Hello! Just a little housekeeping before we get started. Due to the thick layer of fog that clouds my brain at every conscious moment, I entirely forgot to mention last week that we had a little upgrade! Nostalgia Detective now has an Instagram, which you can follow here, and a fantastic new logo designed by friend of the newsletter and top gaming influencer Millicent. Ain’t that a thing?
I’ve also been on a podcast this week with friend of the newsletter and fellow newsletter writer Paulie. His newsletter, Rat Depot, is a lovely and interesting collection of insights into art and culture, and he allowed me to bleat for 45 minutes about John McEnroe and bathroom breaks. Listen here if you fancy, and remember to subscribe to that damn newsletter.
It’s been a little while, hasn’t it? Ten weeks. There are a lot of Fast & Furious movies. Started at the bottom, now we’re here. Wherever here is.
Fast & Furious used to be about stealing DVD players, and now it’s about Tyrese controlling a nuclear submarine. This is known. I don’t think that’s the most interesting part of the Fast meta-narrative, and I hope you’ve come to agree with me. The most important part, in my scholarly, learnéd view, is Vin Diesel, and the company he keeps.
We spent a long time talking about Paul Walker a few weeks ago and then forgot about him entirely, which is entirely in keeping with how the post-7 movies deal with Brian, but I think it’s worth circling back to him for a second.
Vin was never alone. He started this franchise arm-in-arm with Walker, and though he dipped out for a couple of instalments, he was back when Walker was. Paul went Vin-less in 2 Fast, but Vin couldn’t do that. The post-Tokyo Drift instalments gathered a super-team, but the Vin-Paul duo was always the franchise core, the thing that Vin took the most seriously.
From all evidence, it seems that Vin really loved his co-star, and couldn’t imagine Fast without him. Even when the Rock came on board and added a third plank to the macho-man collection, it was Vin and Paul all the way. Then Paul Walker died, and the vibe instantly shifted. The Rock couldn’t be the other brother. That was never going to work out. The cumulative effect of Fate and Hobbs & Shaw, the two messiest instalments in years, was the total dissolution of that partnership. By the end, scissors (Vin) had beaten Rock.
Paul’s gone. Dwayne’s gone. Vin’s still here. Still making Fast & Furious movies.
Welcome to F9. The last one, for three more months.
One of the best episodes of Avatar: The Last Airbender is “Zuko Alone”.
I know. I know. Let me have one last tortured pop culture analogy for the road, okay?
“Zuko Alone”, an early instalment of the second season, follows erstwhile villain Zuko in the middle of his redemption arc. Zuko, we have learned, is a messed-up guy, riddled with trauma from his shitty upbringing with his dictator dad. He found a better paternal relationship with his uncle Iroh, a genial tea-drinking dude who commits a softer, gentler form of war crimes, but he’s struck out from Iroh too. As the episode picks up, he’s flying solo.
The problem is, Zuko has defined himself by the company he keeps, and the expectations they set. He’s been a dutiful son and a grumpy soldier, which is what other people wanted him to be. He doesn’t know who he is outside of those relationships. He doesn’t know who he is when he’s alone. Zuko, alone.
Look, it’s not a one-to-one metaphor. Vin has never had a father figure in these things, unless you count Kurt Russell. It’s not even really a one-to-two metaphor. Vin still has a massive ensemble surrounding him. It’s one-to-three, at best. I just like The Last Airbender. Let me live.
Vin isn’t alone, per se. It’s just that, for the first time ever, he’s here without one of his guys. He’s the shot caller.
Heavy is the head that calls the shots, as NBA Shakespeare once said.
F9 was always going to come after a bit of a break. The heat had gotten high on Fate, and Hobbs & Shaw evidently slowed down the production line that had cranked out a main entry every other year since 2009. Incidentally, this pissed Tyrese off.
It’s actually fallen by the wayside, but Tyrese actually had a feud with the Rock too. In perfect character, this was done in imitation of Vin, except the Rock didn’t dignify this with responses. In 2017, he wrote on Instagram:
“I’m sorry to announce that if [Dwayne] is in Fast9 there will no more Roman [Pearce]. You mess with family and my daughters survival I mess with yours.”
