Dune: Part Two – what lies ahead for Paul and Chani?  

Filmmaker Denis Villeneuve takes us back into the fray, in the ongoing battle for control of the desert planet Arrakis in his adaptation of Frank Herbert’s epic sci-fi novel, Dune. 

Arrakis is the only source of the substance known as Spice, without which the calculations needed for space travel are impossible. After escaping his house’s massacre on Arrakis in Part One, Paul Atreides (Timothée Chalamet, Wonka) and his Bene Gesserit witch mother Jessica (Rebecca Ferguson, Mission: Impossible – Dead Reckoning) are working to unite the Fremen warriors of Arrakis, including Stilgar (Javier Bardem, No Country for Old Men) and Chani (Zendaya, Euphoria Season 1-2), against the planet’s monstrously greedy and exploitative new stewards: Baron Vladimir Harkonnen (Stellan Skarsgård, Chernobyl) and his nephews “Beast” Rabban (Dave Bautista, My Spy) and Feyd-Rautha (Austin Butler). 

Meanwhile, the Harkonens’ puppet master, Emperor Shaddam IV (Christopher Walken, The War with Grandpa), steps out of the shadows as he turns to his heir and daughter, Princess Irulan (Florence Pugh, Midsommar), to bolster his plot to divide and conquer, while keeping House Corrino’s 10 000-year grip on the spice trade, and power in the known universe.

“This film is about the integration of Paul and his mother, Jessica, into the Fremen culture, into the Fremen tribes. During this time, Paul and Chani fall in love, and together they start a campaign against the oppressors. I hope that audiences will be moved by the relationship of Paul and Chani. And I hope that they feel what it is to ride a sandworm!” says Denis. So step onto the worm as Timothée, Zendaya and Denis take us on a wild desert ride.

Stream Dune: Part Two now. And binge the prequel series Dune: Prophecy Season 1

Timothée: the mouse that roars

“Dune: Part Two picks up right where the first movie ended, maybe a couple of hours later, and Paul and Jessica are with the Fremen, with Chani, under the leadership of Stilgar – and in immediate threat of Harkonnen exposure,” reveals Timothée. “Because of what happened in the first movie, he’s struggling with what it is to become a man without a father or father figure, without his friends and family, who have been obliterated by the Harkonnen.” 

“This part of the story, for Paul Atreides, is about a young man not wanting to accept his destiny – a responsibility to lead that feels greater than what he’s capable of, and what he wants to do. Also, what it means as an outsider to be chosen, whether by destiny or by people, to lead. He’s not a person who has delusions of grandeur and power. If that was your fate, what would that actually feel like? What would it be like to stand in the middle of a room and declare yourself a leader? It will require so much of him that his immediate desire to love and be loved by Chani, will be superseded by this responsibility,” Timothée adds.

Paul’s reluctance to lead comes through in the name he chooses for himself as he becomes even more involved with the Fremen. “He becomes the Muad’Dib – a namesake he chooses for the desert mouse that lives on Arrakis,” says Timothée. “This is actually one of my favourite parts of the book and of the film because often we see the lion or tiger as the animalistic metaphor for our leaders, our heroes. And there’s something apt about this small desert mouse that moves in the cracks and is self-sustaining – barely – that works for this young man whose circumstance is so beyond him.. It’s not Paul the Braveheart or Paul the Lionheart, it’s Paul the Muad’Dib.”

And as a reluctant leader, Paul turns to the one person who doesn’t seem to believe that a coloniser is fit to lead the Fremen…Chani. “Chani is Paul’s moral compass. He’s trying to become a partner to her, the man he wants to be to her,” says Timothée.

Zendaya: Chani’s not impressed

Zendaya explains that Chani is keeping a close eye on Paul, and expects him to prove himself. “I think she treats him that way because she is afraid of what he represents. And because her heart is starting to feel something that I don’t think she’s ever felt before,” she says. “In the beginning of the story, she starts to soften toward Paul because he is sincere. He does want to be there for no other reason than to learn their ways and to become Fremen. He wants to earn her respect and her trust.”

“And he rejects the idea of this life that his mother has forced him into, this idea of him being ‘the one.’ That’s comforting to Chani because she rejects that whole idea, too,” explains Zendaya. “What Denis has done so beautifully is show the distinction between the older and younger generations. The Fremen have had years and years of propaganda pushed upon them: the ‘one’ will come and save them.” To Zendaya, it was a familiar divide. “We’re dealing with that generational division nowadays with the new generation of people who see things through a completely different lens, and with a completely different set of rules. Chani is part of the generation that’s fighting back against what she perceives as archaic ideas. She believes this is what has been oppressing her people.”

Given the circumstances, Chani’s feelings for Paul are inconvenient to say the least! “She’s falling in love with him, but at the same time hating what he represents, and that’s really difficult for her because she cares about her people and wants the best for her community. Paul throws a wrench in that situation and it’s really difficult for her to grapple with that, and she wants to believe that he’s on her side. It takes him time to win her over and to crack her shell and for her to be trusting of him. Their love story is really earned.” 

