Dune: Part Three

This week’s Trailaurality blog explores the official teaser trailer for Dune: Part Three. Hans Zimmer’s scores for Denis Villeneuve’s Dune films have made exciting and creative uses of layered vocals (check out his theme for the Bene Gesserit), so it rings true that the music in this trailer features humming, chanting, and shouting. The trailer’s cut in three parts, each part more intense than the previous.

The opening 50 seconds focus on the relationship between Chani (Zendaya) and Paul (Timothée Chalamet). Here we have a short humming motif from a male voice (Chalamet?). The orchestra plays two sustained chords each time through the hummed melody. On screen, Chani and Paul are calmly discussing names for their unborn child, and this sequence is intercut with sweeping wide shots of open desert.

The trailer takes a more active turn at 0:46, and now the steady beat of martial drums supports a group of male voices chanting in a foreign tongue (and in a rare example of trans-diegetic music, we actually see this chanting coming from soldiers’ mouths at 0:57). This second section of the trailer features a voiceover from a conversation where Paul navigates pressure from his mother, Lady Jessica (Rebecca Ferguson). At 1:02 we hear the blast of a war horn synched to a panning shot of a space shuttle speeding through outer space.

We move into part three of the trailer at 1:20. At the cut to a shot of a long line of soldiers drawing their blades, the chant from earlier is now being shouted vigorously. Along with layers of drums, we have staccato strings pulsing steady sixteenth note lines to add momentum and energy to the arrangement. This high-energy music is fleeting, as it cuts out at 1:29 for Paul and Lady Jessica to continue their whispered conversation about Paul’s father.

The music of the shouted chant surges back in triple time at full volume at 1:36, now with the violins wailing in their extreme upper range, and accompanied by brass, synths and choir. Shots of battles lead to an epic shot of Paul ascending to command an army of millions, at 2:01, as the chant comes to a stop.

At 2:08, over a shot of Chani wielding a knife and looking determined, we hear the humming motif from the start of the trailer one final time, followed by a tasteful sudden cut to complete silence and black screen at 2:15, and one final dazzling chord over the Dune title card at 2:16. A series of accents on big drums accompanies the reveal of the star-studded ensemble cast’s names at 2:20.

For a final film in a blockbuster franchise, let’s give some credit here to the trailer creators in their innovative use of unorthodox vocals that feel very much in the sound world that Hans Zimmer’s team have been creating for the first two Dune films. This is a trailer structured to build to its own epic conclusion, much like the film trilogy that it heralds.

We’ll need to wait until December 18, 2026 for Dune: Part Three to hit theatres, but I think it will be worth the wait.

— Jack Hui Litster