The Fast and the Furious franchise films

well put, brad!

realized some time ago that well-structured movies aren’t necessarily good or bad by that rubric alone. MI movies aside, there are a lot of things I’ve seen in the last decade where the good/bad axis isn’t even in play and it’s just a rote, well-constructed money funnel

Yeah the FF movies don’t really work at home but in a packed theater they’re incredible

BN straight orange cassidy-ing the thread ;)

sic i felt like i was right there in that fiero with them :)

i wasnt loving this for the first half, felt like it was coming dangerously close to a franchise about a team of elite hackers who also sometimes drive cars. but once the magnets came out it was all good. did anyone else get serious Frankenstein vibes from vin's big fight scene in the underground lair, the falling rocks and dangling chains and vin's blank affect?

only nitpick that actually bugs me is, i was a bit disappointed with the reveal of how han survived - thought that was a great opportunity for some kind of cool little scene or twist - felt anticlimactic how he just was like "yeah turns out i got out of the car and nobody saw".

Inspired by the FF vs. MI poll, I've been plowing my way through the FF movies the past few days (which I've never seen, barring the first one).

Revisiting the original was good entertainment and made me nostalgic for a particular time and place. Is "Make ya own Goddamn popcorn!" considered a classic line? It should be.

2 Fast 2 Furious was not as terrible as I had been led to believe? There were parts of it that were transparently stupid, like the storage locker scramble, but I was pretty entertained throughout.

I'm pretty skeptical of Tokyo Drift so far. It starts off with the song that turned me off DJ Shadow and the main character hasn't done anything particularly likeable so far. I've got it paused at "Japanese food is like the army: don't ask, don't tell. Name's Twinkie."

[what i imagine fast & furious movies are like, having never seen one]

vin diesel: the president needs us to drive our cars to space

vin diesel’s muscular best friend: easy. when?

vin diesel: a week ago

vin diesel’s muscular best friend: you mean-

both: [together] time cars

— soul nate (@MNateShyamalan) June 27, 2021

the cgi drug tunnels in fast and fourious are so bad it might as well be sharknado.

you can have any beer you want, as long as it's a corona

Ha yeah the drug tunnels might be the low point of the series for me

i need to catch up on these. i paused midway thru the fifth one and never finished

the worst thing about these movies aren't the movies themselves, it's the people I know that like absolute crap movies who are like "OMG these are such STUPID mooooooovies wow America is DUUUUUMB"

start again on Five without watching any of the first four btw

yeah I was thinking of doing that with my extended weekend coming up

start at 1

i seen the first four already

i said start from 1

(gun emoji)

saw 9 at the theatre last night. first time at the theatre since once upon a time in hollywood, whenver the hell that was released.

had vibrating seats, "d-box" or whatever, was novel, silly.

great movie of course 10/10.

just got through 6. was fun, though not as good as Fast Five.

gonna finish 7 and 8 so I can see 9 in theatres.

I did love the hilarious way they explained away Letty's death, which made no sense but was audacious as hell that I appreciated it.

lol at the Blues Brothers moment in F8 of the Furious

let me guess - Cipher is a cyborg or some shit

so far they have kept cyborg villains to the Presents sideline… as far as we know. it would explain Cypher living imprisoned in a glass cage with leather trousers and no toilet in F9 tho

what Blues Bros moment?

the 900 vehicle pile-up in NYC

vin is never more cyborg-like than in that scene, when hes wearing that evil hockey mask

i really really enjoyed F9

think i'm going tonight. i'm finally caught up!

i didn't really like F8 that much tbh. last half hour felt endless, though it had some awesome over the top moments. Cipher just seemed a waste of Theron, who I loved as Furiosa. kind of a nothing character who got defanged a little too easily.

of the later films, Fast Five is definitely my top, then 6, then 7. though the Paul Walker ending definitely got me emotionally with 7 (imagining moreso had I seen it shortly after he died).

excited for your f9 thoughts.

otm re:cipher being a waste of theron, that character completely puts me to sleep. would be a lot better if they had a character actor in there who might camp it up a little more imo

she has an amazing monologue in f9 but yeah otherwise a waste of a great actor on a poorly-defined villain

the events of these movies disappear from my mind immediately after watching them, and i have seen them all multiple times (except for f8, which i realized i accidentally skipped)

I was also disappointed at the reveal as to how Dom was convinced to go turncoat. i thought maybe he'd done something heinous in his past that was going to get exposed, not...that he had a secret baby.

i don't think much will ever top the scenes in Rio (which I guess was really Puerto Rico made to look like Brazil) though from Fast 5.

i'm finally caught up!

you could see if there’s a supercut of Helen Mirren’s scenes from F&FP:H&S on youtube, but nbd if not

oh forgot Hobbes and Shaw, lol

i think I saw thirty minutes of that at a friend's and then just didn't enjoy it because I barely knew who the characters were at the time.