Mr Worm’s wild ride

One of the ways it’s earned is when Paul tackles one of the Fremen’s most lethal initiation rites – capturing and riding a Sandworm for himself the first time. “It’s such an important moment in Paul’s entry to the Fremen world, his acceptance by them. Paul learning how to ride the sandworm is akin to coming of age, because someone who wasn’t one with Shai-Hulud, which is the Fremen word for the sandworm, would have died in that predicament, and Paul doesn’t. He rides the worm,” reveals Timothée.

“In the book, sandworm riding… it reads spectacularly! It is one of the coolest things about the novel,” says Denis. “But reading it is one thing; seeing it is something else. I had to define and create the logic and the technique myself, how to get on a sandworm. I had graphics and I explained to the crew how the Fremen ride on the worm. I wanted to shoot under real sunlight and on a structure that would look like the worm. It took a few months of work and a lot of trial and error for our unit to shoot that specifically, under the supervision of Tanya Lapointe, the second unit director.” Tanya’s “worm unit” prepared for two months in Budapest before they went to the UAE to shoot the scene in the desert’s red dunes. And the cast had to take a crash course in riding at what Tanya calls the “Denis Villeneuve Sandworm Riding School”. 

Visual effects supervisor Paul Lambert explains, “Denis had this amazing pitch for how he wanted it to work. Basically, a Fremen would put a thumper down into the top of a dune. And the worm would come for the thumper and the dune would collapse. And the idea is that the Fremen is on top of the collapsing dune, and that’s how they get onto a worm. One of the challenges for us to be able to come up with was the visual of Paul running onto a worm, with Chani and the other Fremen watching. It involved rebuilding part of the top of the sand dune in another location, where we could control things and have cranes, and we put three tubes inside the dune, which would be pulled by industrial tractors. We’d have a stuntperson – Lorenz Hideyoshi, in this case, Timothée’s stunt double – attached to a safety wire and he would run. The tubes would pull out. The sand would collapse, and Lorenz would fall down the top of the dune into the swirling dust below, kicking up sand. We had to get the timing right, the camera had to follow, and so on. It took some practice runs over a few days because the reset was quite long, but it worked out really well! Then my team extended it out in CG using plates and aerial photography, making you feel like Paul is a lot higher up, and then of course adding the CG worm.”

Paul Lambert adds, “For the actual ride, we have him on a gimbal, so we can change the angle of the platform, surrounded by a huge sand-coloured enclosure that would get lit by the sun and bounce strong sand-coloured light onto Paul (Timothée). We shot aerial photography that would be the surrounding landscape, while always blasting a lot of sand onto Paul. When all combined, it feels like Paul is riding on a worm in the desert!” 

To get across how fast the worm is moving (fast enough to stir up wind in the desert) and how dangerous Paul’s stunt really is, supervising sound editor Richard King turned to practical effects. “We did a lot of recording in the desert, dragging large objects across sand and gravel and then utilising pitch shifters and other simple analog tools to increase the scale or speed,” he explains. “What we hear is the environment reacting to their movement. We used winds recorded by our sound effects recordist in Africa, George Vlad. Added to these are thunder, huge sand sprays and impacts we recorded in Death Valley. The overall effect is one of sheer unstoppable power combined with tremendous speed. Paul’s worm ride is chaotic and terrifying until he gains control of the beast,” reveals Richard. 

10 fun facts about Dune: Part Two

1. The cast studied the Fremen language, Chakobsa, under the guidance of its creator, Fabien Enjalric.

2. Austin Butler trained for his fight scenes with Navy SEAL-turned-stuntman Duffy Gaver and fight coordinator Roger Yuan. Their regime included the Filipino stick fighting discipline Kali.

3. The scene where Princess Irulan and Reverend Mother Mohiam (Charlotte Rampling) are walking through the Emperor’s Imperial gardens was shot at Brion Cemetery in Italy, which was designed by Carlo Scarpa.

4. The design of sandworm skin is based on the clay scales that form when lakes dry up. 

5. To give the Harkonnens’ planet Giedi Prime its stark black and white appearance during outdoor scenes, director of photography Greig Fraser shot using his camera’s infrared sensor instead of visible light. “It’s a fascist world, a world without nuance or subtlety, a harsh world – a world in black and white,” explains Denis.

6. Production designer Patrice Vermette had an unusual inspiration for Giedi Prime’s sets: “I was inspired by septic tanks because they have the morals and ethics of the sewer,” he reveals. 

7. Patrice Vermette based the design for the Cave of Birds on the idea of a bone harmonica, with a texture inside like fingerprints – as a way of referencing the Fremen’s unique identity.

8. Costume Designer Jacqueline West based the Emperor’s costumes on images of the Mongol ruler Kublai Khan sitting on a throne.

9. The Northern Bene Gesserit costumes were inspired by vintage Balenciaga designs from the 1940s – which were based on the Velasquez painting, Black Madonna – along with elements that Jacqueline West found in a fascist fashion book.

10. In contrast, Jacquelin’s inspiration for the uniform of the Fremen’s own Bene Gesserit Reverend Mothers was based on Egyptian art and made from Thai silk in the colours of the desert.

Stream Dune: Part Two now. And binge the prequel series Dune: Prophecy Season 1