The Fast & Furious franchise expanded into spin-offs outside the mainline Fast Saga back in 2019 with Hobbs & Shaw. After Universal crammed a backdoor pilot for the offshoot into the middle act of The Fate of the Furious, Dwayne Johnson and Jason Statham reprised their roles as hard-edged mercenaries Luke Hobbs and Deckard Shaw in their own team-up movie. Thanks to its $760 million box office haul, a sequel is in development. But if it’s going to succeed, the sequel will have to fix a major problem from the first movie.
While Hobbs & Shaw was a fun action blockbuster with a nice balance of explosive set pieces and ball-busting banter, it was let down by the fact that the characters of Hobbs and Shaw themselves weren’t clearly defined. They constantly talk about how much they hate each other, but on paper, they’re actually very similar.
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Johnson and Statham share terrific chemistry, but their dynamic has a lot of unrealized potential because the thinly drawn scripts they’ve been given to work with don’t have a lot of character material for the actors to sink their teeth into. Hobbs and Shaw’s relationship is pretty one-note. They’re both just gruff mercenaries who don’t like each other. The only difference is that Hobbs is a former DSS agent and Shaw is a former MI6 agent.
The Hobbs & Shaw franchise is set up as a sort of “buddy cop” series about a mismatched pair reluctantly teaming up to take on dangerous cases. Neither of them is actually a cop, but “buddy cop” movies are defined more by the “buddy” aspect than the “cop” aspect. Midnight Run is one of the greatest “buddy cop” movies ever made and its leads are a bounty hunter and an accountant. “Buddy cop” movies revolve entirely around the leads’ relationship and they work a lot better when the mismatched duo is actually mismatched and their personalities clash. In 48 Hrs., Nick Nolte’s grumpy detective is contrasted with Eddie Murphy’s fast-talking, street-smart crook. In Lethal Weapon, Danny Glover’s grizzled veteran by-the-book lawman is contrasted with Mel Gibson’s hotshot young renegade cop.
Hobbs & Shaw 2 needs to recapture the first movie’s wildly entertaining mix of action and comedy, but it also needs to tell us more about who Luke Hobbs and Deckard Shaw are and how they’re different, and why they don’t get along. If this is going to become a long-running series, screenwriter Chris Morgan can’t just continue to write vague bickering between the two characters – he needs to dig a lot deeper into their conflicts.
The first movie’s focus on family could be used as a jumping-off point for the conflict between Hobbs and Shaw. The Shaw family’s fierce loyalty toward one another has been crucial to their characterization. Furious 7 revolves around Deckard’s relentless quest to avenge his brother. Helen Mirren’s badass Shaw matriarch has been shown to have a soft spot for her kids. And in Hobbs & Shaw, Deckard only agrees to work with Hobbs to look out for his sister Hattie. Meanwhile, Hobbs & Shaw revealed that Luke Hobbs hails from a family of Samoan thieves whose callous patriarch allowed several of his sons to die. Luke turned his father in to the authorities before running away from home. Hobbs and Shaw clearly disagree on the importance of loyalty to one’s family.
Since family is already the theme that unifies The Fast Saga, this conflict would fit right into the Hobbs & Shaw sequel. Hobbs & Shaw 2 could finally introduce Shaw’s father as a third member of the dynamic. Bringing in a third character as a comedic foil for both Hobbs and Shaw could help to bring out the duo’s differences (and similarities), like Joe Pesci’s role as Leo Getz in the Lethal Weapon sequels. The Falcon and the Winter Soldier suffered from the same problem as Hobbs & Shaw (not enough conflict between the leading duo) until a third character, Baron Zemo, joined them as a go-between foil.
Generic characterization has become a common problem in action cinema. It’s been a long time since action heroes really captured audiences’ imaginations like John McClane or Neo, because every action hero is characterized with the same bland, likable traits. Luke Hobbs and Deckard Shaw were both initially introduced as villains and share a proclivity for doing bad things with good intentions, so Hobbs & Shaw 2 can have fun with the antihero element.
Universal has yet to make any firm announcements about Hobbs & Shaw 2, like its title or release date or when shooting begins, which could be a sign that the studio is still working on getting the script right. Since the filmmakers have got big, bombastic action down pat and the producers can always rely on Johnson and Statham’s reliable chemistry, getting the script right – and, more specifically, getting the characterization right – is the most important thing to make sure the Hobbs & Shaw sequel succeeds.
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