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'Fast X' director says Jason Momoa's revenge-obsessed villain is 'the anti-Dom'
"He is the yang of his yin, the antichrist of his Christ."
The Fast & Furious movies should be renamed to "Everybody Hates Dominic Toretto." After all, Vin Diesel's tank top-loving, death-defying race driver has the rather unenviable talent for driving other people to actively seek out revenge on behalf of their loved ones.
Fast X — which arrives on the big screen May 19 — continues that proud tradition with the arrival of Jason Momoa's Dante, son of drug kingpin Hernan Reyes (Joaquim de Almeida), who met his gruesome demise over a decade ago in the climax of Fast Five. Having lost his father and inheritance in one fell swoop, Dante wants nothing more than to live up to his name by unleashing a hellish inferno of vengeance against Dom and his loved ones. To that end, he's taken Sun Tzu's "know thy enemy" advice to a whole new level.
"He's studied Dom for years, and he actually forged himself as the anti-Dom," director Louis Leterrier (Transporter 2) explained to Entertainment Weekly during a breakdown of the movie's first trailer. "He is the yang of his yin, the antichrist of his Christ. When Dom wears blacks or whites, he wears nothing but colors. Dom has a close shaved head, he has the hair, he paints his nails. He has the same car, but different — Dom will drive a Dodge, he will drive a Chevy. That's the thing: he teases him, he pushes Dom's buttons."
And there's no better way to wound the guy with the live-your-life-a-quarter-of-a-mile-at-a-time philosophy than by going after the thing he loves most in this world: the "F" word...no, the other "F" word...family, it's family. As you can see in the trailer, Dante goes right for the proverbial jugular with the kidnap of Dom's young son, Brian Marcos (played in this movie by Leo Abelo Perry).
"Family has been the secret weapon, the super strength that Dom has had. It's his superpower," Leterrier added. "But when that family is used against him, it becomes his Achilles heel. The moment where Dom is at his weakest is because he can't control everyone. Dante knows that Dom's weakest point is his family, that's where he hurts [him] the most. These are Mafia tactics — you don't kill someone, you make them suffer and you make them suffer by hurting the people they love. Dante's experienced that firsthand, and now he's going to make him feel what he felt."
The filmmaker also revealed that the penultimate chapter in the 22-year-old Fast Saga immediately puts the pedal to the metal with a Rashoman-style recreation of the Fast Five denouement seen through Dante's perspective of the now-iconic vault heist.
"The antagonists always had their point of view and their truth that's quite different from the other one. A good antagonist has their own truth, so that's what we [wanted to explore] ... Dom's legacy is also the wake that he created in all these adventures and in fighting for the right cause — there is a wake and there's a price and you break eggs making omelets. That is our opening, and it's so good," Leterrier said.
We'll get to see Dante in all his vindictive glory when Fast X drifts into theaters Friday, May 19.
Relive a portion of the Fast Saga with Fast & Furious 6 and Furious 7 — both of which are streaming on Peacock. If you want even more Vin Diesel action, then be sure to check out xXx, Pitch Black, The Chronicles of Riddick, and Riddick.
