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The Fast and Furious franchise thread


LethalStriker

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Not a terrible time to bump this since the trailer for Fast 9 drops next week.I bought a Blu-ray set of the first seven movies for ten dollars (thanks Big Lots) a while ago, so I’m finally working my way through this franchise with my wife. In the order I’ve watched them:

The Fast and the Furious: The only one I’d seen before. I have a vivid memory of being a freshman in high school, renting this and Jeepers Creepers from Blockbuster, and watching them while housing some Pizza Hut and chugging a 2 liter of coke. Coincidentally, it turned out both movies were directed by scumbag pedos, but who knew. I also remember having a movie trade magazine from that year that previewed the movie under it’s previous title Racer X, I guess before they realized they’d confuse Speed Racer fans. It was also hilariously going to be called Race Wars at one point before someone with common sense stepped in. Yeah, it’s Point Break with cars, but it’s a delightful time capsule of an innocent time right before our slide into a dystopian hellscape really began in earnest. Three Stolen DVD Players Out of Four.

Hobbs and Shaw: We were killing time before a flight out of Orlando and ended up watching this at Universal Citywalk. Even though I hadn’t followed the franchise I was pumped for this. Sometimes it’s dumb fun and other times it’s just dumb. The biggest problem is the dialogue needed to be punched up, and finding out Shane Black almost directed this kills me because him writing for Statham and The Rock would’ve made this incredible. Two and a Half Climactic Fights Where the Time of Day Changes Drastically in Twenty Minutes Out of Four. 

Fast Five: I’ve heard almost as many conflicting opinions about the order to watch these as Star Wars. I heard Fast and Furious wasn’t that hot, so we started here. I was really surprised when I heard this was being made. I thought the fourth one was designed as a last gasp nostalgic money grab, but I was really, really wrong.  God damn this a good movie. It’s for all intents and purposes a tropey heist movie, but in execution it’s very well crafted and breezy fun that utilizes the charms of its ensemble well. This is definitely the peak of these movies narratively, as from here on out you can see that they reverse engineered the stories from the action beats. Three and a Half That Safe Definitely Would Have Killed Dozens of People Out of Four. 

Fast 6 and 7: I’m lumping these together since I watched them back to back and it’s sort of one larger story. These are both just set pieces strung together by loose narratives, but the action scenes are still incredible. I’d give the edge to 6 over 7, since I think they sort of wasted Statham in 7 and a good portion of the movie is wrapped up in what amounts to a video game side mission. The ending of 7 did make me cry, and I’ve rewatched it on YouTube several times like when you press on a bruise for fun. Also, Kurt Russell is very good in these movies when he could have phoned it in. Fast 6 gets three I Can’t Believe Luke Evans Has a Batmobile Out of 4. Fast 7 gets two and a half A Reporter Uses the Phrase Vehicular Warfare and We Laughed and Laughed Out of Four. 

The Fate of the Furious: This may be blasphemous, but I liked this more than the previous two. It has a lot of the same strengths and weaknesses as those did, but it feels more cohesive, even as it’s become more and more apparent that certain people won’t film scenes together. Charlize Theron is given a bit more to chew on than previous villains, which is great, but not putting Furiosa behind the wheel at all is bullshit. Three Why White Woman Dreads(?!) Out of Four. 

I’ll get to the other movies soon. Frankly, I’d put this up there with Mission Impossible as far as franchises that have surpassed the modern Bonds. It’s silly, and much like Vin Diesel, effortlessly shifts between being in on the joke and being earnest and unaware of its total absurdity. 

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F9: The Fast Saga

Trailer drops Friday.

I'm dumb and I love these movies more than I should, but can you really title your movie a saga? Isn't the whole thing a saga, not just the one movie?

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A few months ago I finally caught Fate of the Furious a couple years late. I was thinking I wouldn't like it as much, remembering seeing the trailers and feeling the plot seemed kinda silly, and also knowing that Shaw was going to somehow become a good guy leading in to Hobbs & Shaw despite killing Han bugged me. But I ended up loving Fate and it's one of my favs in the series. Ended up not totally hating how Shaw was turned even if it did seem abrupt and sudden considering all they had been through against him. Have yet to see Hobbs & Shaw, but I will definitely miss Hobbs not being in F9. I loved Fast 5-8 and especially when Hobbs & Dom were more involved together in the earlier ones. Hyped for F9 and looking forward to Cena joining the cast. Love that they're going all out with the concert/TV special for the trailer drop.

