Dwayne Johnson showcases his Samoan pride in newest flick

One of the most in-demand actors in Hollywood is superstar Dwayne Johnson. A movie with Johnson in it is almost a guarantee to make lots of money. 

Johnson's celebrityhood and star power is so bright that he is at a level very few actors are at. Perhaps only Tom Cruise is the only other actor who can rival Johnson's popularity among the world's moviegoers. Those two actors are at the top of money-earners in Hollywood. Everybody else is a notch below.

Johnson is so successful, whenever critics, movie producers, agents and fans list their AAPI stars, he is often left off the list even though he has a Samoan tattoos on his chest and arms and he's never tried to hide his Samoan heritage.

To be truthful, producers want Johnson for his star power, not because he might fill a diversity quota. His action-hero characters are never identified as Samoan. Their ethnicity is not essential to the story and no one has ever questioned it.

However, in this age of inclusion, Johnson for the first time in his storied career, is playing a Samoan American character in his newest movie Hobbs and Shaw, a spinoff of the Fast & Furious franchise.

To drive home the point of his Pacific Islander roots, there's a point in the movie where he returns to Samoa and calls on his cousins to help his character, Luke Hobbs, and his buddy Deckard Shaw, played by British actor Jason Stratham.

"You guys familiar with the Haka? OK great,"  Johnson asked the audience at CinemaCon2019. "Well, we don’t do that in this movie. But what we do is called the ‘Siva Tau.’ The Siva Tau is the Samoan version of the Haka and we still call upon our ancestors. 

(In this trailer), Johnson continued, "I lead the Siva Tau and for the very first time in a blockbuster tentpole movie we’re very proud to showcase our two cultures, England and culture of Samoa.

"It’s the very first time we’ve seen Samoa ever featured and ever showcased in the movie…Yes we have the explosions and the epic-ness of everything you’d expect from a Fast and Furious movie but now you also have this mana, the spirit that we lived in Jason and I, David, all of us.

Its a Wakanda moment, similar to the hair-tingling scene in the groundbreaking Black Panther when an army of African warriors respond to their leader.

Led by Luke Hobbs (Dwayne Johnson) the Samoan warriors enter battle.

(It's not the first time that Johnson, again playing Hobbs, featured the Haka in his films. In Fast & Furious 8, he taught a girls soccer team the haka to intimidate their opponents.)

When Hobbs and his brothers and cousins do the Siva Tau, its enough to make an AAPI audience cheer.

In Hobbs and Shaw, Luke Hobbs' ethnicity is essential to the movie plot.  Despite using his consider influence to insert Samoan references in his movie, Johnson's position at the top of the star charts is not in danger if he plays an ethnically specific character that reflects his real-life heritage. Johnson remains an almost untouchable star.

But it helps the conversation in Hollywood these days if the big stars like Johnson and Keanu Reeves, who had an important role in the recent Asian American-themed romantic comedy Always Be My Maybe, occasionally remind the Tinsel Town's decision makers that AAPI actors have already proven they can draw multi-cultural audiences.

Hobbs and Shaw will be released August. 2.