If you want to know where Dune: Part Two will begin, just look to the ending of the 2021 original. Director Denis Villeneuve wants to make it clear that his new movie, set for release November 3, is not so much another film as a continuation of the first. “It’s important—it’s not a sequel, it’s a second part. There’s a difference,” Villeneuve tells Vanity Fair for this exclusive first look. “I wanted the movie to really open just where we left the characters. There’s no time jump. I wanted dramatic continuity with part one.”

Before the credits rolled on that movie, Timothée Chalamet’s young royal Paul Atreides, prophesied to become a great leader, had been reduced to nothing. He had survived the destruction of his powerful family by the rapacious industrialists known as House Harkonnen, but was cast out into the barren sands of planet Arrakis. There he met Chani, played by Zendaya, an ethereal woman who had been appearing in his dreams, and was welcomed into her tribe of desert survivors known as the Fremen. 

In the final moments, he watched as one of the Fremen used ropes and hooks to latch onto one of the burrowing leviathans known as sandworms, and rode off into the distance. “Desert power,” he says. Chani looks back at him and says, “It’s only the beginning,” which stands as a coded message to the viewer that the story remains incomplete.

To become a full-fledged Fremen, and lead them in a counterattack that will avenge his fallen family and defeat the powers corrupting the galaxy, Paul will have to ride one of these beasts in Dune: Part Two. “It’s a matter of life and death because, if you fuck it up, you’re going to kill yourself,” Villeneuve says. “It’s a rite of passage. It’s the way you become an adult in the Fremen world. That is a very important part of their culture and they respect the worms as half-gods, so they have a religious relationship with the worm.”

Elsewhere in the universe, Florence Pugh has joined the cast as Princess Irulan, the daughter of Emperor Shaddam IV (played by Christopher Walken), the supreme ruler of the galaxy, whose grip on the warring factions has slipped. “Her stake could not be higher because she’s afraid that her father could lose the throne, could lose everything,” Villeneuve says. “When I met Florence, I was struck by her assurance, how grounded she is as a young woman, how direct, how unapologetic. She has something inherently royal about her. I will definitely believe that Florence could become, in the future, a prime minister.”

Helping engineer the collapse that Princess Irulan foresees is another new character to the Dune universe, the lethal Harkonnen prince Feyd-Rautha, portrayed by Austin Butler. Moviegoers may remember this character being played by Sting in David Lynch’s 1984 adaptation of Frank Herbert’s novel, and Villeneuve draws on another rock star comparison to describe his film’s take on this soulless assassin: “Austin Butler brought to the screen something that would be a cross between a psychotic, sociopath serial killer and Mick Jagger.”

The story of Dune centers on warlords fighting for control of “spice,” the mind-altering mineral that’s found only on Arrakis and imbues those who consume it with luminous azure eyes. It’s a story about surviving with limited resources and the dangers of exploiting the natural world instead of living in harmony with it. But all of that would become abstract if the audience had no investment in who won this epic clash. Villeneuve’s challenge was to create investment in Paul’s quest for vengeance, and Chani’s determination to protect and defend her homeworld. To accomplish this, Dune: Part Two had to be an epic love story between the two. 

That was easier to propose than accomplish. “It was funny trying to figure out in this futuristic space talk, like, how do they flirt?” Zendaya tells Vanity Fair. “What does that look like for a space warrior and the young duke of a planet? How do they show that they like each other? What does that even sound like? We were definitely trying to navigate that, which was funny because all of us were stumped. I think it’s just as foreign to us as it probably is to the characters.”

The solution, she says, was another hallmark of true love: clumsiness. “Awkward and uncomfortable—there’s all those things,” Zendaya says. But her hard-fighting desert survivor, a woman who is a literal dream woman to Chalamet’s character, seemed almost too competent. “I was like, Does Chani get awkward? Does that happen to her? Does she know what that feels like?”

While Villeneuve describes Dune: Part Two as “a war epic action movie,” he says he had to be careful to let the love story not be overwhelmed. “I wanted to make a very human movie, very close to the characters, despite the scope of the film,” he says. “I kept saying to my crew, ‘The most important thing is that spark, that relationship between both of these characters.’ If we don’t capture that, if we don’t have that onscreen, there’s no movie. The epicenter of the story is this relationship.”

