Why Dune: Part Two's Best Director Oscar Snub Is A Crime Against Sci-Fi Cinema

The nominations for Best Director at the Academy Awards have always been a big deal. This category helps highlight some of the best artistic minds in the industry, especially those who have repeatedly demonstrated mastery over their craft. Take a look at last year's nominations for Best Director: Christopher Nolan ("Oppenheimer"), Martin Scorsese ("Killers of the Flower Moon"), Justine Triet ("Anatomy of a Fall"), Yorgos Lanthimos ("Poor Things"), and Jonathan Glazer ("The Zone of Interest"). While Nolan's eventual win for "Oppenheimer" was more than deserved, every other entry within this category underlines a strong directorial ethos, without which their respective cinematic visions would have been impossible.

This year's nominations for Best Director at the 97th Academy Awards also highlight stellar directors: Sean Baker for "Anora," Brady Corbet for "The Brutalist," James Mangold for "A Complete Unknown," Coralie Fargeat for "The Substance," and Jacques Audiard for "Emilia Pérez" (you can check out the full list of nominees here). However, there is a gaping void here in the shape of one Denis Villeneuve, who gifted us with an epic, sweeping follow-up to his 2021 movie "Dune" this year. "Dune: Part Two" crossed several box office milestones after its release in March 2024, and the spice kept flowing for quite some time while garnering positive reactions from critics and audiences alike. Even if we ignore its performance on the financial front, the second installment in the "Dune" saga is nothing short of a cinematic triumph — a labor of love that has borne fruit.

Although "Dune: Part Two" bagged five nominations (including Best Picture, Cinematography, and Sound), the Best Director snub stings, especially if you consider that Villeneuve was also not nominated in the category for his work on his previous "Dune."

Dune: Part Two proves that high-concept sci-fi can be successfully adapted

While "Dune" had already proven Villeneuve's sincere love for Frank Herbert's saga, "Part Two" cements this sentiment and creates ample space for the director's own sensibilities to bloom. The first film deliberately paces itself to lay an immovable foundation to root us, while its sequel unravels the beating part of the sci-fi drama with Paul Atreides' (Timothée Chalamet) gradual "ascension" to Messiah status. This is not an easy thing to pull off, considering how sprawling and dense Herbert's novel series is, with a thousand political machinations orbiting the plight of Arrakis and the fall (and re-birth) of House Atreides. Villeneuve captures these nuances while focusing on what matters most: The layered interiority of Paul, and how the women in his life shape his worldview.

Of course, the term "spectacle" is embedded into the vocabulary of "Dune" and its Known Universe, as the events do not span one planet, but the entire galaxy. Glimpses of this are sprinkled all over like crumbs, setting up the full-scale holy war that is set to change everything in the upcoming "Dune: Messiah." Moreover, flashy, scale-conveying moments like Paul's mastery of the Shai-Hulud (sandworm) demanded intricate visual mastery and a ton of patience, as what has been evocatively conveyed on the written page seldom translates well on the big screen. But Villeneuve nails it, and "Dune: Part Two" perfectly balances dramatic spectacle with quiet, personal toils, creating a tension so exquisite that one cannot get enough of Villeneuve's Arrakis.

"Part Two" also dares to divert from Herbert's canon by planting Chani (Zendaya) as an emotional anchor for Paul; she gets cruelly uprooted after he betrays her love for him. Although Chani is important in the books, she is presented as a mirage of a character, secondary to Paul's ambitions and what the rest of the Fremen expect from him. Villeneuve re-molds their love story into one that deeply matters, as Chani is skeptical of Paul's Messiah complex and everything he wishes to achieve and watches with horror as he rises to power anyway. These movies don't direct themselves, and I can only desperately hope that "Dune: Messiah" will deliver and Villeneuve will finally get the directorial Oscar nod that he deserves.