‘Dune: Part Two’ Reveals Massive First Look, Including 12 New Images and Interviews With Cast and Crew
(L-R) Timothée Chalamet as Paul Atreides and Zendaya as Chani in Dune: Part Two. Image via Vanity Fair.
Dune: Part Two is, no doubt, going to be one of the biggest movies of the year. We’ll see what it does box office-wise (the inclusion of Zendaya in a more prominent role definitely won’t hurt its chances), but what is clear is that in terms of scope, scale, and ambition, sci-fi doesn’t get much bigger than this. And while the first trailer isn’t out yet, Vanity Fair just put out their first (and massive) look at Denis Villeneuve’s upcoming sequel.
Is it a sequel, though? Villeneuve prefers “second part”, as he explained:
“It’s important—it’s not a sequel, it’s a second part. There’s a difference
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.”
(L-R) Timothée Chalamet as Paul Atreides in Dune: Part Two. Image via Vanity Fair.
The second part will bring to life plenty of new locations and new characters, but it will also bring back many people from the first film. We start our tour down the character list with the film’s protagonist, and his romantic partner in the film, Zendaya’s Chani. The character was only featured in quick glimpses in the first film before Paul got to meet her in the flesh in the final minutes of the story. Their relationship is apparently the key ingredient that holds Part Two together; but how does that even work? Zendaya explained their process:
“It was funny trying to figure out in this futuristic space talk, like, how do they flirt? 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.
Awkward and uncomfortable—there’s all those things. I was like, Does Chani get awkward? Does that happen to her? Does she know what that feels like?
I think something we can all relate to is just love 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.”
Josh Brolin as Gurney Halleck in Dune: Part Two. Image via Vanity Fair.
Chalamet piled on:
“The universe of Dune is a complex world of geopolitics and with tons of ecological and technological metaphors that hold up today. 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.”
The production had a very limited time window each day to capture the scenes while shooting in Jordan and Abu Dhabi, as Zendaya explained:
“There’s kind of, like, a ticking timer. You kind of feel like, Okay, we got here, but we have maybe an hour to get this. So we revisited a bit every day, and over a few days, that gives us a few hours. Every time we revisited it, we kind of got to sleep on it and think about it, and come up with a new set of ideas.”
Stellan Skarsgård as Baron Harkonnen in Dune: Part Two. Image via Vanity Fair.
Villeneuve also weighed in on how his actors brought the script and the complex characters to life:
“Zendaya is a fierce warrior. [Her character] has a very strong opinion about her world, about the politics of this world, about the religions and all the impact of colonization on their culture, but there’s something about that young man that cracks her heart. And Timothée did a beautiful job to bring that sincerity onscreen.”
Speaking of religions, Zendaya also had some words about her character’s feelings towards the Bene Gesserit, one of them in particular:
“There’s some tension. Without giving anything away, there’s an awareness of the negative impact that Lady Jessica, as a Bene Gesserit, has inflicted upon her people. So there’s definitely an animosity there, and an apprehension.”
Rebecca Ferguson as Lady Jessica in Dune: Part Two. Image via Vanity Fair.
Jessica is, of course, played by Rebecca Ferguson, once again. According to Villeneuve, she is now in full survivor mode:
“She lost everything. 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.”
As seen in the picture, she is marked with the lines of the prophecy:
“Those tattoos are linked with the prophecy. 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’.”
Javier Bardem as Stilgar in Dune: Part Two. Image via Vanity Fair.
Also returning from a limited role in Part One is Javier Bardem’s Stilgar, who has been the protector of his people for a long time now. Villeneuve described the character and the actor as follows:
“Stilgar, like all the characters, is playing some chess game. He believes that Paul could be that prophetic figure, and he slowly keeps Paul under his wing and becomes a beautiful, surrogate father figure.
Javier Bardem brought something very colorful and a lot of life to a character that could have been also just very severe. 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.”
Florence Pugh as Princess Irulan in Dune: Part Two. Image via Vanity Fair.
Dune: Part Two will bring four new key characters into the story, and three of them were featured in the Vanity Fair preview. Christopher Walken’s Emperor is only briefly mentioned in the piece, but we got our first glimpse at his daughter, Princess Irulan, played by Florence Pugh. Said Villeneuve about her:
“Her stake could not be higher because she’s afraid that her father could lose the throne, could lose everything. 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.”
We also have Austin Butler’s Feyd-Rautha, a ruthless killer who is one of the two characters aspiring to take over the Harkonnen family. While Villeneuve would rather show him in full later in the campaign (we only have his silhouette so far), he did say the following about him:
“Austin Butler brought to the screen something that would be a cross between a psychotic, sociopath serial killer and Mick Jagger.”
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- Austin Butler as Feyd-Rautha in Dune: Part Two. Image via Vanity Fair.
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- Zendaya as Chani in Dune: Part Two. Image via Vanity Fair.
Speaking of the Harkonnens, the sequel also brings back Stellan Skarsgård’s Baron Harkonnen and his minion, Dave Bautista’s Glossu Rabban. Said Villeneuve about their characters:
“[The Baron] is a physically weaker character that has to use some devices to help him to stay alive as he keeps growing. I always saw the Baron as some kind of hippopotamus that, because of his weight, is more comfortable in liquid. He feels more relaxed in those baths, and as we see him in that picture, he’s smoking spice.
Rabban wants to please. 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.”
Dave Bautista as Glossu Rabban in Dune: Part Two. Image via Vanity Fair.
The last new character to debut in the sequel is Léa Seydoux’s Lady Margot. She is a very intriguing character, and according to Villeneuve, Seydoux only brought even more layers to her:
“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.
The main goal of the Bene Gesserit is to make sure that humanity will move in the right direction. The Bene Gesserit, they don’t think about what’s good or what is evil. That’s not very important for them. What is important is to bring humanity to its full potential and to try to create a being that will bring humanity to enlightenment. It’s their full agenda, which takes place over thousands of years of planning and controlling. They are the true masters of this world. Their biggest weapon is time. They see the world in centuries.”
Léa Seydoux as Lady Margot in Dune: Part Two. Image via Vanity Fair.
For Villeuve, this has been a passion project from the very beginning, and it’s very fulfilling to see the film he always dreamed of making come to life:
“Boy, it has been the most very fulfilling experience so far, and very profound for me.”
And still, he looks back at Part One and thinks how he could have improved it:
“You have to accept your failures as an artist. It’s a task that was almost impossible, for me to be absolutely faithful to what those childhood dreams were. 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.”
Dune: Part Two, which is currently deep into post-production trying to complete the sound design and the visual effects, debuts in theaters on November 3. A Venice Film Festival debut has been ruled out, but the film could still debut at another festival, like London, New York, or Rome.
Denis Villeneuve during the making of Dune: Part Two. Image via Vanity Fair.
Miguel Fernández is a Spanish student that has movies as his second passion in life. His favorite movie of all time is The Lord of the Rings, but he is also a huge Star Wars fan. However, fantasy movies are not his only cup of tea, as authors like Scorsese, Fincher, Kubrick or Hitchcock have been an obsession for him since he started to understand the language of filmmaking. He is that guy who will watch a black and white movie, just because it is in black and white.
