Part two looks fittingly expansive, and there is still the prospect of the blockbuster denouement to come – which should make Luke blowing up the Death Star look like an episode of Doctors in terms of spectacle. Given the softly, softly approach to bringing Dune back to the big screen employed by studio Warner Bros, which was only prepared to film the novel one segment at a time, many fans of the book will just be pleased to see that Villeneuve didn’t end up pulling a Ralph Bakshi. There’s also a glimpse of the spectacular scenes from the book in which Paul Atreides first rides a giant sandworm.
Instead we see more of Zendaya’s Chani, witness the transformation of Rebecca Ferguson’s Lady Jessica into the Freman’s tattooed, spice-loving Reverend Mother, and are introduced to Florence Pugh’s shifty Princess Irulan (daughter of the Emperor). Interestingly, the new trailer shows us little of the spectacle we can expect in the finale of Dune: part two, when Christopher Walken’s Emperor Shaddam IV descends with all his armies on Arrakis, only to discover he really should have stayed at home. In the film there are fewer hints but it matters less, because the sci-fi eye candy on display is like nothing we’d seen before on the big screen. In the book, there is always a sense that the Atreides’ forebears as rulers of Arrakis are going to get their comeuppance, because scion Paul is clearly going to end up as the Bene Gesserit’s predicted messiah and probably take over the known universe. In 2021, the first part of Denis Villeneuve’s Dune adaptation managed the remarkable feat of keeping us interested despite focusing almost entirely on the horrifying fall of House Atreides at the hands of the putrid and relentless Harkonnens, and leaving any sense of hope and future glory seemingly buried deep beneath the sand dunes. And yet Dune is not Star Wars, even if Part Two, the first trailer for which dropped this week, will without doubt provide audiences with the burgeoning saga’s most Star Wars-like moment so far. The desert-covered central planet the blending of religion and magic to the point where they are virtually indistinguishable the depiction of a galaxy where democracy has failed and gilded nobles battle for control of solar systems: all are present in both works of sci-fi-fantasy.
I t has often been noted that George Lucas’s 1977 film Star Wars was greatly influenced by Frank Herbert’s Dune.
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