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'Fast X' director teases 'vertical quarter-mile' stunt in upcoming film
The director of Fast X won't be taking the characters to outer space, but it seems they're still going up.
Dominic Toretto’s family is going on its tenth adventure where, as always, the stakes get higher and the stunts get a little more death-defying. Now, director Louis Leterrier is teasing the next great stunt that Fast X will use to inject NOS into the increasingly higher-octane franchise.
What began as a simple story about a group of thieves pulling off highway heists of truckers' combo DVD/VCR cargo has ballooned into a criminal romp that spans all corners of the world and sees Toretto’s real and chosen family stealing even crazier items through impressive feats ranging from “vehicular warfare” to literally going to outer space.
RELATED: Michelle Rodriguez after seeing the final shot of 'Fast X': 'What have we done?'
Speaking to Empire Magazine, Leterrier explained the desire to get back to basics with the tenth movie while also finding a way to up the ante once again. In doing so, he let part of an upcoming setpiece slip. The franchise got its start with racers competing in a quarter-mile drag race for respect and, yeah, a bit of cash. It seems like that will be returning in a more three-dimensional way.
“There are many ways of doing quarter-mile races,” the director explained. “We’re doing a vertical quarter-mile race, which is very interesting…”
Sadly, he wasn’t able to elaborate on what that meant exactly. Could they be going up a wall? A cliff? Flight? If there’s one thing Fast Saga fans know it’s to expect the unexpected even when a wild stunt is par for the course. So, for all the hype around this movie getting back to basics and regrounding its characters, it seems those who go to the theater for some typical over-the-top action set pieces won’t be disappointed. Seriously, what the heck is a vertical quarter-mile?
Leterrier implied later in his interview with Empire that, after the bonkers move to freaking space in F9, this movie is simply trying to reground the action (literally).
“We’ve landed back on Earth,” the director said with a laugh. “What we did was go back to the original tone. You have to have stuff that feels real.”
The director concluded by noting that they relied heavily on actually doing the things that happen in this movie. For example, when you see a car dropping from a plane and destroying two other cars, that’s because the filmmaker actually dropped a car from a plane and had it break two cars below. The trailer for the upcoming film revealed a sequence in which Toretto and his team have to outrun and outmaneuver a wrecking ball, which Leterrier said again is not something they could fake.
So, although they may not be blasting off to another planet in the tenth installment of the Fast Saga, they also won’t be dealing with something as basic as unruly truckers either. Instead, it seems Fast X will land somewhere in the middle, still head-and-shoulders above the rest of the action genre with plenty of room left for the gang to go cuckoo in the future.
Perhaps a reverse, underwater quarter-mile? Listen, it makes just as much sense as a vertical one.
Fast X premieres in theaters on May 19.
Watch more of the Fast Saga on Peacock.
