There are enough questions about this movie at the moment to wonder just where to start. Of course the first question is: why? That one word can cover so much ground in The Fast and Furious 9 that it’s hard to pick just one point and go with it. One of the best places to start is to think of why after 8 other movies we’re just hearing about a brother that’s never been mentioned until now, a little brother to Dom no less that apparently tried to compete with him from the moment they were old enough to know what competition was. Kirsten Acuna of Insider has just as many questions as we do thankfully. Several of the recognized crew are coming back and there’s even one that appears to be coming back from the grave as Han is making his way back into the fold despite being immolated, allegedly, all the way back in Fast and Furious: Tokyo Drift, which was then shown to be the work of Deckard Shaw, who’d been dialed into the scene at a later date as the antagonist that was responsible for Han’s death. Convenient right? It doesn’t stop there unfortunately, as the series should have a while back when the tragedy that took Paul Walker occurred. One would have thought that the movies would have stopped there, that losing Brian would derail any chance of coming back as a full crew. Of course there was an easy out for the last Fast and Furious installment since it was mentioned that they didn’t want to involve Brian and Mia in their mess any longer, which was kind of hard to accept since Brian and Mia would have gladly jumped into the fray once again for family.
That’s not even the most eye-rolling part of it since not only is the movie starring John Cena, who can or can’t act depending on whose opinion we’re going off of, but will also be featuring stunts that already look like something that’s been pulled from the MCU or a Bond movie. Ever notice how movie magic is so effective when it comes to saving people from the massive internal and external injuries that should be happening when they get rammed into, thrown out of windows, and otherwise brutalized in some insane fashion? It’s bound to happen here as well since the laws of physics and even gravity just don’t tend to apply when we’re talking about fast cars and a movie that relies on the majority of its stars making it to the end. It’s going to be laughable to hear how Han managed to escape, especially given that he was pinned pretty effectively and even developing sudden super-strength or the ability slither his way out of the wreck wouldn’t have been enough unless Deckard was taking his sweet time to hit the detonator that finally ‘killed’ Han. If you need a good laugh about this one Matt Elfring of GameSpot has you covered on that front.
Then come the stunts that are already being shown in the movie, and the fact that even the most casual drivers know too well that driving across a crumbling bridge and going REALLY fast doesn’t work when the planks are falling out beneath you. That pesky thing called gravity is bound to catch up a lot faster than the vehicle can drive. Oh yes, then there’s the moment that Dom decides he can cross the same span even without the bridge by pulling a Tarzan maneuver with his car by catching the trailing hook at the end of the rope as it latches onto his car in midair and then serves to swing the vehicle across the gap and presumably to where they need to go. Is anyone else starting to get a headache at this point at the seriously unrealistic nature of the Fast and Furious franchise and how far they’ve pulled away from what realism actually is? It’s become something akin to a high octane soap opera/superhero movie that’s bending the natural laws of the world just as much as they can in order to make the movie look that awesome before allowing those same laws to snap back into place before it becomes a live-action cartoon. Think about how the franchise started out, it wasn’t perfect but it at least looked real and had a shot at actually being mostly real since there is such a thing as street-racing and it is a controversial pastime that happens to cost a massive amount of money for those that partake. This coming movie and many of those that came before are fantasies thought up by minds that have unfortunately gone from entertaining the fans to playing a game of ‘can you top this’ with each and every new movie that comes out.
Right now the most amazing part of the movie is that there are already people excited to go see it and those that are willing to fall in line even if they know it’s all rubbish. The action, the lifestyle, and the unbelievable nature of it are the draw, and it’s hard to argue with since despite the break from reality that is what an action movie tends to be about.
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