Denis Villeneuve‘s “Dune: Part Two” arrives in theaters on November 3, carrying with it the huge expectations of devotees of Frank Herbert‘s 1965 novel. Will Villeneuve do justice to the entire story of Herbert’s book? After all, “Dune” is a lot of different stories all at once: it’s an intergalactic war movie; a coming-of-age tale for Paul Atreides; a love story between Paul and Chani; a warning about the dangers of exploiting the natural world’s ecology for material gain; and a treatise on how statecraft and polity go hand in hand, with humanity manipulating itself for its best interests over generations.
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But for Villeneuve, it’s most important that “Dune: Part Two” continues Herbert’s tale, picking up where 2021’s “Dune” left off. It’s important—it’s not a sequel, it’s a second part. There’s a difference,” the director told Vanity Fair in the magazine’s brand-new first-look at the upcoming blockbuster. “I wanted the movie to really open just where we left the characters. There’s no time jump. I wanted dramatic continuity with part one.” Adapting Herbert’s novel into a feature film is a lifelong dream for Villeneuve. “It’s a task that was almost impossible, for me to be absolutely faithful to what those childhood dreams were,” Villeneuve continued. “But what brings a lot of peace in my heart is that I brought a lot of them to the screen, a lot of them are close to what I had imagined.”
Let’s recap Villeneuve’s 2021 film to get readers up to speed. “Dune” ends with Timothée Chalamet‘s Paul Atreides and his mother, Rebecca Ferguson‘s Lady Jessica, on the run on the desert planet of Arrakis after their family gets betrayed by the Harkonnens. With Paul’s father, Oscar Isaac‘s Duke Leto, dead, the Harkonnens look to take back fiefdom of Arrakis for themselves and control the trade of the universe’s most precious substance, the spice. Paul vows for vengeance, but to achieve it, he’ll have to befriend the desert-roaming Fremen people, including Zendaya‘s Chani, a girl he dreams of, and submit to the mind-expanding prophecies that he may be the universe’s savior.
“Dune: Part Two” opens where Villeneuve’s previous film left off, with Paul and Lady Jessica integrating into Fremen culture and discovering “desert power.” But there are a slew of other new characters in the mix, too. First up, Florence Pugh‘s Princess Irulan, the daughter of Christopher Walken‘s Emperor Shaddam IV, who sees her father’s grip on the galaxy slip after the Harkonnen’s coup against the Atreides. “Her stake could not be higher because she’s afraid that her father could lose the throne, could lose everything,” Villeneuve says about Irulan. “When I met Florence, I was struck by her assurance, how grounded she is as a young woman, how direct, how unapologetic. She has something inherently royal about her. I will definitely believe that Florence could become, in the future, a prime minister.”
Léa Seydoux also joins the cast as Margot Fenring, a member of the secretive sisterhood, the Bene Gesserit.“Margot Fenring is a Bene Gesserit sister, but will be a secret agent in the movie,” Villeneuve says. “It was very playful to work with Léa. It’s a character full of surprises.” More intriguing still is Austin Butler‘s Feyd-Rautha Harkonnen, a ruthless Harkonnen prince who, with the help of Stellan Skarsgård‘s Baron Harkonnen, eyes the galaxy’s throne for himself. Villeneuve describes Butler’s performance as Feyd-Rautha as particularly fearsome: “Austin Butler brought to the screen something that would be a cross between a psychotic, sociopath serial killer and Mick Jagger.” So, a different energy than what Sting brought to the role in David Lynch‘s 1984 adaptation. “He’s someone Machiavellian, much more cruel, much more strategic, and is more narcissistic,” Villeneuve added.
In the upcoming film, Butler’s Feyd-Rautha vies against David Bautista‘s Glossu Rabban as the heir to the frail Baron Harkonnen. Skarsgård’s Baron, now physically weaker after being poisoned in the first film, is no less vicious and scheming in the sequel, but it’s clear he needs a successor. “Rabban wants to please,” Villeneuve said as he explained the power dynamics within House Harkonnen. “He wants to please the Baron. He wants to shine in front of his uncle, but there’s something touching about Rabban because he’s a bad strategist. He’s not very intelligent. Rabban finds himself, at the end of part one, in the position where he doesn’t have the brain to be able to manage and control all these operations. Feyd-Rautha Harkonnen is a very clever, very charismatic figure, and much more brilliant.”
