Movie marketing is often designed to be simple and immediate, but the new Dune 3 poster shows how effective visual design can be at building expectation if it's just cryptic enough to get people theorising about the film months before release.
At first glance, the minimalist design doesn't seem to reveal much new about Denis Villeneuve's third and final Dune movie. It shows the Dune logo written vertically and depicts two of the main stars, Timothée Chalamet and Zendaya as Paul Atreides and Chani.
But, like many of the best movie posters, some subtle details provide plenty for fans to pore over.
This article includes speculation about possible plot directions in the upcoming movie Dune 3.
Dune: Part Three is set three years after Paul defeats the Harkonnens and takes the throne. In Frank Herbert's saga, it corresponds to Dune Messiah, the second of the six novels, but both the poster and the new trailer (below) raise doubts about how closely it will follow the text.
The poster design shows Paul and Chani standing face-to-face with crysknives drawn, against a massive sun. This appears to set up a lovers-turned-enemies story as hinted at the end of Dune 2. That would be a considerable deviation from the novel.
In Dune Messiah, Chani remains loyal to Paul and dies in childbirth without really doing very much. The Dune: Part Three poster makes her appear to be an opponent of Paul's.
That's already generating some controversy among fans of the novels. Some welcome Chani having a more prominent role. Making here the personification of Herbert’s messages about authoritarianism and religious fanaticism, could help prevent audiences from misinterpreting Paul as the hero the way they did with the novel.
But some fear that a direct conflict between the former lovers would turn the movie trilogy into a completely different story.
"Paul and Chani standing off against each other like this makes me nervous that it's gonna not be a Dune-related story. I'm already getting flashbacks of S8 Game of Thrones," one fan writes on Reddit.
"This would be a Batman v Superman level disaster if they make Chani and Paul fight," another person fears.
But could there be some deceptive misdirection at work?
Eagle-eyed fans immediately noticed the blue scarf around Paul’s wrist, presumably Chani's Nezhoni scarf, which she previously wore to signify her romantic bond to Paul. Some wonder why Paul would be wearing it if the pair were now enemies.
Some fans have a theory that the figure facing Paul in the poster isn't Chani but the shapeshifting Scytale played by Robert Pattinson. In the novel, he takes on the likeness of a woman called Lichna.
But does the poster necessarily show a fight? Some suggest that Chani seems to he approaching in a calm way rather than in a fighting stance.
Meanwhile, the solution they found to fix the Dune logo is turning out to be a useful design feature.
The well-placed solar eclipse and beam of light that were added to the middle arm on the E have evolved over the trilogy. The logo for the second movie added a second beam of light and made the eclipse only partial. The final film's logo has three beams, and there's no longer an eclipse but a full, uncovered sun.
It's a nice detail in itself, but some fans are reading more into it. There's a theory that the lack of eclipse symbolises Paul's dream of a falling moon in the novels. Others suggest that the increasing amount of light indicates how the Golden Path intensifies for Paul over the course of the story with his increasing foreknowledge of humanity's future.
And to think the planet was only added so the internet would stop with the 'Dunc' memes. All the same, I still think the Lego Dune logo remains the best take on the design.
Dune 3 will be released on 18 December.
