Up until yesterday’s trailer premiere, details of Jason Momoa’s villain character in the upcoming “Fast X” have been under wraps. All that was known was that he would be playing a “flamboyant” antagonist.
The trailer revealed that Momoa’s Dante is the son of “Fast Five” bad guy and Brazilian drug kingpin Hernan Reyes (Joaquim de Almeida) who basically got wiped out alongside his giant safe in the film’s climax.
The trailer incorporates scenes from the “Fast Five” final act and retcons a slightly younger Momoa into those scenes as he witnesses Dom & Brian destroy Hernan and his empire.
As a result, Momoa’s character has spent the last twelve years masterminding a plan to make Dom pay the price for his actions. The film’s director Louis Leterrier recently spoke with Esquire Middle East to discuss what audiences can expect from Momoa’s bad guy:
“Yeah, he’s a different type of a villain not only for the franchise. He’s the type of antagonist that I’ve rarely seen before in any movie. He’s the man who has studied his enemy almost like an obsessed fan. He’s also the polar opposite of Dom. He’s all color and flamboyance. It’s the yin and yang, the christ and the anti-christ—the anti-Dom.”
He goes on to say that was reflected on the set as well with Diesel bringing a “calm and collected, almost zen-like” energy whilst Momoa was “just like rock & roll, an electric bass that’s slapping”. Nonetheless, Leterrier had a mandate for the approach that would bring things back to the franchise’s roots:
“What was really important for me was to bring it back to the car. This franchise is all about cars, but we hadn’t seen a driver antagonist for a long time. He’s a driver – he grew up driving, being obsessed with Dom Toretto and tried to become him. He’s a gearhead just like Dom Toretto, but a very different type of gearhead. They are also polar opposites in their driving styles. The person that keeps their hand on the wheel and the person that let’s go. That’s very interesting to me, and it’s the theme of the entire movie and the entities that oppose them.”
Separately he spoke with Total Film and explained why they chose to make the connection to the “Fast Five” villain in particular as opposed to someone earlier or later in the saga:
“Fast Five was the last [Fast] movie that truly dealt with human stakes – the oppression of the poor. Reyes was oppressing the favelas and stealing from them. Dom and the family, they Robin Hood the money, and give it back.
But when you think they’re doing the right thing, there’s always somebody who thinks you’re doing the wrong thing. So what we tried to do was to Rashomon the Fast Five safe heist, which is my favourite of all time. We were like, ‘What if we filmed it through the eyes of the bad guys? Where the bad guys, in that vision, are Dom and Brian, and they’re stealing this family safe?’
On Thursday night, Diesel was asked by Variety who would be his dream casting for the villain of the eleventh film, which will serve as the final entry in the franchise. Diesel responded with Robert Downey Jr. and went on to explain why:
“Without telling you too much about what happens in the future, there’s a character who is the antithesis of Dom who is promoting AI and driverless cars and a philosophy that with that goes your freedom. There is somebody that believes that’s the future, and that’s at direct odds with the Toretto mentality.”
“Fast X” is set to hit theaters on May 19th.