Chalamet says Zendaya’s character is the key to his own. “The universe of Dune is a complex world of geopolitics and with tons of ecological and technological metaphors that hold up today,” Chalamet says. “But at the center, there’s this relationship where Chani sort of becomes a moral compass.” Otherwise, the messianic prophecy that looms around his hero would feel abstract. “Even to say that out loud feels kind of huge, and she’s really the humanizing, grounding force to that,” he says.

“I think something we can all relate to is just love,” Zendaya says. “These characters literally live on another planet, right? They’re aliens. It was interesting finding these tender moments in such turmoil and chaos. These characters are just young people forced into really, really intense circumstances.”

One part of creating that sense was shooting frequently during “magic hour,” the phrase filmmakers use for that brief window when the sun is setting and the world is bathed in gold. The film was shot in remote desert locations in Abu Dhabi and Jordan, so pressure was often on Zendaya and Chalamet to capture their romantic scenes in a hurry. Otherwise, they’d have to make the long trek again and try to capture bits of the same scene. “​​There’s kind of, like, a ticking timer,” Zendaya says. “You kind of feel like, Okay, we got here, but we have maybe an hour to get this. So we revisited a bit every day, and over a few days, that gives us a few hours.” The upside was that they got to refine their performances. “Every time we revisited it, we kind of got to sleep on it and think about it, and come up with a new set of ideas.”

Villeneuve credits the two actors for finding their way. “Zendaya is a fierce warrior. [Her character] has a very strong opinion about her world, about the politics of this world, about the religions and all the impact of colonization on their culture, but there’s something about that young man that cracks her heart. And Timothée did a beautiful job to bring that sincerity onscreen.”

The shadow lurking all the while is the villainous figure that Butler plays. While technically flesh and blood, his corpse-like pale visage suggests a deadness that runs deep. Villeneuve prefers to save Feyd-Rautha’s full reveal for later in the publicity campaign, but even this silhouetted image of the Harkonnen hunter-killer suggests his ominous nature, and highlights his signature weapon of twin blades. “He’s someone Machiavellian, much more cruel, much more strategic, and is more narcissistic,” Villeneuve says.

Feyd-Rautha is also a lean, coiled presence, unlike his uncle, the Harkonnen family ruler known as the Baron (played by Stellan Skarsgård), who reigns as a corpulent grotesque. In the previous movie, the levitation suit that he uses to move his immense body crashed him into the ceiling after he was successfully poisoned, but the Baron lives. Damaged, but more deadly, and ready to seize more power in the galaxy and expand his clan’s corrosive dynasty.

“He is a physically weaker character that has to use some devices to help him to stay alive as he keeps growing,” Villeneuve says. “I always saw the Baron as some kind of hippopotamus that, because of his weight, is more comfortable in liquid. He feels more relaxed in those baths, and as we see him in that picture, he’s smoking spice.”

With his failing health, the Baron will need an heir, and Dune: Part Two presents two of them. Butler’s Feyd-Rautha, and the brutish Harkonnen enforcer from the first movie, Glossu Rabban (played by Dave Bautista). The hulking Bautista and the dagger-like Butler could not be more physically different, but Villeneuve also wanted there to be an intellectual chasm between the two characters. 

“Rabban wants to please,” Villeneuve says. “He wants to please the baron. He wants to shine in front of his uncle, but there’s something touching about Rabban because he’s a bad strategist. He’s not very intelligent. Rabban finds himself, at the end of part one, in the position where he doesn’t have the brain to be able to manage and control all these operations. Feyd-Rautha Harkonnen is a very clever, very charismatic figure, and much more brilliant.”

Among the other returning characters is Josh Brolin’s Gurney Halleck, a soldier for the Atreides family and a mentor to Paul, who gave him his earliest training as a warrior. Halleck was bloody and beaten after the attack in the first movie that brought down House Atreides, but the image you see here is from the second movie—and another cataclysmic confrontation. “Gurney Halleck survived and has come back to avenge his friends,” Villeneuve says. “For people who know Dune, there will be a massive battle at the end of Part Two.”

Also reprising her original role is Rebecca Ferguson as Lady Jessica, Chalamet’s mother and protector. As a member of the religious sisterhood known as the Bene Gesserit, Lady Jessica believes in the prophecy that her son will become a powerful liberator for the galaxy. In the first movie, as the concubine of Oscar Isaac’s Duke Leto Atreides, Lady Jessica often appeared in ornate and ceremonial outfits, befitting her position and class. In the second movie, she is a grim and hardscrabble presence. “She lost everything,” Villeneuve says. “She is a survivor like her son Paul, and she has to strategize how to accomplish her ambition. It’s a really beautiful and nicely complex character.” 

