The Dune: Part Two Trailer, featuring Florence Pugh and Austin Butler, Just Dropped and Things Are Getting Tense
Originally published in BUST Magazine 5/4/23
The trailer for Director Denis Villeneuve’s Dune: Part Two was just released and the world of Arrakis is expanding with some familiar faces: actors Florence Pugh (Midsommer, Little Women, Don’t Worry Darling), Austin Butler (Elvis, Once Upon a Time in Hollywood, The Dead Don’t Die), and Léa Seydoux (No Time To Die, The French Dispatch, Blue is the Warmest Color) have all joined the cast, filling out the world of Dune and adding intrigue to an already complex plot.
Dune is an epic sci-fi fantasy with an ecological message written in the 1960s by novelist Frank Herbert. It takes place on a desert planet called Arrakis that is ravished by famine, systemic inequalities and a failing government (sound familiar?) and is colonized by the Atreides family and crew, who vied for control of the planet because it’s the only interstellar producer of “melange,” a drug that is used to enhance mental abilities and extend lifespans.
Dune: Part One starred Timothée Chalamet, Zendaya, Oscar Issac, Stellen Skarsgård, and Jason Momoa and was released in September of 2021. The film took on the first half of Herbert’s novel, and surpassed opening weekend profits, bringing in $41 million on opening weekend through just over 4,000 theaters. Reception was overall quite high, despite it’s nearly three hour run time, especially for fans of the novel who were eager to see a successful rendition after David Lynch’s panned Dune adaptation, and the failed adaptation attempt from Chilean-French director Alejandro Jodorowsky in the 1970s.
Now, two years after the release of Dune: Part One, Warner Bros. Pictures released the trailer of Dune: Part Two. Florence Pugh is introduced in the trailer, portraying Princess Irulan, a dominant character in the Dune series. The Princess plays an integral role in Paul Atreides’ hero’s journey. We see Princess Irulan investigating the “fall” of the Atreides family, wondering if her family was involved in a plot against them.
“In the shadows of Arrakis lies many secrets, but the darkest of them all may remain, the end of house Atreides,” Pugh voices in the trailer.
In addition to Pugh’s new major character, the trailer shows a growing connection between Paul (Chalamet) and Chani (Zendaya), a classic Montague and Capulet story, with Chani being a native member of the Fremen, and Paul being the son of a colonist who was sent to occupy Arrakis. The duo have a great and natural connection, developing an environment of love and hope in the otherwise bleak background of the sandy and arid Arrakis.
While Pugh is the most prominent of the new characters, we also get to see glimpses of Seydoux and Butler in the trailer. Seydoux plays Margot Fenring aka Lady Margot who is part of a secretive matriarchal order called Bene Gesserit, aka The Sisterhood, who have developed some pretty wild abilities (using that aforementioned drug, melange) including sexual imprinting, sexual seduction, control of her body chemistry and more.
We also see a disturbing glimpse of a bald Austin Butler, playing Feyd-Rautha, a power-hungry villain who is posed to be the antithesis of Paul Atreides.
In a world full of questionable remakes and less-than-stellar adaptations, sci-fi fans are pretty excited about what director Denis Villeneuve is doing with Frank Herbert’s epic story. While we don’t know where the future lies for our friends on Arrakis, we’re excited to see this saga expand with some of our favorite actors. Dune: Part Two will be released in theaters on November 3.
Top photo from the official Dune: Part Two Trailer from the Warner Bros. Pictures Youtube Channel
