Josh Brolin recently revealed the staunch differences between working on the set of Dune and the MCU in a recent interview with ComicBook.com. Playing Gurney Halleck in Dune, the Oscar-nominated actor is part of an incredible cast member lineup with Timothee Chalamet, Zendaya, Jason Momoa, and many others.
Brolin, who is also known for his leading roles in Deadpool 2 and Avengers: Endgame, explains that MCU films are much more impromptu onset in regards to story changes, while Dune was consistent the entire time. In Brolin's words:
"Because [Marvel] would release pages to make you think it was one thing, and then you would change it and do it, that was annoying. But with [Dune], it's all out there. You have a book, you have source material, it's kind of tough to hide it, even though it's a very loyal adaptation. There's some things that are changed, there's some things that are ad-lib, there's some things that are created for... Because it kind of has its own life, but no. And it's all practical, we're on sets that you're looking at, you're in the middle of these massive sets, the production design was on a massive scale, whereas Marvel, it's kind of up to your imagination, both are equally fascinating and deserve a lot of focus, but very different."
According to the actor, working on a project based on a novel makes the scripting much more straightforward, while the MCU tends to alter many details during filming. While Brolin expresses that neither is necessarily worse or better, he praised every aspect of Dune and clearly enjoyed working on the film. In an interview with ACE Universe, Brolin added, "It truly is a cinematic masterpiece, what he was able to do and hold all those characters and give all those characters their time and day but then also hold the story on top of that, and do justice to the story."
The actor brings up an interesting contrast that while the plot of Dune is one many fans are already familiar with, MCU movies have more room to create plot twists. Even while playing Thanos in Avengers: Endgame, the primary villain of the story, certain plotlines were still withheld from Brolin — so the staunch change of having every move laid out in Dune must be a nice one.
Dune promptly took theaters by storm on October 22 and has made over $525 million worldwide in only a week since its release in addition to being available to stream on HBO Max. Warner Bros. and Legendary have already approved a sequel for the smash hit, which is set to release on October 20, 2023.