It’s all been leading to this. Two long years have passed since we watched Paul Atreides (Timothée Chalamet) launch his holy crusade against his enemies in Dune: Part Two, orchestrating a marriage of convenience with the royal Princess Irulan (Florence Pugh) and breaking the heart of the Fremen Chani (Zendaya) in the process. Director Denis Villeneuve left us on an intense close-up of Chani storming into the deserts of Arrakis, calling a sandworm to ride home on, and stewing in silence.
Part Two was something of a departure from the books by Frank Herbert, which depicted Chani with far more docility and later wrote her off tragically — not unlike George Lucas’ Star Wars prequels, which (not that he’d ever admit it) took a major page from Dune for the doomed romance between Anakin Skywalker and Padmé Amidala. Villeneuve, thankfully, doesn’t seem interested in following that same path: his Chani was different from the start, and Dune: Part Three serves as the culmination of his bolder, more emotional vision.
