New “Dune: Part Two” Images Unleash Austin Butler’s Feyd-Rautha Harkonnen
The third trailer for Dune: Part Two revealed the most in-depth, riveting look yet at Denis Villeneuve’s long-awaited sequel. Along with the trailer, Warner Bros. also released a slew of new images from the film, giving us a clearer picture of the sweeping sci-fi epic Villeneuve and his team have built.
When we spoke to Dune: Part One and Two co-writer Jon Spaihts a year ago, he revealed that he and Villeneuve had left much of the most thrilling action from Frank Herbert’s 1965 novel for the second installment, choosing to focus Part One on the treachery and galactic scheming that led the galaxy to the brink of all-out war. Part One introduced us to some of the major players, including young Paul Atreides (Timothée Chalamet), whose maturation into a would-be messiah of a desert people he has yet to meet when the film opens is one of the film’s major narrative thrusts. Paul moves, along with his father, Duke (Oscar Isaac), the leader of House Atreides, his mother, Lady Jessica (Rebecca Ferguson), and nearly all of House Atreides soldiers, scientists, and advisors to the invaluable desert planet Arrakis to help manage the crucial manufacture and distribution of Spice, the native element rich on that planet that makes interstellar travel possible. They do this by galactic decree. They are a noble house, Paul believes at the start, even if they’re involved in the extraction of a precious resource from a planet not their own from a people they try very hard to ignore.
Part One dealt with the fallout from a plot against House Atreides, schemed up by an unseen Emperor and carried out by the ruthless, warmongering House Harkonnen, that led to the assassination of Duke Atreides and an assault by House Harkonnen on an unprepared House Atreides. While Part One had plenty of thrilling action, Spaihts explained that many of the most iconic action and fighting set pieces from the novel would arrive in Part Two. And now, at long last, we’re getting close to that moment.
Paul and his mother, Lady Jessica, ended Part One fleeing to the vast dunelands of Arrakis, where Chani (Zendaya) and the native Fremen, led by Stilgar (Javier Bardem), agreed to help them escape and plot their revenge. Part Two will focus on what happens when House Harkonnen and their vast intergalactic armies try to wipe out what’s left of House Atreides and the native Fremen entirely. It will introduce major new characters, including Princess Irulan Corrino (Florence Pugh), Emperor Shaddam IV (Christopher Walken), Lady Margot (Léa Seydoux), and the psychotic Feyd-Rautha Harkonnen (Austin Butler), the man who features in one of the book’s most iconic sequences.
The new images give us a fresh look at the newcomers to Villeneuve’s two-part epic, as well as the returning players from Part One. The shots include a thrilling look at three sandworms being led into battle by the Fremen, a look at Gurney Halleck (Josh Brolin), a House Atreides Loyalist who survived House Harkonnen’s deadly initial assault, and Florenc Pugh’s Princess Irulan Corrino, the daughter of the scheming Emperor Shaddam IV. And then we have our featured image, Austin Butler’s Feyd-Rautha Harkonnen, the remorseless House Harkonnen lunatic who is on a collision course with Chalamet’s Paul Atreides.
It all adds up to one of 2024’s most eagerly-anticipated films.
Check out the images below. Dune: Part Two arrives in theaters on March 1, 2024.
Featured image: Caption: AUSTIN BUTLER as Feyd-Rautha Harkonnen in Warner Bros. Pictures and Legendary Pictures’ action adventure “DUNE: PART TWO,” a Warner Bros. Pictures release. Photo Credit: Courtesy Warner Bros. Pictures
