Hobbs and Shaw Trailer: WTF?
The trailer to the Fast and Furious spin-off introduces…superhumans (?) into the franchise.
The first trailer to Hobbs and Shaw dropped today, after star Dwayne Johnson has been dropping tease after tease on his Instagram. The Fast and Furious is one of those fast food franchises — really fun, great to watch, but ultimately pretty empty. That being said, I am into these movies. See the trailer for yourself below.
Don’t get me wrong, I am very excited for this movie. I am just genuinely surprised at the direction the filmmakers took it. Big, dumb fun has been the style of the Fast and Furious movies, especially in recent installments, and characters defy the laws of physics consistently in this series…
But this is the first time there is an outright superhuman.
And man, is it outright! The trailer doesn’t even open on our heroes, but instead opens with Idris Elba’s (super)villainous Brixton, who sets the stage by literally telling us he’s a “bad guy” and “superhuman” before punching Johnson’s Hobbs character into next week (or at least, into a vehicle that takes some serious damage).
Truth be told, it’s pretty ridiculous, even in a movie series in which characters drive off cliffs and punch torpedoes with no physical repercussions. It doesn’t quite align with what we’ve come to expect from a Fast and Furious movie.
Vanessa Kirby’s addition to the franchise is also exciting, after her underutilized presence in Mission: Impossible — Fallout. She could be headlining her own movie with the charisma she oozes. I can’t wait to see more of how she plays off of the cast here. I hope she gets a chance to kick some ass alongside Johnson and Statham.
While Elba’s villain takes center stage for the first half of the trailer, the second half is all about the main event, the title characters. Luke Hobbs and Deckard Shaw are instant fan favorites, in large part due to the men playing them. Dwayne Johnson is one of the most bankable movie stars today, with copious amounts of adoration from the general public. And Statham? The dude is practically his own movie genre.
Seeing these two headline their own movie, especially since they’ve been peripheral players in the Fast and Furious movies, is something special. They have tremendous chemistry, and it’s clear these two know exactly what kind of movie they’re in. They relish it.
They get to spout off one-liners, drive an assortment of vehicles, and do crazy stunts. An awesome (and hilarious) stunt sequence in which Johnson’s Hobbs jumps off a building and Statham’s Shaw casually takes an elevator starts here:
And ends here:
This movie looks absolutely bonkers, like the filmmakers consulted their seven-year-old nephews to help them write the script. This isn’t a bad thing; in fact, it’s the opposite. These movies have thrived on being B-movies with large budgets and star power. Hobbs and Shaw is merely utilizing those ingredients and dumping heaps of sugar onto it.
Here’s what this trailer leaves me thinking, though. Now that superhumans have been introduced into the Fast and Furious franchise, is Dominic Toretto going to find out he’s been a superhuman all this time? After all, how many brutal car wrecks can one survive without beginning to wonder? Has Dom’s family actually been a group of superheroes all along? Will Nick Fury be entering the Fast and Furious world soon? So many questions. Unfortunately, we’ll have to wait until August 6th for the answers.
