Fast X, which raced into theaters this past May, unleashing the revenge-driven chaos of Jason Momoa’s Dante Reyes on Dom, Letty, and the rest of the “Family” in the process, arrives on Blu-ray, 4K UHD, this week, following its recent digital release. Director Louis Leterrier (Transporter 2, The Incredible Hulk) is a veteran of the action game, though that doesn’t mean that being offered a Fast and Furious movie on extreme short notice — after original Fast X director Justin Lin left the project a week into shooting — wasn’t what he calls a “roller coaster” of emotions and pivotal decisions.
“In the two days between the initial phone call and me getting the job it was just like, ‘Yeah, it’s the greatest day of my life’ and ‘Oh my God, what did they say?’,” Leterrier told Fandom.
As he explained, flipping back and forth between “Yes, I need to do this” to “But I will destroy this franchise” to “But I’m the best guy because I’ve loved it for so long” kept Leterrier second-guessing himself for a few days, and he described it as “One of those scenes when a person talks to [themself in] the mirror, and the mirror answers.”
With the home release of Fast X here, Fandom spoke with Leterrier to talk about his experience diving into the massive film, the future of the franchise (including the announced Hobbs solo film and Fast 11, the latter of which Leterrier is returning to direct), and discovering a major sequence in his movie was similar to one in the latest Mission: Impossible film. Plus, Leterrier spoke about what it’s like now that so many characters from his very early entry in the MCU, The Incredible Hulk, have finally begun to return to that franchise in various projects.
Spoilers for Fast X follow.
BECOMING FAMILY FAST
Leterrier was very excited to join the Fast franchise, though he noted the initial plane ride to London to the Fast X set, where filming had already begun under Justin Lin, was still a very daunting thing. “You walk on set, and everybody gets quiet,” he recalled. “Like, ‘Oh, that’s him. He’s the guy…’ And then you walk in, and that’s the first time I met Vin Diesel and Michelle Rodriguez and Sung Kang and Jason Momoa and Charlize Theron.”
“Everybody was incredibly welcoming and open to my ideas and loving the input and willing to work extra hard to catch up,” Leterrier continued. “So it was really an exciting entrance that actually never let up. It was hard and difficult work but there were no bad moods and everyone was always like ‘Let’s really make the best movie possible.’ And every day we looked at each other like ‘Was that a W?’ ‘Was it right?’ At the end of every day, Vin and I, and other actors, met for two, three hours in his trailer and we just talked about the next day, or the next week, the next month, what we were going to do. It was very creative, very collaborative. It was just, frankly, the greatest set I’ve ever been on.”
Reuniting with The Transporter
Most everyone Leterrier worked with on Fast X was new to him, as he was joining a long-running franchise with a notably large ensemble, though there was one person he’d collaborated with before.
Said Leterrier, “Every day, especially that first week, was like ‘This is my first day with Vin Diesel and Michelle Rodriguez. And I was like, ‘Oh my God, these are the icons I’m directing.’ The next day, enter Charlize Theron. Then the legend, Rita Moreno. Then the rest of the crew, and we did the barbecue scene and it was the greatest day of my career. And he kept going and kept going.”
“And then there was also a blast from the past with Jason Statham, who I started my career with,” he noted, of his Transporter 2 star. “I hadn’t worked with him for many, many years… Then he became what he became and I had become what I had become and we loved each other then. And now we’re just like brothers and it went so great. It’s so easy to talk to each other.”
“And it kept going and kept going, from Brie Larson to Alan Ritchson to everyone else. And then we finished with our cameos, the little tags at the end. Every day just topped itself.”
You Can Get a Fast Hobbs
Regarding those cameos at the end of the movie, two big Fast and Furious names returned to the fold, one even returning from the dead in the form of Gal Gadot’s Gisele. The second big return was Dwayne Johnson appearing as Luke Hobbs, who we discovered was also in Dante’s crosshairs. And with the Luke Hobbs character back came the announcement soon after of a second Hobbs spinoff movie starring Johnson.
But how exactly will Fast X and this untitled Hobbs intersect with each other and then simultaneously lead into Fast 11? And could this Hobbs solo movie also wrap up the Eteon conspiracy story introduced in Hobbs and Shaw? According to Leterrier, all these things were being discussed and figured out right as the WGA strike began. “We had to stop for the right reasons,” he stressed, “and hopefully it’s resolved soon. But yes, the idea of Dwayne coming back, Hobbs coming back to the main franchise, was really to incorporate everything now to really have one cinematic universe that just can intersect.”
“We have moments where our characters are going off on their own tangents but still coming back to the main franchise and there’s no switch of tone. The tone is very much a Fast and Furious tone from the main franchise. So that’s exciting. The ideas that were brought forth before it all happened were very very exciting.”
“[Eteon returning] would make sense,” Leterrier remarked. “That absolutely would make sense, but again… the strike happened. I know what was talked about. I know we have a release date. I know we’re aiming towards it but, frankly, everybody’s waiting, eagerly waiting. It’ll happen. It’s going to be exciting.”
Though no work can currently be done writing or producing a new Fast movie until both the WGA and SAG-AFTRA are able to make new deals with the AMPTP, socially speaking, Leterrier definitely still has that Family feeling, noting, “What’s great is that everybody’s talking to each other like every day. I get emails from Vin Diesel. I talk to Dwayne from time to time. There’s Jason Momoa, I just talked to him yesterday. Fast and Furious is not something that you pick up and then drop off and then do something else. I think once you pick it up, you carry it for the rest of your life, so I’m getting curious. We’re all carrying it together.”
When in Rome
Fast X was the first of two big action movies this summer to feature a car chase through Rome and a big stunt piece involving that city’s famed Spanish Steps. Mission: Impossible – Dead Reckoning Part One also utilized the steps, though Leterrier had no idea M:I was also utilizing that city for a chase, and specifically using that particular landmark.
Though Fast X was the movie released first, Leterrier noted, “I guess they shot way before us. No one told us, but they should have told us, I feel. I literally discovered it in their first trailer but we were almost done with the movie and I was like ‘Oh no, they have this thing.’ Unfortunately, it is what it is.”
Leterrier ultimately felt bad for Dead Reckoning since, even though they filmed on the Spanish Steps first, it opened a couple months after Fast X and became, by default, the second movie audiences would see using the locations.
“We could have chosen another thing if they had told us but yeah – whatever, it’s different. Their scene in Rome is really fun. Our scene in Rome is really fun. We were trying to walk through the city to find the fun areas where a ball would roll and the steps’ barricades are pretty cool!”
Dante’s Inferno
Jason Momoa’s maniacal Dante has become the huge arch-villain for Fast and Furious’ endgame, extending now, presumably, into the new Hobbs movie, and then Fast 11. Leterrier had a fun time working with Momoa on the set, crafting this flamboyant character, which was a process throughout the whole film.
“We knew where we needed to end, with this final threatening scene,” he said. “And I just wanted to see how much of Jason’s personality could we put into his character. It was just the meeting of an actor and the director and how we sort of just fell in love with each other. And we’re like, ‘Alright, I see who you are.’ I was like, ‘let’s put that on screen.’ That is something I want to see on screen.”
“I want to take the real Jason Momoa and just push up the cursors and dials. And just go crazy. Like, full Momoa.”
Time is a Hulk Circle
The Fast and Furious saga isn’t the first mega-franchise Louis Leterrier has been a part of. Previously, he directed the second film in the MCU, 2008’s The Incredible Hulk, which opened mere weeks after Iron Man. For a long time though, Incredible Hulk became something of the odd film out in the MCU, partially because it was released by — and is still owned by — Universal and, more importantly, because the lead, Edward Norton, was recast when Avengers was made, with Mark Ruffalo taking over the role of Bruce Banner/Hulk.
In the years that followed, the events of The Incredible Hulk were rarely referenced, and while William Hurt’s Thaddeus Ross was eventually brought back – albeit with no mention of his history with the Hulk – no one else from that film ever returned… until now that is, with The Incredible Hulk currently having a notable resurgence in terms of MCU lore significance.
First, Tim Roth once again played Emil Blonsky in She-Hulk: Attorney at Law (after his alter ego, the Abomination, made a cameo in Shang-Chi and the Legend of the Ten Rings), and soon both Liv Tyler and Tim Blake Nelson will be seen again in the MCU, finally, in 2024’s Captain America: Brave New World, reprising their roles as Betty Ross and Samuel Sterns/The Leader alongside Harrison Ford, who’s taking over the role of Thunderbolt Ross following William Hurt’s death. On top of that, portions of The Incredible Hulk were even recreated in an episode of Marvel Studios’ What If…? animated series. It took a decade and a half, but the MCU’s only solo Hulk movie finally seems like it’s getting its due and pushing aside the doubts of any who questioned its status as canon.
Looking back on the movie, and having rewatched it recently now that it’s on Disney+, Leterrier remembers wanting to use The Incredible Hulk to expand and solidify the franchise in big ways and truly establish this was a connected universe after Iron Man‘s release. “It was the plan all along. The Incredible Hulk was sort of like the first MCU movie because it was our idea to bring Robert Downey Jr. in for the tag,” Leterrier remarked, referencing Tony Stark‘s appearance in the film’s final moments.
Leterrier also recalled, “In the very beginning of the movie, in a scene that was later cut out, we had [Bruce] Banner going to the North Pole, trying to off himself, and then he Hulks out and hits the ice and then the ice cap breaks and then you see the Captain America shield for a quick moment.” As he explained, “The Avengers was my favorite comic book so I just wanted to wink at it a lot.”
As for how long it took for The Incredible Hulk to get this kind of acknowledgement and major reintegration into modern MCU’s stories, he remarked, “Look at movies 10 years from now… The power of a movie is felt over the next 10 years and not the weekend it comes out.”
Fast X is out August 8 on 4K UHD, Blu-ray and DVD and on Digital now.
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