The Fast & Furious spin-off movie Hobbs & Shaw, directed by David Leitch (Deadpool 2) is souping up Hollywood’s greatest car stunts franchise into something entirely different: science-fiction. The first trailer for the new film pits Dwayne Johnson and Jason Statham, reprising their roles as Hobbs and Shaw respectively, against Idris Elba, who is basically an evil Million Dollar Man.
Needless to say, things have changed a lot since 2001, when these movies were about teenagers stealing DVD players in Los Angeles.
On Friday, Universal released the trailer for Hobbs & Shaw, the first spin-off in the Fast & Furious series. The new film reunites law enforcement hero Luke Hobbs (Johnson) with his old rival, Deckard Shaw (Statham) in a plot that forces them to take down a cybernetic enhanced villain, Brixton (Idris Elba). The film also stars Vanessa Kirby as an MI6 agent who happens to be Shaw’s sister.
As shown in the trailer, the film hops the globe, with action scenes set in London, Los Angeles, Chernobyl, and the isles of Samoa.
To anyone remotely familiar with the Fast & Furious movies, Hobbs & Shaw is unlike anything that came before. With actual, bonafide superpowers and characters running down skyscrapers, Hobbs & Shaw is a massive leap even compared to the last film — 2017’s The Fate of the Furious — which involved the Toretto Family stopping nuclear terrorism.
"We can rebuild him. We have the technology."
As delightful as the trailer for Hobbs & Shaw may be, fans of the franchise remain peeved that Shaw, who was introduced in 2015’s Furious 7 (which was actually a retcon from a plot point in 2006’s Tokyo Drift, and yes I’m serious) as the murderer of beloved Toretto Family member Han Seoul-Oh (Sung Kang), is now being promoted as a hero. When Shaw joined Dom’s barbecue at the end of the 2017 movie, fans were, ahem, furious that Dom let bygones be bygones.
Hey remember when Luke Hobbs was just a buff DHS agent looking to stop some criminals in Brazil? Me neither.
Now Hobbs & Shaw is framing him as a real hero. It may feel like a betrayal to the series’ themes, but hey, Statham has actual chemistry with Dwayne Johnson. So maybe Shaw will earn his way into every gearhead’s heart.
Hobbs & Shaw will be released in theaters on August 2.
