Picking Apart the Trailer for ‘xXx: Return of Xander Cage’, the Greatest Film Ever Made

Here is the character Vin Diesel plays in every film: calm muscle boy who smiles on one side of his mouth. Imagine Vin Diesel now. Dress him in a grubby vest and have him lean on an old Corvette. The Corvette is making those little tinkling sounds cars make as they cool down, and that is because Vin Diesel has been revving it, running it along deep black tarmac roads knifing through orange deserts; Vin Diesel has been hitting 80mph while a girl (Michelle Rodriguez, always Michelle Rodriguez) half stands out of the top of the car, holding a scarf behind her and yelling, "Woo!" Vin Diesel steps to you to hand you a Corona that is inexplicably ice cold despite rolling around in the trunk of said Corvette for four-to-six hours. How is this possible. How. Vin Diesel always hands you a beer like this: he pops the cap, smoothly but without a visible bottle opener, and then holds his arm bent low down by his waist, and turns his body with the arm as he offers the beer up to you, and then when your fingers touch the beer he fixes you with a stare and gives you a slight nod – a nod that says: Vin. This is Vin Diesel; this is the image you have of him in your head. Now tell me: what movie was that from?

It was from every movie he has ever been in, including The Pacifier.

Vin Diesel used to be in the army (spec ops, sure), but he isn't any more. "I don't do that shit no more," he says, smiling out the side of his mouth, looking behind him to where Michelle Rodriguez is, sat on top of a car and looking concerned. "We're family," Michelle Rodriguez says. "We're out. Don't you hear me? We're OUT." And then the guy trying to recruit him always tilts his head and says the same thing – "one last job" – and this is what gets Vin Diesel's blood up; this is the "chicken" taunt to his Marty McFly. Vin Diesel cannot resist One Last Job. One Last Job is his life force. One Last Job is his brain and his heart. Vin Diesel can be a hundred years old and dying on a gurney surrounded by family (Michelle Rodriguez, ancient, still wearing a vest) and the heart monitor is winding down and then someone sidles close to him; his eyelids are fluttering and he's trying to say something – "let's get it", or something, "it's go time" – and ancient Michelle Rodriguez is saying, "No, Vin, you must save your strength," and then some dude in a suit walks in, bends down to him and whispers, "One Last Job." And that's it: he's sat upright and he's loading a pistol. Doctors can't stop him and the nurses can't either. His mouth is firm and stoic. One Last Job. Shoot that Russian fuck, Vin Diesel – fulfil your destiny. One Last Job. It doesn't matter that they took your lungs out and your heart is robotic. One Last Job. Sit up, Vin Diesel. One Last Job.

There is no other human being alive called "Vin".

"Vin Diesel" is the most absurd name on the entire planet.

We allow Vin Diesel to get away with this because he is Vin Diesel.

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It is important that we all watch and enjoy this, the trailer for xXx: Return of Xander Cage, featuring Vin Diesel literally riding a motorbike into a wave.

Science and logic say: you can't ride a motorbike on water, Vin Diesel! But Vin Diesel looks at the two flimsy concepts of science and logic, and smiles on the side of his face, and looks to the sand beneath his boots, and does a little laugh, like this: ah, ha ha ha. Vin Diesel has an entourage of dudes in leather jackets and black denim and cigars who are sitting on motorbikes polishing guns, and they all laugh, too, and then Vin Diesel gets serious for a minute and then rides a fucking motorbike into the sea.

There is a separate part of the trailer where Vin Diesel does an unnecessary motorbike flip into a crowded bazaar, and I am just putting this out there: I think there's a chance that xXx: Return of Xander Cage features a good 40-minute segment where Vin Diesel has been cursed by a wizard to be bonded to a motorbike and the only way he can shake the unbreakable spell is by flipping it into just everything on earth.

Samuel L. Jackson is here, now, and while Vin Diesel is playing his go-to role of "dude who is mad he can only ride one motorbike at a time", Samuel L. Jackson is doing the only role he has played for the past 20 years, which is "man in a position of authority who is being threatening over a cup of tea".

Here he is holding chopsticks like he might just jam them into a motherfucker, but also he is enjoying some delicious pho and some jasmine tea. Peace in the streets, extremely violent dude in the sheets – that kind of vibe. Anyway, he says the world is getting bad as a montage shot of London exploding and a satellite falling out of the sky happens in the background. How can Vin Diesel stop a satellite falling out of the sky? Heh. If you're asking the question, you don't need to know the answer.

The answer is that he is going to ski down a fucking communications pylon in a jungle????

This means Xander Cage is back, which is important. Xander Cage is the most cutting edge throwback in the entire world. Xander Cage is a dude with non-tessellating all body tattoos who likes extreme sports and hates authority, thus making him the most mid-00s action hero possible. There is no more "I watched the Matrix twice and then made a film" superhero than Xander Cage. There is no more, "Woo! Yeah, buddy! Pass me another can of Monster energy drink!" action hero than Triple X.

Consider: in the 80s, our action heroes were bulky muscle men, goliaths, so muscular they can't actually undertake some simple athletic movements, such as walking. In the 90s they narrowed out but they were still hard, un-killable – 90s action stars literally dodged bullets and had high velocity driving skills. And then in the 2000s they all had neck tattoos, black-and-red khaki trousers and wore headphones while they did hacking. Xander Cage was the exemplar of that. And now he is back, here to shoo away the measly action heroes of the current decade – those who are always smart talking, always in sleek outfits, very rarely seen long-boarding while holding onto the side of a runaway bus. He is here to usher them back into the abyss they came from.

