The final “Dune: Part Three” trailer opens on a young man with a shaved head in a dim stone room, a thin cord at his open collar and a hooded shape at the edge of the frame. For the first six seconds he does nothing but look off to one side and then lower his eyes, while the soundtrack offers only whispers. Warner Bros. posted it on its official YouTube channel on Tuesday, October 27th, after a 30-second short whose title began “Final. Trailer. Tomorrow.” went up the night before. The footage runs two minutes and 41 seconds, about nine seconds shorter than the July trailer. The film opens only in theaters and IMAX in North America on December 18th, with its international release beginning December 16th, and tickets are on sale now.
Most of what is on screen has not been seen before. The cut also runs on a different instinct from July’s, which leaned on one woman’s fury and an emissary’s peace offer. This one is assembled from short, hushed demands and confessions that stop just before they explain themselves. Only one spoken line returns from that earlier trailer, and at least a dozen shots come back from it and from March’s teaser, most of them brief. That is a lot of fresh material for the third full-length trailer after March’s teaser and July’s official trailer. Warner Bros.’ own synopsis still describes a ruthless Emperor, a conspiracy and Chani (Zendaya) at the heart of its unfolding mystery, and the footage fills in far more than that. Warning beyond this point there are spoilers for everything in the final “Dune: Part Three” trailer, including its cast reveals and what the footage suggests about the plot.
Most of what is on screen has not been seen before.”
Taken in order, the footage settles quickly into an interrogation. A woman in a black hood and knit cap watches something off-screen, composed, while the shaved-headed man from the opening, whose scarred face matches the film site’s official art for Paul Atreides (Timothée Chalamet), hangs out of focus behind her with his head bowed. Then, a voice says “Tell me what you know” and she looks up with her mouth open. A wide shot places him behind her in a sunlit study with a latticed window as her body sags. A gasped “…please” follows, and the picture finds her face down on the stone, grimacing, one hand clawing at the floor, while an echoing “Tell me!” and then screaming fill the soundtrack. The Warner Bros. and Legendary logos follow. When the trailer returns, a voice says “There will be an assassination attempt” over a dark chamber where a few tiny figures stand far off. A hand grips a dagger inside a white sleeve. A pale-haired man in a white tunic stands at an arched window with a hooded shape beside him. His look matches the site’s character art for Scytale (Robert Pattinson), whom the site calls a Face Dancer. “What else?” asks one voice, and the answer, “Chani’s involved”, plays over the woman on the floor. Then, the picture cuts to Chani herself, crouched in the desert with a blade planted beside her, and a “From Director Denis Villeneuve” card closes the opening half-minute.
After that card, the trailer widens from a room to a civilization, and the whispers give way to chorus. Over a woman in a gray fur-trimmed hood in daylight, a voice says “He knows.” Then, a colossal statue of a seated, bald man appears with a bird perched on an orb beside him. Rows of shaven-headed figures in robes of mustard and olive sit with their eyes closed and their hands raised as a voice says “Whatever happens, you must survive.” An older woman in a black hood appears with her mouth open, a white sleeve crossing the edge of her frame. A single pale hand lifts above a plain so crowded that its people read as grain. In an arched hall ringed by daylight, a black-robed figure faces a line of gold-robed ones. Then, a young woman in a bloodied white veil stares into the lens with blue eyes, the same blood-streaked styling the official character art gives Alia (Anya Taylor-Joy). “For the past 19 years…”, a voice begins over dark cargo blocks drifting in fog, and it finishes “Muad’Dib has conquered a thousand worlds.” Soldiers in helmets and conical straw hats charge across a misty plain at dusk. A crowd chants “Muad’Dib!” three times while the picture passes through a blue-white glare and a field of red tracer fire to a lone figure on a stepped platform above a vast, ranked crowd under dark banners. A voice says “We found a way to neutralize the Emperor and end this madness” as the picture cuts to Paul staring into the lens with dust on his face, and the sentence ends over a pale-haired man whose mouth is open.
The mood changes at the minute mark with a whirring of wings, as a swarm of dragonfly-winged craft crosses a darkening desert in front of a tower. A silhouette lifts a pistol toward the sky, and a voice asks “Ready?” over a black frame. “Fremen keep their word” answers over Chani, her eyes bright blue and a breather tube across her nose. After a card that reads “On December 18”, a sandworm rises in a column of dust, and the next shot looks straight into its mouth. A brief embrace in golden light follows, between a curly-haired man and a braided woman in a blue headband. Then, an armored woman walks out of a burning forest while a voice says “After years of combat…” Over churned dunes and a line of raiders clinging to a slope, the sentence ends: “I’ve become the oppressor Chani had sworn to fight.” Chani sights a rifle, and a finger hooks a trigger. A tilted, burning machine sits under thin cables hanging from above as four people run. “Traitor”, a voice says, and “I’m the enemy” comes over the profile of a shaved-headed man with a dark metal disc set into his neck. Four figures drift down on small round canopies over a dune as someone says “I’m sorry…” The rest of the apology, “for the pain I’ve caused you”, lands on Chani at a lattice.
