The new trailer for Dune: Part 3 gives fans their first look at director Denis Villeneuve’s highly anticipated trilogy-capper. The movie adapts Dune Messiah, Frank Herbert’s second book in the literary series.
Several familiar faces are back from the first two Dune movies, including one character that those who haven’t read the books will be shocked to see, and Part 3 introduces new characters like the villain played by Robert Pattinson.
At a launch event for the teaser trailer on Monday, Villeneuve said he wanted to approach Part 3 “with a new pair of eyes.” He was originally going to direct a different film after Dune: Part 2, but he realized there was a palpable hunger for a Part 3 while doing the global press tour for Part 2 and interacting with fans:
“As a filmmaker, when you make those movies, when you make a series of movies, you are in a relationship with the audience, and I felt a responsibility to finish the story. And I went back home. I said to my crew, ‘I'm taking a break. That's it. Bye-bye.’ And I went back home and I kept awaking in the middle of the night with those images. I was supposed to do another movie in the meantime, but the image of Dune: Part 3, inspired by Dune Messiah, kept coming back, kept coming back. And I said, ‘Oh, all right, let's do it.’”
He added, “I said to myself, ‘It's a good idea to come back to this world, not by nostalgia, but by urgency and to go there with a critical eye and the idea not to be self-indulgent.’
“I said to my team that it will be a very different film, very different, a Dune movie but with a different tone, with a different rhythm, with a different pace. And if the first movie was more of a contemplation, like a movie of a boy exploring a new world, and the second one being a war movie, this one is a thriller. It’s more action-packed and more tense and more muscular than the two others.”
So let’s break down who’s who in the first trailer for Dune: Part 3 and what we can glean from how the movie might differ from its source material.
We've tried to remain spoiler-free regarding the book on which the film is based, but for those who want to go into the film completely untouched by any knowledge of the continued adventures of Paul Atreides, don't read any further.
Paul Atreides: The New Emperor
The first thing to note about Dune: Part 3 is that the story picks up 17 years after the events depicted in Dune: Parts 1 and 2. That’s five years later than in the book. And the planet Arrakis has changed in those ensuing years, as Villeneuve explained at that trailer launch.
“The world changed in those years. The climate is different. Arrakis is still the desert planet, but there are differences. We are visiting new sets, new places. I brought the camera in areas of the planet that you guys have not seen before, and we are visiting new planets as well.”
Opera hater Timothee Chalamet is back as Paul Atreides, who rules as the new Padishah Emperor and has the blood of 61 billion people on his hands.
That’s right: the hero we followed in the first two movies is now a world-conquering tyrant. Embraced as the messiah of the Fremen, Paul has triggered an interstellar jihad, but his prescient visions have convinced him it’s the only way to ultimately save humanity.
With the story of Paul Atreides, author Frank Herbert wanted to subvert the romantic notion of the populist hero and beloved political leader by showing how such figures can ultimately lead people to war, death and destruction. (He cited President John F. Kennedy in particular for embroiling the US in the Vietnam War.)
At the trailer launch, Villeneuve said “we see Paul dealing with the consequences of having too much power and him trying to figure out how to get out of this cycle of violence. And, of course, he can see the future, so he’s kind of invincible. We follow people trying to overthrow him.”
The Factions Conspiring Against Emperor Atreides
Among those who would like to see the emperor dethroned are the Spacing Guild and everybody’s favorite scheming space nuns, the Bene Gesserit. Also in cahoots with Reverend Mother Mohiam are the Bene Tleilax – more on them in a bit – and even Paul’s own wife, Princess Irulan, once again played by Florence Pugh.
You’ll recall that Irulan is the daughter of Shaddam IV, whom Paul deposed at the end of Part 2. Paul only married her for political reasons. In the book, Paul and Irulan have no children and Paul keeps his Fremen true love Chani as his concubine.
At the trailer launch, Villeneuve said Dune: Part 3 is “a quite intense story, but the heart is still a love story. The heartbeat of the film is still the relationship between Paul and Chani.”
We don’t know yet how or even if Paul and Chani get back together in Part 3 since she left him at the end of the second film, understandably disappointed in him marrying the princess and becoming the emperor.
The trailer ends with a shot of Chani that makes it look like she’s going to battle Paul, but that could just be a bit of misleading trailer trickery.
Children of Dune: Paul and Chani’s Kids
In Dune Messiah, Paul and Chani eventually have twins, son Leto II and daughter Ghanima. At the trailer launch event, neither Zendaya nor Villeneuve would answer when asked about whether Paul and Chani have kids. But we know that the twins are in Part 3 because it’s been reported that they’re played by Nakoa-Wolf Momoa and Ida Brooke, respectively.
Yes, you read that right: Momoa. He’s the son of Jason Momoa, who played Duncan Idaho in the first Dune and totally isn’t back for Part 3. Oh, wait. No, he is. We’ll get to that, too.
Leto and Ghanima are pre-born with the memories of their ancestors (what the Bene Gesserit refer to as “abominations”). This is where things get tricky, and while we’re not going to get into full spoilers from the books, it would seem that Dune: Part 3 may be radically altering the story as Herbert originally laid out. The actors playing Leto and Ghanima in Part 3 are both young, but in Dune Messiah those characters only ever appear as infants.
Perhaps Leto and Ghanima only appear as part of a framing device for Part 3 where the saga of what happened to their parents is relayed to them, maybe by Irulan herself, who serves as essentially the narrator of the first book. Irulan is a historian in the books, so this framing device approach seems the most straightforward way to explain how Paul and Chani can have kids that age in this movie.
Alternatively, perhaps Paul sees them in some sort of spice vision as he did his then-unborn sister Alia in Part 2. Speaking of whom…
Anya Taylor-Joy’s Alia
Anya Taylor-Joy reprises her role as a now-adult Alia in Dune: Part 3. In the books she serves as regent and guardian to Paul’s heirs. Based on this trailer and Taylor-Joy’s own comments at the trailer event, Alia appears to play a key role in the film as her brother’s most intense ally.
Alia has been aged-up for this movie; the character is just an adolescent in Dune Messiah. The Fremen of Arrakis worship her as “St. Alia of the Knife.” In the story, she seeks not only to thwart the conspiracy against Paul but to also find a mate.
“Alia has a very intense blessing/curse situation. She carries the weight and the wisdom of generations and generations in her head. She's never in a singular conversation. It's kind of everything everywhere all at once,” Taylor-Joy explained.
“And the one thing that she really feels most strongly about is her love and devotion to her brother, because that is the only person who's ever made her feel like she makes sense. He's understood her from before she was even born and she will do anything for him to various degrees of insanity.”
