In the third act of Hobbs & Shaw, the gang goes to Samoa to visit Luke Hobbs’s (Dwayne Johnson) family.
It’s a multipurpose excursion: They need to fix a machine that will save Hattie’s (Vanessa Kirby) life, and Hobbs’s brother Jonah (Cliff Curtis) is the only person in the world who can do the job. But they also go because the subplot of the movie is family—this is a Fast & Furious film, after all—and for a long time, Hobbs has had a terrible relationship with his actual relatives. Now that the fate of the world is at stake, it’s time to fix that as well.
Though these scenes were shot in Hawaii for logistical reasons, the sequence serves as an amazing platform for bringing Samoan culture to the screen. The movie casts dozens of Samoan actors to play Hobbs’s family and friends. Characters regularly speak Samoan and pepper sentences with words like uso, which means “brother.”
When it comes time to band together and fight the baddies, led by the villainous Brixton (Idris Elba), the Samoans perform a Siva Tau, a traditional war dance similar to the Haka, and fight with traditional clubs and spears, because Hobbs’s mother, Sefina (Lori Pelenise Tuisano)—who runs things on the island—has decided that guns are too primitive. Samoa becomes a central figure in the film, serving as the only setting that can help Hobbs and Shaw save the world, not least because Hobbs and his family intimately know their way around the island.
Naturally the concept of this plot twist was inspired by Johnson himself, who is half Samoan, said Hobbs & Shaw screenwriter and producer Chris Morgan. Seeds for this idea were planted around the fifth Fast & Furious film. Morgan specifically wrote the role of Hobbs for Johnson; once the actor said yes, he started figuring out ways to inject Johnson’s real personality and real-life story into the character, as he does for all Fast characters.
“I remember talking to Dwayne a lot about his background, and where he came from and who his family was,” the screenwriter said. One anecdote in particular stood out. “He was telling a story about [how] his dad had wanted to go buy a gun at one point, and his grandmother sat him down and gave him this lecture. She said specifically, ‘If you have to fight, you fight with this,’ and she holds up her fist, ‘And you fight with this,’ and she points to her heart. She’s like, It doesn’t take a man to pull a trigger. I was like, ‘Oh my God, man, that’s going in the movie!’”
That scene, word for word, did end up in the final product. “Dwayne just clicked and took it and ran with it,” Morgan said. “It was important to him because for the first time he’s really able to, in a blockbuster film, embrace his cultural heritage.”
It’s true that though Johnson has been able to pepper past films with nods to his Samoan background, Hobbs & Shaw is his greatest love letter to the island itself thus far. In order to get things just right, two cultural advisers worked on the film, designing things like the Siva Tau. Samoan actors like Eliana Sua (who plays Hobbs’s bright daughter, Sam) were cast to fill out the film’s sprawling ensemble.
It was also a real-life family affair for Johnson; his cousin Joe Anoaʻ’i (better known as wrestler Roman Reigns) was cast to play Hobbs’s brother Mateo, while Johnson’s mother, Ata, came to revel in the action behind the scenes.
“I remember being there that night when he’s doing the Siva Tau, and his mom’s there and she’s crying,” Morgan recalled. “There’s so much going on. She’s seeing her son embrace his cultural heritage, and share it with the world on a giant movie, and speak her native language. It was very moving.”
“She had no idea it was gonna happen,” Johnson said in an interview on Live with Kelly and Ryan. “They’re tears of pride.”
Throughout it all, Deckard Shaw (Jason Statham) stays by Hattie’s side, working with Hobbs’s family to save the day. It’s one of the few moments in the film when Hobbs and Shaw, notorious frenemies, aren’t feuding or trading silly barbs. That comical bickering took up a lot of the film’s dialogue real estate, with Johnson and Statham getting passionate about it behind the scenes—running back and forth to Morgan on the set to brainstorm delicious new insults to surprise each other with.
“It’s like doing a live TV show,” Morgan said. “These guys are willing to do whatever it takes to get audiences to engage [in] the journey…they’re willing to go so dark.”
Their interactions sound like a far cry from a recent Wall Street Journal report indicating that during the makings of Furious 7 and The Fate of the Furious, Statham, Johnson, and Vin Diesel were so sensitive about their fight scenes that they had collaborators make sure each actor always walked away from his bouts looking heroic. Diesel reportedly even tried to create an intricate point system to count how many times he got punched or kicked in a fight scene, to make sure his character wasn’t taking an unequal number of hits.
Morgan, who read the WSJ report, said it was “kind of crazy to me.”
“That has never been a concern that anyone has ever, ever brought up to me,” he said. He also repeated the studio’s line—that every character is someone’s favorite, so they all need a chance to look formidable. “They are all alphas. They are all awesome. They all have awesome skills,” Morgan said. “Unless the story’s calling for a specific moment where they need to be brought so low, I want them to be able to give as good as they get.”
“I don’t count punches, I’ve never done that,” he added with a laugh.“I’ve never had anybody on those sets come to me with a punch count.”
He laughed, too, when reminded of the “candy ass” beef of 2016, when Johnson called out one of his costars and complained about his alleged behavior. That costar was later revealed to be Diesel, who reportedly wasn’t thrilled about the launch of a Fast & Furious spin-off.
“I mean, listen—I will just say these guys, they are working together every single day. They are total businessmen,” Morgan said. “I think that stuff got so blown out of proportion. I’m just glad we’re able to keep telling stories in the Fast world. It’s a spiderweb. It always comes back, and [the characters] always interweave.”
For now, Morgan’s careful not to make any promises about a Hobbs & Shaw sequel. But with a $180 million gross at the box office opening weekend, plus the fact that the core Fast franchise doesn’t seem to be winding down, another entry in the spin-off series seems possible. While Hobbs and Shaw would, ostensibly, be the focus of another movie, Morgan said he’s also got a lot of ideas for Hattie, Kirby’s “smart and acerbic” MI6 agent: “I think there’s so many more stories where you can go with that character.”