Pakistan turned Dune: Part Three's Paul and Alia into memes, and critics noticed what Villeneuve cut
The jokes and the orientalism complaints were pointing at the same thing, and Frank Herbert never hid it. Dune Messiah's holy war reaches cinemas on 18 December.
Empire's December issue, on sale 22 October, released new stills from Dune: Part Three this week, and one of them has been living a second life in Pakistan and across Arab social media since 16 October 2026. Timothée Chalamet's Paul, head shaved and now Padishah Emperor of the Known Universe, sits on his throne. Anya Taylor-Joy's Alia stands beside him, covered head to toe in white. On paper, that is the most dangerous brother and sister in the galaxy. A lot of viewers saw the family portrait after Friday prayers.
The jokes came from people who know that picture from their own phones:
- The household verdict: "standard jummah photo in a Pakistani household".
- The domestic version: "Me and my wife after iftar waiting for her to finish namaz so we can have chai."
- The blessing: "Mashallah Anya sister".
- The geography lesson: "couples from dagestan", over the two of them side by side.
None of this is laughing at the faith. It is recognition: the shaved head, the white garment and the pose are lifted from real life, and the people who live that life spotted it instantly.
Orientalism 101, according to the replies
Not everyone was laughing. As The New Arab rounded up, some replies called the costume an orientalist fantasy, and one put it in a single line: "Orientalism 101: Arab and Islamic aesthetics without Islam or Arabs". Several Muslim fans added a sharper point. Taylor-Joy gets praised for a striking look, while the same modest dress on ordinary Muslim women is often met with suspicion or worse.
The jummah meme and the orientalism complaint are the same sentence in two different moods.
The complaint sounds like the opposite of the memes. It isn't. The people joking and the people objecting are pointing at the same thing: they know exactly where this outfit came from, and the film never says it out loud.
Read more: Dune: Part Three won't hit a billion — blame the book Villeneuve chose to film
What Herbert wrote and Villeneuve left out
Frank Herbert did not hide his sources. The books are full of Islamic and Arabic vocabulary: jihad, Mahdi, Lisan al-Gaib, Shai-Hulud. A great deal of the texture came from Lesley Blanch's 1960 history The Sabres of Paradise, about Imam Shamil's Muslim resistance to the Russian Empire in the Caucasus. Kanly, kindjal and Chakobsa all came from there. Which means "couples from dagestan" is, to be fair, closer to Herbert's research notes than the person who posted it probably intended.
Villeneuve's films kept Lisan al-Gaib, the desert, the robes and the chanting crowds. What critics have pointed out since the first trailer is the missing word. The 2020 trailer promised "a crusade", and the films talk of a "holy war". Herbert's word, jihad, one of the saga's central ideas, never makes the screen. The faith got reduced to wardrobe, and the wardrobe is what Muslim viewers recognised.
The holy war arrives on 18 December
That is where the still stops being just a meme. Dune Messiah, the book Part Three adapts, is about the aftermath of Paul's war: in it he tallies sixty-one billion dead and compares himself, unfavourably, to Hitler. Villeneuve told Empire the new film shares the DNA of the first two but is "a very different movie":
"We are back with the same characters, but this time the world has totally changed."
— Denis Villeneuve, in his Empire interview
Dune: Part Three opens in cinemas and IMAX on 18 December 2026. To tell the story of a religious war started in the desert, Villeneuve will have to show it to the audience in Lahore, Cairo and Almaty that has already spotted where the costumes came from. They will be watching for whether the film says the word this time.
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