When F9 was delayed to April 2020 on account of Hobbs & Shaw, Tyrese flipped out.
Congratulations to @TheRock and your brother in law aka 7 bucks producing partner @hhgarcia41 for making the fast and the furious franchise about YOU - And like you, DJ even if they call I will not be deleting this post - Gn folks see you in 2020 April #FastFamily right? Nah..... it's about #TeamDewayne #3yrs will it be worth the wait? #NoShaw just Hobbs will this be another #BayWatch? Guys guys just relax I'm just a passionate film critic
Then, on Hobbs & Shaw’s opening weekend, Tyrese went for the jugular about the film’s box office.
The dysfunction had spread, and everyone needed to calm down. The film eventually started production in mid-2019 for that 2020 release date.
It is at this point that we must mention the novel coronavirus.
Sorry. Wish it wasn’t the case. If it helps, we have Vin Diesel to helpfully walk us through the painful real-world history.
In one of his increasingly rare excursions outside the Fast franchise, Vin starred in Bloodshot, a cut-price superhero movie intended to start a series. Unfortunately for Bloodshot, it came out on March 13th, 2020, as cinemas around the world shut down. It was quickly released on VOD soon after, but it’s unclear how well it did. The Bloodshot universe seems to be in stasis for now. Sorry, Vin.
Though F9 had released its truly astonishing trailer by this point, it was kicked down the release schedule like any blockbuster - first to April 2021, then to May, and finally to its eventual release in June. It became one of the first big movies to get a full theatrical release since the pandemic began.
Summer 2021 at the box office was a bloodbath. A Quiet Place II hit pay dirt at the start of the season, but with studios still skittish about putting out product, the schedule was a barren wasteland in which potential successes - In the Heights, The Suicide Squad, Jungle Cruise - went to die. Even Black Widow, the MCU’s big ticket relaunch, sank out of sight after a big opening weekend.
What do those four films above have in common? They were day-and-date releases, put on either HBO Max or Disney+ alongside their theatrical release. Though a reasonable strategy while audiences remained nervous about mid-pandemic cinemagoing, the effect on their box office was sharp and notable. Lots of people just stayed home and watched them there instead.
No such choice with F9. Universal would dabble in day and date fuckery later on, such as the botched Peacock releases of the latter Halloween films, but F9 was a rare breed in 2021 - a total theatrical exclusive. Vin was there to welcome us back.
I honestly find this incredibly moving. It’s like the Nicole Kidman AMC ad for straight men.
F9, as it turned out, hit a perfect niche in June 2021. Vaccines were now fully available, and most people on either side of the Atlantic were on their second shot. COVID cases were rapidly receding, and the Delta variant was barely a concern. Audiences were ready for any excuse to get back in a big sweaty room together.
COVID would rush back, and cinemas would gradually dry out for profit until the likes of Shang-Chi and No Time To Die in the autumn. But for a precious few weeks, audiences were back to the movies. Audiences were desperate for a big, sweaty blockbuster with honking sound and lots of explosions. It could have been anything, but it turned out to be F9. For a few precious weeks, Vin was our shepherd back to the movies.
Beautiful.
We gave the director airtime last week. He deserves it again this week.
It’s not the same guy. We like this one.
It’s Justin Lin! Hey, Justin!
In this house, we stan the hell out of Justin Lin. The man who revived the Fast franchise with Tokyo Drift and ushered it into its golden era. The man who made goddamn gorgeous beautiful Fast Five. We love him. And he’s been gone for a while. 7 and Fate were in other hands. The king had been long gone from his realm.
His return was always on the cards, though, and the fractious vibes of the franchise post-Fate made a steady pair of hands an ideal prospect. When Lin signed on for F9 in late 2017, he was also pencilled in to come back for the tenth and then-final instalment - who else would bring the franchise home? After Vin’s vision became so massive and terrifying that the series finale expanded to a two-parter, Lin signed on the dotted line to helm film eleven, too.
