As a huge movie buff, I love all kinds of movies. Everything from Action to Bollywood to Horror, I watch it all. I certainly have my preferences for certain genres and certain kinds of movies. I love action movies. Big explosions, intense gunfights, white-knuckle chases, and heavy-hitting fight scenes get my adrenaline pumping. Action movies are my drug of choice. I love all different kinds of action movies. If it looks interesting, I’ll check it out. Everything from Indiana Jones to John Wick is probably within my wheelhouse. I like smart action movies and I love silly action movies. I also happen to like big dumb blockbusters like Michael Bay’s Transformers. Yes, I said it. I enjoy those movies. That’s because I’m willing to shut my brain off and enjoy watching giant shape-shifting robots blow the shit out of everything. I’m also okay with The Expendables with aging action stars that are in better shape than me doing crazy stunts and other things like that. I’m okay with that, because I can suspend my disbelief for about two hours.
There is a franchise that’s gotten bigger and louder over the past two decades: The Fast and The Furious. What started out as movies about car races and the people who drive them turned into heist movies by the fourth film. That was probably the best decision the Universal Studios had made with the franchise. Each subsequent film got bigger, louder, crazier……and dumber. I mean, Fast Five ended with Vin Diesel and Paul Walker dragging a bank vault through city streets. Implausible, but it was all done practically. It was the sixth film in the series where I started to check out, especially with that ridiculous final sequence with the plane. The film was fun up until that point, but then it just got silly. Furious 7 I decided to give chance, despite the fact that it looked insane. I gave it a shot because it was Paul Walker’s final film and he was killed in a tragic accident while making it, so I’m giving Furious 7 a pass. It was a ton of fun and it sent off Walker’s character into the sunset. The ending was very touching.
The Fate of the Furious is where I threw up my hands as the film just threw any sense of plausibility and physics to the four winds. But the moment they brought in a nuclear submarine at the end was my breaking point. I understand that the Fast and Furious movies are popcorn action flicks now and it kinds of requires you to suspend your disbelief quite a bit. However, I have my limits. When your films start saying that the laws of physics no longer apply, I’m absolutely flabbergasted that people are still willing to shell out money for this. I realize that there are fans of Vin Diesel, I’m one of them, but I would rather see another Riddick film than another Fast film. I also know that these films are very self-aware and they are willing to go full-throttle, and I applaud their dedication, but when people start going, “Really?,” you’ve kind of gone a little too far. The less said about Hobbs and Shaw, the better. I enjoyed that movie, but holy moly guacamole, it stretches credibility to its absolute breaking point.
That all brings me to F9: The Fast Saga: The ninth entry into the series(tenth if you count Hobbs and Shaw). As soon as I finished watching the trailer, I was literally shaking my head. This is what we’ve come to now? I’m not even going to go into the plot, because what’s the point? There are so many things in this trailer that just blow my mind and not in a good way. For one, are we supposed to accept the fact that WWE superstar John Cena is playing Vin Diesel’s brother? Were we even supposed to know that Dominic Toretto had a brother? This is the 9th film in the main series and we’re just finding out NOW that Toretto has a brother? Not only that, Cena teams up with the previous film’s main villain, Charlize Theron to take down Dom. Towards the end of the trailer, John Cena drives his car off of a cliff that is caught by a “magnet” plane. Right after that, Dom drives HIS car off the cliff while the car gets attached to one end of a busted rope bridge. At that point, I was banging my head against a wall. Sir Isaac Newton’s brain would be exploding in so many different ways if he could see all this. At least some of the Transformers films adhered to some of those laws of physics. The Fast and the Furious franchise basically says “fuck it” to all of that. Oh, yeah, I almost forgot: A character that was killed at the end of the THIRD film makes his return in this one: Sung Kang as Han. He was in the fourth, fifth, and sixth movies. They’ve screwed up the timeline so bad that you have no real idea when each movie is supposed to be taking place in relation to each other. I realize that I haven’t seen the film yet, but judging from what I’ve seen in this trailer, F9 is NOT on my list of must-see movies. It really isn’t. This is a series of movies where stupidity and implausible action take priority over making any sort of logical sense at all. Again, I’m all for a dumb action movie, but the Fast and Furious have taken dumb to a whole new level. The worst part? They’re planning on at least one more after this! JUST STOP!!! PLEASE!!!!