'Dune' First Look: A Surprisingly Normal-Looking Timothée Chalamet Confirms December 2020 Release
When one thinks of Dune on film, the first image that comes to mind is the outlandish costumes and weird nose plugs of David Lynch's infamous 1984 adaptation. Funny enough, those costume designs were actually quite close to the descriptions in Frank Herbert's seminal 1965 sci-fi novel. But it's 2020 now, and nose plugs aren't cool. So it's natural that the first image to come out of Denis Villeneuve's highly anticipated adaptation of Dune looks like it could be the cover to a music album. The first image from the film has arrived, giving us our first look at star Timothée Chalamet as Paul Atreides, the young heir to the noble Atreides house. See the Dune first look below.
Dune First Look
Heavy is the head that wears the stillsuit, though there is no stillsuit in sight. Nor any dunes for that matter, in the first image from Dune premiered by Vanity Fair. That's because this image of Timothée Chalamet as Paul Atreides, the protagonist of Denis Villeneve's upcoming sci-fi epic, takes place before the hero lands on the desert planet.
"The immediately appealing thing about Paul was the fact that in a story of such detail and scale and world-building, the protagonist is on an anti-hero's-journey of sorts," Chalamet told Vanity Fair.
In the above image, a transport ship is descending to take the Atreides family to their new destination, the desert planet Arrakis, which is known for producing the mind-altering drug known as "spice." Paul's parents Duke Leto (Oscar Isaac) and Lady Jessica Atreides (Rebecca Ferguson) have been tasked with managing the spice mining in Arrakis, leaving behind the beautiful oceanic planet of Caladan where Paul was raised. But the ruthless House Harkonnen (led by Stellan Skarsgård's cruel Baron Vladimir Harkonnen) is hellbent on taking over Arrakis and its spice trade for themselves.
The first image from Dune looks surprisingly mundane for a sci-fi epic, especially one as imaginative and dense as Herbert's Dune. But Villeneuve is known for his minimalist approach to heady subjects, and the early images to come out of his films are often tantalizingly simple. Still — apart from his huge belt and long coat — Chalamet looks like he's just on a photoshoot for a magazine. The image doesn't give us much of an idea of what Villeneuve's take on the stillsuit — the full-body suit that keeps the body's moisture protected from the scorching heat of Arrakis — will look like. Will Chalamet look just as dashing with a giant nose plug covering half his face? We'll have to wait and see, as Vanity Fair has more Dune content set to roll out this week.
The debut of the first image comes with confirmation that Dune is still set for a December 18, 2020 release — for now. Warner Bros. has been shuffling around the release dates of its tentpoles in the wake of the coronavirus pandemic, but Dune's holiday release apparently remains unchanged.