'Dune' Casts Javier Bardem As Denis Villeneuve Continues To Build The Most Attractive Cast Of All Time
At some point, director Denis Villeneuve must have sat down and wondered, "How the hell am I going to get audiences to come see my two-part adaptation of a long, dense science fiction novel that has a reputation for being often impenetrable?" And then it must have hit him: "Eureka! I shall pack it full of the sexiest people in the world!"
The trend continues with Academy Award winner Javier Bardem joining the cast of Dune. No matter your taste, this cast has someone for everyone at this point.
Variety reports that the No Country For Old Men and Skyfall star is set to join the cast, which already includes a smorgasbord of talented (sexy) folks. There's Timothee Chalamet as the sexy young science fiction noble whose house is betrayed and must lead a revolution on the desert planet Arrakis. There's Oscar Isaac as his sexy father, Rebecca Ferguson as his sexy mother, and Zendaya as his sexy love interest. On the other side of things, there's Stellan Skarsard as the sexy villain and Dave Bautista as the sexy lead henchman.
And now, Bardem will play a sexy revolutionary. Specifically, he'll play Stilgar, a leader in the Fremen tribe who takes Chalamet's Paul under his wing after his family is betrayed and the survivors are on the run in the wastelands of Arrakis. Stilgar is a major character in the novel, one who helps shape Paul into a leader and acts as his general as they take the fight directly to their enemies.
The character was played previously by Everett McGill in David Lynch's ill-fated 1984 film and Uwe Ochsenknecht in the decent-but-cheap 2000 TV miniseries. Interestingly, the casting of Bardem and Zendaya (also playing a Fremen character) suggests that Dune will cast non-white actors for the natural denizens of Arrakis. While it's nice to see a diverse cast, prepare to for this to open a can of worms that has always lurked at the heart of Dune since its publication in 1965 – this is very much a story of a rich white kid taking over a native tribe and leading them. While the book is a masterpiece, there's no denying that this aspect of the plot is, well, problematic by 2019 standards. However, Villeneuve is no dummy – the director of Arrival and Blade Runner 2049 has surely thought this through. Hopefully.
Dune has no release date yet, but Villeneuve has described it as his "Star Wars for adults," and that's really all I need to hear right now.