Inside that epic “Dune: Part 2” duel between Timothée Chalamet and Austin Butler
The actors, director Denis Villeneuve, and fight coordinator Roger Yuan reveal how they perfected the sci-fi film's thrilling fight scenes.
Warning: This article contains spoilers about Dune: Part Two.
Singing and talking like Elvis is one thing, but learning to fight like a Harkonnen was a whole new challenge for Austin Butler. Costar Timothée Chalamet knows how he feels.
“On the first [Dune], I felt like I had to prove myself the whole time,” Chalamet tells Entertainment Weekly. “And here I felt like Austin had to prove himself.”
That he did. Butler, who says he came into Dune: Part Two with “a lot of respect for everyone involved — everyone from the actors to the department heads are at the top of their game,” spent his first week on set filming the debut scene of his character, Feyd-Rautha Harkonnen. We meet Feyd-Rautha on his birthday, which he is celebrating in the gladiator pits of the Harkonnen homeworld, Giedi Prime.
The gladiator sequence is filmed in black-and-white because, director Denis Villeneuve says, “I had never seen that before on screen, a planet where the sunlight erases colors, and I thought it would absolutely go with this vampire look that I brought to the Harkonnens. They are creatures living in a fascist society in an artificial, totally plastic environment.”
The unique visuals also had another resonance. Rest assured, the desert set literally felt white-hot that day.
“It was 110 degrees,” Butler says. “I had the bald cap on, and it was between two soundstages that were just these gray boxes of 200-foot walls and sand. It became like a microwave. There were people passing out from heatstroke. And that was just my first week.”
Warner Bros. Pictures
Austin Butler in 'Dune: Part Two'Chalamet had been through some of this before on the 2021 Dune, which climaxed with a duel between his character, Paul Atreides, and the Fremen fighter Jamis (Babs Olusanmokun). Chalamet’s biggest memory from that scene is how uneven he felt on the rocky desert that the Fremen call home.
“That was challenging in that the terrain wasn’t even,” Chalamet says. “So there were a lot of turned ankles.”
“It’s funny because it’s true,” Zendaya adds with a laugh. “I was there. I was sitting on my rock, just watching y’all.”
“That killed me,” Chalamet continues. “You came in for a week and had me dying in front of you.”
Butler had more even ground to fight on — first the sands of the arena, then the smooth tiles of the imperial palace. But in addition to proving he could withstand the heat, the actor also demonstrated his natural athleticism.
“Austin has such fast-twitch muscle movement, and an incredible work ethic,” fight coordinator Roger Yuan tells EW. “He probably could have made a living as a stuntman had he not chosen acting.”
Yuan is a good source of authority on Butler’s skills, since they actually fought on screen. In addition to his work designing the fighting styles for Dune’s various factions and figuring out how to weave that action into the story and character beats, Yuan also plays the role of Lieutenant Lanville, a survivor of the Harkonnen massacre of House Atreides who is allowed to fight Feyd-Rautha in the arena without protective shields — or much of anything else.
“Hey, I got to play a pivotal role as an old dude doing battle against an Oscar-nominated young gun in a Denis Villeneuve film…in nothing but a leather diaper,” Yuan says.
Niko Tavernise/Warner Bros. Pictures
Timothée Chalamet and Austin Butler in 'Dune: Part Two'Finally, the time came to film the climactic duel between Paul and Feyd-Rautha. Unlike the duels between Paul/Jamis and Feyd-Rautha/Lanville, this fight is not just two actors face to face. They were surrounded by most of the film’s entire cast — including Christopher Walken, Florence Pugh, Charlotte Rampling, Rebecca Ferguson, and Javier Bardem.
“Christopher Walken was pretty scared for you guys,” Pugh recalls. “He was like, ‘Do they have to be fighting so close?’ I was like, ‘I think so!’ He and Charlotte were both very concerned that you were getting very good at it and getting very close. And I was like, ‘Well, they're professionals!’”
“That’s awesome,” Butler says.
But though Butler is known for immersing himself in his roles (his voice famously adapted to that of Elvis Presley’s even after wrapping his Oscar-nominated role in Elvis), Chalamet is thankful his costar didn’t display the sadism of Feyd-Rautha.
“It was amazing to have the gravitas of everyone being there, and shooting the fight practically,” Chalamet says. “Austin was so respectful between takes, but then within a take was totally letting loose and kicking ass. It was great.”
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