Bizarre Fast & Furious 6 scene goes viral over forced perspective between Dwayne Johnson and Vin Diesel

Perspective is everything – not least when you’re watching this mind-bending scene from Fast & Furious 6.

A scene from the 2013 movie has gone viral after a viewer pointed out how small Vin Diesel looked in comparison to Dwayne ‘The Rock’ Johnson.

Note – pretty much all of us would look like children next to The Rock, but Vin Diesel isn’t exactly petite himself. 

Twitter user Lily (@lilyeliz) shared a clip of a scene where Johnson’s character Luke Hobbs is speaking to Diesel’s character Dominic Toretto.

It looks like the pair are standing in front of each other and talking, but when Hobbs steps forward to say: ‘I never thought I’d trust a criminal’, he absolutely dwarfs Toretto.

Lily tweeted: ‘watched fast and furious 6 last night and absolutely cannot stop thinking about the weird perspective in this scene.’

Many replies and quote-tweets speculated that Diesel and Johnson’s highly publicised beef was to blame, suggesting that Diesel – who is around 6ft tall – did not want to appear shorter than his rival, who is 6ft5. 

Others joked that their contracts stated that they couldn’t look each other in the eye, while others suggested the men weren’t even on set at the same time to film the scene.

However, visual effects expert Todd Vaziri attempted to explain what was going on in the scene, posting the full scene to show that the two actors were not directly in front of each other, but were offset and not eye to eye.

Vaziri, who was digital artist on films like Star Wars: The Rise of Skywalker and Thor: Ragnarok, tweeted: ‘This is where it starts to get confusing. Johnson takes a step forward. Now they’re shoulder to shoulder, but each of them still gazing off into the same direction.

‘And now a shot-reverse-shot of characters standing shoulder-to-shoulder gazing in opposite directions. And that gives you unintentional forced-perspective.

‘In screen space, it looks like they’re making eye contact, which is super-powerful to our brains.’

He also explained that the camera crossed the 180° line for the shot, explaining: ‘Keeping the camera on one side of an imaginary line that is ‘drawn’ between two characters helps the audience make sense of the geography between cuts. When the camera crosses the 180 degree line, you risk creating jarring cuts…

‘So the “Fast 6” scene feels weird because it’s an accidental forced perspective and also the camera jumps the 180 degree line.

‘Yes, I’m well aware of the gossip of behind-the-scenes drama. (Also, simply listen to the dialogue which might be oozing with subtext.)’

So it’s actually just camera trickery and our easily fooled brains that create that bizarre perspective.

Lily tweeted: ‘Thanks for commenting, Todd! i didn’t mean to take the clip out of context- just thought the optical illusion was quite funny (even in the context when i watched the film!). i appreciate you clearing up the mystery!’, with Vaziri replying: ‘Out of context it’s hilarious! (in-context it is, too!) I totally agree! You rock.’

We’ll have to wait and see if there’s any equally bizarre scenes – well, it’s Fast & Furious, so of course there will be – in the much-delayed F9, which is set for release this June.