Everything’s bigger in the Fast and Furious franchise, including the previews. Our first look at Fast X comes in the form of a jumbo-sized, nearly four-minute long trailer. The penultimate installment of the hugely successful action franchise comes on May 19, and this first look checks all the boxes: dialog about the importance of family, expensive-looking vehicles exploding, a slew of international setpieces, and Vin Diesel wearing a mechanic’s shirt.
Beginning with Rita Moreno, debuting in the franchise as Abuela Toretto, delivering an emotional speech about, you guessed it, family, the trailer introduces Jason Momoa’s Dante, who is poised to be Fast X’s big bad (alongside Charlize Theron’s Cipher). As the trailer makes clear, Dante is related to Hernan Reyes, the drug kingpin played by Joaquim de Almeida in the series seminal 2011 entry Fast Five. Dante is out for revenge and is targeting Dom’s family, including his son Brian, now aged up to an eight-year-old.
Though this installment looks as glossy and over-the-top as some of the recent features, there does appear to be an attempt to restore the original feeling with a street racing scene. Then again, there’s a scene where Dom’s muscle car gets hooked by two harpoons and crashes a pair of helicopters into each other, so things aren’t exactly grounded here.
The preview for Fast X continues the trend of turning ‘90s rap classics into epic orchestral numbers, this time flipping The Notorious B.I.G. and Bone Thugs ‘n Harmony’s “Notorious Thugs” into an operatic nail-biter.
Though the absence of Dwayne Johnson’s Luke Hobbs is keenly felt–he and Vin have a longstanding beef–Fast X is peppered with A-lister both new—including Brie Larson and Moreno— and old, with the return of John Cena as Dom’s brother and Jason Statham as villain-turned-ally Deckard Shaw. And of course, the “family” is around, too, including Michelle Rodriguez, Tyrese Gibson, Ludacris, Jordana Brewster, and Sung Kang. (And yes, Kang and Statham share a scene acknowledging that time Shaw “killed” Han.)
Despite the longstanding history between the franchise’s principle players, making Fast X was hardly a well-oiled machine. Director Justin Lin left the film one week into production, citing creative differences, though he remains credited as a producer. Lin was replaced by Louis Leterrier, a director known for his work on Transporter 2 and Now You See Me, though nothing on the level of Fast X, which has a jaw-dropping $340 million budget. In a February interview with Empire, Leterrier said that he “brought [the franchise] back to earth,” presumably a nod to the absurd rocket car scene in F9. Presumably, Leterrier will helm the final installment in the franchise, and he’s already showing a knack for the dramatic, high-stakes language his characters love to use.
“There’s a war brewing. It’s coming to an end, and it is a race to the finish,” Letterier told Empire. “There will be some tremendous casualties.”
Still, with scenes in three continents, the most impressive cast this side of an Avengers movie, and a 20-plus-year story arc to conclude, even a more grounded Fast and Furious movie has sky high expectations.