Fans who gathered in select of Imax theaters across the globe for an advance peek at Dune: Part Three were treated to a surprise appearance by Paul Atreides himself, when Timothée Chalamet joined filmmaker Denis Villeneuve to drop some tantalizing teases about the space saga’s hotly anticipated finale.
“I love this, man — I want this to be my daily life: plugged in around the world,” enthused Chalamet, who appeared live alongside Villeneuve in an AMC multiplex in Burbank, clearly enjoying the instantaneous, impromptu reactions from fans linked via satellite in Chicago, Dallas, Montreal, Toronto, London, Berlin, and Abu Dhabi as he joked and teased with the audiences remotely. “Did this second seat not give it away?” he quipped about the empty seat next to his director. “Were you guys like ‘Why is there a second chair here right now?’”
Fielding questions from fans at the various theaters, Chalamet responded to the new trailer’s implications that Paul appears to be treading down an irredeemable path toward villainy as supreme ruler, creating an irreparable rift with the love he previously sacrificed in the name of peace, the Fremen warrior Chani, played by Zendaya.
“I hope it’s more nuanced than that,” he said of Paul’s seeming heel turn. “I think it’s one of the great things in Frank Herbert’s book: I think I read somewhere that it’s why he wrote Messiah as a follow up to the first book, is people mistook Paul as a classic hero and he sort of wanted to warn the world what could happen when people blindly follow leaders and that even the good can be corrupted.”
“At the end of the second film, Chani is obviously feeling a sense of betrayal towards Paul and how the relationship has crumbled,” Chalamet added. “Without giving too much away in the third film, I think it’s sort of Denis’ mastery in weaving in storylines that weren’t explicit in the book. And perhaps I would say Denis took the most creative liberty, but it really ties the story together, and Zendaya, as you guys see in that trailer, gives such a fantastic performance in this, as usual.”
The actor also expressed his deep appreciation that Villeneuve, who had initially intended to step away from the Dune films — long his passion project — for a period of time after completing the second movie, was inspired to continue on to complete the story sooner rather than later.
“I’m very grateful to this man,” said Chalamet. “He could have taken years between these projects and instead he buckled in and we got it done right away. And I’m a huge fan of The Lord of the Rings trilogy and I’m trying to imagine the last time someone knocked out three things so consecutively and just very grateful to Denis, and ‘In Denis we trust.’”
Villeneuve explained how, despite his plan to fit other projects in before returning to Arrakis, he found that he felt compelled to continue on.
“We did both movies back to back, and I was quite tired,” the writer-director explained. “I said to everybody, ‘Listen, I’m taking a break.’ And I went back home and two things happened: first of all, I kept waking up in the night with images, and these images started to get stronger and stronger; and also something important I have to say is that as we were touring for Part Two, I felt an appetite and a joy and a desire to finish that story.”
“And I felt suddenly a responsibility too, and I was planning to go do Part Three in a few years from now,” Villeneuve continued. “But I said to myself, would it be a better idea to instead of going there instead of inspired by nostalgia to go there by necessity and honor these images that are coming to my mind right now? And I wrote the movie right away and here we are, and I’m really excited. Dune Part Three is based on the second book, Dune Messiah, and it’s one of my favorites, if not my favorite. And it was a massive privilege and honor for me to bring it to the screen.”
“I said to my crew, ‘I don’t want us to walk into our own footsteps. I want us to bring the audience to new parts of Arrakis and something that will be fresh and new,’” he added. “Also, for people who knows the book, it is a very different beast. It’s more of a thriller. It’s a more intense story and it’s definitely more emotional as well. And so it would be the third and last Dune movie. It’s a Dune movie, but it is very different rhythm and it’s much more intense.”
Chalamet credited Villeneuve’s sincerity of approach to the unique character of the third chapter. “It wasn’t like, ‘OK, we found a formula and now we’re just going to run it back,’” he said. “This is a different movie. I don’t know if you would agree. I think the first two are sort of siblings, and then this one is really its own energy. And I love that approach. I thought, wow, it’s familiar with this crew, this family, but there’s a new tone to this.”
The actor heaped praise on two of the cast additions: Robert Pattinson, as the scheming usurper Scytale, and Anya Taylor-Joy, as Paul’s now-grown sister Alia Atreides. “They’re just tremendous. I worked with Rob before … I knew how good he was,” he said. “Anya is something special in this movie. …The first day Anya stepped on set — I didn’t really get to work with her on the second one — just visually she was breathtaking, and she’s unbelievable in this movie. That’s not media hyperbole. She’s actually terrifying.”
Villeneuve revealed how striking he found Chalamet’s evolution through the trilogy. “I’m really looking for you all to see what Timothée did in this film,” he said. “It’s really impressive. It’s like in the first movie he’s like, you have a boy discovering a planet, second one someone becoming an adult and now he creates something very special. I was very impressed with Timothée brought to the movie again.”
“This was the most emotive, on a personal level,” Chalamet admitted. “Not necessarily the character, but I’ve been living with this for so long. I’m so proud to live with it. I’m so proud to work with Denis and this family. So I felt there was a finality in the exercise that I was kind of nostalgic about living the moment, even though I was 29 when we shot this. I still felt like I was losing a part of me by getting through it.
“It felt like there was finality in it. And it was just moving. I felt melancholic to be moving on from this incredible family, incredible crew. And I just couldn’t believe how quickly the experience came and went.”
As someone who gained an appreciation of the original Herbert novels and the sweeping story they convey, Chalamet said he treasured the community of like-minded admirers who’ve sprung up around the Dune films.
“ so moved that we have this community here now, this community of fans,” he said. “‘Fans’ isn’t even the right word: It’s people that have been moved by whatever this material has to offer.
Niko Tavernise/Warner Bros. Pictures
