Dune: Part Three opens December 18 as Denis Villeneuve’s adaptation of Frank Herbert’s Dune Messiah. The film keeps the novel’s conspiracy and rebuilds the marriage the story depends on. Herbert’s 1969 sequel follows a husband and wife under attack from the powers that surround the throne. Villeneuve has called his version a divorce movie, a premise that has no counterpart in the book.
A Longer Gap Between Films
Messiah opens 12 years after the events of Dune. Part Three takes place 17 years after Part Two, with Paul Atreides having ruled as Emperor for that stretch. Alia, a small child at the end of the first novel, is a teenager in Messiah, and Anya Taylor-Joy plays her in the film. In the book, the jihad fought in Paul’s name has killed 61 billion people by the time the story starts. Villeneuve told Empire that Paul is trying to find a way out of the spiral of violence he created.
What Matches the Book
The conspiracy carries over. In the novel, the Bene Gesserit and the Spacing Guild move against Paul, and the Tleilaxu hand him Hayt, a ghola grown from the dead Duncan Idaho and primed to kill him. Irulan, Paul’s wife in name only, joins the plot and secretly feeds Chani contraceptives to keep her from bearing an heir.
The casting follows that structure. Jason Momoa returns as Hayt despite Duncan’s death in the first film, and Robert Pattinson plays the Tleilaxu Face Dancer Scytale. Charlotte Rampling is back as Mohiam, and Florence Pugh returns as Irulan. The official synopsis describes a ruthless Emperor surrounded by betrayal as old allies return and new threats emerge. Villeneuve has called Messiah “by far my favorite book of the series.”
Where It Breaks From Herbert
Chani is the break. In the novel she stays beside Paul. She accepts his marriage to Irulan as politics, survives the court’s schemes long enough to become pregnant despite the contraceptives, and dies giving birth to the twins Leto II and Ghanima.
Part Two already changed that. Chani rejected the Irulan marriage and rode into the desert alone. Part Three extends the break. Zendaya told Empire, “I think there is a deep pain, a deep mistrust, a deep betrayal.” Villeneuve told the magazine that the film deals with separation and divorce, and tied it to his personal history: “With me, it happened.” The synopsis has Paul haunted by his long-lost love, with Chani central to a mystery inside the conspiracy. Neither the estrangement nor the mystery appears in Herbert.
Villeneuve has said he reworked Chani so the films would land Herbert’s point that Paul is no hero. Book readers have objected to the change since Part Two, and the divorce framing renewed the complaint this week.
The Twins and the Ending
The casting adds a second departure. Nakoa-Wolf Momoa and Ida Brooke are cast as Leto II and Ghanima as teenagers, though the twins are newborns at the end of Messiah. Teenage twins on a 17-year jump put their birth near the close of Part Two, which sits uneasily with a Chani who has left Paul. Either the film moves the twins’ birth, or it borrows from Children of Dune. The Sci Fi Channel took the combined route in 2003, when its Children of Dune miniseries adapted both novels. Javier Bardem, returning as Stilgar, told Entertainment Tonight that for readers of Messiah the film “goes beyond that.”
The book ends with a stone burner blast taking Paul’s eyes, and Paul walks into the desert as Fremen custom sends the blind. Whether Part Three ends there is unannounced.
Villeneuve Walks Away
Villeneuve has said this is his last Dune film. Asked by The Wrap whether it really was one more trip to Arrakis, he said, “Yes. After that, it would become unhealthy.” If the finale performs, Children of Dune and God Emperor of Dune would fall to another director.
Herbert put the cost of Paul’s rise in a marriage that held until Chani died giving birth to his children. Villeneuve puts it in a marriage that ended first. Does a Paul whose wife walked out carry the same tragedy as a Paul whose wife stayed beside him to the end?
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I’m starting to think Denis Villeneuve wasn’t interested in doing more Dune series. Didn’t help that the divorce plot, came from his own divorce. So that doesn’t help.