‘This is only the beginning’, Chani (Zendaya) muses, bringing a shyly knowing expression to Paul’s (Timothée Chalamet) face, his gaze lowered ever so slightly (Figure 12.1), his mind’s eye revealing the prescient vision of her as his soulmate, and so bringing to a provocative conclusion Denis Villeneuve’s initial 2021 adaptation of Frank Herbert’s celebrated novel Dune (1965). Subtitled Part One, reflecting Villeneuve’s insistence that he could not hope to capture in a single film the scope and grandeur of more than the first two parts of the novel, the overwhelming consensus is that it is indeed ‘the version we’ve all been waiting for’, as Ben Child predicted. It stands to reason, then, that we will feel similarly about Part Two, set to appear in 2023, reflecting at least the concluding third part of the novel, and about what, as Villeneuve has hinted, may follow in turn.

For Dune fans who are also fans of one or more of its seven sequels, Chani’s is not a simple cliffhanger-style provocation. There’s the film, that is, and then there’s the project, a distinction of Villeneuve’s own, which begs, in the spirit of her more layered provocation, two related questions. What will animate the project overall? What may we glean of this already from the first film?

CHANI’S PROVOCATIONS

‘This project is, as the book is, a tragedy’, Villeneuve tells us, ‘the story of a young man’, Paul Atreides, who bears ‘the burden of a terrible religious heritage’. Paul’s tragedy is not just the burden itself, however, but its tragic consequences for humanity, which Dune: Part One effectively teases with snippets of Paul’s ‘a war in my name’ visions of the future. Chani’s first and most obvious provocation, then, has us looking forward to being in the audience again when this future comes more fully into view. To this extent, we cannot help but be additionally provoked to look forward to witnessing it develop further still, in Dune: Part Two and what may follow, not only in the spirit of Dune’s third and final part, but of its first sequel, Dune Messiah (Herbert 1969).