Movies

'F9' Behind The Scenes Footage Shows The Franchise's Continued Commitment To Practical Stunts

F9 behind the scenes
By Ben Pearson/

If you've seen one of the latter period Fast & Furious movies, it should come as no surprise that not every outlandish, over-the-top stunt in those films was accomplished practically. But a surprising number of them actually are – they literally dropped vehicles with parachutes on them out of a plane, for example.

After taking two movies off, director Justin Lin has returned to the franchise for F9, the long-delayed and highly anticipated sequel that's slated to arrive this summer. And it looks like he brought that love of practical stunts with him, because Lin shared some behind-the-scenes footage which reveals that the biggest moment in last night's F9 Super Bowl teaser was, astonishingly, done for real on a set and not entirely created using CG.

F9 Behind the Scenes Video

Hell. Yes. This is exactly the spark I need to kickstart a groggy, post-Super Bowl Monday morning. Thank you, Justin Lin. Thank you to those 100-plus crew members who helped pull this off. Thank you to the people who sat through what must have been dozens of meetings about this and didn't blink when they heard that they needed to pull off a stunt in which a character turns on a massive magnet that's so powerful that it literally pulls a car through a building and into the back of a truck that's in motion. God, I love these movies.

I don't want to make it seem like there was no CGI utilized in this scene at all – there obviously was. But it's being used to enhance a stunt that was actually performed for real, which is what's so damn cool about it. Lin easily could have decided to make this entire thing a visual effect, but we're talking about the same filmmaker who actually strapped a giant, 9,000 pound safe to the back of cars and had his stunt team drag it through the streets of Rio de Janeiro – so let's be real: faking it was never an option.

Looking at this video closely, it seems as if there were two different run-throughs that were stitched together digitally to achieve the final effect. There's the part in the beginning when the car is initially pulled through the wall, and then a segment at the end in which it bursts through the "glass" and into the side of the truck. Again, you'll be able to spot some CG enhancements here, but it's still incredibly impressive, and I cannot wait to see how this sequence plays out in context within this sure-to-be-insane sequel.

F9 is currently scheduled to arrive in theaters on May 28, 2021.

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