Hobbs and Shaw gets a testos­terone-fuelled first trailer

Over their eight install­ments, the Fast and Furi­ous fran­chise has grad­u­al­ly inched away from real­i­ty. Every new film takes the series far­ther from its street-rac­ing roots – the most recent chap­ter of this ongo­ing saga involved a run­away nuclear sub­ma­rine – and the trail­er for upcom­ing spin­off Hobbs and Shaw announces a full head­long leap into fantasy.

Fan favorites Jason Statham and Dwayne ​“The Rock” John­son will reprise their char­ac­ters, crim­i­nal-turned-crime­fight­er Deckard Shaw and Diplo­mat­ic Secu­ri­ty Ser­vice agent Luke Hobbs, in a new vehi­cle (pun extreme­ly intend­ed) for the pair.

Such mighty heroes need a vil­lain wor­thy of their bulging biceps, and they’ll find one in Idris Elba, por­tray­ing inter­na­tion­al ter­ror­ist mas­ter­mind Brix­ton. He’s the one to ful­ly divorce this fran­chise from the con­straints of physics, as his mega­lo­ma­ni­a­cal plot involves using gene tech­nol­o­gy to essen­tial­ly turn him into a super­hu­man capa­ble of punch­ing through steel walls.

To diehard fans of the series’ mythos, Hobbs team­ing with Shaw rep­re­sents a betray­al of the [Vin Diesel voice] fam­bly mem­bers whose lives Shaw has already tak­en. To those less invest­ed in the die­ge­sis and more invest­ed in watch­ing large objects explode, the trail­er promis­es a pret­ty good time.

Hobbs and Shaw’s valiant mis­sion to stop Brix­ton before he con­quers Earth or destroys all cars or what­ev­er his plan might be drags the men through an obsta­cle course of big-bud­get spec­ta­cle, where sky­scraper free-falls and build­ing-lev­el­ing crash­es are the order of the day. The only way to sur­vive will be through trust, friend­ship, and macho one-lin­ers deliv­ered through a pearly-white grin.

Fast & Furi­ous Presents: Hobbs and Shaw will be in the­aters on 2 August, 2019.