News culture 20 years before James Cameron, Dune had already warned against AI: computers have disappeared from SF novels
Publié le 26/02/2024 à 17:45
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Very soon, we will have the second part of Dune in the cinema and it is on this occasion that the director Denis Villeneuve returned, during an interview, to a significant point of the universe: the absence… of computers.
Dune (again) at the cinema
It was in 1965 that the novelist Frank Herbert published Dune, a science fiction novel whose legacy is indisputable: not only did the work win the Nebula Prize for best novel the same year, then the Hugo Prize the following year, but it can also boast to be the best-selling SF novel in the world. Just that.
Obviously, we had to expect that the Seventh Art would take a close interest in it and as a result, the adaptations are legion: we can count Davind Lynch's film in 1984, a television series in 2000 as well as another in 2003 (adapting the second novel, Children of Dune) then, of course, Denis Villeneuve's vision in 2021.
This latest feature film from the director (to whom we owe Blade Runner 2049, First Contact, but also Sicario or Prisoners) was in reality the first opus of a trilogy: the second, “Dune, Second Part”, is preparing to be released in cinemas on February 28. A highly anticipated event for many fans of the universe and on this occasion, the Canadian director returned to a specific aspect of the universe.
No AI, only organic
This was already the case in Frank Herbert's novel and perhaps you will have noticed it in the various film adaptations, but in the Dune universe, no computers need to be declared. A necessarily very particular vision of the future where, very often, science fiction describes it precisely guided by screens, chips and other autonomous software.
During an interview with the New York Times with Timothée Chalamet (who plays the title role, as a reminder), Denis Villeneuve rightly returned to this world where “computers were destroyed and no one tried to rebuild them”:
They banned AI and computers. They are trying to augment human capabilities biologically instead of having external machines. “Dune” isn’t really a science fiction film, it’s more about embracing a new culture. For me, it's more interesting to explore walking on sand: it's more poetic and cinematic than a spaceship.
For once, we cannot indeed deny the atmospheric aspect given by the director to the first Dune, specially shot in Imax and giving pride of place to the desert and its different populations. As for computers and in particular artificial intelligence, the universe of Dune necessarily echoes that established by a certain James Cameron who, with his Terminators, already depicted the dangers of technology. As well as a bunch of other science fiction works, for that matter.
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