of both modern Dune films:

“I watched the second half and I think it’s a miraculous job of adaptation, of taking that second half and making an incredible conclusion to the story. What a remarkable piece of work.”

During the conversation between the directors, Nolan praised Villeneuve’s ambitious science fiction sequel. He even went as far to compare Dune to the most iconic space opera franchise of all time, and one that’s become embedded in popular culture, and influenced him:

“If, to me,
Dune
was like
Star Wars
, then
Dune 2
is
The Empire Strikes Back
, which is my favorite
Star Wars
film. I think it’s just a great expansion of all that was introduced in the first one.”

Christopher Nolan Is Not Shy About Praising the Films He Loves

Christopher Nolan knows all about the challenges of adapting previous works, like Villeneuve did with Dune. The Prestige and Oppenheimer are based on books, and The Dark Knight trilogy is inspired by the comic book superhero, but when it comes to adapting familiar IPs, he does his best to recycle the necessary elements and achieve his own vision. Something which the filmmaker feels Villeneuve more than managed to achieve when making Dune:

“There is a serious question behind that. Most adaptations, it’s a process of condensing things and simplifying things. My feeling in watching both films, in particular the second film, is that this was an act of exploring a little further and burrowing into the complications and embracing those and the world building beyond even what’s in the book.”

We can only imagine how Villeneuve feels after Nolan has validated his films, and we only hope that this inspires him further to excel once again when adapting Dune: Messiah in the future.

Christopher Nolan has been known to say a thing or two about the films he likes. He doesn’t stay silent when it comes to praising modern and classic films that catch his eye, because he simply loves films. On The Hateful Eight, Nolan said, “Watching this film, it felt like it had an increased level of formalism. There is a real calm and thought for where the camera is always. It’s also in the music. There is a great sense of the history of cinema in it,” with the director having also openly praised the likes of Close Encounters of the Third Kind, The Right Stuff, and 2001: A Space Odyssey, saying of Stanley Kubrick’s masterpiece, “‘I just felt this extraordinary experience of being taken to another world. You didn’t doubt this world for an instant. It had a larger than life quality.”