“You’ve conquered the galaxy. You’ve destroyed thousands of worlds,” Jason Momoa’s Duncan Idaho tells Timothée Chalamet’s Paul Atreides in the new trailer for Denis Villeneuve’s Dune: Part 3.
“What are your thoughts on that?” asks Atreides.
“I think you’re way beyond redemption,” says Duncan.
The trailer starts to answer the question of how Dune: Part 3 can possibly top — much less resolve — the finale of Dune: Part 2.
That film ended with Paul seemingly betraying the Fremen people of the desert planet Arrakis by marrying Princess Irulan (Francis Pugh), daughter of the Padishah Emperor, Shaddam IV. As Paul embarked on a holy war, his Fremen lover Chani (Zendaya) refused to bow to him.
The Dune: Part 3 trailer opens with her seeming understandably miffed.
“I trusted you!” she protests, giving him a well-deserved push. “You promised me that you would never take power in your name. You convinced me that this was your home. That I was your home.”
Timothée Chalamet Returns in Dune: Part 3
The film marks Chalamet’s return to the big screen following fallout during his Best Actor campaign for Josh Safdie’s 2025 Marty Supreme, in which he played a self-centered table tennis hustler with big dreams. Chalamet drew criticism for saying during his Oscar run, “I don’t want to be working in ballet, or opera, or things where it’s like, ‘Hey, keep this thing alive, even though like no one cares about this anymore.’
He quickly added, “All respect to all the ballet and opera people out there,” but the damage was done: He had launched a thousand think pieces praising ballet and opera, and criticizing his perceived lack of support.
Dune: Part 3 completes Villeneuve’s planned trilogy, which began with 2021’s Dune. If the Lord of the Rings trilogy provides a template, the third film in the Dune series may be the one in which Oscar voters reward the entire series.
The first two films adapted Frank Herbert’s 1969 novel Dune, while the third adapts his 1969 follow-up Dune: Messiah.
The series is the third adaptation of Herbert’s work, following David Lynch’s 1984 film — widely considered a failure — and a 2000 TV miniseries by John Harrison. A planned adaptation by cult filmmaker Alejandro Jodorowsky never came to be.
Dune: Part 3 arrives in theaters on December 18, from Warner Bros.
Main image: Timothée Chalamet as Paul Atreides in the Dune: Part 3 trailer. Warner Bros.