STACK NZ Aug #65

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The way that Kurt Russell plays this role, he
is the coolest guy in the room...
The chemistry with Kurt was so gratifying,
and he’s so much fun to work with. Right from
the beginning, you could tell that this was
something he was excited about, that there was
a pride that he had about being a part of the
Fast saga, and there was something precious
to him about creating a character that would
have such a deep relationship with Dom Toretto.
We spent many a night and weekend talking
about character, talking about the direction, and
refining and retuning. I love having somebody
that’s willing to look for that little extra nuance,
look for that little extra magic.
We’ve been to some pretty
incredible places with you through
this franchise, but Abu Dhabi is
pretty special.
Very special. The audience now
has grown to somewhat expect these
new locations, and they enjoy travelling
with the characters that they know so well.
They still wanted to come home in 7, but as a
characteristic of the saga over the years, fans
have enjoyed travelling with the characters.
When we travel and visit these other cultures
and countries, it only strengthens that idea that
we are all citizens of the world.
As a producer, presumably you had a hand in
picking the director.Why JamesWan?
James Wan is somebody who has
conquered a genre; he has proven
you can take a horror genre and be
or themes that have been planted in previous
movies, all come full circle here.
At the end of Fast & Furious 6 , we met
your new foe in a very dramatic way. Dom
has faced serious opponents before. How
dangerous is Deckard Shaw?
It was imperative to introduce the next
villain in a way that automatically affected
you emotionally. For you to feel like a villain
is being introduced at the same time he is
taking away someone that you’ve already
grown comfortable with creates an emotional
response to the villain that you can’t anticipate,
and you can’t make up. And that’s at the
forefront of our story here. You have to see the
fourth chapter to really appreciate where we are
when we step into the first new chapter of the
unknown road.
Why do you think Jason Statham was right
for the role of the villain?
Jason is one of those actors who keep it
cool and consistent. He’s a wonderful talent
to watch, period. We needed a character that
represented the location we’d just lived in for
two hours, which is London. Jason Statham did
that. We wanted to get a formidable character,
but we wanted the character’s formidability
to be different than Hobbs’s formidability that
we employed in 5. And then last, but not least,
I went on Facebook, and I asked the fans,
“Who would you like to see me work with?
Who would you like to see me incorporate, if I
could?” And the top name was Jason Statham,
more than the next three combined.
Dom’s going to go after this guy.Through
Hobbs, he comes in contact with someone,
played by Kurt Russell, who makes him an
offer he can’t refuse...
That’s right. There is a device called God’s
Eye, which as Dom says in the movie, is a
glorified tracking device, but on steroids. Kurt
Russell was one of those guys in the ‘70s and
‘80s that we all enjoyed going to see in movies,
and we thought was a real badass at that
time. The irony is Kurt Russell was chosen not
necessarily to service Fast 7, but was chosen
to service Fast 8. And the design was to have
him introduced here, as we start going into a
new shadowlike world of higher stakes,
one that was designed to play out and pay
off in the eighth film.
extremely successful with it. In my mind, he’s
become the new face of horror and what’s
exciting about him is that he wants to do more.
He was very excited about coming into this
and trying to do something that’s memorable
in all the right ways. There is a sensibility to his
shooting style that I think was imperative for
this kind of re-set chapter. I call it re-set chapter
because Chapter 7 incorporates so many things
that happened before but, as you know, with
the Han character [Sung Kang] finally sinking off
to Tokyo Drift at the end of Chapter 6. In some
ways, this is the new frontier. So for all of us
involved, we’re finally at a place where we don’t
know what’s going to happen in the future.
It is the unknown road ahead that is exciting,
and I think that James Wan has taken scenes
and shot them differently, with a certain kind
of tension that he’s mastered in his horror world.
Do you have an outline for future films?
I think what Fast & Furious has done as a
saga has proved that there is a new way to
approach sequels and sagas. The way that they
used to do it in the 1980s and 1990s was to
make a movie and if it was really successful,
they would use the brand and market it again
and again and expect diminishing returns. The
secret to counter that is to have a long view of
what your story looks like over multiple pictures
and, with Universal, I wouldn’t have been
interested in just doing 7 if they didn’t have an
idea or feel comfortable with what the new
trilogy would look like, of how 7, 8 and
9 would roll out and how they would
connect to one another. One of the
things that I’m most proud about in
the last three films is how much each
film speaks to one another and how
connected they are.
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DVD&BD Feature
Increasing the
emotional stakes is
what will set this
saga apart from any
other movie