Fast X And Vin Diesel Ask The Most Important Question: What If Every Actor Was Latino Now?
The "Fast & Furious" franchise is one of the most fascinating things to have happened to Hollywood in the past two decades or so. 2001's "The Fast and the Furious" was essentially a mid-budget "Point Break" knock-off, yet it birthed a massively expensive (and lucrative) property that's become the only real competitor to "Mission Impossible" in terms of outlandish stunts, as well as the only real competitor to the Marvel Cinematic Universe in terms of complex (and often frustrating) lore. This is a franchise where seemingly every other character has a secret family member and where every villain either dies battling the heroes or goes on to join the fambly.
"Fast X" promises to up the ante once again, delivering a blockbuster epic that is the beginning of the end for this beloved and unlikely property. This movie has everything you could ask for from a "Fast & Furious" sequel: fast cars, family, callbacks to previous films in the series, what looks like a "Face/Off" machine, Jason Momoa living his best life, huge surprise twists, and Han just being very cool.
Arguably the biggest reveal of the "Fast X" trailer is the fact that Joseph Jason Namakaeha Momoa is going to play the son of Joaquim de Almeida's "Fast Five" villain Hernan Reyes. With that, Momoa becomes the latest actor to be re-imagined as Latinx in the "Fast & Furious" franchise.
The biggest stunt
We've had non-Latinx actors like Elsa Pataky (a Spanish actor) and Joaquim de Almeida (a Portuguese actor) playing Latinx characters in the franchise before, but it goes beyond that. There's Gisele, played by Israeli actor Gal Gadot, first introduced in "Fast & Furious" as a liaison for drug trafficker Arturo Braga working in Mexico, who only got retconned into being an Israeli former Mossad agent in a later movie. Then came the biggest surprise: Dominic Toretto, a character originally coded as Italian-American in the first movie before becoming full Latinx in the sequels, has a brother. Not only that, but none other than John Cena was cast as Dom's very Latinx brother Jakob, son of Jack Toretto (played by Latinx actor J.D. Pardo).
The franchise even tries to justify this twist by having another character joke about there being a Scandinavian strand in the Toretto family, but there's no mistaking it. John Cena is as Latino as café con leche, as is Jason Momoa. It doesn't stop there, either. Paul Walker's Brian O'Conner? Also Latinx (by marriage). Sung Kang's Han? Latinx too, as are Ludacris' Tej and Tyrese Gibson's Roman and Nathalie Emmanuel's Ramsey. Even Jason Statham's Deckard Shaw. No, really, it's true, en serio.
This franchise has done many great stunts that defy gravity and logic. From the humble origins of a car racing beneath a truck, all the way to cars diving out of a plane, outracing a submarine, and literally going to space. The biggest stunt the franchise has pulled, however, is stealthily becoming the most Latinx franchise in Hollywood, and spreading the gospel of Latinidad to the point where it is converting every actor in Hollywood into a Latino, whether they like it or not.
It's all one big family
The key to all this is in the ending scene of every "Fast & Furious" movie: the barbecue. Almost every movie ends the same way, with Dom and the crew celebrating the success of the job by having a big family barbecue and saying a prayer before it. That barbecue has grown bigger and bigger with every movie, as new people join the crew, both friend and foe. But what the film doesn't explicitly say is that the barbecue also serves another purpose — it is an official adoption ceremony wherein Dom indoctrinates a new person into the Toretto family, and more specifically, into becoming Latinx.
It makes perfect sense. This franchise, starting with the fourth movie, became the biggest and only Latinx franchise in Hollywood, one where religion, family values, family dinners, fast cars, and coronas are sacraments. The moment you sit down at a Toretto barbecue and start eating, you essentially sign a Faustian deal wherein you gain supernatural skills and near immortality, and also you become a member of Dominic Toretto's Latinx family — and because being Latinx is all about having mixed backgrounds, everyone is welcomed. No matter what you look like, if you're part of the crew, you're part of the family.
At a time when Hollywood loves to race-bend and allow white actors to play Latinx characters (like Javier Bardem in "Being the Ricardos"), the "Fast & Furious" movies take the opposite approach. This franchise about guys being dudes dares to give every single actor currently working in Hollywood the chance to be a part of a huge franchise that prints money and join a loving Latinx family where people love and respect each other and forgive one another, no matter how many times they tried to kill or even succeeded in killing one of them.