With the first trailer for director Denis Villeneuve's third Dune film out in the world, we've finally gotten a look at the final chapter in his visionary film trilogy. And at a glance, it looks absolutely epic. From Paul Atreides (Timothée Chalamet) leading his legions of Fremen warriors on a holy war across the known universe, to the return of Jason Momoa to the franchise and debut of Robert Pattinson as the Face Dancer Scytale, there's a ton of moments in the trailer to get hyped about.
By how explosive and exciting the Dune: Part Three trailer is, you'd never guess that the book it's based on, Frank Herbert's Dune Messiah (1969) is actually a fairly quiet story. Villeneuve has more than proven his ability to bring Herbert's universe to life with the first two movies in the trilogy, but Dune: Part Three stands to make the biggest improvements on the source material yet, and in some unexpected ways.
What is Dune Messiah about?
Frank Herbert's Dune is the seminal novel of the author's career, and I don't think there's much room to debate it. The sci-fi epic is a massive, thought-provoking story about a young noble who ends up becoming an unwilling messiah to the Fremen people of Arrakis, and using that position to both secure their future and get vengeance on the enemies who killed his father. It's both a grand adventure as well as a meditation on the dangers of a charismatic leader, and Herbert plays both sides of the story through to perfection.
Dune Messiah is a very different kind of book, which Herbert wrote to make the first novel's warnings about charismatic leaders crystal clear for readers, many of whom overlooked the theme in favor of Paul's triumphs. While Dune is a sweeping epic, Dune Messiah is a much quieter story that takes place more than a dozen years later and chronicles the end of Paul's reign and his struggles to create an heir. It explores the suffering the holy war has caused to the universe at large, to the Fremen, and to Paul himself.
At the same time, it also details a conspiracy to bring about Paul's downfall, orchestrated by the Scytale and his allies. Dune Messiah does have excitement and tension, but it's nowhere near the scope or scale of Dune. That becomes obvious even from the size: Dune Messiah is less than half the length of Dune. It almost reads more like an epilogue to the original book more than its own story.
In a nutshell, if Dune is about Paul's rise to power, Dune Messiah is about his fall.
Dune: Part Three must be more ambitious than Dune Messiah
You would never guess that Dune Messiah is a smaller story from the trailer for Dune: Part Three, however, which is filled with armies and explosions and excitement galore. Villeneuve is in a very different position than Herbert was with his books: he's creating the culmination of a movie trilogy, and dialing things all the way back for a less ambitious finale simply would not go over as well with audiences.
As such, Dune: Part Three is likely to expand the most on Herbert's written work out of any of Villeneuve's films, fleshing out events that happened off-screen in the books like Paul's holy war and Lady Jessica (Rebecca Ferguson) going into self-imposed exile on Caladan.
It makes for an interesting change of pace from the first two movies, where the first Dune book was so massive and ambitious that Villeneuve had to make hard decisions about what to cut and what to keep, and split the story into two separate films. Here, he has the freedom to expand, to allow the characters and plot to breathe even more. The movie is almost certainly going to be better for it.
But there's one other reason that Dune: Part Three will likely be even better than Part One or Part Two: it's the first film in the trilogy that is adapting a complete story in one movie.
The power of a complete arc
For as good as Dune: Part One and Dune: Part Two are, their one major drawback is that each movie only adapts half of a novel. It works fine, and ultimately was probably the best way to go about it, but there's something about the full breadth of Paul Areides' story happening in one book that makes it even more powerful. This full arc makes the passage of time and growth of the character feel more visceral, because we witness it all happen over the course of a single story instead of two discrete pieces of media.
For example, the assassination of Leto Atreides (Oscar Isaac) is a major turning point in the book, but it is by no means a climax to the story as a whole. Rather, it's the inciting event that launches Paul onto his collision course with the Fremen, where he and his mother Lady Jessica ultimately end up embedding themselves until the time comes to fight back against the Harkonnens. Villeneuve did about as good a job as anyone could hope at making those events feel like the culmination of his first film, but it doesn't change the fact that in the overall arc of Herbert's book, this is simply the first of several major events that dictate the flow of the story.
Dune: Part Three won't have that problem. For the first time, Villeneuve is adapting an entire Dune book in one movie. We'll see a beginning, middle, and end laid out that match Herbert's novel, except with more material added that creates an even fuller finale. That advantage can't be understated, and I have no doubt that Villeneuve and his team are going to make the most of it.
Dune may be a much better book than Dune Messiah, but Dune: Part Three could end up as the best film in Villeneuve's trilogy.
Dune: Part Three premieres in theaters on December 18, 2026.