Director Denis Villeneuve has revealed the first look at Dune: Part Two, featuring a host of returning and new characters. The ending to 2021’s Dune left star Timothée Chalamet as an outcast on Arrakis’ barren sands, where he met Zendaya’s Chani. The conclusion teased there’s more to the story, which will be explored when Dune: Part Two arrives in theaters in November. But with several months to go, fans can get a first look at Chalamet and Zendaya, along with the returning Josh Brolin, Rebecca Ferguson, Javier Bardem, Dave Bautista, and Stellan Skarsgård, as well as newcomers Florence Pugh, Austin Butler, and Léa Seydoux.
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“It’s important—it’s not a sequel, it’s a second part. There’s a difference,” Denis Villeneuve told Vanity Fair. “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.”
One of the more surprising looks comes from Austin Butler, who plays the Harkonnen prince Feyd-Rautha. The musician Sting famously played the character in the 1984 version of Dune, directed by David Lynch. “Austin Butler brought to the screen something that would be a cross between a psychotic, sociopath serial killer and Mick Jagger,” Villeneuve said of Butler’s performance.
Denis Villeneuve Talks Dune: Part Two’s Love Story
Later in the Vanity Fair piece, Denis Villeneuve described the film as “a war epic action movie,” but also wanted to keep the love story between Timothée Chalamet and Zendaya a focus. “I wanted to make a very human movie, very close to the characters, despite the scope of the film,” he said. “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.”
“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.” He added, “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 said. “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.”
Dune: Part Two arrives in theaters on November 3rd.
Photo credit Niko Tavernise via Vanity Fair
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