12 things to look for while watching (and rewatching) Dune

Even Dune obsessives — and they are legion — could not have asked for a more obsessive movie than the 2021 Dune (streaming now on Max). Saddled with big expectations and bigger concerns, given the troubled history of the ’80s David Lynch adaptation, director Denis Villeneuve succeeded beyond any realistic expectations by sticking to the epic Frank Herbert sci-fi novel’s text while also seamlessly translating the story into a pristine, psychedelic visual language all his own. And he solved a lot of Lynch’s mess by simply telling the first half of the 896-page book. But that’s… still a lot of pages to tell. And Villeneuve was not afraid to pack every image with minor narrative nuggets and references to Herbert’s dense universe, not to mention a smattering of sneaky cinematic allusions.

Luckily, it was a hit, so we will get to see Dune: Part Two in mere months (coming to theaters Nov. 3). But it’s fair to say that even attentive viewers missed some of those small, finely etched details while they were busy admiring star Timothée Chalamet’s cheekbones, or taking in those sublime, desert-shaking sandworms — or maybe you just got high on all the spice? Anyway, we’ve assembled a handy breakdown of the Easter eggs, hints, and references to keep an eye on when you inevitably rewatch, or finally catch up on, Dune part one.

[Ed. note: Spoilers ahead for Dune the movie and the novel.]

Dune kicks off not where the novel begins (the box of pain test, below), but with a voiceover from an unknown character who says, “Dreams are messages from the deep.” Cue the Warner Bros. intro, credits, and images of the vast, sand-blurred planet Arrakis (aka, Dune). But while dreams (particularly those of Chalamet’s protagonist Paul Atreides) prove key in this story, that opening line is nowhere to be found in Herbert’s books. Villeneuve is likely inserting his own elliptical introduction to the Dune universe for unsuspecting viewers. He further plays with our mind by cutting immediately to Zendaya’s Chani, a mysterious member of the Fremen, who live on Arrakis and have electric-blue eyes as a result of consuming “spice,” the planet’s natural resource that gets you high but is also critical for space travel. Chani appears in the prophetic dreams of Paul, but to Zendaya fans’ dismay, she has a tiny role in the first film. As Paul assumes his rightful (maybe?) role as leader around these parts, with the help of the native Fremen (we’ll get into the politics soon enough), Chani will become a more central figure, mostly saved for Part Two. Big takeaway: Villeneuve is such a tease.

Chalamet, one of our few credible young movie stars, is 27 in real life. As Paul, he is meant to be just 15. Which, even with the actor’s lithe body, is weird to think about. But we must accept it.

One of the recurring images in Villeneuve’s Dune is of a statue depicting a man bullfighting. There’s also a mounted bull on the Atreides family’s dining room wall. You might regard these as cool visual asides in a movie full of them, but they’re also mentioned in Herbert’s text. See, bulls are symbols of House Atreides (as the family is known), and its worldview. Paul’s dad, Duke Leto (Oscar Isaac with an impeccable beard), had a dad who enjoyed bullfighting and died in a bullfight. And, despite his waifish looks, Paul definitely has some bull in him.

Villeneuve, who crafted the mesmerizing visuals of Sicario, Arrival, and Blade Runner 2049, among others, is no slouch. The orb-like space vessels in Dune strike a delicate balance: a dash of rounded modernism reminiscent of Stanley Kubrick’s 2001: A Space Odyssey (released just a few years after Herbert’s book), plus whiffs of the more ornate Star Wars behemoths, along with Arrival’s streamlined alien monolith. That’s without going into the X-wing-adjacent, dragonfly aircrafts. Or the architecture, which leans toward spare Brutalism, even intentionally evoking World War II bunkers, as well as Frank Lloyd Wright home designs. Somehow, Villeneuve wills the mishmash into a gorgeous whole.

Since Dune takes place far into an imaginary future, you might wonder, where’s all the nifty, sleek tech? Why aren’t there… computers? And why is acclaimed thespian Stephen McKinley Henderson portraying a lackey whose eyes go totally, creepily white? We have answers: Dune is so far into the future, it is post-advanced tech. AI is literally banned following humanity’s war against computerized overlords. There aren’t even calculators in Dune. Instead, you get human computers: an elite group known as Mentats capable of machine-like calculations, which includes both Henderson’s Thufir Hawat, playing for team Atreides, and David Dastmalchian’s Piter de Vries, who works on behalf of the Harkonnens.

