Fast X: Louis Leterrier teases a “vertical quarter-mile race”

Fast X director Louis Leterrier teases a vertical quarter-mile race, proving there’s still new things for the franchise to do with cars.

The Fast & Furious franchise has tackled a number of physics-defying stunts over the last twenty years, including taking a rocket car to space. Although Fast X director Louis Leterrier has promised slightly more grounded stunts in the new sequel, that doesn’t mean that we’re not in store for some craziness.

While speaking with Empire, Louis Leterrier teased, “There are many ways of doing quarter-mile races. We’re doing a vertical quarter-mile race, which is very interesting…” Exactly what Leterrier means by that remains to be seen. Will Dom be driving straight up a building? I suppose he’s already driven through enough buildings. No matter what happens, Fast X will deliver plenty of vehicular mayhem, which sent a lot of real-life cars to the scrapyard. “When you see a car dropping from a plane and landing on two cars, well, we did drop a car and then it landed on two cars,” Leterrier said.

“Over many missions and against impossible odds, Dom Toretto (Vin Diesel) and his family have outsmarted, out-nerved and outdriven every foe in their path. Now, they confront the most lethal opponent they’ve ever faced: A terrifying threat emerging from the shadows of the past who’s fueled by blood revenge, and who is determined to shatter this family and destroy everything—and everyone—that Dom loves, forever,” reads the official Fast X description. “In 2011’s Fast Five, Dom and his crew took out nefarious Brazilian drug kingpin Hernan Reyes and decapitated his empire on a bridge in Rio De Janeiro. What they didn’t know was that Reyes’ son, Dante, witnessed it all and has spent the last 12 years masterminding a plan to make Dom pay the ultimate price. Dante’s plot will scatter Dom’s family from Los Angeles to the catacombs of Rome, from Brazil to London and from Portugal to Antarctica. New allies will be forged and old enemies will resurface. But everything changes when Dom discovers that his own 8-year-old son is the ultimate target of Dante’s vengeance.“

Fast X will kick off the grand finale of the Fast & Furious franchise, and that has allowed Louis Leterrier to take a few more risks than previous movies. “That’s the beauty of arriving near the end of this franchise: I don’t have to go, ‘Oh, well, these characters will live forever,’” Leterrier previously said. “No. They might not, because it’s the end. Only in westerns do cowboys gallop out into the sunset. This is definitely different. It allowed me some freedom to raise the stakes even more than they’ve been raised before.” Michelle Rodriguez has also teased that Fast X would end on a shocking cliffhanger, so who knows what surprise the movie has in store for us. Fast X will hit theaters on May 19th.