The Fate of the Furious
April 11, 2020
What Did I Expect: The events would be fateful. The people would be furious.
My Favorite Part: Jason Statham’s character, Deckard Shaw, rescues an adorable little baby, and then fights his way through a series of trained killers with the baby carrier slung over one arm. Periodically he checks on the baby, who is wearing gigantic headphones and sporting a smile. My heart exploded just like all the cars in this movie.
My Least Favorite Part: This movie had the absolute gall to cast Charlize Theron (aka The Imperator Furiosa from one of my all-time favorite movies, Mad Max: Fury Road) as its main villain and not even let her drive in a single chase scene!
A Brief Summary of My Experience: This was a weird one, gang. It felt like two movies smashed into one. The first movie was dull and slow-moving, with lots of drily spoken threats made to Dom by Cipher (Charlize Theron). These parts that should have been stacked with tension were slow and weird.
And let’s talk about our gal, Cipher. I expected her to be dynamic, but she instead comes off as robotic (seriously, someone should show her a series of pictures and see if she can tell you which ones have street signs in them). At one point in my notes, I described Cipher as “an evil, be-dreadlocked, unhinged Jan Levinson.”
The other part of this movie, with its car chases, team banter, jokes, and ridiculous lines spoken by The Rock was an absolute treat. The more this franchise sticks to impossible plans and friendly teamwork, the happier I am!
One final note: if Ramsey isn’t canonically gay by the next movie, I may need to start a riot.
My Final Rating: 7/10 self-driven cars raining out of buildings
My Final Takeaways:
I had so much more fun watching this series than I ever thought was possible. Truly, I cannot wait to see F9 on the big screen next year, and my husband and I have plans to watch Hobbs and Shaw just for fun on HBO this week.
There are certainly problems with the franchise, many of which are well-documented in other critical spaces online. From the ogling display of women’s bodies, to the writers’ lack of understanding of how to write feminine characters, to the strange racial politics of the early installments, the franchise is far from perfect.
Even though there are problems, these movies provide a great action escape that’s outside of my normal genre bubble. Watching nearly two decades’ worth of movies in eight days made me reflect on how the series has evolved and shifted.
Viewers like me traveled from the unsubtle “race wars” to a media landscape with smart, tech-savvy black characters. We were impressed when a zillion cars flooded the streets in 2 Fast 2 Furious and then laughed out loud when The Fate of the Furious appeared to parody this moment with self-driving cars! We’ve experienced the soap-operatic returns from death for more than one fan-favorite character!
I can’t say I recommend binge-watching this series to everyone out there…but my experience with the Fast Franchise was a blast that taught me a couple of things:
First: Genres and movies that you assume aren’t for you may provide some much-needed escapism and entertainment.
Second: Nothing is more important than Family.
Thanks for coming along on the ride with me, Frolic readers!