My Quick Rant on New “Fast & Furious” Movies #MovieBlog

17 Apr 2017

As I write this post, The Fate of The Furious (a.k.a. F8) was already reviewed by many critics and it gets rather positive ratings on IMDb. I haven’t seen it yet, but according to the trailers and some official clips, I guess it’s going to be very similar to the last two films. And that means I should expect a lot of unrealistic stunts, loud music, exotic locations, car crashes, ladies in bikinis and of course, maybe one race to remind us what this franchise used to be about. While many people seem to be excited, I’m very skeptical about it. Why? Here are few reasons why I don’t like the new F&F movies:

Plot

It gets more ridiculous with every new film. It started from stealing some ancient Panasonic DVD players and now the same guys are saving the entire world. That’s how far everything went. I may sound like a whining grandpa, but I think they could’ve ended it on Fast 5, just to give this franchise some dignity. It was a perfect moment to say goodbye. All our characters became happy, rich and lived happily ever after… until the 6th movie. Since Fast and Furious 6 every F&F film tries so hard to be like Mission Impossible or 007 movies. Traveling around the world, using fictional technology, fighting terrorists… come on, this is some serious spy sh░t, not a job for a bunch of criminals and street racers! To be honest, sometimes I feel like these scripts were written by a 13 year old kid.

Cars

In the first movie cars were quite important for character development. We learned story behind Dom’s Dodge Charger and saw our protagonists turning wrecked Supra into a “10-second car”. The most memorable scene is with Jesse freaking out after losing his riced Jetta in a race. It perfectly shows how much these characters were attached to their vehicles. However, in new Fast and Furious movies cars are treated in the same way as computers, cell phones or f░░king microwaves. There is absolutely no relation between drivers and their cars. Vin Diesel doesn’t mind destroying another Charger, because he will most likely find a new one in his garage. It seems like cars are there just for spectacular crashes and nothing else.

Ridiculous Action Scenes

But hey, these films are made for pure entertainment. Don’t think about physics. Just turn off your brain and enjoy all these explosions and flying cars!

And I get it - not every action flick has to be dead serious or hyper-realistic. What’s more, I’m that kind of guy who genuinely enjoys watching films like Machete Kills or Shoot ‘em Up.
The problem with the F&F franchise is they went so far with over-the-top action sequences, that it’s hard to take any of these scenes seriously. You can’t feel the tension, because you’ve learned that our protagonists can survive stuff like falling from the 5th floor on an SUV, jumping from a speeding car and being involved in violent crashes (unless their name is Han). It’s really hard to tell when our characters are in danger.

But let's be fair...

After all, there are some positive aspects about these films. Despite all the bad things I said in previous paragraph about action scenes, I have to admit they’re done pretty well. There’s no “shaky cam” or sh░tload of cuts. You can tell exactly what is happening on screen, even when it’s total bulls░it. What’s more, I was also positively surprised when I found out there are actually more practical effects than CGI. Remember that scene in Furious 7 with cars falling off from a plane on parachutes? Guess what? They did it in real life. Amazing, isn’t it? If you don’t believe me here’s the link:
https://youtu.be/-w7imxsoq3M

Final Conclusion:

I could make this post much longer, because there are still many bad and good things about these movies that I didn’t include here. But why shall I waste my time on stuff that was only made for pure entertainment? In my opinion Fast and Furious are that kind of “disposable” movies, like watch it once, have fun and never think about it again. So, will I watch F8? Maybe… but I don’t expect it to be better than the first film

PS: As English is my second language, there’s a chance I made some grammar mistakes. If you spot some, feel free to correct me. Oh, and thanks for reading the whole post.

Comments

Injun86 (AE86 squad) Chadkake (Subaru squad) Mark Mason

Just wait until you watch the new movie, you’ll be surprised. Has f and f strayed from it’s roots a little bit? Yes. Does that bother me? Not really, fate of the furious is a great movie

Yo…the latest one is so damn good. Pretty sure they did what they did with the first one for the “Race Wars” scenes and rounded up real car tuners and racers from Cuba. Though that scene is full of impossible physics…still badass.
The movie was great. The Rock was badass. Statham was more badass. Just enough car stuff and just enough action. I rabk it second. Second only to the first F&F

Woah. I never would’ve known that English is your second language.

Anyway, nice blog! I agree.

Thanks. I was lucky to spent my early years in UK plus my mom is an English teacher. However, I still feel like I’m constantly spelling something wrong :-)

Wtf that was fast

Yay, my first editor’s pick ☺

I type this just after watching the new movie and I really wasnt expecting to be very good at all, I agree with everything you said in the blogpost and it pretty much holds true for the new movie, but it wasnt as bad as the 6th or 7th one. There was more racing and cars in general than the previous 2 movies and the story was quite good aswell not to mention the acting wasn’t bad either, of course there were moments where physics were completly ignored and stuff was way to convinient in favour of our protagonists, but i kinda liked it, personally id give it a 7.2 out of 10.

I heard that in F8 Jason Statham’s character joins the ‘family’. It sounds weired because he killed Han and was ready to murder Dom and his crew… Other than that I think it’s cool that he has a bigger role in this film. In Furious 7 I was very disappointed with his character.

I watched this movie today in a cinema and things you say are true. I liked the movie for most, but I could be better.
I didn’t like the action scenes, like Dom driving a burning car and at the end driving through fire caused by an exploding submarine.
Roman was being funny, as always, that Iiked.

I’ve changed my mind and I’m going to see it this weekend. I will try to write a blogpost about it.

I’m surprised F8 has a relatively high IMDB rating.

You do realize the series revolves around heists, right?

Do you think Fast and Furious will go into space?

Yes, but before that Dom will have to join Autobots :-)

this will probably get lost in the comments but did anyone else notice the 3rd pedal in Ludas AMG? I could have sworn automakers were drifting away from manual tranys….

I guess it’s an editing mistake. They probably re-used the footage of other character pressing the pedal. Anyway, good spot. I probably won’t notice that.

I saw that and for some reason it bothered me. It is probably just a little feature for the lesser car enthusiasts who wouldn’t know any better. You do have to admit, it’s not very entertaining to see someone shift gears in a dual-clutch automatic.