The Dune: Part 2 Trailer Shows Off A Key Moment From The Original Book

This piece contains big potential spoilers for "Dune: Part Two."

Frank Herbert's "Dune" is one of the most influential and well-regarded sci-fi books of the past century, a complex tale that combines intricate politics, geology, religion, the interrogation of messiah narratives, and the hero's journey into a simple to get into yet hard to fully decipher work of fiction. The book has long been considered unadaptable, with David Lynch's 1984 adaptation changing and cutting too much of the story to truly give it justice, and the Sci-Fi Channel (now SYFY) miniseries from 2000 not having a big enough budget to properly capture the epic scale of the novel.

And then there was Denis Villeneuve's adaptation. The 2021 version of "Dune" doesn't just work as an adaptation, condensing some things, expanding others, and giving certain characters more time in the spotlight. It also gives us a fantastic visual feast, with intricate designs that are different from all other adaptations and attempts at them. 

The trailer for Villeneuve's follow-up (just don't call it a sequel), "Dune: Part Two," is already doing a lot to build excitement for the second half of the story, teasing the incredible cast Villeneuve has amassed for his movie — like Austin Butler as a yassified Voldemort — and moments from the book like gladiatorial fights and the return of desert power. There is one particular scene the trailer highlights, however, that is key to the entire story.

In the "Dune: Part Two" trailer, we see a sequence of Timothée Chalamet's Paul Atreides learning to ride Shai-Hulud, the giant sandworms of Arrakis. Upon his success, the other Fremen cheer for him, while Stilgar (Javier Bardem) looks in awe at the outsider, the so-called Mahdi of legend. This is a huge moment for Paul and a ritual that helps tremendously in his gaining the respect of the Fremen and becoming one of their own.

Now, this scene and the lead-in to it illustrates what makes "Dune" so special, and different than other stories about white protagonists becoming one with a community of color, like "Avatar." Paul may appear as a messiah to the Fremen, but he is no clean hero — he is a pawn in a scheme centuries or even millennia in the making. 

In the first film, Paul realizes that the people of Arrakis had been manipulated for centuries by the Bene Gesserit, the religious order his mother belongs to, to recognize a young man from another world as a messiah and quickly embrace him as a leader. The indoctrination, done through legends and myths spread during religious missions, was done on hostile planets to provide protection in case a Bene Gesserit was stranded there.

Paul's hero's journey is more of a curse than anything, an inescapable future he sees and fails to change. In the first "Dune" he sees a dream of himself leading thousands to their deaths, and the new trailer shows those thousands rallying behind him (well, in front, but still). Paul cannot escape his fate, but it remains to be seen where that fate leads.

"Dune: Part Two" rides into cinemas on November 3, 2023.