Cutting to the Quick
Denis Villeneuve’s new movie is arguably the most anticipated sequel of 2024. Its closest competitor is the MCU’s only entry for the year - DEADPOOL & WOLVERINE. After a half dozen Academy Awards and an 83% on Rotten Tomatoes, Villeneuve’s sequel is already sitting at 97%. If you liked the first one, you’ll probably love this one. If you thought the first movie was too slow, this one corrects that…a bit. See it on IMAX or in one of those Sensurround theaters that have been making a comeback - it’s a big movie, a sensory experience. Thanks for reading.
The Slow Blade
A big deal was made of the knife work in both movies. Dune (the book) is a nearly high-fantasy story with concepts that play out wonderfully in literature "The slow blade penetrates the shield." The same is true for concepts like The Weirding Way and Prana-Bindu, fictional martial art techniques practiced by the Bene Gesserit order. They are part of what makes the book series so beloved, but also what makes their visual depiction a challenge.
Fortunately, both movies selected the mighty Roger Yuan as fight/stunt coordinator. Readers of KFM ought to recognize Roger’s name - a fight trainer, action coordinator, actor, writer and producer who’s worked in the US, UK, Hong Kong, China, Thailand and on "Bollywood" and Vietnamese productions. He’s trained with John Cusack (who you’ll recall loves his ongoing Kung Fu training), Henry Cavill for IMMORTALS (2011), Daniel Craig for SKYFALL (2012) and Keanu Reeves for 47 RONIN (2013).
Roger’s an actor from the Hong Kong school of acting, doing his own stunts and trading blows with legends like Jackie Chan, Yuen Biao, Sammo Hung, Jet Li and Chow Yun Fat (on BULLETPROOF MONK in 2003),. Let’s also recall his role in CHANDNI CHOWK TO CHINA (2009). As a thank you for all this hard work, Villeneuve also gave Roger a very cool onscreen role (more on that in the spoilers section).
Accompanying Yuan as co-fight coordinator is Vi-Dan Tran the 8th generation JC Stunt Team member who worked on the action choreography and action-previs for THE FOREIGNER & BLEEDING STEEL (2017). Rounding out the fight team is fight arranger Vincent Wang a graduate of Shanghai University of Physical Education, the man entered the 90’s coaching Wushu and Taiji in London before ending that decade doing stunt-work and fight choreography. Also a part of the fight team are Kai Fung Rieck, Khoa Huynh, Sefa Demirbas as well as a score of stunt-men and actors. But it’s Roger Yuan who’s to be credited for the choice to bring stick-fighting to a knife-fight choreography situation.
The Balintiwak
During interviews and on the DUNE special features Yuan talks about his choice to bring “a real-live martial art” to the fight training. He specifically names Balintiwak and required that all stunt-workers, and actors with action scenes be trained in the art. Amusingly, Jason Momoa (our very own Aquaman) who portrayed a fight-master and sworn protector admitted to Indiewire that while he couldn’t master the Filipino martial art he called it “Kali”) he learned enough to play his part convincingly but ended up inspiring his own son to take up the practice.
Many use the terms Arnis, Eskrima and Kali interchangeably. Personal aside; It was learning Arnis, as a member of my collage Martial Arts Club, which introduced me to Kung Fu, having joined the club with some non-Brazilian-jiu jitsu training as a high-school student. You may hear that Arnis and Eskrima are Spanish words (or derivatives thereof) used to describe the local arts. Others may say that Arnis is a term used primarily in Luzon or the northern territories of the Philippines, whereas Eskrima is found in the Visayas or central region and Kali is the property of Mindanao or the southern portion of the archipelago.
Balintawak was founded by Grandmaster Venancio "Anciong" Bacon midway through the 20th century. This took place in the barrio of Balintawak in Quezon City. It’s said he wanted to enhance and preserve the combative nature of Arnis which he felt was being watered down by other styles of Philippine martial arts. Practitioners claim that this style is all about practical, applicable stick-fighting, empty-hand and, bladed weapon techniques and has a reputation for close-range combat and agility. Practitioners will boast that there is so much trapping in the art that Guru Dan Inosanto called Balintiwak the "Wing Chun" of the Filipino martial arts.
In a video interview with the New York Times, Villeneuve made sure to credit both Yuan and the Filipino martial art that inspired him. “That choreography was designed by Roger Yuan. He developed the Atreides fighting style borrowing from a martial art technique developed in the ‘50s,” he explains. “This technique was called Balintawak Eskrima. It’s a style that involves blocking the opponent’s attack with both a weapon and the free hand.”
He went on to say “I developed with our stunt coordinator and choreographers a way of combat that is closer to a chess game than a fighting sequence. When you fight someone with a shield, the idea is to distract them with moves in advance. You want to distract them with a specific move so you can slowly bring the blade into their body. It’s a totally different way of fighting. It’s a way of fighting that is very fast. It’s like a chess game, you have to plan in advance and distract the adversary. It’s a very specific, new art form of combat.”