As Feyd-Rautha awaits his showdown against Paul, expect Bautista’s Glossu Rabban to take on the likes of John Brolin‘s Gurney Halleck and Javier Bardem‘s Stilgar. “Gurney Halleck survived and has come back to avenge his friends,” Villeneuve said. “For people who know Dune, there will be a massive battle at the end of “Part Two.”” And Stilgar will help Paul lead the Fremen in battle, but he has plans of his own. “Stilgar, like all the characters, is playing some chess game,” Villeneuve continued. “He believes that Paul could be that prophetic figure, and he slowly keeps Paul under his wing and becomes a beautiful, surrogate father figure.” Villeneuve loved how Bardem developed Stilgar’s character in “Dune: Part Two.” “Javier Bardem brought something very colorful and a lot of life to a character that could have been also just very severe,” the director added. “That charisma explodes in “Part Two.” For Stilgar, the more Paul is embedded in his culture, and the more Paul evolves as a Fremen, the more he feels that they are walking in the right way.”
While Paul embeds himself in Fremen culture easily, partially due to being in love with Chani, Lady Jessica finds it more difficult. “She lost everything,” Villeneuve explained about Lady Jessica’s wariness. “She is a survivor like her son Paul, and she has to strategize how to accomplish her ambition. It’s a really beautiful and nicely complex character.” One new touch for Ferguson’s Lady Jessica? Her tattooed face, which marks the prophecies both she and the Fremen hold about her son. “Those tattoos are linked with the prophecy,” Villeneuve continued. “We see that there’s a darkness, a very specific darkness in her eyes. Lady Jessica is one of the masterminds of “Dune.” She’s trying to play her own agenda. The meaning of that look would be unveiled in “Part Two.””
But the centerpiece of “Dune: Part Two” will be Paul’s relationship with Chani. And Villeneuve reminded his crew often how important that love story is to the entire film. “I wanted to make a very human movie, very close to the characters, despite the scope of the film,” he says. “I kept saying to my crew, ‘The most important thing is that spark, that relationship between both of these characters.’ If we don’t capture that, if we don’t have that onscreen, there’s no movie. The epicenter of the story is this relationship.”
Both Chalamet and Zendaya understood how integral their characters’ love story is to how the rest of “Dune: Part Two” plays out. “The universe of “Dune” is a complex world of geopolitics and with tons of ecological and technological metaphors that hold up today,” Chalamet said. “But at the center, there’s this relationship where Chani sort of becomes a moral compass. Even to say that out loud feels kind of huge, and she’s really the humanizing, grounding force to that.” “I think something we can all relate to is just love,” Zendaya added. “These characters literally live on another planet, right? They’re aliens. It was interesting finding these tender moments in such turmoil and chaos. These characters are just young people forced into really, really intense circumstances.”
Villeneuve wanted to make Paul and Zendaya’s scenes together as romantic as possible, filming many of them at “magic hour,” with the setting sun bathing the desert with golden light. “It was funny trying to figure out in this futuristic space talk, like, how do they flirt?” Zendaya told VF. “What does that look like for a space warrior and the young duke of a planet? How do they show that they like each other? What does that even sound like? We were definitely trying to navigate that, which was funny because all of us were stumped. I think it’s just as foreign to us as it probably is to the characters.” As striking and formidable as her character is, Zendaya wanted Chani also to be a young girl falling in love. “Awkward and uncomfortable—there’s all those things,” the actress continued. “I was like, Does Chani get awkward? Does that happen to her? Does she know what that feels like?”
So how will Chani and Paul’s love story, and all of the other stories that make up “Dune: Part Two,” wrap up? Fans of Herbert’s novel already know the answer there, but expect Denis Villeneuve’s latest to be as true an adaptation as possible. The film hits theaters everywhere on November 3. Take a look at first-look photos from “Dune: Part Two” below.