It all made a lovely amount of sense. For one, it meant that Vin wasn’t truly alone - the safest pair of hands in Fast town was back to help steer the ship/big car. For two, the series needed Lin’s easy aptitude with all the spinning plates these movies require.
What a reassuring place for the series to be in going into its long-awaited endgame. I sure hope nothing would happen to jeopardise this stable and calm creative situation.
I can only respect that Vin reacted to the loss of the former WWE star from his franchise by finding the next most famous one.
We’ll dive into the frankly insane implications of the character he plays soon enough, but since we gave so much space to Dwayne, I thought John Cena was owed a little time in the sunlight.
Wrestlers on wrestlers have tried their hand at acting, but it’s safe to say three have separated themselves from the pack in modern times. One is the Rock, obviously. Another is Dave Bautista, the thinking man’s block of muscle. And another, behind them but paddling fast always, is Cena.
Through the mid-2010s, Cena began to rack up a solid resume of small roles in comedies like Trainwreck and Blockers, before making a big for the blockbuster leagues in Bumblebee.
Fun fact about Bumblebee: it’s good. Seriously. I remain unbudged from Bumblebee Hive. It’s a charming movie. It’s interesting that Cena actually isn’t the big hero of the movie - a role which goes to Hailee Steinfeld - but rather the human antagonist, a prick military colonel who hates robots. Though hardly a pinnacle of villainous acting, it indicates an eye for big roles that is slightly more sophisticated than Johnson, a man incapable of not being the charismatic and well-liked leading man in a movie.
Cena is a fitting replacement for the Rock, and for this new flying-solo incarnation of Vin, because he knows his place. He’s rarely done big leading roles, instead mostly slotting into ensembles. Though he’s made some dopey social media gaffes in his time, Cena seems by all accounts to be a fairly genial and professional actor who doesn’t mind existing a tick away from the spotlight, which means Vin could trust him to know his fucking place thank you very much.
He’s wasted in F9, though we wouldn’t know quite how much until his other big role of 2021 - Peacemaker in James Gunn’s pleasantly enjoyable The Suicide Squad. As Peacemaker, Cena as an actor would unfold like a beautiful butterfly. It’s a role that reveals a self-awareness and ability to send up his own image that the Rock has always been too afraid to wield, and a weirdly effective approach to selling emotional beats like a sledgehammer falling. Cena uses his absurdly hulking physique and enormous marble-carved block-head as comic instruments, and he proves to be a pretty effective player. He’s even better in the (genuinely great) spinoff TV series released a few months later, where he takes to one of his first bonafide leading roles like a duck to water.
The guy is conducive to similes. He looks like a lot of things, okay?
Just look at these opening titles. Physical comedy is back, baby!
I had an intense hyperfixation on this song that led to it becoming my most-streamed song of the year on my Spotify Wrapped 2022. These things happen.
Going into F9, Vin had never had few other cooks in the kitchen. The remaining cast is entirely comprised of designated supporting players. It’s Vin and Lin all the way, and it’s abundantly clear at this point that it’s Mr. Mark Sinclair who has become the franchise’s dominant creative voice.
So. Unencumbered by on-set feuds, stripped of powerful influences in the rest of the cast and without the on-screen partner with whom Vin was happy to share the limelight, this was a chance to see what kind of Fast movie Vin would make (mostly) himself. His pure vision for the saga that appeared to him in a dream circa 1998. The Fast Saga, as this entry would be awkwardly suffixed in the US.
We’ve been complimentary of Vin in this here newsletter, establishing him as some kind of cinematic shaman with a dedication to his very particular and very stupid craft that could topple empires. He’s the archetypal lone genius, misunderstood by the world, interrupted constantly by mediocre fools. We have, somewhat accidentally, imposed the Great Man Theory onto Vin Diesel. The narrative we’ve established to date would suggest that a movie he makes without outside influence would be fucking awesome.
As we should all know, though, Great Man Theory is contemptuous bullshit. Great Men? Really? Have you seen men?