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Anticipating the trailer tomorrow let me go ahead and rank the 'Fast' movies real quick.   

1. Fast Five 

2. The Fast and the Furious 

3. Furious 7 

4. Fast & Furious 6 

5. 2 Fast 2 Furious 

6. Tokyo Drift 

7. Hobbs & Shaw 

8. The Fate of the Furious 

9. Fast & Furious 

Edited by Niners Fan in CT
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13 minutes ago, John Austin said:

For 9. Mainly

 

  Hide contents

Cena is Dom's little brother and some how we get the return of Han

 

The second was inevitable.

Spoiler

It gets people off the "Wait, Deckard Shaw is a hero now? The guy who killed Han?" bit.

 

 

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My head is spinning with all of the questions I have...

Mama Shaw is still involved in all this shit even though Deckard and Owen aren't...

The whole brothers angle...

HAN?!?

This movie is the appropriate amount of insanity that I'm looking for.

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Jesus Fuck, this has to be the dumbest one ever.

I can't fucking wait to get my tickets.

I guess since Cipher is the BBEG in this one, that almost rules her out as the owner of the Voice of Eteon from Hobbs & Shaw.

Edited by J.T.
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35 minutes ago, J.T. said:

Jesus Fuck, this has to be the dumbest one ever.

I can't fucking wait to get my tickets.

I guess since Cipher is the BBEG in this one, that almost rules her out as the owner of the Voice of Eteon from Hobbs & Shaw.

Still seems like that's going to be Keanu.

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I still hope someone else is pulling Cipher’s strings in this. I love the matryoshka doll structure of villain development in this franchise. The voice in Hobbs and Shaw was done by Ryan Reynolds supposedly as a placeholder, but if they haven’t figured out something better it may actually be him when they get around to addressing that. 

We watched Fast and Furious (2009) last night. I had low expectations for this one, but it exceeded them by quite a bit. The zaniness had already begun here, and it’s a lean mean 105 minutes, which is nice compared to the increasingly epic scope and length of these movies. It’s also fun to go back to a story with lower stakes. Highlight is probably Dom standing in the road reconstructing Letty’s murder in his mind palace. Move over Will Graham. Three Yeah We’ve All Seen Batman Begins Braga, Nice Try out of four. 

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Where the fuck has Dom brother been hiding all this time? For someone who lives day and night by the code of family, youd think he'd care more about what's going on in his own immediate family. 

But we'll see this could be an alternate timeline brother like Cable from X-Force or some shit.

Oh yeah, the trailer. It's awesome, I'm there day 1 as always.

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2 hours ago, Niners Fan in CT said:

Where the fuck has Dom brother been hiding all this time? For someone who lives day and night by the code of family, youd think he'd care more about what's going on in his own immediate family. 

I'm guessing by the move tagline that he somehow left the family in disgrace as a child and somehow joined COBRA to learn combat tactics and advanced weapons training.

I'm going to wager that Jakob is the middle child / Mia's older brother suffering from typical middle child syndrome.  Mia is probably the baby of the Torretto kids.

Speaking of Mia, it will be easier to explain Jakob's resurgence than it will to explain why Brian will be MIA in this adventure.  Mia is there risking her neck and Brian is not the stay at home type.  Perhaps Jakob kills Brian off-screen?

Edited by J.T.
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My theory:

When Dom's dad died, and Dom went to prison, his mother took Jakob & Mia and left him to rot.

While in prison his mama Toretto died and Jakob went his own way. Maybe he saw the Toretto name as a curse?

Mia, with no-one else to turn to, goes back to Dom and they have been inseperable since.

Edited by L_W_P
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8 minutes ago, L_W_P said:

My theory:

When Dom's dad died, and Dom went to prison, his mother took Jakob & Mia and left him to rot.

While in prison his mama Toretto died and Jakob went his own way. Maybe he saw the Toretto name as a curse?

Mia, with no-one else to turn to, goes back to Dom and they have been inseperable since.

That makes sense, so it can't possibly be right.

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