Universal Pictures
Part of me actually wishes I had the ego of Vin Diesel — who knows what I’d be able to accomplish with that sort of blind confidence. Walking into baby showers acting like the party is for me because my girlfriend calls me baby. Telling telemarketers what an honor it is for them to select my phone number. Putting ketchup and string cheese on a piece of toast and acting like I just invented pizza. These are examples of how Vin Diesel likely feels about himself in relation to the Fast and Furious franchise: he genuinely believes that *he’s* the reason for the franchise’s success. It’s legitimately stunning but also admittedly impressive. You’d think that not having a hit movie without the word Fast or Guardians or Avengers in the title would clue him into the fact that perhaps he’s not the Hollywood icon he thinks he is. Alas, he does — but that’s what makes Vin Diesel, Vin Diesel.
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Take this recent interview with Men’s Health, for example, where Diesel detailed his feud with former Fast co-star The Rock, and how his “tough love” helped created the wildly popular Hobbs character:
“It was a tough character to embody, the Hobbs character,” Diesel said. “My approach at the time was a lot of tough love to assist in getting that performance where it needed to be.”
“As a producer to say, ‘Okay, we’re going to take Dwayne Johnson, who’s associated with wrestling, and we’re going to force this cinematic world, audience members, to regard his character as someone that they don’t know’ – Hobbs hits you like a ton of bricks,” he continued. “That’s something that I’m proud of, that aesthetic. That took a lot of work. We had to get there and sometimes, at that time, I could give a lot of tough love. Not Felliniesque, but I would do anything I’d have to do in order to get performances in anything I’m producing.”
The amount of revisionist history happening here is staggering. Lest we forget, 2009’s Fast & Furious — the last film in the franchise to *not* star The Rock prior to F9 — made “just” $360 million at the global box office against an $85 million budget. It wasn’t until The Rock showed up that it became a half-a-billion dollar (or more) behemoth: Fast Five made $626.1 million, Fast & Furious 6 made $788.7 million, Furious 7 made $1.5 billion, and The Fate of the Furious earned $1.236 billion.
It was, quite literally, the introduction of The Rock that made the franchise what it is today — not Diesel the actor nor the producer. Diesel, obviously realizing as much, now trying to take credit for “creating” the Hobbs performance, or whatever, is simply laugh-out-loud funny. I just love to hate this dude.
F9, which unfortunately does not star The Rock, hits theaters on Friday.
RELATED: ‘F9’ Review – ‘Fast’ Fans To Be Thrilled With More Of The Same From 20-Year-Old Franchise
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