Villeneuve’s Dune, Part 2–Watch the first trailer

In the first trailer for Dune, Part 2, you may find yourself hoping to see Timothée Chalamet’s Paul Atreides go face in the sand like John Candy trying to water ski in The Great Outdoors, or expect to see the Tusken Warrior who trained Boba Fett appear on the horizon. Is anyone counting to eight once Paul gets going?

Once you’ve seen a film by Denis Villeneuve, you can spot his work instantly. Somehow the reserved, slow, plodding storytelling style worked for his alien invasion movie Arrival, his spin on Philip K. Dick’s characters in Blade Runner 2049, and it was just what was needed for his interpretation of Frank Herbert’s Dune, Part 1, reviewed here at borg. Despite previews that looked like George Miller’s Mad Max: Fury Road, Villeneuve pushed aside sprawling action and explosions for a thoroughly faithful interpretation of Frank Herbert’s novel. He also distanced himself from David Lynch’s version from 1984, leaving behind all things creepy for a quiet story about a Chosen One in a future, sci-fi desert-world driven by the value of spice and the power that goes with it.

The best science fiction and fantasy film of 2021, Dune had all the sci-fi/fantasy mash-up elements of Flash Gordon, The Chronicles of Riddick, John Carter of Mars, and Valerian and the City of a Thousand Planets, but without the expensive production. Major set pieces were few and far between, but the best could be found in a scene following Paul and his father, played by Oscar Isaacs, attempting to save a group of workers on a giant spice harvester from an impending attack by a behemoth worm. It should be no surprise that creature will be the big element of Dune, Part 2, as well.

Christopher Walken, Black Widow’s Florence Pugh, Elvis’s Austin Butler, and James Bond star Léa Seydoux join the cast from Part 1, including Timothée Chalamet, Josh Brolin, Stellan Skarsgård, Dave Bautista, Rebecca Ferguson, Zendaya, Stephen McKinley Henderson, Charlotte Rampling, and Javier Bardem.

Check out the first trailer for this fall’s big movie, Dune, Part 2: