The trailer for the highly anticipated action spin-off Fast and Furious Presents: Hobbs and Shaw was released yesterday. The movie is part of the Fast and Furious universe, produced by Universal Pictures.
With Dwayne Johnson, Jason Statham and Idris Elba on board, here we breakdown the brand new trailer...
A three-minute introduction
Before you even start watching the trailer, you might notice the running time. At almost three minutes, the trailer is certainly not short. Some might argue (including me) that trailers should never be longer that a minute. They should show just enough to get you interested, and never every single action or comedy set piece. Unfortunately, studios today have decided the best way to entice people is to show them a shortened version of the whole film. Criticism aside, let’s see what we’re in for.
Meet Robo-Idris
He’s not Bond (yet) but we can relish in the fact that Idris Elba is going to be in a big action film, and as the bad guy no less. Dominating most of the trailer, we see what kind of character he’ll be, some sort of genetically modified super-soldier turned bad is my guess.
Obviously for an unstoppable force like that, you’re going to need not one, but two immovable objects.
Enter the heroes
We've got to know Luke Hobbs and Deckard Shaw, played by Dwayne Johnson and Jason Statham respectively, in the last three instalments of the Fast and Furious films.
Completely over the top with their charisma and one-liners, the two characters have fast become firm favourites among fans of the series. And their introduction in the trailer does not disappoint. That said, the pair are obviously not friends, which is made even more obvious the musical choice playing throughout the rest of the trailer; a remix of Why Can't We Be Friends by WAR.
Time to save the world
It seems the stakes have never been higher. While the other films seemed to be less imperative in terms of consequences, they have certainly been cranked up to 11 here. Our heroes may hate each other, but they also know that they need to work together. Setting aside their differences to take on Idris Elba's Brixton won’t be easy, but with some help from fast cars and elaborate action set pieces, the job might just get done.
The trailer is certainly long, and you’d have to imagine there’s more to see in the film beyond the three minutes we saw, but the series has a history of showing you their most important scenes in the promotional material, so we have to hope what we were shown was just an amuse-bouche. That being said, it will be an easy decision buying a ticket come August.
Watch the full Fast and Furious Presents: Hobbs and Shaw trailer here:
A fast past...
The Fast and Furious films started from humble beginnings in 2001 with a street racing gangster film directed by Rob Cohen. The film made a $207 million on a budget of $38m. Safe to say it was a box office smash hit, which inspired one sequel after the other.
Fast forward to 2019 and the Fast and Furious series boasts eight films, with the ninth, Hobbs and Shaw, set t come out this summer. The series has a combined gross of over $5 billion, and is the eighth highest grossing film series of all time. The films have proved particularly popular amongst people in the region, with parts of the seventh movie, Furious 7, being part-shot in Abu Dhabi.
