On Austin Butler’s Feyd-Rautha, Breaking the All-American Tom Cruise Image, and the “Young Hollywood” Royal Four of Dune 2

The trailer for "Dune: Part Two" took the world by storm. And for a logical reason. The film features four of the biggest names in Hollywood today, actors known as "young Hollywood," the next generation not enamored with Marvel movies and popularity. Yes, they are A-listers of the top tier, and their lives and paparazzi shots reflect that. However, they're also devoted and dedicated, trying to carve their names beyond being brand ambassadors for luxury perfumes and underwear. They lead big-budget movies, but they also travel to Europe to experiment with a European creative name "Zendaya and Timothee Chalamet", go down in the dirt to do an indie that costs nothing "Florence Pugh", or look into literature and try to be the hero in a modern-day epic that resembles all the Greek mythological adaptations that took the 80s/90s movie screens by storm "Austin Butler".

However, none of this mattered to the hungry Internet onlookers, because the most talked about aspect of the trailer was: Was Austin Butler seriously going bald?

The initial reactions ranged from sarcastic and dismissive to hopelessly devoted and infatuated by the superstar's image. Austin's fans still hold on to his beauty and image, like a modern-day Jesus, a Visconti-type Roman god-like figure, someone to revere and worship, treated with scary and research-worthy delicacy, like a China doll they are afraid to hold and break. Some of the more mature audiences were curious, and some were appreciative. Was Austin Butler that ballsy? Was he more interested in the aesthetic of losing that main thing that defines him; his beauty? Is it possible to spiral down the "nose" rabbit hole that former beauties have fallen into; Nicole Kidman, and Charlize Theron to name just a few? Or was he seriously solidifying his steps by molding into the actor that he has been patiently putting on the armor, learning the makeup artistry, studying the body, experimenting with the props (probably experimenting with it in the Cabinet of Dr. Caligari-like dungeon where he stores his serious creative side - like many other artists before him), assembling, gathering, and finally emerging with the results to a world that is watching with both fascination and scrutiny?

It's not that significant. Austin is slowly shedding the blindfold of being too much of a heartthrob on TV. Roles like "Shannara" and "Carrie Diaries" might earn him a swarming following of worshippers, but not a place in the collective history of art and storytelling. He found himself faced with the daunting challenge of balancing his celebrity image with remaining true to his inherent artistic abilities, which seems to be the main driving force behind his career choices, as he finally reached the place that he had -deservedly- worked so hard for.

So what happens in the creation of a movie character's looks?

After my recent conversations with multiple hair and makeup artists, costume designers, and DPs, I saw the creative process through a different lens. A character on paper differs from what the actor embodies. And a character like Feyd-Rautha Harkonnen is a different breed of monster. Looking at the BDSM-inspired costume that Jodorowsky initially envisioned for Feyd, it was clear how sexualized and sadistic he is. It would be interesting to see what shadows of that interpretation remains and what is omitted in the new adaptation.

Described initially in Frank Herbert's novel as a dark-haired youth of about sixteen years, round of face and with sullen eyes. This couldn't be further from what Austin Butler showed in the Dune trailer.

In another instance, At the Baron’s elbow walked Feyd-Rautha. His dark hair was dressed in close ringlets that seemed incongruously gay above sullen eyes. He wore a tight-fitting black tunic and snug trousers with a suggestion of bell at the bottom. Soft-soled slippers covered his small feet.

Even the Baron lustfully - or in an admiring, borderline creepy manner- reminisces on the future he has for Feyd:

Beloved Feyd-Rautha, Benign Feyd-Rautha, the compassionate one who saves them from a beast. Feyd-Rautha, a man to follow and die for. The boy will know by that time how to oppress with impunity. I’m sure he’s the one we need. He’ll learn. And such a lovely body. Really a lovely boy.

On the other hand, the Baron in the book is as precisely as we see him in the first "Dune", a fat blubber of a character with emphasis on his gross body in passages like this one:

The Baron shifted his gross body in the suspensors, focused his attention on an ebaline statue of a leaping boy in a niche across the room. Sleep faded from him. He straightened the padded suspensor beneath the fat folds of his neck, stared across the single glowglobe of his bedchamber to the doorway where Captain Nefud stood blocked by the pentashield.

