How Fred Durst Inspired xXx's Xander Cage
Limp Bizkit's Fred Durst provided unlikely inspiration for xXx's Xander Cage. The surprise success of 2001's The Fast And The Furious made Vin Diesel something of an instant movie star, and he made a bold career choice when he declined to return for 2 Fast 2 Furious. Instead, he jumped over toxXx, which was Sony's attempt to create their very own secret agent franchise for the new millennium. The film saw the NSA recruit a very reluctant extreme sports star named Xander Cage to go uncover with a terrorist group, as their agents prove ill-suited to the job.
xXx was a big success for Diesel, but after disliking the screenplay for xXx 2, he again declined to return. He dusted off Cage's fur coat for xXx: The Return Of Xander Cage in 2017, which saw the titular character pulled out of retirement for another mission. The xXx movie franchise has never reached the heights of Diesel's Fast And Furious saga, though Diesel's two entries prove Cage is a surprisingly popular character. That said, the series is on another hiatus pending a messy lawsuit.
Related: xXx 3 Should Have Killed Off Samuel L. Jackson's Gibbons For Good
xXx's use of nu-metal and constant references to video games or X Games make it feel charmingly dated now, but back in 2002, they were the height of cool. xXx's soundtrack is littered with alt-rock, hip hop and nu-metal acts too, including Drowning Pool's «Bodies» or Rammstein's «Feuer Frei!» Surprisingly, despite their ubiquity at the time, Limp Bizkit don't appear on the soundtrack, though frontman Fred Durst had a big impact on the script's development. Speaking with the SpyHards podcast, xXx screenwriter Rich Wilkes revealed when he was developing Xander Cage — who died in an xXx 2 short film - he had a
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