Pattinson wanted to look alien in Dune: Part Three — Villeneuve said no, then changed his mind
The strangest face of the Dune finale wasn't the director's idea. By the actor's own account, it almost didn't happen at all.
A new image of Robert Pattinson's Scytale is making the rounds, and with it a story about how the look was nearly vetoed. Pattinson says he came into Dune: Part Three with one ambition — "I want to look like an alien" — and Denis Villeneuve initially turned him down flat: the character had to fit in with everybody, "he just looks like you. He's normal." Pattinson admits he was disappointed.
The reversal came by email. Not long before shooting, Pattinson says, Villeneuve wrote that he'd had an idea — and the Scytale now on posters, with the bleached brows, the blonde swept-back hair and a hairline that reads as not quite human, is what that idea became.
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The ending of this story was already public
What's verifiable is how the argument ended, because Pattinson told that part on Jimmy Kimmel Live in March: the final look takes about three hours of makeup, and when Villeneuve saw it, he was sold in the most Villeneuve way possible.
"It is so sexy. I love the hairline. It's so sexy!"
— Denis Villeneuve's reaction, as told by Pattinson on Jimmy Kimmel Live
Scytale earns the strangeness. In Dune Messiah he's a Tleilaxu Face Dancer — a shapeshifting conspirator whose entire function is wearing other people's faces, which makes "he should look normal" and "he should look alien" two defensible readings of the same character. The fan verdict under the new image sides with the actor: as one commenter put it, "Robert Pattinson fits right into Villeneuve's weird aesthetic, even if it looks wild at first glance."
Villeneuve's first instinct for Scytale was a villain who looks like Robert Pattinson. The poster version needs three hours of makeup.
The stakes on this villain are not small. Dune: Part Three opens December 18, 2026 — the "Dunesday" collision with Avengers: Doomsday, with Villeneuve holding the date and taking the IMAX screens — and Scytale is the finale's new antagonist opposite Timothée Chalamet's Paul. If the weirdest design in the movie wins the weekend, remember that it started as an actor refusing to look like himself.
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