Nearly two decades into The Fast and The Furious franchise, one that I never would have guessed would still be kicking, Universal Pictures is putting out Hobbs & Shaw, the first spin-off from the main line of films.
After the initial trilogy was met with varying degrees of excitement from fans, it seemed as though that’s where they would stop. But in 2009, three years after he directed The Fast and the Furious:
Tokyo Drift, Justin Lin delivered the fourth installment simply titled Fast & Furious. Arguably the best of the films to that point, the franchise started to reshape itself and old characters reappeared as Lin stayed on board for Fast Five and Fast & Furious 6. For Furious 7, directorial duties were handed off to Aquaman‘s James Wan, and then F. Gary Gray took over on The Fate of the Furious.
During this stretch, we saw what started as a bunch of thieves tooling around LA in Honda Civics, become international hijackers, and eventually, government-sanctioned heroes. Along the way they met some new faces – namely Luke Hobbs (Dwayne Johnson), the law enforcement badass that was hunting the team before joining them, and Deckard Shaw (Jason Statham), the rogue ex-MI5 agent who was their rival until a team-up was concocted in the eighth film.
Now, we’re getting Hobbs and Shaw together, minus the rest of the team, and it actually looks like a lot of fun.
Statham and The Rock are a pretty epic team up, not unlike when Kurt Russell and Sylvester Stallone joined forces for Tango & Cash thirty years ago – two badasses, with totally different styles, team up to bring down the bad guy. But this time around, the bad guy is a hell of a lot cooler.
The villain for this movie is played by Luther‘s Idris Elba, who appears to have superpowers of some sort, which makes sense seeing how super-human the previous films have made Hobbs and Shaw look.
The trailer has all the crazy action the series is known for, but also features a good deal of humor that seems to fit our two leads perfectly. Admittedly I enjoyed the fifth and sixth movies best myself, and since I didn’t care for Furious 7 — I skipped the eighth film entirely — but this looks like it will probably get me back on board.
Additionally, the cast will feature Vanessa Kirby (Mission: Impossible – Fallout), who plays Shaw’s sister, and from early reports steals several scenes from our two action icons. Eddie Marsan (Ray Donovan), and Eiza González (Baby Driver) also appear. Fun note, the movie almost featured Jason Mamoa as well, whom Johnson wanted to play Hobbs’ brother, but scheduling conflicts prevented his involvement. Instead, the part went to Joe Anoa’i, who WWE fans will know better by the name Roman Reigns.
Director David Leitch has an impressive list of features under his belt already, which include John Wick, Atomic Blonde, and Deadpool 2. The script comes from Chris Morgan, who has written all but the first two F&F movies.
Fast & Furious Presents: Hobbs & Shaw hits theaters August 2nd, 2019.
Images: Universal Pictures
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