How little narrative does a film need to prop up the action? How can one wildly incoherent car chase lead to another and another? And how can spectacle help us work through traumas sustained (Walker’s death) and traumas anticipated (self-driving carpocalypse, climate change)? These are movies for ordinary fans, not discerning critics.īut the film is underrated as a study in spectacle. Our own Mike McClelland wrote, “ The Fate of the Furious feels like more of the same, a lesser retread: a showcase for flashy cars and a vanity project for its buff, aging stars.” Over at The Atlantic, David Sims observed, “ The Fate of the Furious offers everything you might want from the series, but those offerings are beginning to look ever so slightly stale.” (It’s just a little ironic that Rotten Tomatoes considers that review “certified fresh.”) Those critics that did praise the film lauded how successfully it appealed to “fans,” a term that simultaneously acknowledges the films’ global successes and distances sophisticated writers of taste from such embarrassingly simple films. Why contain cars in space and time?Ĭritics had seemingly grown tired of such physics-defying antics by 2017, when Fate dropped. Think back, for example, to the Rio de Janeiro safe-dragging heist scene in the fifth film or the Dubai skyscraper-hopping getaway in film seven.
#Fate of the furious series
Still, The Fate of the Furious continues the trend that the series began in Fast Five of moving away from car races towards globe-trotting, CGI-constructed vehicular fantasia. Gary Gray ( Set It Off, Straight Outta Compton) at the helm and bring in some surprisingly elite actors, including Charlize Theron (as hippie villain and aspiring influencer Cipher) and Helen Mirren (as Jason Statham’s cockney-accented mom). Accordingly, they put legendary director F. Moritz ( Juice, Goosebumps, Escape Room) and unleaded-as-ever Vin Diesel-seem to use Walker’s death as a reason to move on from Brian completely.
Should we name a baby after him? Yes, so manger-ous!Īt first glance, the Fast and Furious team-including producers Neal H.
Should we go get Brian to help lead us to victory? No, too dangerous. His character does appear in The Fate of the Furious, but only via allusion. Walker died in a car accident at age 40, before even the completion of Furious 7. His final words? “It’s never goodbye.”Įxcept that it was. Rather than kill Brian off, Leia-style, the franchise provides him with a photogenic and holographic drive into the sunset. It appealed to global audiences by offering a swan song for Walker’s Brian O’Conner (I’ll tell you all about it when I see you again), the blue-eyed and smiley token white boy who had always hovered close to the franchise’s center. Let’s not forget that the previous Fast + Furious film, Furious 7, was the eighth-highest grossing film of all time with a total worldwide box office of over $1.5 billion.
#Fate of the furious movie
Worried about the effect of his death on the series’ success, the movie is eager to prove that its ever-expanding family can pay homage to his memory in spectacular and surprising ways. While not the official tagline of The Fate of the Furious, it sums up the film’s approach to a newly Paul Walker-less Fast and the Furious franchise.
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