After what feels like a lifetime of seeing stills and hearing rumours, we finally have a first trailer for Denis Villeneuve’s Dune. And, right at the end of it, they show the Sandworm.

To say why the worm is important to the story of Dune and this movie adaptation would be a spoiler, even if it is central to the premise of this series. You may think it’s silly to talk about spoilers for Frank Herbert’s source material book that came out in 1965, but if you haven’t read it yet you may as well start now or wait for the movie.

In terms of waiting we will need to do that for a few more months as Dune is scheduled to release on 18th December. Like a few other movies the adamant “only in theatres” phrase pops up near the end despite the global pandemic still happening with no end in sight. Like Tenet this seems to be another high profile, highly anticipated title that people will need to risk their health to see.

Those things aside it is good to see the world of Dune fleshed out like this. We’ve seen people online complain that everything looks a bit drab here, but we think that may just be people clinging onto the colourful insanity that was supposed to be Jodorowsky’s Dune. As we’ll be spending so much time on a desert world in a near hopeless situation, the more stoic approach seems fitting.

One interesting change many caught in the trailer was the use of the word “crusade”. In Dune this fervent war across the galaxy on behalf of Paul Atreides (played by Timothée Chalamet) is referred to instead as a “jihad”. This was changed because of the use of this word in relation to terror attacks, but we have to wonder which term will be used in the actual movie.