Caffeinated Clint
OK, so Vin’s out, Paul’s out, the dude with the socket-inspired hair-do is gone…where’s the second sequel to "The Fast and the Furious" going, then?
Director Justin Lin tells MTV that "This is a big franchise for the studio," he says, pausing briefly as he packed his bags for a location scouting trip to Tokyo. "I’m just trying to make a good summer popcorn movie that has a little more to say; that’s my goal. I’m not trying to win an Oscar, I just want to stay true to the characters and to the themes and have some kick-ass car chases. Those are the goals."
This sequel tells the story of Shaun Boswell, a 17-year-old American street-racer whose mother brokers a deal that allows him to avoid prison if he leaves the country. Sent to live with his military-employed uncle in Tokyo, the youth finds himself intrigued by the underground phenomenon of drift racing.
"It’s about turning these corners on these roads, and how you handle it — it’s not a straightaway race," Lin said of the real-life Asian phenomenon. "There are certain things required [of the cars] — you have to have rear-wheel drive; you can’t have a four-wheel drive or a front-wheel drive, so you can pull the e-brake and stuff like that. You can drift, you can actually glide these turns, and be very efficient. It’s not all about the speed; it’s all about how you take these turns, so on a winding road you’ll be kind of sliding back and forth very gracefully. It’s interesting, because from a distance it looks very graceful, but when you’re up close it’s all about traction."
None of the original characters will be back, says Lin.
"We’re casting [the character of Shaun] and we’re thinking of this kid that will go with the sensibility of the movie I want to make, which is more of a global sense. Someone that you can’t quite tell what he is," the director said, hinting that his new star will have a Diesel-esque ambiguity. "We’re building a whole new cast; we’re looking at everybody. The thing that excited me was that it’s a brand-new film; we don’t want any holdovers. For me, it’s very much like a postmodern Sergio Leone movie. Structurally, it’s very much like a Western."
Lin, a cinema-savvy director with a fondness for Leone’s classic "Man With No Name" trilogy, says the battle between Shaun and a villain racer known as the "Drift King" will have echoes of the classic battles in "The Good, the Bad and the Ugly" and the other films. "It’s really just these two guys who are alpha males, and it’s your classic Western setup: They have a little showdown at the end. That’s pretty much all I can give you now, because I’m in the process of working that out. But think Western, think Leone Western."
He’s going to continue to polish the story. "Even if someone has to be a heavy, or a love interest, I don’t want to take that for granted," he insisted. "I want to try to work really hard on the back story. In the initial script, they are Asian and some are Asian-Americans, and I’m working really hard to make them three-dimensional rather than just props, and that’s always the challenge. But I feel like I’m up for it — so far so good. I guess we’ll see next summer how it turns out."
The currently untitled film will not be called "3 Fast 3 Furious."
"God," he laughed. "I really hope not."
