Fans of the ‘Fast and the Furious’ movies learned long ago that they could rely on the franchise to keep upping the ante and increasing the scale with each new entry, and ‘Fast X’ is no exception. Yet even in a film filled with awe-inspiring set pieces involving nuclear bombs being dragged through the streets of Rome and cars hurtling across the surface of massive dams, perhaps the most exciting development is the addition of Dante, the feisty villain played by Jason Momoa . As demonstrative and hilarious as his adversary Dom (Vin Diesel) is restrained and taciturn, Dante exponentially ramps up the already high energy of every scene he’s in and brings a welcome sense of style to the proceedings.
A huge part of Dante’s appeal is his look, which Momoa painstakingly crafted with his longtime hair and makeup artist Jennifer Stanfield. “Jason is very clear about what he likes,” Stanfield told IndieWire. “She wanted Dante to be very flashy, so he made quite a few references to peacocks. His hair had to be as big as possible. A starting point for Momoa was the costumes created by “Fast and the Furious” veteran Sanja Milkovic Hays, who dressed the actor in a python jacket that gave the impression of Dante sliding in and out of his skin. an animal – something that underlined Momoa’s concept of the character as a man with a seductive outer layer that harbors danger.
To accentuate this duality, Momoa wore contact lenses to create a specific effect as the audience got a closer look at his “Fast X” persona. “She wanted to have a sort of shark look,” Stanfield said. “Contact lenses take all the warmth out of her natural eye color, just to give that extra wickedness as you get close to him. Jason wanted the bright colors of the costumes and makeup to draw people in, but then when you get closer you see that he has these dark, soulless eyes. To that end, Hays dressed Momoa largely in whites and pastels, which Stanfield in turn had to match in line with Dante’s fashion sensibilities. “We matched her nail polish to her costumes,” Stanfield said. “And she wasn’t just one color, sometimes each nail had a different color or even two colors on the same nail. I don’t know how many bottles of nail polish I drank!”
The attention to detail in the color palette went beyond the connection between costumes, hair and makeup: at one point Momoa’s nail polish matches the color of his motorcycle, and even the color of Dante’s car was dictated from the character’s predilection for pastels. “I don’t think the car was lavender at first,” Stanfield said. “It all stemmed from her lavender dress. She loved it so much he said, ‘I have to have a lavender car.’”
It takes a lot to stand out in a film filled with souped-up vehicles, wall-to-wall action sequences, and as many huge movie stars as a typical red carpet, but a Jason Momoa peacock at the wheel of a lavender car is as tough to beat as one of the most memorable images in “Fast X”.