The Feint
In May of 2022, the New York Times made a big deal about the casting of the character Feyd-Rautha, played originally by Sting in David Lynch’s iconic 1984 adaptation. ONCE UPON A TIME IN HOLLYWOOD (2019) actor Austin Butler would portray the new villain of DUNE: PART TWO. They made a point to say “He has started intensive knife-fighting training for that role.” He had already been practicing Karate daily for his take on the titular role in Baz Luhrmann’s ELVIS (2022).
Later that year Butler would tell Esquire Magazine. “Very early on, Denis [the director] told me, he said, his vision for Feyd was to be physically imposing. Then he set me up with Duffy Gaver, who is this incredible physical trainer who had worked with Brad Pitt on TROY, and he helped me put on size. I just did whatever he said. I was doing Kali, which is Filipino stick fighting and learning how to fight with knives, so I did that for many months before we started filming.”
Then in December the movie’s star Timothée Chalamet faced off against his foe Austin Butler in a virtual knife-fight. It was a promotional piece for Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 3 using skins of their movie characters to promote the game. Maybe they also sought to appease fans bothered by the movie’s delay from November 2023 to March 2024. The knife talk has continued with allusions about the actors having trained under different masters. Or how when they finally met in Budapest, they weren’t technically supposed to do a run through. But — “We got after it right away,” Chalamet is reported to have said.
Josh Brolin had this to say about his own Sword fight “I wanted to do it in one, he (the director) wanted to do it in one and I’m 55. Doing that when you’re 25, recovery is quick, but doing that when you’re 55… I thought I was 25 in my head then I realized that it was gonna be a longer process, But in my panic I pulled it off, I think we were more than ready when we finally did it. We did it in one shot even, and I’m proud of that. Terrified, you know, not terrifying, but you know, I was terrified and the scene became terrifying.”
Here’s the thing, you hardly see any of it. After seeing the video where Brolin said all that I was keeping an eye out for it. Visually, the movie is glorious and cinematographer Greig Fraser will probably get an Oscar for all the epic imagery to be seen on the screen, but the knife-fights are filmed in that quick-cut, shaky-cam style we thought JASON BOURNE had beaten to death.
The Cleave
SPOILER ALERT The movie is a sensory experience. Without the option to depict the pervasive heat the planet Arrakkis is known for, sound design is used instead. The costume and set design are sumptuous and there are hugely epic action set-pieces. Some add a hint of spice to the hordes of literally faceless masses charging towards each other, blades drawn. When it comes to epic warfare there has yet to come a director able to escape the gravity well of Peter Jackson’s LORD OF THE RINGS trilogy. Villeneuve comes close in some places but offers so much else that dust-covered Fremen fighting dust-covered Harkonnens, or maybe Sardaukar, in a sandstorm is forgivable.
Beginning the sequel with an expository voice over by the Imperial princess is not the only nod to David Lynch in this movie. The director plays a delicate game providing imagery to discomfort or bolster the arguments of most anyone across the political spectrum. The movie is a classic hero's journey, one filled with many of the rituals martial artists will recognize in one form or another. But by the time we’re given a break, it’s for the reveal of Feyd-Rautha, the dark reflection to our movie’s hero.
It’s been a long time since a foe was provided such an iconic introduction. A nightmare hate-child of a setting spawned by H.R. Giger and Leni Riefenstahl provide the backdrop for this character’s introduction. Tossed into this hell-pit our Roger Yuan playing the last of the named warriors from House Atreides and doomed to a duel with Feyd-Rautha in a gothic spectacle of violence. A classic method for defining the character’s bona-fides (you might recall a similar explanation in ONCE UPON A TIME IN HOLLWYOD) and it works beautifully — until the character defining final stroke gets lost in an expressionist chiaroscuro.
There’s a recurring motif throughout the movie where, despite all the visual bravado, there is a tentativeness when it comes to certain things: esoteric themes, sci-fi concepts and more than one notable character defining “killing blow.” The Bene Gesserit Voice, more commonly known as the Jedi mind trick, comes off mostly as shrill. Those other skills mentioned earlier are depicted but rarely named. Nobody says the word “jihad.”
The same can be said for that final duel which the whole movie had been leading up to. In story terms the tension is huge, the stakes are epic, and the staging is suitably climactic. But we don’t actually see much of the work everyone’s been talking about. There are some cool silhouettes and if it turns out Timothy performed that barrel-role himself and it wasn’t a digital stitch then - very cool. Clearly the knife carries huge symbolism throughout the movie, but perhaps it’s the blade’s association with intellect and The Will that really matters to Villeneuve. There’s a crucial scene where Paul Atreides, surrounded by foes on all sides, decides he knows what must be done. “The way is narrow, but there is a way…” he says using the universal hand gesture for chopping and thrusting, cleaving his way through this uncertain future.
Hopefully that future includes a DUNE 3.
