Here,The Fate of the Furiousdirector F. Gary Gray goes inside his films frightening climactic scene.
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Oh, and an airplane, too.
Credit: Everett Collection
Well, of course the answer to why he betrayed his family would be to save his family.
The unexpected answer: villain-turned-presumed-dead-ally Deckard Shaw (Jason Statham).
Finding Brian was the easy part, as the exit strategy proved to be a tad more strenuous.
The fight scene featured great action, adorable reactions from the baby, and amazing one-liners from Statham.
You were going to shoot a baby?
Coming offStraight Outta Compton, his commercially and critically successful N.W.A.
biopic,The Italian Jobfilmmaker returned to the world of cars forFate.
Upon diving into longtimeFastwriter Chris Morgans script, the airplane scene immediately caught Grays attention.
I was a little nervous at first, admits Gray.
Its not a slam dunk situation.
Certain scenes you read and youre like, Okay, I know this is going to work.
Its just the unknown, shares Gray.
We dont want to burn your actors and stuntmen out and burn a million takes on this acrobatic shootout.
Its the unpredictability of what the baby would do.
Then, also making sure it felt unique and not like every other action scene in the film.
So it doesnt feel too gratuitous.
The movie doesnt work without this story point and it was a fun story point.
Its one of my favorite scenes in the movie for sure.
The Miracle Baby, nailed his big debut.
I just love the chemistry between him and Jason.
The interaction and interplay between both of the actors became just as entertaining as the actions and the stunts.
And so anytime you might combine great character moments with great action, you have a great sequence.
But its this sequence that Gray deemed Stathams movie star moment.
We had so many movie stars in that movie and every star needed their moment.
And that was a great moment for him.
We talk about that: How can we make it great?
How can we make it better?
We know what the words are on the page, but how can we push the envelope?
But here, Gray went in a much more animated direction to keep baby Carlos preoccupied.
My editor Chris Wagner kind of gave me this crazy look, like, What?!
Because what was written by Chris Morgan was this really mellow classical song to keep the baby calm.
And I said, Lets just go for it.
Because with the Chipmunks, youre going to immediately recognize it and youre going to laugh your ass off.
