While the experience of seeing Dune: Part Two in theaters has been compared to the release of The Two Towers or even The Return Of The King, Denis Villeneuve’s sci-fi epic differs from its predecessors in a major way. (It’s not just all that sand.) Don’t expect your post-home-release, five-hour Part One and Part Two marathon to suddenly expand to seven hours with a bunch of spliced-in deleted scenes or other “extended edition”-style edits.
“I’m a strong believer that when it’s not in the movie, it’s dead,” Villeneuve said (via Collider). “Sometimes I remove shots and I say, ‘I cannot believe I’m cutting this out.’ I feel like a samurai opening my gut. It’s painful, so I cannot go back after that and create a Frankenstein and try to reanimate things that I killed. It’s too painful. When it’s dead, it’s dead, and it’s dead for a reason.”
This incredibly metal approach to movie-making clearly paid off for the director, whose film opened to a whopping $81.5 million this past weekend. But when you’re the one controlling the spice, others are naturally going to go hungry. Unfortunately, one of those actors was Coen Brothers regular Tim Blake Nelson, who said he was “heartbroken” to see his undisclosed character cut from the film entirely. “I don’t think I’m at liberty to say what the scene was,” he told MovieWeb. “I had a great time over there shooting it. And then he had to cut it because he thought the movie was too long. And I am heartbroken over that, but there’s no hard feelings. I loved it, and I can’t wait to do something else with him, and we certainly plan to do that.”
Nelson wasn’t the only actor to be cut from the film. Stephen McKinley Henderson, who played House Atreides advisor Thufir Hawat in the first installment—yes, the one with the parasol—also didn’t make the final edit. (Per Variety, both Nelson and Henderson are listed under “special thanks” in the end credits.) “It is a painful project, but it is my job,” Villeneuve continued. “The movie prevails. I’m very severe in the editing room. I’m not thinking about my ego, I’m thinking about the movie… I kill darlings, and it’s painful for me.” Maybe that’s why he was able to adapt Paul’s arc—especially in that one scene with Zendaya—in the particular movie so well.
This article originally appeared on The A.V. Club.