No. Vin is not a great man. Like the rest of them, he is but a regular man, albeit with a deeper voice than I would have believed biologically possible. Like regular men, he is flawed. Like the ancient heroes of old, his fatal flaw is hubris. Vin believes in himself, and in his vision, fiercely. It is this uncompromising nature that led to him walking off the franchise to begin with, and to the eventual Rock feud.
F9 leads us to ask a question which one may not have dared to ask before: is there such thing as too Vin?
This is an oddly difficult movie to talk about coherently. There is not a singular thread running through F9, an easily trackable narrative around which to frame everything. No. It is a spider’s web of knottéd strands, a thicket of immeasurable density. Excuse the five-dollar words: what I am trying to say is that F9 is all over the fucking place.
That’s distinct from it being bad. It’s not bad. It’s not good, but it’s not bad. Even muddy water quenches a thirst, and after the undrinkable substance of Hobbs & Shaw, and the concerningly sour taste of Fate, you learn to appreciate hydration where you can get it. Again, please excuse all the syllables: what I’m trying to say is that there is a sense of rightness in Vin returning to the centre here. The tone is once again mystifyingly weighty, the sentimentality cloying, the comic relief strongly separated from the gravel-voiced drama. It is, if nothing else, the correct Fast recipe.
On the other hand, it’s not very good.
You realise that it’s too Vin almost instantly, because the movie opens with a flashback. This is Saga Mentality in action: F9 treats with utter importance the idea that Dominic Toretto has a dark secret backstory. Did we need a Dom Toretto origin story that plays out throughout the entire movie? No. We did not. This is far too much Vin. Sorry, buddy, but we’re not here for that. We are not. Nobody cares.
That being said, the flashbacks do introduce the idea that Dom has a secret brother who is Finn Cole from Peaky Blinders and grows up to be John Cena that he has never mentioned before. That, I have to distinguish, rules. I love it. It’s pure telenovela, which means it’s pure Fast.
Also, it means Vin Diesel’s brother, and Jordana Brewster’s brother, is somehow Caucaciest of Caucasians, and always has been.
Take it away, Col. Tom Parker.
They explain this in-movie by Charlize Theron referring to “mixed-up Toretto bloodlines” and that “she never detected a Nordic strain”. Hooting and hollering.
I love the stupidity of the big brother twist, but I dislike the gravitas the movie ascribes to it. It’s an oddly precise mix, the tone of these movies. Their ability to take their dramatic beats too seriously has long been part of their charm, because it’s part of Vin’s charm. They are utterly, goofily sincere, and that’s kind of admirable.
However, as much as I regret to say this, Deadpool made some points. Sincerity in excess is a millstone on a big, silly movie. I can happily accept that Vin has a long lost white brother, but I draw the line at viewing this all as some epic story of hidden generational trauma. Oddly, it’s a story where the franchise’s strengths come to bite it in the ass. These movies have so tirelessly made the case for #family as a blood-defying bond, a form of Ultimate Friendship, that a sudden pivot to telling stories about actual family feels oddly trite. The Cain and Abel thing has been worn down to a nub in popular culture, and it’s not as if F9 has a nuanced enough script to overcome the familiarity of the whole endeavour.
Saga Mentality troubles this movie in other ways, such as the regrettable return of Charlize Theron’s Cipher. Sorry, but (Tom Wamsgans voice) who the fuuuHHuck invited Cipher back? Must this irritating cardboard cutout be this franchise’s Darth Vader? Must there be a Darth Vader here? You may think the Star Wars references are random, but reader, they are not. F9 dedicates a whole scene to Cipher and Otto (European subvillain, not worth mentioning further) trading Star Wars metaphors, with Cipher claiming that Otto is Yoda “because he’s a puppet with someone’s hand up his ass” (true - Yoda is a puppet).
Also, the hair. I had thought that white girl dreads were the worst it could get, but cast your peepers on this shit.
Evil. Evil.
No, really, we do not need a recurring villain in these, least of all someone as boring as Cipher. She escapes again at the end of this one, and is back for Fast X. Jesse Pinkman was right. (S)he can’t keep getting away with it.
