Keep in mind I’m not saying that no one in the movies has won every fight, but there is a proven fact that the big fights usually see the FF crew winning despite how heavily the odds are stacked against them. When it comes to action movies it kind of goes without saying that people want to see their heroes win. This is part of what gets people pumped up to see the movie n the first place, and watching the heroes overcome incredible odds is just too good to pass up. But there are times when the stakes become so low because the knowledge that the heroes will walk through one challenge after another or pull out some hidden attack or ability is built up in the minds of the fans, and lo and behold, it happens in a manner that is kind of ridiculous and doesn’t really benefit the story. The Fast and Furious saga is a lot of action with plenty of drama mixed in to make things interesting, but there’s a great deal of the impossible blended into the mix as well. Let’s just be clear that the crew has lost a few times, but never in such a big way that they’ve been without hope at the end of a fight.
Somehow, someway, they’ve always managed to pull through, sometimes scraping by in order to make something work and to survive an encounter that should have by all rights killed one or more of them. For instance, Dom taking on a world-class assassin shouldn’t have been a close fight, as Deckard Shaw, even Owen Shaw, should have been the end of him. Granted, Dom is strong and not bad in a fight, but against those that are trained and experienced in hand to hand combat and know at least a dozen ways to kill someone, if not more, Dom should have been outclassed the moment he decided to tangle with someone that had learned to kill when Dom was still working the stock car circuit. Even Luke Hobbs should have been able to subdue Dom without as much effort, but then we wouldn’t have been given the big fight scenes that people have enjoyed for so long. And Letty versus a highly-trained government agent? That must mean that Letty and everyone else since almost everyone on the crew is a skilled fighter in some regard, had been taking lessons at the local gym over the years. In fact, one of the only times that any of the crew took a serious beating came during Fast and Furious 6 when Han and Roman caught a beating from a trained henchman played by Joe Taslim.
That felt way more realistic since the guy that had the training was able to control the fight for a good deal of time, but when it’s come to other fights one has to wonder how much the writers are grinning as they think up ways to make the impossible happen, such as Dom stomping his foot to collapse a parking structure beneath Deckard Shaw, or getting into countless fistfights with only a trickle of blood to show for it most times. Oh, and let’s not forget Dom’s ability to channel his inner-Riddick and become even stronger when someone angers him, kind of like a muscular version of Bruce Banner without the benefit of turning into the Hulk. In other words, Dom becomes Superman, in a way, when he’s angry, and even bullets can’t touch him apparently, nor can collapsing parking structures catch up to him. Hell, this guy can determine just how he needs to turn the wheel to catch a trailing section of a rope bridge that he simply knows will swing his entire car from one hunk of rock to another, as happened in F9.
The point is that it doesn’t appear that the FF writers know how to make Dom and the crew lose in a manner that might raise the stakes of the story just a bit. In all honesty, not a single member of the crew should have been able to survive to a ninth movie since the suspension of disbelief hasn’t just been eradicated, it’s been snapped out of existence quicker than even Thanos could manage. At this point, one should probably expect to see a crossover showing the crew racing dinosaurs or perhaps being contacted by the Avengers after their little space stunt, since there literally appears to be no limit to the FF movies no matter how ridiculous things have become. People still watch them, so it’s fair to say that the formula hasn’t been used up yet, but there are times when all one can do is shake their head and wonder why anyone thought that another impossible scene was a good idea, since it certainly doesn’t lend any kind of integrity to the franchise.
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