The final trailer for Fast & Furious Presents: Hobbs and Shaw (that’s quite a branding mouthful) just dropped and it features loads of action. And by that, I mean literally loads and loads of action. If that’s your thing, you’re certainly going to be marching into theaters seeing Dwayne Johnson and Jason Statham pack some testosterone punch and kick some heavy ass. Throw in Idris Elba into the mix as the main villain and Vanessa Kirby in an action-heavy role and you’ve got yourselves a commercial potboiler.
Despite their usually unrealistic car chases, the earlier Fast & Furious movies used to at least have some semblance of groundedness. Well, grounded is a far-reaching term for this franchise but, I guess I’m saying the action in those movies is something you felt could be pulled off after some suspension of disbelief. Gradually though, Fast & Furious embraced increasingly outlandish action sequences and this spin-off, while not the main series, is now a full-blown superhero story.
And no, that’s not me exaggerating. Idris Elba’s character is shown as a supervillain of sorts with enhanced abilities and heightened skills, glimpsed at in this trailer, and our heroes out to stop his evil plans. It’s exactly the kind of corporate flick that’s made by the studios as a shameless cash grab, using CGI to pull off some of the more bizarre action. There’s no denying that Hobbs & Shaw is going to be a relentless ride from start to finish. There’s also no denying that it’s going to be heavily devoid of any proper characterization and whatever elements do exist will be mostly hackneyed.
Regardless, if you’re a fan of non-stop action flicks, this should certainly appeal to you, as I’m sure it will to a lot of other people. And it should be a great popcorn entertainer for those looking for a fun time out at the theaters. I can already see this as a potential billion dollar grossing movie and coming at the tail end of summer, it shouldn’t have new competition slowing it down. Then again, I also thought Detective Pikachu would to a billion and it did only half of that so I’ll reserve final judgment until some tracking estimates begin showing up.
Fast & Furious Presents: Hobbs & Shaw is set for release in theaters on August 2, 2019. It is the ninth installment in the Fast & Furious series although technically, it’s a spin-off and not part of the main storyline.
