Within days of starting production in April last year, what had seemed a relatively smooth start for “Fast X” hit the skids as long-time franchise director Justin Lin announced his abrupt departure from the project.
The move led to a rush to find a replacement who could hop onboard without major delay – they found it in French filmmaker Louis Leterrier (“The Transporter”) who quickly got up to speed and took over.
Leterrier had circled previous franchise instalments in the past, was known for being adept at shooting action films quickly, and had solid Hollywood experience with films like “Clash of the Titans” and “Now You See Me”. As such, he seemed a natural fit.
Now in a new feature piece for Esquire Middle East, he has gone into the crazy ride of how he was enlisted on the film and how he effectively helped re-write the film’s entire script.
He tells the outlet he went from getting called by Universal Studios to flying to the film’s set in the span of just four days. He read the original “Fast X” script four times whilst travelling and upon landing suggested that some edits be made:
“I said I had some ideas, and they [the producers] said, ‘Great because the whole third act is changing. ‘Can you rewrite it tonight?'”
So he began reworking the third act and upon doing so realised in order for those rewrites to work, they had to narratively and thematically connect to the first two acts. That prompted him to rewrite elements of the entire script to make everything more cohesive:
“Obviously, since the third act was changing, I needed to change the first act. And when you rewrite the third act, and the first act, the second act has to go. So basically I had to on the fly rebuild the airplane.”
He adds the rewriting process was hardly a solo affair, he took everyone’s opinions and suggestions into consideration:
“I was embracing everyone, meeting with every actor, getting their notes, putting their notes into the script. It was a lot of work, but it was possibly the most exciting and collaborative experience of my professional life.”
Despite all the pressure, he says coming in at the last minute had its benefits too as everyone was very supportive:
“It was very liberating. When you’re the boy scout, the knight in shining armor who comes in to save the day, the pressure is lifted. You’re like, ‘well, I’m here to help,’ and everybody helps you. The pressure is off in a sense because everyone’s working towards the same goal – to make a great movie.”
His approach was to “ground it more in reality” after the series went into space in the ninth film. The aim was to do:
“Stuff that we’ve never done before practically, such as rolling a one-ton bomb – an actual one-ton metal ball in the streets of Rome, and hope not to destroy the Colosseum.”
He adds that whilst CG was used to make things safer, he’s keenly aware the “human eye is so aware of what’s real and what’s not”. That’s why even with the car suspended by helicopters scene in the trailer, they really did put Vin Diesel “in a gimbal 20 feet up in the air that was going up and down”. He added:
“I was not pulling punches on that. That’s the truth, because when you see them jumping and feeling the zero-G, there was really a moment of zero-G when we dropped this incredible gimbal.
Imagine being on top of a 20-foot robot that can move so fast and you’re inside a metal box. It’s really a car that we bolted something on top. That’s when you get the truth – you don’t get acting, you get reacting. There’s true acting needed, of course, because you have to imagine the reality of everything, but there’s a lot of real reacting that happens, too.”
We’ll see the results of Leterrier’s efforts when “Fast X” hits theaters on May 19th.
