The last trailer before opening day has dropped — and it's everything. Johnson. Statham. Elba going full black-armoured supervillain. Here's what to expect when Hobbs & Shaw hits screens on August 2.
Universal has released the final trailer for Fast & Furious Presents: Hobbs & Shaw, and it delivers exactly what fans of the franchise have come to expect: cars, chaos, impossible physics, and two men who absolutely should not work together somehow saving the world together. The film opens in Malaysian cinemas on August 2, 2019, and after this trailer, the question is no longer whether it will be good — it's whether you've bought your ticket yet.
Director David Leitch — the man behind Deadpool 2 and Atomic Blonde — has been given the keys to the Fast & Furious universe and promptly floored it. The trailer makes clear this is a film with its own identity: funnier, more kinetic, and more overtly comic-book than the main franchise, with Idris Elba's villain Brixton leaning into full sci-fi supervillain territory in a way that gives Hobbs and Shaw something genuinely new to bounce off.
"I am the necessary evil."
— Brixton (Idris Elba), Hobbs & ShawEver since hulking DSS agent Luke Hobbs (Dwayne Johnson) and British black-ops rogue Deckard Shaw (Jason Statham) first crossed fists in Furious 7, the two have been circling each other with a mutual contempt that is, frankly, enormously entertaining to watch. Now they're being forced to work together — reluctantly, loudly, with considerable property damage — to stop a cyber-genetically enhanced anarchist called Brixton from deploying a programmable supervirus known as "Snowflake" that could wipe out half of humanity.
Standing between the virus and the world: Shaw's sister Hattie (Vanessa Kirby), a brilliant MI6 agent who has already injected the virus into her own body to keep it from Brixton's hands. She needs to be extracted. Brixton needs to be stopped. And Hobbs and Shaw need to stop arguing for long enough to do it — which, if this trailer is anything to go by, is asking a lot.
Hobbs & Shaw is the first proper standalone spinoff in the Fast & Furious franchise — a genuine attempt to build something new from the universe rather than just continuing the main timeline. For that, Universal needed the right creative team: Leitch is one of the most kinetically gifted action directors working today, and pairing Johnson and Statham — two performers whose chemistry is built entirely on mutual contempt — gives the film an engine that doesn't need plot to run.
The addition of Idris Elba as Brixton is the film's smartest move. Elba doesn't play villains often, and when he does he tends to go big. Here, he goes enormous — armoured, augmented, sneering, with a backstory that ties directly into the franchise's mythology in ways the trailer only hints at. His presence elevates every scene he's in and gives Johnson and Statham something to unite against that feels like a genuine threat rather than just another boss fight.
Leitch has built a film that knows exactly what it is — and has the nerve to commit to it completely.
— Pass the PopcornThe final trailer also offers the first real look at the Samoa third act, where Hobbs' extended family becomes, apparently, a critical tactical asset. It's the kind of detail that should be ridiculous and instead, in the hands of this franchise, feels oddly earned. That's the magic of Fast & Furious at its best: it shouldn't work, and it does.
Fast & Furious Presents: Hobbs & Shaw is in Malaysian cinemas from August 2, 2019. Check your nearest GSC, TGV or MBO for showtimes.