hobbs & shaw was ok but i liked all of the hobbs & shaw content of f8 more than anything in the actual hobbs & shaw movie. big fan of the bit with statham & the baby on the plane, and whole bit with them in jail together & breaking out

my thing with this franchise is that most of the movies have at least one and sometimes 3-4 really fun setpieces, but that 6, 7, 8 and 9 have become shockingly interchangeable with regard to everything else that happens. like if you ask which one had the tank, or the safe, or the arctic ice thing, i can answer that. but ask me which one had michelle rodriguez regain her memories, or who was the villain in 6 vs 7, i have no idea. the character relationships have all gotten flattened out, just a bunch of action-adventure teammates rolling out to play the hits again. might as well be watching Superfriends or something.

without Paul Walker, these have become Vin Diesel plus a claustrophobic caricature poster ensemble, and it's just not as compelling as it was when these two co-leads were testing each other, trying to win each other's trust and respect, overcome their past beef, etc. even the flashback stuff in F9, despite obnoxiously quadrupling down on this being the Toretto Saga, was welcome because it was character melodrama stuff that i could actually kinda think about. the actors were attempting to display real emotions and conflicts, in a fairly relatable real-world situation where the stakes and risks and consequences were clear. please more of that and less "but look - they went to space, omg lol!"

my other quick fixes:

* no more superhacking, no more superhacker villains, no more superhacker device macguffins. it's been what, four straight movies of this and it's NEVER INTERESTING. and if the heroes have to be a super-team going on missions, instead of rogues trying to steal stuff, why can't they just be on a mission to catch somebody who's stolen a supercar and is going to use it to steal a bunch of diamonds or something?

* no more "Mr. Nobody" --- never thought i would have wanted Kurt Russell to NOT be in a movie but he adds nothing and subtracts a lot.

* no more Theron. should be clear enough. i like her fine as an actress, love her in Fury Road, but this character STINKS.

* no more secondary and tertiary villains who are just interchangeable evil European guys with no memorable faces or tics or interesting goals. it's like the summer sleepaway camp for kids whose parents want them to get into a good Bond Villain College. zzzz.

* no more sticking the three Black characters on comic relief duty together. Ludacris and Tyrese have had some great scenes, but try writing something where they're paired up with other people, get some new character dynamics going, let them play some other notes. maybe they could even be, idk, central to the story?

* no more bringing back OR killing off characters unless there's a really good idea for it. Han's much-awaited return was about as lame in its own way as the horrible fridging of Elsa Pataky a couple movies ago (maybe the worst moment of the whole series).

* and in conclusion, bring back Drift King and Ja Rule and give them their own spinoff movie and eight video games together

post-5, i honestly dgaf about any of the characters or relationships & am only interested in the efficient delivery of setpieces and car stunts. i dont really care to watch any of these goofs trying to act any more than the bare minimum thats necessary to set up the next car chase. my ideal F10 would be dialogue-free. or better yet, upload their consciousnesses into the cars and have it be human-free.

but all those other quick fixes are resoundingly otm to me espec "no more superhacking", which i was nearly yelling at the screen during stretches of f9. it is weird that theyve gone this long without ever encountering a villain with some kind of faster-than-fast supercar.

or like a ghost car with a cloaking device.... i'm not picky

and i'm in the same boat insofar as i also no longer care about the characters or their relationships. but i'm sure i would dig the movies more if i did, and i think it's mostly the movies' fault that i don't.

yeah tbf i guess its a chicken and egg thing, i stopped seeking it bc the movies stopped providing it

upload their consciousnesses into the cars and have it be human-free.

omg this would rule

Hobbs & Shaw sucks bcz The Rock has control over the script to such a degree that his character cannot face a setback and then overcome it, only fist-fight to a draw (against killer robots) repeatedly until he can finally chain enough trucks together - through the power of fambly - to punch a helicopter out of the sky. And 98% of his dialogue is ~witty banter~ about how big and tough and smart and accomplished and unstoppable he is.

Jason Statham, a man who has starred in the first two Transporters and the Cranks and Safe and The Bank Job and Spy, knows that audiences enjoy seeing a protagonist show vulnerability, or struggle and overcome obstacles, or be clowned on for a ludicrously overblown self-image, or to actually engage in clearly-filmed fight choreography. But he can’t do any of those against this version of The Rock, so his best value is rolling his eyes and making wanker / jerkoff hand motions in response to Rock braggadocio.

(nb: he is very funny doing this, but weighed against the “jokes” that don’t land…)

And 98% of his dialogue is ~witty banter~ about how big and tough and smart and accomplished and unstoppable he is.

so desiring an F&F film without braggadocio?

(I kid....but honestly I'm less interested in this movie anyway because I don't know that I need F&F side stories)

tbf there is an ideal amount of Mr Nobody in #9. if they made a film every 13 months then rostering characters in and out like that would give more room for everyone to breathe (and Luda to interact with more non-Tyrese ppl)

obv they do a lot of rostering already, just that the rep company gets bigger every flick anyway

tbh if Mr Nobody is a cipher in the film he's kind of lived up to his character iirc

I've never seen these. If I want to skip through the dross and the almost-good-ones, I should watch Five first, right?

yes