Following the filming of Fate of the Furious, Dwayne "The Rock" Johnson and Vin Diesel appeared to have fallen out while working together. Now, we know what might have happened between the two in a new interview.
Though the sun is setting on the franchise, the Fast and Furious films will entertain the masses with super speedy cars, A-lister actors, hair-raising stunts and pretty pedestrian scripts for some time to come. After all, it is Universal's golden goose and has grossed over $6 billion over the last two decades of films, television shows and video games. Oh, yes, there was a game titled Fast & Furious Crossroads that released to a "generally unfavourable" reception last year. It turned out that driving gameplay and mechanics are a major part of a Fast and Furious game, and if you don't get that right, the whole thing unravels at the seams. Perhaps, we should leave that enigma to Dom Toretto and his crew. They seem to have the skill for it.
Alright, so he's not quite the typical gamer, but 93-year-old Ryuji Urabe is an absolute star at driving sims like Forza. Check out his story here.
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Working on a Fast and Furious film must be a whale of a time, but it transpired that there might have been a difference of opinion between Dwayne Johnson and Vin Diesel. In the series, Johnson plays Luke Hobbs, a former Diplomatic Security Service agent, and Diesel plays Dom Toretto, the leader of the crew and an ex-convict with experience in high-speed hijackings. A few years ago, Johnson spoke about how he had found filming Fate of the Furious, and it wasn't especially complementary. "My female co-stars are always amazing, and I love 'em. My male co-stars however are a different story," he said on social media, and the theory was that he was referring to Diesel's behaviour on set.
Chatting to Men's Health in a recent interview, Diesel explained how his approach to filmmaking is an intense one and that this could have caused sparks between individuals. "When you have a unique perspective of creating a franchise that spans generations, you realize, okay, we all have to be as brilliant as possible," he said about the latest film, F9. "We have to reach as high as we can. Because it may be more important than just a movie. More important than two hours of escapism. There may be something more at play." Hobbs doesn't appear in F9, which is odd as the character has been woven into the storylines since Fast Five in 2011.
"It was a tough character to embody, the Hobbs character," continued Diesel about Fate of the Furious. "My approach at the time was a lot of tough love to assist in getting that performance where it needed to be. As a producer to say, Okay, we're going to take Dwayne Johnson, who's associated with wrestling, and we're going to force this cinematic world, audience members, to regard his character as someone that they don't know-Hobbs hits you like a ton of bricks. That's something that I'm proud of, that aesthetic. That took a lot of work. We had to get there and sometimes, at that time, I could give a lot of tough love. Not Felliniesque, but I would do anything I'd have to do in order to get performances in anything I'm producing."
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Of course, it seems to be all water under the bridge today, as Johnson thanked "brother Vin" after the release of Hobbs & Shaw. A sequel to the film is in the works and plans to introduce new characters into the mix, however, it is not dated at the moment.
Featured Image Credit: Universal