Director Justin Lin Has 'Emotional Reason' For Sending 'F9' To Space

That’s one small step for man, one giant leap for… family. The new F9 trailer has it all: Vin Diesel and John Cena pointing guns at each other; Helen Mirren driving a car; Charlize Theron with a terrible-but-not-as-bad-as-the-one-she-had-in-The Fate of the Furious haircut; magnets; and the return of Han. Also, folks, they did it. They really did it.

[“Pigs in Space” voice] Ludacris and Tyrese in space.

It might seem preposterous to have Roman and Tej in a car in scuba diver-looking space suits considering this franchise’s humble origins (humble compared to The Rock flexing so hard that his cast explodes). But director Justin Lin swears that there’s an “emotional” reason for sending them flying. “It’s been years in the making. Through the years, I always can just play and feel like I come up with the craziest ideas and see if there’s an appropriate way for us to earn that,” he told Entertainment Weekly.

Lin continued:

“I remember I was working on the script and there was an emotional character thread, and it was for like four months, and when the idea finally hit and it felt right, I drove to Vin’s house and we looked to each other and we said, ‘Yep, this is the one.’ We’ve been talking about it for years, but this is the one where we really get to push it.”

Who among us hasn’t driven to Vin Diesel’s house to pitch him an idea? I did it last week with my new script (the script is a single page with a drawing of the moon and the word “profit?” on it). Lin says the visuals in the space sequence “speak for themselves, and it’s a promise of something that is going to not only be visually and action-wise fun, but also I think there’s an emotional reason for its existence.”

I am going to be so mad if F9 gets delayed again.