The first trailer for Dune: Part Three has been released, offering a glimpse of Robert Pattinson’s eerie new villain. The 39-year-old actor, best known for his role in Twilight, plays the shapeshifting Scytale in the final instalment of Denis Villeneuve’s trilogy, due out this December.
In Frank Herbert’s novels, Scytale is a Tleilaxu Face Dancer – a genetically engineered shapeshifter and master manipulator central to a conspiracy to overthrow Emperor Paul Atreides, played by Timothée Chalamet. The trailer shows Pattinson with a bleached-blond buzz cut and shaved eyebrows, wearing a nose plug as he walks among Fremen natives.
The film also sees the return of Zendaya, Javier Bardem, Rebecca Ferguson, Florence Pugh, Anya Taylor-Joy and Isaach De Bankolé. In the trailer, Paul tells Lady Jessica: “War feeds on itself. The more I fight, the more enemies fight back,” as scenes of battle unfold.
Speaking to IndieWire in November, Pattinson described filming in the Arabian desert: “It was so hot that I just couldn’t question anything. It was so relaxing, my brain actually wasn’t operating. I did not have a single functioning brain cell.”
Dune: Part Three is based on Herbert’s Dune Messiah and follows directly from Part Two, which ended with Paul overthrowing the Emperor and setting a holy war in motion. The new film is expected to open with Paul already in power, dealing with the consequences.
