As Fast X marks the beginning of the end of the Fast & Furious franchise, the director and cast opened up about making the new movie to Total Film magazine. In our cover feature in the latest issue, director Louis Leterrier and series newcomer Jason Momoa explain how they're bringing back classic elements of the franchise as well as pushing the action even further than before.
One key element of this is the return of the old-school, quarter-mile Fast street race, with Dom set to go head-to-head with Momoa's character Dante in Rio. "As a fan, there’s some stuff that I really wanted back from the franchise – the street races [were one]," Leterrier tells Total Film. "That’s the fun of it all: when you’re the head of a movie [series] that you’ve admired and have been a fan of for so many years, you get to bring your fantasies to life!"
As a newcomer to the series, Momoa was surprised by just how much of the action and stunt driving he and his fellow cast were permitted to perform themselves. "This is full adrenaline… It rules," Momoa says with an explosive burst of enthusiasm. "Riding around cobblestone streets in Rome that have centuries of wear, so when you stop, you slide… One of our producers was like, 'We’re letting him drive through Rome like that?' I was like, 'Yeah, man!'"
Vehicle co-ordinator Dennis McCarthy has worked on every Fast film since Tokyo Drift, and estimates that, with each significant car featured on screen requiring around seven duplicates, over 200 cars were built by his workshop for Fast X – all to the race-car standards required for the series’ demanding stunt work. The film will also introduce a fleet of electric vehicles to the series for the first time, including a Dodge Charger Daytona and the upcoming DeLorean Alpha5. "The one thing about Fast & Furious films is: unlike most movies, where you build a car that looks fast, and they’re not really concerned about the performance, on a Fast movie, we build the cars to get the job done as if it were on a race track," McCarthy grins.
These vehicles – and Dom’s unmistakable Dodge Charger – will be deployed in several typically OTT Fast set pieces, including a sequence in Rome where a real one-tonne 'bomb' is dribbled around the ancient streets like a football, but by cars. There’ll also be several standout close-quarters action scenes, with Dante demonstrating he’s more than capable with a pair of knives, an explosive return to a familiar bridge in Rio, and a knockdown womano-a-womano showdown between Charlize Theron’s hacker mastermind Cipher and Michelle Rodriguez’s Letty.
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Fast X opens in cinemas on May 19. This is just a snippet of our huge cover feature on Fast X, including interviews with Vin Diesel and Brie Larson as well. For much more, grab a copy of the new issue of Total Film magazine when it hits shelves (and digital newsstands) this Thursday, March 30. Check out the covers below:
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