It must have been a joint decision between Austin and Denis Villeneuve to make Austin's Feyd like an alien hybrid, a pale, slimy Harkonnen lacking what defines Austin the most; his beauty and his physical appearance. They sat together and decided that to make this character, there must be something beyond what meets the eye. I understand that there are a thousand interpretations of how a villain should look like. There are far more lethal and handsome devils in film and TV. But this particular creative choice was a carefully crafted milestone in the plan that Austin the artist -not the celebrity, nor the performer- had been carefully weaving. He is trying to carve a path that carefully treads the line between an attractive person who has been known for his looks almost all his life. During his rise to superstardom, he successfully portrayed one of the most beautiful men on earth, Elvis Presley. So to work around that, without losing the fanbase that pushed him forward, Austin's steps should be careful, tactful, and calculated. This is in a way that sees art uncompromised for the sake of aesthetics, without also completely disregarding his oozing classic Hollywood charm.

By looking back at some of the more talented leading men known for their stunning physicality, one could track stars like Brad Pitt and Leonardo DiCaprio.

Leo, of course, is the apex of the Hollywood hierarchy of leading men. He has evolved from doing a film like "The Man in the Iron Mask" that wouldn't have made a dollar at the box office if not for his rabid female fanbase. He has also ignored these looks in movies like "J. Edgar" or "The Revenant". Leo became a movie star who is willing to deconstruct that image for the sake of roles as ridiculous and hilarious at the same time as "The Wolf of Wall Street" or most recently from what we saw in the trailer for "Killers of the Flower Moon" where his character is not only an average joe -as far as Leo DiCaprio could be- but also dim-witted, manipulated by the more cunning men, so it's not like he was a movie star character, carefully plotting and tactfully planting leads or clues. Leo in a very daring move is going deep down the hole that he avoided in roles like "Shutter Island" or "Inception" where characters might not be what viewers would consider hot or sexy, but they are the kind of men that lead investigations or drive the narrative forward. These are all preliminary assumptions just like the ones that I'm making about Austin Butler's Feyd. However, that trailer shows DiCaprio weaving in a character, unlike others he portrayed before. He is brave at such an age -he's almost 50- to reinvent himself and look for ways that defy viewers' expectations.

It's always tricky with other actors of the previous generation, but Brad Pitt (while lacking the acting credibility and lucrative career of DiCaprio) has taken some bold moves with his career as well. Pitt will be the handsome leading man even if he plays the average guy. He's a very hot lawyer in "Sleepers", he's the ultimate morally ambiguous dreamboat in "Legends of the Fall", he's a very sexy detective in "Seven", he's a homoerotic dream of a gothic beauty in "Interview with the Vampire" but he's also an insane, dirty, grimy, funny guy in "Snatch" with an insane Irish accent and some marvelous work of his crazy eyes. Brad Pitt created another male icon in "Fight Club" playing the sexual yet psychopathic Tyler Durden and gave the 00s a true anti-hero unlike anybody else. He twisted his comedic side in more than one instance, unafraid to be funny like in "Burn After Reading", "Once Upon a Time in Hollywood", or even the unbelievable tale of "12 Monkeys".

Tom Cruise is a different kind of leading man. For starters, Cruise wasn't an artsy actor, but more of a box-office-slamming, unified celebrity image. As Cruise, he will look cool on screen, get the girl, save the day, and throw a couple of American jokes to solidify his American charm worldwide and at the box office. Experimentation and artistry beyond the "Cruise" image could be classified in a very tricky -but also interesting- category: deconstructing the alpha American male image. In "Magnolia" he plays a parody of toxic masculinity and male vulnerability combined, ranging from the extreme to the extreme. In "Eyes Wide Shot" he is the sidekick to Nicole Kidman, the main player of the film, the real protagonist with her moral and sexual dilemma. He is the American husband and father, crushed and declassified while watching helplessly as his stoned wife fantasizes about sleeping with another man.

So that being said, Austin Butler has a long road to explore, and a series of mountains to climb. Which way will he go, that is the question. And personally as a movie buff and a critic, I am here to revel in the marvel of anticipating a movie star, in the times of this dying breed of filmmaking.