The back half turns tender and brutal at once. A scuffle plays in silhouette, an orange blast fills the frame, and a stair hall fills with black-robed figures. The question comes in two halves, “My emperor…” and then “don’t you have the power to stop this?”, and it runs across four shots: that stair hall, a bearded man in a white hood whose eyes are washed to a milky white, a dark close-up and a ringed hand. He matches the film site’s official art for Hayt (Jason Momoa), whom the site describes as a ghola of Duncan Idaho brought back through the practices of the Bene Tleilax. A pillar of light stands over a gray-blue plain, and the next shot is an extreme close-up of a blue-on-blue eye that opens onto Paul’s tearful face while a voice says “I can’t see what’s ahead.” It is the only line carried over from July’s trailer. A voice asks “What is your purpose among us?” over a woman sliding down a dune and blue vapor rising from a floor, and then two faces meet nose to nose in blue light. The next line, “Promise you’ll protect my family”, plays over a clay-pale, shaved-headed figure whose chalky styling matches the official art for Princess Irulan (Florence Pugh). At 1:58, the camera settles on a crowd of hooded Fremen and holds on two teenagers just left of center, a girl in a stillsuit cap and a boy with a red band across his forehead. SlashFilm calls it a first look at Paul and Chani’s children. IGN names them as Ghanima (Ida Brooke) and Leto II (Nakoa-Wolf Momoa), the names the couple chose in March’s teaser. “I will” is the answer, over a masked swordsman. Masked fighters appear in the dust, and a tall, four-legged machine stands beside a ring-shaped gateway as a voice says “You’re running out of time, Paul.”
“All we ask is that you hand power to us” arrives over Paul’s lowered face and a flash of orange fire. Then, a floating, upright pod hangs among rows of masked attendants in white and gray, a more distant look at the pod that Inverse and Vanyaland read as the Guild Navigator Edric. Red tracer fire streaks toward a burning vehicle at dusk as a voice cries “I was doing this for our children!”, and two small figures face each other across a sandstorm while a voice says “I’m doing this for you.” The line “There’s nothing I can say to make amends” plays over a shaven-headed youth in a gray stillsuit, the skin around his eyes cracked and sore, who weeps openly. Chani glares into the lens, and a masked figure in tan armor is seen from behind in the dust. Then, she walks out of the haze toward a man whose back is to us, and the two hold each other, her eyes closed and her cheek against his shoulder, in the last image before the title card.
Set against the earlier footage, the shape of the change is clear. March’s teaser gave Paul and Chani a quiet conversation about names, plus an exchange that Rolling Stone reads as Paul talking with his mother. July’s trailer was built around Chani’s accusations, Hayt’s “peace proposal” and a plan for “regime change”. The final trailer drops all of it, along with July’s beach landing at low sun, its field of X-shaped barricades and its hands cradling a pregnant belly. What it keeps are the images that sell scale: the armored woman in the burning forest, the straw-hatted troops, the stair of blue light, Scytale at his arched window and the white-eyed man in his hood. What it adds is nearly everything else, from the interrogation and the robed figures with raised hands to the swarm of winged craft, the worm’s mouth, the rifle sight and the children. The August 18th ticket promo’s ribbed close-up of the pod does not return, and neither does that promo’s opening shot of a white ship over a blue planet.
The closing cards put the people behind the camera back in front. Denis Villeneuve directs from a screenplay he wrote with Brian K. Vaughan, based on Frank Herbert’s novels, and Warner Bros.’ notes name Linus Sandgren as director of photography, Patrice Vermette as production designer, Joe Walker as editor and Hans Zimmer as composer. The cast card runs through Timothée Chalamet, Zendaya, Jason Momoa, Florence Pugh, Rebecca Ferguson, Isaach de Bankolé, Charlotte Rampling, Anya Taylor-Joy, Robert Pattinson and Javier Bardem. The next card promises “Only in theaters” and “Filmed for IMAX” for December 18th, and the last one credits Frank Herbert and the screenplay by Villeneuve and Vaughan.
SlashFilm’s headline says the trailer confirms that “Paul Was The Villain All Along”, which is a critic’s reading rather than the studio’s. What the footage supports is narrower. A voice says “I’ve become the oppressor Chani had sworn to fight”, a crowd chants “Muad’Dib!”, and a later line asks for power to be handed “to us”. The line “For the past 19 years…” also sits a little oddly beside Villeneuve’s own description of a 17-year jump, as TheWrap reported it, while Warner Bros.’ synopsis settles on “nearly two decades”. It might be that the number is a flourish, or that it counts from the start of Paul’s rise. A trailer can always be arranged to mislead. Gizmodo notes that Villeneuve has called the film a story of “the idea of a separation, the idea of a divorce”, and the closing image fits that description. Whatever the film does with all of this, the trailer chooses to end on two people holding each other rather than on a battle, which perhaps says more about its priorities than any of the chanting.
What Do You Think? Does a quieter, darker final trailer make you more or less eager for December 18th? Is Chani’s place in the plot the right shape for the trilogy’s last chapter, and did the first look at the children land the way you hoped? And would you rather see more of the pod before the film arrives?
See you on the next binge!