You may find yourself immersed in conversations about “spice” among the big Dune players and nodding along, still ignorant. As you’ve no doubt guessed, this is no smoked paprika at work. The coveted spice in the plot is mined on Arakkis, which has been ruled with brutal force by House Harkonnen (we’ll meet its big baddie soon). What you really need to know about spice is that it’s central in interplanetary feuding, sort of like… oil in our world. And the Fremen are tired of being exploited. Obviously, Herbert was alluding to geopolitical realities in his time, and there’s a whole lot to unpack when thinking about representations of race, ethnicity, and nationality in Dune, the book or the movie(s). It doesn’t all quite cleanly map onto the globe as we know it, but it’s hard to miss the loaded naming of a certain villainous Baron Vladimir Harkonnen (more on his nastiness below).

They’re actually not nuns, nor funeral attendees. But the stoic women with the black veils, including Charlotte Rampling’s Reverend Mother Mohiam, collectively known as the Bene Gesserit, have an independent and specific agenda within the overarching Imperium (with its various houses, including House Atreides, which takes over control of Arrakis at the start of the film, and their rival House Harkonnen, i.e., the bad guys). The Bene Gesserit sit somewhere outside the politics of the various houses, but they have mystical powers, particularly their ability to control minds with the intonation of their voices. (If this sounds a lot like the Force in Star Wars, consider who was inspired by whom, since George Lucas’ sci-fi franchise came well after Herbert’s novel, published in 1965.) But the Bene Gesserit don’t just want to control minds. They’ve also worked for centuries to arrange marriages among the houses to create a so-called Kwisatz Haderach, or a special heir with extraordinary powers. Yikes, but yeah, eugenics are part of this story.

In some of the blissfully lighter moments of the movie, we get to know Momoa as a hunky swordmaster who’s training young Paul. His delightful name should not be skipped over: Duncan Idaho.

We truly understand the stakes Chalamet’s Paul faces in the scene where he undergoes a pain test, administered by Rampling’s terrifying Reverend Mother (apparently Chalamet was scared of the actress on the set, which makes us feel better). What’s in that box of pain into which she insists Paul insert his hand? Technically, nothing. But it enables her to conjure unimaginable pain within Paul. If he removes his hand, as she explains, he will die via the poisoned needle she holds to his neck, known as a gom jabbar.

As Herbert wrote the pain test in his book, Paul feels the sensation of his flesh slowly burning away, which cannot be fun, so he recites a Bene Gesserit mantra. But in the film, his mother Lady Jessica (Rebecca Ferguson) softly speaks those crucial, meditative words as she stands nearby.

It’s easy to gloss over what seems like simple exposition but is in fact a planted secret: After undergoing his pain test, Paul suits up with his dad and others for a tour of Arrakis and its gaping-mouthed sandworms. This is when the Fremen paleontologist (fancy title, but she earns it) Liet Kynes (played by Sharon Duncan-Brewster) sizes him up and notices something interesting: “Your desert boots are fitted slip-fashion at the ankles. Who taught you to do that?” No one, Paul explains. “It seemed the right way.” At this point, notice the telling subtitles as she mutters in the fictional language Chakobsa: “He shall know your ways as though born to them.” Even before other Fremen get a glimpse of Paul, Kynes is on to a fundamental truth that will propel all of the events of Dune forward.

The wild designs of this Dune aren’t limited to the spaceships or Brutalist homes. By the time Skarsgård shows up literally hovering over the ground with a decidedly larger body than in real life, you might wonder if some of the old spice got to your head. But that is indeed the actor, wearing layers upon layers of prosthetics as the Harkonnen leader Baron Vladimir. While the antagonist’s appearance was arguably more grotesque in Lynch’s film, there’s no question that Skarsgård deserves some kind of thespian award for how he manages to make his eyes look so dead. Get ready for a bald, ruthless Austin Butler as relative Feyd-Rautha Harkonnen in Part Two!