Aside from the central Toretto family drama, F9 is a somewhat bitty and episodic movie. The peaceful one-track simplicity of Fasts five through seven is a distant memory. This is more of a “condensed season of a TV show” vibe. We can only discuss such a movie bittily and episodically. I’m sorry. It’s not satisfying for me either.
Han’s back! Han’s back! They revealed this one all the way back in the first trailer, which is fair enough, because F9 more or less acts as if we all expected this to happen. Speaking for myself, I did not expect this. The Letty reversal had the fortune of plausible deniability, but Han was barbecued in a car. We saw this, and then we saw it again retconned as a deliberate Statham murder: a cinematic double tap, if you will. Forgive me for thinking it was unlikely that Han was okay all along.
Anyway, Han is okay. It was holograms.
It’s very funny to me how this developed. Tokyo Drift Han was a devil-may-care racer, a fun guy who dies by accident in a street race. The following films up to 6 retcon this Han as a grieving man embracing hedonism as a way to numb his own pain, and that he was actually assassinated by Jason Statham as revenge for his brother Luke Evans. Now, F9 retcons this again, so that, while Han was still grieving at the time, he was actually also recruited by Kurt Russell to do black ops missions in Tokyo and that Jason Statham’s arrival coincided with the going-rogue of John Cena so to solve this issue Kurt Russell switched Han with a hologram, and also Han now had this surrogate daughter/little sister with special DNA who he lived with during Tokyo Drift.
This is insane. This is an intricate latticework of ad-hoc bullshit, writers scribbling furiously over and over their own work. I love Han much as the next guy, but there is a concerning whiff of Sherlock season 3 to the work F9 does to explain his survival. It is quite sweaty. With all that hard work, the movie gathers Han and then… does nothing with him. Part of this retcon is to establish Han as a responsible carer for someone else, which means he can’t be fun and unpredictable like he used to be. Sung Kang, a charisma generator with the right material, frowns a lot in this movie, and little else. This is not the #JusticeForHan you were looking for.
Speaking of Han… the Tokyo Drift boys are back as rocket scientists?! I would not have believed you if you had told me that Bow Wow would make it back to the franchise, but here he is. Bow Wow is back. Actually, he’s now going by Shad Moss because his career flamed out in between movies, with no acting roles for eight years, a dead rap career and a third placed finish on the 2020 season of The Masked Singer, but who cares? Bow Wow is back! Twinkie is back! And he brought his friends, Sean Boswell, the Donkey Kong himself, and… um, Earl. Earl! Remember Earl? I don’t, but that’s okay.
As mentioned, they are rocket scientists now. I appreciate the chutzpah of how the writers got here. The plot demanded rocket scientists, for reasons I’ll soon explain, and Lucas Black had an open contract for one more movie after 7… so why not re-use and recycle? They’re rocket scientists now! Bow Wow has helped to usher in physical miracles that would surely win him a Nobel Prize! Sure!
I love this. It’s very sweet. Few franchises would care to address their flop eras (commercially, anyway - you know that I back Tokyo Drift to the hilt) like this. Few would care to bring back Lucas Black, a man now most famous for a six-season run as a series regular on NCIS: New Orleans, but Fast cares. Vin cares. When you’re family, you’re family for life.
Cool.
This brings us neatly to the final point I feel compelled to address, besides the absolutely smoking sexual tension shared by Vin Diesel and Helen Mirren in their scene together, or that Cardi B is Dom’s friend and leads an all-female militia, or the mid-credits scene featuring Jason Statham, or the extended setpiece set in Edinburgh, or the magnet plane, is what the Tokyo Drift boys do with their rocket powers.
It gives me great joy to say this.
Tyrese and Ludacris go to space in a rocket car.
It had long since become a meme that the Fast movies would go to space. It seemed like the logical extreme of their constant escalation, their exponential ridiculousness. Space? Why not?
People joked about this, but like so many things, Vin took it seriously.
Tyrese and Ludacris go to space in a rocket car and then ram a satellite using the car and then the International Space Station rescues them. I don’t have anything more to say about this. I just love it.
