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Dwayne Johnson, aka The Rock, gives USA TODAY a lesson in talking smack. Johnson stars in the “Fast and Furious” spinoff “Hobbs Shaw.”
USA TODAY
Idris Elba’s super-engineered villain has the most ingenious secret lair in “Fast Furious Presents: Hobbs Shaw”: the infamous Chernobyl nuclear power plant.Â
Filmmakers were planning to use the site of the 1986 nuclear disaster, the world’s worst nuclear catastrophe, as a location even before awareness was turned up following HBO’s “Chernobyl” mini-series, which has earned 19 Emmy nominations.
“It wasn’t a statement. It was more like, where would this nefarious high-tech organization hide underground?” says director David Leitch. “It’s just this place people wouldn’t want to go. No one is going to want to snoop around Chernobyl.”
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Dwayne Johnson and Jason Statham team up in the new “Fast Furious” spinoff, “Hobbs Shaw.”
USA TODAY
Brixton is shown driving his convoy into the plant (featured in the first shots of the trailer), compelling Dwayne Johnson’s Hobbs and Jason Statham’s Shaw to break in secretly and then bust out.Â
But it wasn’t actually Chernobyl they shot at. While tourism to the shut-down nuclear plant and the evacuated area in the Ukraine (about 100 miles north of Kiev) has boomed in the series’ wake, filmmakers used a power plant stand-in.
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They traveled to the northern city of Doncaster, England to film around the recently decommissioned Eggborough coal-powered plant, which allowed the stunt teams to shoot scenes featuring the off-road, custom-made Rock Crawler and the MAN Truck.
“All those cooling towers, they are there. So many of the interior and exterior shots are all (from camera shots),” says Leitch. “It had the same sort of aesthetic of Chernobyl and that area of the Ukraine.”
However, much of the actual secret lair interiors were shot in London locations, including Shepperton Studios.
In the complete other location extreme, filmmakers incorporated the lush Hawaiian island of Kauai to shoot much of Hobb’s home base of Samoa. But the rock-filled waterfall location where Brixton, Hobbs and Shaw battle it out was a multi-story set on a 30,000 square foot sound stage.
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The set featured portion of a downed Blackhawk helicopter and a Peterbilt truck, and required an extensive water system that pumped thousands of gallons of water to create a working waterfall and constant rain.
The slow-motion power punches to the stars’ faces during the battle required some visual effects punching-up. But the actors really did slog it out in the fake torrential rains for two weeks. The looks on their faces says it all.
“To put the actors in the torrential rain day-after-day, it  was not a comfortable experience,” says Leitch. “But onscreen, it looks kind of epic.”