The Fast & Furious universe has featured some interesting cast choices over the years. From Dwayne Johnson and Helen Mirren to Jason Momoa, it’s been fun (and pretty silly) to see what relatively big-name actors get caught up in this universe’s orbit. And if Vin Diesel has his way, the franchise will add another Marvel actor into its ranks.
During the reveal event for Fast X’s trailer on Thursday night, Diesel told Variety that he’d like to bring Robert Downey Jr. into the franchise, specifically for Fast 11. It’s his dream casting “without question,” though he hasn’t pitched the idea to the former Iron Man yet. In fact, when asked about that, he jokingly replied, “How dare you ask me this question in front of all these people? I have pride and I have dignity.”
On its own, that would be a fun aside — Michelle Rodriguez was asked the same question and nominated Matt Damon — but Diesel followed it up with an…interesting idea for Downey’s hypothetical character. He suggested that the actor would be “the antithesis of Dom who is promoting AI and driverless cars and a philosophy that with that goes your freedom. There is somebody that believes that’s the future, and that’s at direct odds with the Toretto mentality.” He prefaced this by saying he didn’t want to give too much of Fast 11’s plot away, but this definitely suggests that such a villain is being cooked up by the franchise’s writers — and if not for that specific movie, then maybe in an eventual spinoff.
Either way, “Elon Musk but the self-driving cars work and are intentionally deadly” does sound like a role Downey would probably be good at. And to be quite honest, it doesn’t sound entirely hard to imagine he’d come to the franchise for a single movie and then die…assuming he doesn’t somehow cheat death four movies later. If it happens, cool, just don’t make the car into a mech. We don’t need to be that on the nose with it.