In a development that one notable figure in the entertainment industry is calling “potentially the biggest story in years” (it’s me, I’m the only one saying this, shut up, it’s important to me), Vin Diesel is coming back to the xXx franchise early next year after a 15-year hiatus. The new movie is called xXx: Return of Xander Cage and is about his character, Xander Cage, uh, returning. I guess that part was obvious. If there’s a tattooed, skydiving God in heaven, the movie will feature someone trying to coax him out of retirement, and when Vin replies “Why me?,” that person will say “Because you’re the best, that’s why.” All good movies have this scene. It usually takes place on a mountain.
Anyway, the studio just released the official trailer for the movie and, guys, it is very extreme. xXxtreme, if you will. There are at least two different scenes in which Vin Diesel uses a form of transportation in a situation where it doesn’t belong at all, at various points flying through the air and/or under the water, just like he does in your dreams when you accidentally take too much cough syrup. It’s really quite something. I think the best way to handle it all is by putting the things Vin Diesel in the trailer into categories and ranking them from “A Little xXxtreme” to “Probably Too xXxtreme.” Yes, let’s do that.
A Little xXxtreme
Jumping over a moving car is usually pretty extreme. Like if you went outside right now and someone just did it on your street, you’d probably be all, “Dang, that was some pretty extreme stuff right there.” But we are dealing in proportionality here. There are things that happen elsewhere in the trailer that throw the whole scale into disarray. Trust me on this.
Hmm, disarming a woman who has a gun pointed at your crotch and then turning the gun back on her in the middle of what appears to be a rave held inside a castle is definitely an extreme thing to do, but I’m deducting points because the woman didn’t have a mohawk. Sorry, but rules are rules.
Not So Much ‘xXxtreme’ As ‘Hilarious,’ But Still
ACTUAL DIALOGUE FROM THIS TRAILER
“We need someone who can move like them, fight like them… it’s time to be a patriot.”
“There are no more patriots, just rebels and tyrants.”
“So which are you?”
“I’m xXx.”
This is, I think, my favorite selection of movie dialogue since the “I believe that, like me, the people behind these robberies are extreme athletes” speech from the Point Break remake. It’s just perfect. I hope when the movie comes out and I see this scene on opening weekend in IMAX 3D, it cuts back to the lady who is trying to recruit him and she does a dramatic eye roll straight into the camera. Until then, I’m going to try to work “There are no more patriots, just rebels and tyrants” into as many conversations as I can.
It’s also worth noting here, while we’re discussing turns of phrase, that Vin Diesel revealed a new poster for the movie yesterday on Facebook and the tagline on the poster was “‘Safe’ isn’t in my dictionary.” That’s just perfect in ways I can’t even begin to articulate.
Sending members of the military flying out the back of a cargo plane is probably more “federal offense-y” than extreme.
About A Standard Amount Of xXxtreme
As far as I can tell, there is no real crime-solving, world-saving reason for Vin Diesel to be high-fiving people in cars and doing sick skateboard tricks off of buses as he careens down a mountain road with a backpack on like some sort of tatted up version of Mitchell Goosen from Airborne, so let’s just take this opportunity to point out how weird it would be to be on a bus and see Vin Diesel grind under your window and zip off.
Gettin’ Pretty xXxtreme
There’s a scene in the trailer where a van flips over a car and it causes a whole mess, but car crashes in action movies are nothing new, so bleh. The reason I have it ranked this high has nothing to do with that. The reason I have it ranked this high is because the van is being driven by The Hound from Game of Thrones and a little research tells me that his character’s name in this movie is “Torch.”
Admittedly Vin Diesel is not in this scene and it makes the headline somewhat inaccurate, but, I mean, Torch!
(Also, while we’re on a brief non-Vin tangent, if you heard that Vin Diesel was making another xXx movie and thought to yourself, “Hmm, I wonder if it will be about a group of terrorists stealing a device that controls every single military satellite, and I wonder if those terrorists will be an ethnically diverse group of martial arts experts who love wearing leather and driving motorcycles and looking like they just came from or are going to a night club that John Wick has shot up on multiple occasions,” I am pleased to report that your hunch was correct.)
You would think that nothing could be more extreme than skiing through a rainforest.
You would think that.
You would be wrong.
xXxTremely xXxtreme
Jumping out of a flying plane as it is exploding is undoubtedly very extreme, but Vin Diesel has already a) driven a car through the nose of an airplane as it was exploding on a runway (Fast & Furious 6), and b) backed a muscle car out of an airplane and then parachuted the car down safely onto a road below (Furious 7), so this feels a little stale. No, it is not lost on me how ridiculous that sentence is.
“What’s that? Vin Diesel flies out of a plane as it explodes? [yawns] Okay.”
He just slapped a guy in the face with the back wheel of a dirtbike. Imagine surviving that and then showing up to your big terrorist meeting with tire marks and trying to explain it.
“Sheesh Ron, what happened to you?”
“Vin Diesel did a backflip into our camp on a dirtbike and slapped me in the face with the back tire as he drove by.”
“… Again.”
“Yes, Kevin. Again.”
Hand grenade hot potato. The most extreme game of all.
Probably Too xXxtreme
Let’s be really clear about what’s happening here. Vin Diesel is chasing a bad guy, and they are both on dirtbikes, and both dirtbikes have apparently been outfitted with little planks that can be deployed when nearing water, and deploying these planks turns the dirtbike into a jet ski. Or a waterbike. Or a water dirtbike. I don’t know what you call it. What I do know is that
Vin Diesel
is driving a dirtbike
through the ocean
like some sort of dolphin
that probably has a tribal tattoo circling its blowhole.
That is very xXxtreme.
