Junkee Investigation: What Are The Most Poignant Moments In ‘The Fate Of The Furious’ Trailer?
You don't need to dress up wisdom, man.
Fast and the Furious is the most important franchise of all-time and frankly if you choose to argue, well, it must suck to live your life with bad and wrong opinions I guess.
We already know this movie is going to be fun and frankly it’s insulting to our collective intelligence to pretend otherwise. We already know that it is going to be about family but also, how the game has changed what being a family even means (the ‘game’ is life). In case we didn’t know this — we’ve recently suffered amnesia; we mis-clicked and thought we were watching the Game of Thrones teaser — in the new trailer, The Rock says: “This crew is about family. But the game has changed now”.
Holy shit. The game has changed.
One thing that has not changed about Fast and the Furious movies, is that they’re not afraid of keeping the message simple and delivering this message with all the subtlety of a million cars crashing out of one glass skyscraper into another glass skyscraper. It’s this willingness to state the absolute obvious that makes these movies all the more poignant. You don’t have to dress up wisdom, man. Truth is truth.
Here are the most poignant moments in The Fate of The Furious trailer:
0.15: The Rock catches a grenade, looks at it, and then tosses it away. It’s not that The Rock is reckless (He’s got a daughter, remember? A daughter who he has such a wonderful and understanding relationship with, that when he physically bursts a cast that’s on his arm and says, “Daddy’s gotta go to work” she just fist-bumps him like, “yo, do what you gotta do, Dad”?).
The Rock is just out here every damn day neutralising threats to save his/The Family. You have to be calm in the face of catastrophe. We’re all just holding grenades in this life.
0.25: “You going to turn your back on family?” says Letty, lying on the floor from the grenade blast. Dom looks at her, emotionless. Then he literally turns his literal back on his metaphorical family so yes, it looks like he will be doing that. I haven’t seen La La Land, but I am willing to bet every pair of shoes I have, past and present, that there isn’t anything in that film that comes close the poignancy of that moment.
You think I want to spend the rest of my life walking around with no shoes? That’s how certain I am about this bet.
0.41: “You ready?” says Dom. “One thing I can guarantee: no one is ready for this,” says Charlize Theron. She’s absolutely right: you can never be truly ready for everything. Sure you can mentally prepare yourself for events that may happen in your life, but that may not necessarily mean that you are ready for them. It’s like when you get a tattoo and they’re like, “you ready?” and you say, “yes” but that doesn’t mean it hurts any less. Inside you’re still like, “ow”. You can prepare but you’re not ready.
This moment is particularly poignant because it’s when Charlize Theron presses a button on her portable keyboard, which operates a self-driving car. And guess what? No one is ready for that.
0.52: “There are thousands of cars in this city and now they’re all mine,” says Charlize Theron. This is particularly poignant given that since 2001, the Fast and the Furious franchise has been based on a group of criminals whose primary skill has been expert car-related hijinks. The fact that Charlize Theron has developed a technology that effectively makes humans redundant — except her, she’s driving all the cars at the same time — means that The Family’s skills are kind of defunct. Once cars were their friends, now they’re their foes.
“She’s the very definition of high-tech terrorism,” says Kurt Russell. You said it, Kurt.
0.59: “Now I know what it’s like being every cop chasing us!” says Ludacris, into a walkie talkie. It’s weird in life how you spend a bunch of time — years even — thinking that you’re on one side of things only to later figure out that you’re on the other side of things. Sometimes you end up in places that you never, ever would have imagined.
“Never would of imagined it, not even in her right mind,” sang Ludacris, in 2010. The song was ‘How Low’ and he was talking about your mum not being able to predict how low you could get your butt to the floor, but the poignancy remains I think.
1.30: “I think I need to remind you why you chose this,” Charlize Theron says, white dreads falling over her eyes. Dom stares at a crucifix (if it’s his crucifix necklace, it’s like his engagement ring to Letty. If it’s not, he’s a bit more Catholic now). This means that either Letty drove him to go against The Family, or God did.
This is some Shakespeare shit, right here.
1.45: “You wanna tell me why you put me in a room with this tea-and-crumpet-eating criminal?” The Rock says when Kurt Russell wants him to work with Jason Statham. The Rock is so unfamiliar with ‘tea’ that he doesn’t even know that it’s not consumed solid. You drink tea, you don’t eat it. The Rock probably doesn’t even need to hydrate.
This is poignant because sometimes you are confronted with having to cooperate with someone you don’t like, just because it’s the right thing to do. Sometimes you have to work together. “You guys are gonna work together,” says Kurt Russell.
1.48: The trailer tells us that working together is good and right because it helps you punch your way out of maximum security prison. Anything is possible. We know that teamwork is good, because this bit is followed by a shot of celebratory butts.
2.03: “I’ve been waiting for this. We got a tank!” Ludacris says, rejoicing in destroying things in a more sustainable vehicle. In this series Ludacris has grown from a guy who just bets on car races, to a computer genius, to a dude who just wants a tank. Growth is important.
The Rock laughs in appreciation because it’s nice when your friends get things they have been waiting for. This moment is poignant because you could be in mortal danger, but you should still take time to be thankful for the little things. Like tanks.
2.28: The Rock leaps out of a car and tackles a torpedo.”This is crazy!” says Tyrese. The Rock just growls, because sometimes in life you do have to be a little bit crazy.
The Rock then blows up a fleet of cars that is presumably full of enemies (not Dom, though — do not think for a second that Dom will remain an enemy), so never let them tell you that you can’t achieve your dreams.
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The Fate of the Furious is in cinemas from April 14.