See Jason Momoa slice and dices as Duncan Idaho in Dune

Timothée Chalamet describes the awe-inspiring landscapes of the upcoming Dune movie, together with some exciting new images!

Movie theaters are tentatively opening their doors again, and if all goes well, we will be seeing Denis Villeneuve take on Frank Herbert’s sci-fi classic Dune this December. And I cannot wait. Herbert’s story about a young noble (Paul Atreides, played by Timothée Chalamet) is enormously imaginative and influential — without Dune, there is no Star Wars — but no one’s ever quite pulled it off onscreen. But with his amazing cast and his experience making movies like Arrival and Blade Runner 2049, Villeneuve could be the guy to finally do it.

Just how amazing is the cast? In addition to Chalamet, we’ve got Zendaya as Chani, a native woman of the desert planet of Dune; Oscar Isaac as Paul’s father Duke Leto; Game of Thrones veteran Jason Momoa as Paul’s swordmaster Duncan Idaho, and it just goes on like that.

Empire is having a big blowout all about Dune with its new issue out September 3, and it’s giving the internet a look at some images ahead of time. Here’s Momoa as Idaho doing what he does best: slicing and dicing.

Idaho is a bit of a swaggering badass, meaning Momoa is the perfect choice to play him. The casting is pretty spot-on for the entire movie.

Above, I’m guessing he’s fighting either Harkonnen troops or the Emperor’s Sardaukar special forces…or maybe both. It’ll make sense when you see the movie.

We’ve also got Duke Leto and Gurney Halleck (Josh Brolin), another of Paul’s teachers:

Finally, there’s Chalamet and Zendaya as Paul and Chani, her eyes turned deep blue by prolonged exposure to the spice of Arrakis, a powerful drug at the center of the story.

It all looks pretty tremendous. And expect something special from the landscape shots. Villeneuve opted to eschew heavy use of green screen and film his movie in the real-life Wadi Rum in Jordan. “That part of the Wadi Rum is so awe-inspiring, you might as well be getting chased by that cliff in the background,” Chalamet told Empire. “It wasn’t a green-screen or anything. That’s one of the most thrilling parts of the book and the movie. We had the sketches. That was a lesson for me. On a Call Me By Your Name or Beautiful Boy it can be counterintuitive to see the storyboards because then maybe you limit yourself based on a camera angle or whatever. It’s the opposite [here] because, for a sequence with the sandworm chasing you, I could never imagine that.”

We’ve gotten a brief look at the sandworms, too.

Dune comes out on December 18, coronavirus willing.

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