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Fast X Composer Brian Tyler Breaks Down Jason Momoa's "Sneaky Siren Call" Theme For Dante
"I wanted you to like him and have that cognitive dissonance of kind of rooting for the villain at times. And then going, ‘What am I doing?!’"
The Fast Saga has seen its fair share of memorable villains over the last 22 years, but there's no denying that Jason Momoa's Fast X baddie — Dante Reyes — is the wildest antagonist of them all.
Fueled by revenge, the sociopathic son of Hernan Reyes — the Brazilian crime lord killed by Luke Hobbs during the climax of Fast Five over a decade ago — harbors an ambition to make Dominic Toretto (Vin Diesel) and his loved ones suffer. Much like the Joker, he's the walking embodiment of chaos anarchy, with an unpredictable personality that makes him oh-so entertaining to watch.
RELATED: Why Fast X Composer Brian Tyler Compares Long-Running Fast Saga to Star Wars
Fast X composer breaks down new theme for Jason Momoa's villain
Speaking to SYFY WIRE over the phone, Fast X composer Brian Tyler (who has scored nearly every installment in the blockbuster series) describes the villain's new theme as both "sensual" and "sneaky." Where another composer might have opted for a "darker" musical signature — "they think low like Jaws" — Tyler sought to go in an unexpected direction.
"I wanted there to be empathy for this villain," he explains. "I wanted you to like him and have that cognitive dissonance of kind of rooting for the villain at times. And then going, ‘What am I doing?!’ in a way that Hannibal Lecter was. He’s terrible, but there's something about him that you like. Momoa’s character has this seductive thing about him, so I wanted to do music that was like a siren call."
Utilizing harps and violins as a base, Tyler built Dante's melody into a tantalizing mixture of incongruent sounds; a hauntingly beautiful melody purposefully marred by a "wrong" note on the third chord.
"Every time that third chord lands, it kind of has that stank face," he continues. "There's something off about him, but you need to understand where he's coming from. His dad was killed in front of him and that's why he's become this vengeance-seeking person. He loves the opera, so I incorporated operatic tones to the orchestration of it."
To cap things off, Tyler added a sense of "modernity" with "metric tick-tick-tick, synths, and percussion" in order to convey just how prepared Dante has become in his quest to squeeze every last drop of anguish out of the extended Toretto family.
"He is also very calculating, so there's a math angle to him," finishes the composer. "It’s beauty and strategy, all coming together that if you're in a room with him, you have no chance, because he's smarter than you. That was really the idea behind it and it’s maybe my favorite villain theme I’ve ever done."
Fast X is currently playing in theaters or available to rent/purchase on digital platforms like Vudu and Apple TV. Be sure to check back with us for regular updates on the movie's Peacock debut and physical media bonus features.
A Hobbs-fronted adventure (featuring the return of Dwayne Johnson's fan favorite DSS agent) will bridge the narrative gap between Fast X and Fast 11 (aka Fast X: Part II). The latter is scheduled to premiere in April 2025, which means we can probably expect the Hobbs spinoff to drop sometime within the next year-and-a-half.
Relive part of the Fast Saga on Peacock with The Fast and the Furious (2001), 2 Fast 2 Furious (2003), The Fast and the Furious: Tokyo Drift (2006), Fast & Furious (2009), Fast Five (2011), and Furious 7 (2015).
