Vin Diesel, Donnie Yen and Tony Jaa on xXx: Return of Xander Cage and the beauty of multicultural casting
With Indian, Chinese and Thai co-stars, it’s a global cast for a global audience, says Diesel of his latest action outing as master spy Cage
Fifteen years since Vin Diesel played extreme sports-loving espionage agent Xander Cage in xXx , the star can takes some credit for changing the Hollywood spy movie.
Back then, the James Bond franchise was wheezing along with the much-maligned Die Another Day . When xXx arrived, says Diesel, “they went grittier – hired a new Bond and relaunched that franchise with Casino Royale to try to speak to that grittiness that Xander had. But beyond that, all the other secret agent movies failed to be truly contemporary.”
It’s a bold claim, when you consider the Jason Bourne and Mission: Impossible movies. But then the 50-year-old Diesel has a point: Bond, Bourne and M.I.’s Ethan Hunt are still all Caucasian heroes frequently fighting foreign assailants.
On the other hand, xXx: Return of Xander Cage represents something modern: not in its story so much – with agents chasing after a gadget called Pandora’s Box – but in the multicultural casting. From Bollywood’s Deepika Padukone to Asian stars Kris Wu Yifan, Donnie Yen Ji-dan and Tony Jaa, the new sequel is a Diesel dream come true.
Much of it he puts down to the success of The Fast and the Furious, his all-action franchise that tapped into hitherto underserved markets by casting across continents. Diesel wanted the same for xXx. “The idea was to create a cast that knew no boundaries and didn’t allow the restraints of Hollywood to hold us back from casting in a truly international way,” he says. “We scoured the Earth for the cast that lives in this movie. It’s a global cast for a global audience.”
