Denis Villeneuve has done it again, apparently. After showing the first seven minutes of ‘Dune: Part Three‘ to a packed CinemaCon crowd in Las Vegas, and more recently at a trailer launch event, one comparison keeps coming up. People say it plays like Steven Spielberg‘s ‘Saving Private Ryan,’ but set in deep space.
The sequence opens in near silence, just drums and thunder, before a fleet of angular ships punches through a violent storm toward an unfamiliar planet. Some ships get hit by lightning as they descend, and the drop toward the surface looks brutal. Inside the crafts, though, things are quiet and human. Soldiers fidget with personal totems, read small books, or pray together before landing.
Denis Villeneuve on the ‘Saving Private Ryan’ Comparison to ‘Dune: Part Three’
Once the surviving ships touch down, Javier Bardem’s Stilgar leads Fremen warriors out into rain that many of them have never felt before. One soldier marvels that “water will fall from the sky,” while Stilgar tells his troops “God be with us” before they charge forward chanting “Ready!” The calm doesn’t last long. The moment Stilgar leads his troops into the rain toward enemy lines, gunfire erupts. What follows has been called visceral, chaotic, and unrelenting by people who saw it.
Related: “Even the Good Can Be Corrupted”: Timothée Chalamet Reveals the Real Message of ‘Dune: Part Three’
The Spielberg comparison isn’t something reporters just came up with on their own. Villeneuve invited it. He’s a longtime admirer of Spielberg, and the feeling goes both ways. Spielberg once interviewed him for a Directors Guild of America podcast about ‘Dune: Part Two.’ Journalist Barry Hertz summed up the reaction on social media, writing that the sequence “played like an intergalactic SAVING PRIVATE RYAN” and that “you felt it in your bones.”
Critic John Rocha seemed just as stunned, telling attendees, “I am speechless for what is coming,” while another person at the event simply warned that “no one is ready.“
For Villeneuve, this shift in tone is on purpose. Talking to the press, he explained that each film in the trilogy has its own mood. The first was “more of a contemplation, like a boy exploring a new world.” The second was a war movie. This one is a thriller, “action-packed and tense, more muscular.” He also said he wanted this film to break away from patterns he’d already set rather than repeat them, and that silence is still one of his favorite tools as a director, even in a scene as loud as this one.
New ‘Dune: Part Three’ Cinematographer Linus Sandgren Replaces Greig Fraser
The footage also confirms a big change behind the camera. Oscar-winning cinematographer Greig Fraser, who shot the first two ‘Dune‘ films, didn’t come back for this one. He’s moved on to other projects. His replacement is Linus Sandgren, known for working with Damien Chazelle on ‘Babylon,’ ‘First Man,’ and ‘La La Land,’ and with Emerald Fennell on ‘Saltburn.’ Early word is that fans worried about the switch. However, that worry has faded, with Sandgren’s IMAX-scale shots described as crisp, sleek, and just as ambitious as Fraser’s work.
In case you missed it: How ‘Dune: Part Three’s 17-Year Time Jump Transforms Alia Atreides Into the Saga’s Ultimate Power Player
The story picks up roughly 17 years after ‘Part Two,’ pulling from ‘Dune Messiah,’ and brings back Jason Momoa, not as the original Duncan Idaho this time, but as Hayt, a clone built from Duncan’s cells. Timothée Chalamet and Zendaya return as Paul and Chani.
‘Dune: Part Three’ Release Date
You won’t have to wait until December to get a taste either. Villeneuve revealed that part of the opening sequence, shot on 70mm IMAX film, will screen ahead of IMAX showings of ‘The Odyssey‘ starting July 17, 2026.
‘Dune: Part Three‘ itself hits theaters December 18, 2026, the same month as ‘Avengers: Doomsday,’ which has people already calling it this year’s version of ‘Barbenheimer.‘
You might also want to read: “I Was Losing A Part Of Me”: Timothée Chalamet Gets Emotional Over ‘Dune: Part Three’ Ending After Nearly A Decade
