FAST & FURIOUS 9
The turbocharged franchise revs up its next huge installment...
DIRECTOR Justin Lin STARRING Vin Diesel, John Cena, Michelle Rodriguez, Jordana Brewster, Charlize Theron, Sung Kang
The future of film has never felt more uncertain than right now. As major Hollywood players bet big on the streaming future at the expense of the debilitated exhibition industry, the outlook for cinemas certainly seems grim. But not if Vin Diesel has any say in the matter.
“I am so committed to the theatrical experience,” Diesel tells TF from his home in the Dominican Republic. It’s here that Diesel’s spent the year plotting the final two chapters in the Fast Saga (more on those later), recording his debut album (!) and remotely working on videogame Ark 2, where he plays a dinosaur hunter from the 24th century – you know, the typical lockdown experience. “Obviously, I’ve dedicated my life to [the cinema]. It’s so meaningful and so cherished. It’s a wonderful feeling to know that we’re going to be there on 28 May with a movie that everybody is going to want to see together.”
There are myriad reasons why even the most lavish home-cinema setup just won’t cut it for Fast & Furious 9, but hovering near the top of the list is director Justin Lin. After joining the family with underrated third entry Tokyo Drift (a film even Christopher Nolan has a “soft spot” for), Lin transformed the franchise into a turbo-charged juggernaut with series standout Fast Five. The London-set F&F6 was supposed to be the end of the road for Lin, wrapping up character arcs that had been in the planning since his earliest conversations with Diesel in 2005. But just when Lin thought he was out, they pulled him back in.
“Between 6 and 9, Vin would just call me up, and we would talk about Dom,” Lin tells TF from the Universal lot, where he’s putting the finishing touches on Fast 9’s colour grading. “At first, I would say, ‘Vin, you do know I’m not coming back, right?’” But Diesel wasn’t taking no for an answer. “Bringing [Justin] back was something I started plotting before we even started filming Fast 8,” Diesel recalls. “I even did a Dodge commercial and had him direct, just to slowly bring him back. The timing worked perfectly. He was ready to rip the doors off the franchise by last year, when we filmed Fast 9.”
Describing the science-defying set-pieces that he, Lin and screenwriter Daniel Casey have cooked up for F9 as “like nothing you’ve ever seen”, Diesel credits Lin as the ultimate Fast director, thanks to his deft ability to balance the series’ improbable mix of earnest character drama and outlandish vehicular mayhem. From
rocket-powered Pontiac Fieros to ‘magnet planes’ (“That’s actually a piece I had inside my action vault since I left… it’s been years in the making,” Lin exclaims), the trailer alone is full of wonderfully preposterous WTF moments. But nothing glimpsed so far comes close to the sight of Dom’s beloved Dodge Charger rope-swinging – for want of a better description – across open water.
You watch these movies, and you can probably guess my grade in physics at high school, right?” laughs Lin. “When I pitched the idea of the swing, I could see just the fear in the crew’s eyes. I get a joy out of that look. It’s usually 20 seconds of ‘What the hell?’ and then they’re like, ‘OK, we’re going to have to take a car, and we’re going to have to put it on a helicopter, and do this and that…’ That one was a pain, but there are a couple of things you haven’t seen yet that freaked them out even more!”
And yet, as fun as swinging a supercar from a helicopter undoubtedly was, it wasn’t the (only) reason Lin returned. “I know that the theme of family has become a drinking game for some of the fans,” the director acknowledges, with a chuckle. “But when I woke up that morning and had the idea of exploring Dom and Jakob… that was always the reason to come back.”
Yes, Dom’s long-lost little brother surfaces in Fast & Furious 9, and it’s fair to say they haven’t been on each other’s Christmas card lists for quite some time. Jakob’s lengthy collection of qualifications include master thief, assassin and high-performance driver, making him the “greatest hurdle” Dom and the family have ever faced, according to the man who plays him, John Cena. “There is an old saying that blood is thicker than water,” Cena tells TF from Canada, where he’s currently shooting The Suicide Squad spin-off series Peacemaker. “For me, having four brothers, I can say I have had the absolute brawls of my life with kin. It’s almost like it’s accepted.”
When it comes to where Jakob has been all these years, and why he’s stepping out of the shadows now, Cena is staying schtum, but teases that “Fast 9 will not only answer a lot of the questions that many people around the globe have had, but it will leave them asking more questions...” For Diesel, the introduction of Jakob and the resulting exploration of Dom’s flesh and blood family provided the opportunity to bring the Toretto story full circle for what is now a 20th-anniversary sequel to 2001’s
The Fast And The Furious.
“So much of our story originates from the first film, and anecdotes that we can remember from 20 years ago when we were introduced to these characters,” Diesel muses. “As we are seeing Dom now become a father, another vehicle with which we were able to explore fatherhood was this unfinished business with a blood relationship – to have a man, who’s all family, understand that there’s something in the past that is unresolved, is fascinating.”
Speaking of unresolved pasts, after years of outcry, justice will finally be served for Sung Kang’s Han, who somehow returns in Fast 9, despite being sent to the scrapyard in the sky by Jason Statham’s Deckard Shaw in the post-credits scene of Fast 6. There’s also the small matter of precisely what Roman and Tej are planning to do with that rocket-powered car…
And while Lin maintains that the unexpected extra year of postproduction hasn’t resulted in any pickups or plot changes, it has allowed a director so often forced to fly by the seat of his pants to savour the filmmaking experience (“Usually at this stage the sun is coming up and I’m running to catch a plane to the UK premiere”), and submerge himself in the Fast Saga’s final chapters. “When we started talking about 9, we knew we had more ideas than just one movie,” Lin reveals. “To be in postproduction but, at the same time, writing [Fast 10 & 11], it really helps both processes.”
But it’s Diesel, perhaps more than anyone, who already has the finish line in his sights. “Fast 9 is designed to be the prequel to the finale and establish a narrative that could stand over multiple films,” Diesel explains. “We owe the loyal fans that have supported us a finale like nothing they’ve ever seen. [Fast] 9 is an amazing film, it’s going to be a thrill for people to see. But it needed to lay the groundwork for the final finale, which will have to be broken into two films because there are so many elements to wrap up. It’s a very, very exciting.” Even after 20 years and nine films, the Fast Saga is only just getting started.
ETA I FAST & FURIOUS 9 OPENS IN CINEMAS ON 28 MAY.