But he needs friends to do it, so he's got Backflip Man, Possibly Evil DJ, Dude Who Yells While Driving a Heavily Armoured Truck and Ruby Rose in to help him.

These are important because they all share some of the core assets that make xXx who he is (athlete, sleeveless hoody connoisseur, yelling, slightly threatening sexiness), but only he has them all in combination. They are his splinter team, his limbs. I pretty much guarantee Yelling Armoured Truck Guy will die, Possibly Evil DJ will turn evil (DJs are always evil in movies; this is a rule) and Ruby Rose will be some sort of oscillating triple agent who xXx suspects of being Really Bad but is actually Really Good (Vin Diesel, looking up at a collapsing balcony while a light-on-her-feet sniper wolf Ruby Rose skirts away, outsmarting him once again: "What the… hell?").

Anyway, here's a dude getting kicked off a motorbike by someone who then continues riding the aforementioned motorbike, and it really seems people's ability to not ever fall off motorbikes and die is a core theme to this film:

Samuel L. Jackson is now telling Vin Diesel "kick some ass and try to look dope while you do it", which is like Samuel L. Jackson submerging his head in a barrel and yelling at the fish to "shit in the sea". Essentially he is telling Vin Diesel, "Please, keep existing." But anyway: you just know that Samuel L. Jackson represents an organisation that is secretly evil, and Samuel L. Jackson knows it but not the true extent of it, so when Samuel L. Jackson is captured by those who he thought were his colleagues who inexplicably tape him to a chair and keep him alive, it is Vin Diesel and his pals who he has to shout "save me!" into a radio to, and Vin Diesel has to abseil out of a helicopter and kick his way through the window of a skyscraper and kick the living fuck out of some heavily armed and sleeveless vest-wearing ninja dudes, and when he unties Samuel L. Jackson, Samuel L. Jackson will start yelling: "Well get out of here! You have to stop them!"

Samuel L. Jackson may have just been beaten half to death, but he doesn't have time for pleasantries, for emotion, he only has time to tell Vin Diesel he needs to kick some major ass, like some just enormous buttocks, like you know when you see those hour-long documentary programmes about a woman whose weight has just got insanely out of control and she is condemned to live a life wheezing up the ramp the council had installed to her house and eating multipacks of Wagon Wheels and using more than one stick to walk and going, "This ehn't no life" to a camera over piano music, and she dabs one large tear from her pink huge face? You know them? Now imagine that ass. Huge. And Vin Diesel needs to kick that amount of it, to death.

Things that I can tell you are going to happen in the new xXx film; things I can tell you even before it is released, released as it is in January:

– Vin Diesel will aggressively unroll a short amount of duct tape and growl, "Let's get to work";

– A revolving shot where Vin Diesel gives four different people unique and different handshakes when he meets them, and he will meet them in a cybergoth club, and the music will be both loud enough that everyone is dancing to it but also so quiet they can all talk, over tequila shots (Vin Diesel will do a tequila shot without flinching), and that's where they will make a delicate arms trade, on the top balcony during Student Night at Corp;

– Vin Diesel will get beaten up during a chase sequence in a way where the only visible damage is a nosebleed out of one nostril;

– Vin Diesel will be challenged to a knife fight above a large structure (top of a skyscraper, on top of a train, on a bridge) and he will say, "Heh heh: I've been waiting for this one";

– At the end of a successful mission xXx and Ruby Rose will get tattoos, and will solemnly nod to each other while they do it, and then huge "X X X" CGI letters will come onto the screen with an iron-stamped-on-iron sound effect for each, and a specially recorded KoRN song will play over the credits;

– There will be a long opening scene where Vin Diesel is just driving, to show he is at peace;

– A lot of people will run out of a room mid-way through an action sequence and the camera will be on Samuel L. Jackson, who will say "damn" and then do something really domestic and mediocre like check his voicemail;

– There will be a really hard huge silent henchman called "Vasily" who Vin Diesel inevitably defeats by punching him into some robot-controlled riveting equipment (they are fighting in a motorbike factory);

– Vin Diesel looks at an old photograph of a woman (Michelle Rodriguez) and says: "This one's for you, Sara;"

– Vin Diesel has a conversation with Neymar (FUCKING NEYMAR IS IN IT) where neither one of them shares the shot for even one second and it becomes ever more clear that the two leads in the scene were shot months apart and on different continents (sample dialogue: "I need your skills" "I am… Barcelona" "You read my mind");

Essentially: I am sorry, but if this film does not win every Oscar I am going to revolt. This needs to win every Oscar and then they need to create additional Oscars for Vin Diesel to win.

And the Oscar for Fewest Amount of Tops with Sleeves on Them in a Motion Picture? Vin Diesel, xXx. The Oscar for World's Angriest Dad Bod? Vin Diesel, xXx. The Oscar for Most Motorbike Stunts in a Movie. The Oscar for Most Instances of the Word "Booyah". The Oscar for Most Vin Diesel. Vin Diesel, Vin Diesel, Vin Diesel. I absolutely cannot wait for this film.

@joelgolby

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