That ambition is to obsessively work toward fulfilling the prophecy that the Bene Gesserit have been trying to engineer for eons. This work is now marked on her face. “Those tattoos are linked with the prophecy,” Villeneuve says. “We see that there’s a darkness, a very specific darkness in her eyes. Lady Jessica is one of the masterminds of Dune. She’s trying to play her own agenda. The meaning of that look would be unveiled in Part Two.”

Another member of the Bene Gesserit is a new character called Lady Margot, played by Léa Seydoux. “Margot Fenring is a Bene Gesserit sister, but will be a secret agent in the movie,” Villeneuve says. “It was very playful to work with Léa. It’s a character full of surprises.” 

Is she good or evil? Villeneuve said that question doesn’t apply. “The main goal of the Bene Gesserit is to make sure that humanity will move in the right direction,” he says. “The Bene Gesserit, they don’t think about what’s good or what is evil. That’s not very important for them. What is important is to bring humanity to its full potential and to try to create a being that will bring humanity to enlightenment. It’s their full agenda, which takes place over thousands of years of planning and controlling. They are the true masters of this world. Their biggest weapon is time. They see the world in centuries.”

While Villeneuve gender-swapped the character of Dr. Liet Kynes (played by Sharon Duncan-Brewster in the first movie) to bring another female figure into the story, the back half of Herbert’s novel has far more for its fearsome women to do, including a bigger presence for Chani. “Ironically, the first one was definitely just visual,” Zendaya says. “I was literally mostly just a vision.” In Part Two, Chani is not necessarily a part of that galactic sisterhood and its centuries-long efforts to manipulate power. “There’s some tension,” Zendaya adds. “Without giving anything away, there’s an awareness of the negative impact that Lady Jessica, as a Bene Gesserit, has inflicted upon her people. So there’s definitely an animosity there, and an apprehension.”

As the Fremen leader Stilgar, Javier Bardem’s character is more accepting of Paul and his unusual mother. “Stilgar, like all the characters, is playing some chess game,” Villeneuve says. “He believes that Paul could be that prophetic figure, and he slowly keeps Paul under his wing and becomes a beautiful, surrogate father figure.”

Stilgar has been protecting his people for a long time, and they trust him. And he trusts Paul, even as the young man deepens his relationship with Chani. “Javier Bardem brought something very colorful and a lot of life to a character that could have been also just very severe,” the director adds. “That charisma explodes in Part Two. For Stilgar, the more Paul is embedded in his culture, and the more Paul evolves as a Fremen, the more he feels that they are walking in the right way.”

Completing Dune: Part Two is a personal mission for Villeneuve, who used to dream about adapting Herbert’s book when he was growing up in the small village of Gentilly in Quebec. Before the first movie debuted, his brother found a collection of storyboard illustrations that Villeneuve made with a friend when he was around 13 or 14.

The filmmaker, who was previously best known for visionary, critically acclaimed projects like the alien-visitor drama Arrival, the Blade Runner 2049 sequel, and the missing-child thriller Prisoners, spent decades trying to make a new version of Dune for the big screen. Like the Bene Gesserit, he played the long game. “Boy, it has been the most very fulfilling experience so far, and very profound for me,” he says. 

Although the first part of Dune became one of the first post-pandemic blockbusters and was nominated for 10 Oscars, winning six, the filmmaker himself still fixates on what he feels he could have done better. “You have to accept your failures as an artist,” he says. “It’s a task that was almost impossible, for me to be absolutely faithful to what those childhood dreams were. But what brings a lot of peace in my heart is that I brought a lot of them to the screen, a lot of them are close to what I had imagined.”

For now, Villeneuve is keeping his head down, staying focused on his work. “I’m deep into sound design and the visual effects, and it’s a race against time,” he says. Even discussing the film for this story was taxing for him. “I’ll be very blunt, okay?” he says with a smile, deploying the most Canadian analogy imaginable. “It’s very difficult for me to start to talk about a movie when I’m doing it. It’s like asking a hockey player to describe how he will score as he is skating toward the net.”