LOS ANGELES – Director Denis Villeneuve and actor Timothee Chalamet bound into the room talking at, and over, each other in rapid French.

Villeneuve is from Quebec, Canada; Chalamet was born in New York City, but has dual American and French citizenship. Together, they are a dynamic tag team dressed near-identically in head-to-toe black, although Chalamet’s shiny leather layers have more swagger.

The topic of the day is galactic genocide and dubious messiahs, central themes in Dune: Part Two, the second instalment of their cerebral space epic based on the 1965 novel by Frank Herbert that opens in Singapore cinemas on Feb 29.

Yet, the two are prone to giggling fits.

“We didn’t see each other since a while, so it’s like a holiday,” Villeneuve, 56, says apologetically, switching to English. When coffee arrives at the room at the Four Seasons hotel in Los Angeles, the two clink mugs.

“That’s our spice,” he says with a chuckle, referring to the psychedelic substance found only on the movie’s planet Arrakis.

In Dune, spice is the most valuable resource in the universe.

Herbert conceived of it as a glittering dust with the power to expand minds, fuel interstellar travel and incite bloody battles over its distribution. Combine the brain-melting effects of peyote, the geopolitical strife over oil and the violence of Prohibition-era bootlegging. Multiply that by the number of stars in the sky and you get the idea.

Dune, released in 2021, won six Academy Awards. It climaxed with Chalamet’s sheltered scion, Paul Atreides, abducted from his family’s spice-mining compound and left to die in the scorching Arrakis desert, patrolled by fanged sandworms the size of the Empire State Building.

To survive Part Two, Paul’s mother Jessica (Rebecca Ferguson) encourages the Fremen, a tribe of desert dwellers, to believe that her son is its long-awaited saviour. The danger is that Paul might be swayed to believe it too, even as the hallucinogenic spice peppers him with visions of a war waged in his name.

Heavy stuff. Not that it is weighing down their mood.

As Chalamet, 28, grins, he says: “The great irony of working with a master like Denis is it’s not some pompous experience.”

The two speak further about the next potential sequel and the impossible quest for on-screen perfection.

People have described your dynamic as father and son. Is that how it feels to you?

Denis Villeneuve (DV): At the beginning, I had a lot of empathy for Timothee that he was stepping forward in a production of that scale. He’s the age of my kids, and I was trying to find ways to take care of my new friend. Maybe I was paternalistic.

Timothee Chalamet (TC): I was grateful. The scale was so large, the actors were such titans. I felt a protected aura.

DV: When he walked onto the set of Part Two, it was totally different. Much more confident. Much more solid. He was not impressed by the size of things any more. You were jaded. It’s the first time I had the chance to see an artiste growing up in front of the camera. That’s very moving.

Audiences could have left Dune thinking, this Paul Atreides kid is terrific, I can’t wait to see him take over this planet. Here is where disillusionment sets in.

DV: Frank Herbert wanted the book to be a cautionary tale, a warning against charismatic religious leaders. He felt that he failed because people misperceived his intentions. So he wrote Dune Messiah (1969), an epilogue where he made sure his ideas would be seen. I think the movie’s more tragic and more dramatic than the book because it’s closer to Frank’s intentions.

In Dune, there is the quote, “Fear is the mind-killer.” Has making these films affected how you handle being afraid?

TC: I’m playing a grounded character who is – simply by way of the eyes on him – going through something I can relate to.

DV: Movies are very long to make, so it does have an impact on your own psyche. Definitely, it put a seed inside me. I developed an aptitude to be comfortable not knowing the answer right away.

Dune exists in a post-computer world. Computers were destroyed and everybody decided to not rebuild them.

DV: They banned AI and the computer. They are trying to increase the human capacities biologically, instead of having external machines. Dune is not much of a science-fiction movie. It’s more about embracing a new culture. For me, it’s more interesting to explore sand-walking. It’s more poetic and cinematic than a spaceship.

In that spirit, you filmed in physical locations in Jordan and Abu Dhabi, United Arab Emirates, that stood in for a planet where it’s only safe to be outside at sunrise and sunset. That must mean pulling off scenes in a narrow window of sunlight.

TC: Definitely. Those scenes with Chani (Paul’s love interest, played by American actress Zendaya), we would shoot at dawn – sometimes over three days – because you have 30 minutes or an hour.

DV: It gives a lot of credit to the actors, because the cinematographer (Greig Fraser, who won an Oscar for the first Dune) and the director are stubborn and want a precise light that will exist for 10 minutes. I didn’t want to make any compromise. There are scenes that on-screen look very simple, but would be shot in several different environments just to make sure that we have the right rock at the right colour at the right time of the day with the precise sun. It was constructed like a puzzle.

Neither of you are strangers to intense compliments. Denis, you’ve been called a genius, this generation’s Stanley Kubrick.

DV: I learnt very early in my career that the bigger the flowers, the bigger the pot that follows after. If you receive a big compliment, someone else will say that you’re a hack.

And Timothee, you were nominated for your first Oscar at 22 (Best Actor for 2017’s Call Me By Your Name). You both must have insight into the arc of this film: the temptation to buy into your own hype.

DV: Fortunately, I’m always feeling like an impostor, so there’s no danger.

TC: I’d say the difference is, in this story, there’s human life at stake. The role of an actor is never that consequential. Even if you’re making powerful work and people relate to it. NYTIMES

• Dune: Part Two opens in cinemas on Feb 29.