That’s F9. Fleetingly joyful, nothing if not convoluted. It’s okay. It’s nowhere near the franchise’s best. It makes you wonder, really, what we’re still doing here.
Vin’s hubris ended up where many people thought Vin’s hubris would end up. Lin would return to direct Fast X, but accounts suggest that Vin’s controlling attitude and erratic creative style frustrated Lin to the point where he walked off set. Vin had lost his last real creative partner. Now, as he brings the franchise in to land, he really is alone.
Hey, Vin.
Here again. We started with this JPEG of you, and we’re going to finish with it.
Vin, I have to admit something to you.
I’ve kind of made you into a character in a story. Sorry. It wasn’t my full intention. It just happened. I made this series into narrative nonfiction about you by mistake. I took some of your obvious traits and used them to tell the story I wanted to tell. I pretended like I know you, Vin. I don’t know you, really. All I know is the Vin I created for the sake of these newsletters. He’s got plenty of similarities with you, I’m sure, but it’s not actually you. We can’t recreate real people in stories. All we can do is recreate how we see them.
Anyway, Vin, now we’ve established that, I hope you don’t mind if we keep up the pretence for just a little more time. I’m going to pretend like I’m talking to you. Hope that’s okay.
We’re at the end of these newsletters, Vin, but not at the end of these movies. We’re close, or so you say. Two more. “The end of the road begins”, says that ominous Fast X poster. Cool. I hope so. Truthfully, I’m wondering why the end is taking so long.
Really, Vin. Why are we still here? Why are you still here? Why did there need to be eleven Fast & Furious movies, Vin, if you don’t count Hobbs & Shaw, and I bet you don’t?
Is it to honour your friend Paul? Is the idea that he would have wanted this? Is this your way of remembering him?
I get it, Vin. I understand that. Grief is weird. You do what you have to, in order to survive it.
I just wonder if it might have been easier if you had finished this thing already. There was a time, I think. A nice stopping-off point, where you could have wrapped Fast up nicely, and remembered your friend.
It’s Furious 7, Vin. When Paul left, Dom Toretto should have gone with him. Your fictional avatars would have gotten to drive around together forever, and you could have moved on. You could have made things of your own. You could have made a fourth Riddick, Vin. A fourth Riddick.
But you kept going. You sent Paul/Brian off on his own, and you kept driving. Kept making Fast movies, right until the end you’ve set out.
Honestly, Vin, the vibe’s been kind of weird since. Part of that was the Rock’s fault, but not all of it. I think there’s something missing in these movies now that can’t be replaced, and the more they deny that absence, the more it is felt.
It would have been okay for you to stop, Vin. Nobody needed you to keep going.
But you’re going to anyway, right? You’re going to finish this thing yourself. Alone, pretty much. Tyrese and Ludacris are not equal partners in this enterprise, after all. A lot of people have gone, Vin. Some of them you pushed away yourself. It’s an odd situation, Vin.
Fine. I get it. You’re not stopping until you ring the damn bell yourself.
Fast X is out in May. The trailer is out next week. Vin, I’d be lying if I said I wouldn’t be there. I wouldn’t have advised this, but you are how you are. We might as well roll with it.
Thanks for the good times, you big fucking weirdo.
See you at the movies.
Phew! We’re done. This has been a lengthy series, so I am (a tired and (b sincerely grateful for all of you for being here. This series has coincided with a period of what I am calling “excellent mental health”, which is to say I have, frankly, found writing these things to be an immense comfort. I’d do it if nobody read them. The fact that some people do, and some are very kind about what they’ve read, means a lot to me. Thank you. You’re all invited to the barbecue.
(Don’t ask any more questions about the fucking barbecue.)
I need a rest, but I’ll be back at the start of next month for a short new series focusing on one of my favourite weird trilogies of recent times. I’d say more, but I have to split.
Salud, mi familia. Hope the road rises to meet your wheels.
Peace out.
Louis
as a fellow vin i was very confused when i checked my inbox. great read as always louis!