There’s not an official rule about it, but the Motion Picture Association of America suggests film trailers run no longer than two and a half minutes, and that is where most full-length trailers clock in. However, studios usually reserve a few exceptions each year and do a three-minute trailer for their biggest, best films, the ones they hope will pull the biggest, best audiences. Warner Bros. Discovery is burning one of their exceptions on Dune: Part Two, due out in November. A new trailer dropped yesterday, giving a fuller sense of the scope and scale of the sequel, which is very big indeed.
Part Two looks so beautiful, I cannot WAIT to see it on a big screen. This was the shame about Dune: Part One, as boring as that movie is, it is gorgeous and watching it at home was not ideal. Dune is the type of movie that deserves to be seen on a big screen. Hans Zimmer’s ululating score remains annoying as hell—either do something interesting with the MENA-inspired roots of Dune or drop it all together—but Greig Fraser’s cinematography is SPECTACULAR (he won an Oscar for Part One). I am especially interested to see the sandworm stuff. Not unlike superhero movies exploding in the 2000s, technology has finally reached the point where a person sand-surfing on a giant worm can look cool. They’re cleverly teasing that moment in the trailers without actually showing it to us.
We also get to see a little bit more of Florence Pugh as Princess Irulan, we’re introduced to Christopher Walken as Padishah Emperor Shaddam, and there is a bit more of black-and-white bald Austin Butler in action, but this trailer is really focused on Timothee Chalamet’s Paul Atreides and his rise to power leading a rebellion from the desert planet Arrakis. Zendaya also heavily features in the trailer—she’s taking such good care of her little white boys!—as they tease Paul and Chani’s desert love story.
I didn’t care much for Dune: Part One, despite the excellent visuals, but Part Two is where all the actual development and action is at, so I am looking forward to this one. I am always and forever put off by the white savior undertones of Paul Atreides, a privileged outsider, being the prophesied Chosen One for the Indigenous people of Arrakis, but that is just baked into the core of Dune. Denis Villeneuve and co-writer John Spaihts inherited that trope from novelist Frank Herbert. Based on Part One, I don’t think they’ll do anything interesting to interrogate or upend the trope in Part Two, but maybe I’ll be surprised. I want to be. I want all parts of Dune to live up to Greig Fraser’s visuals.
Here’s Timmy out to dinner in Santa Monica the other night.
