fast & furious (2009), or littlevinplanet
in which even sackboy gets a second chance
I think that studios need to sort out their business when it comes to sequel titles. Really, I’m sick of it. This cute little trend of calling your legacy sequel by the same name as its predecessor, forever necessitating that everyone has to remember the release year to tell them all apart. It’s gone too far. There shouldn’t be three films all called Halloween. The latest Scream should not have been called Scream, because it was the fifth Scream. Now they’re calling the sequel Scream VI (or SCREAIVI if you like) and that just makes everything more confusing.
(If you’re thinking of it, reader, yes, I am aware that the latest Call of Duty game is the second game to be called Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2. It haunts me every day of my existence on this ball of rock.)
I say all of this, of course, because the movie we are covering today has a title which is most vexatious to me. The fourth Fast & Furious film, the direct sequel to The Fast and the Furious, is called Fast & Furious.
God. Damn. It.
What the hell do I do with this? That’s the name of the franchise!! You give first instalments a pass for that, but you don’t give a pass to the bloody fourth one. My whole thing here is seeing each movie in context, distinguishing between franchise and individual film, and they’re called the same goddamn bastard thing. Don’t play the legacy sequel card with me, Fast. I know your game. Eight years passed between this and the first one, and that’s the normal sequel gap for Marvel movies these days. That’s absolutely no excuse at all.
If you’re sitting there reading this thinking thoughts like “but it’s clean and effective!” and “it signifies a fresh start!” and “it indicates that viewers don’t need to worry about remembering Tokyo Drift!”, let me pose this to you: the franchise itself acknowledges that this name was a mistake. They didn’t call the sequel Fast & Furious 2, did they? No. They called it Fast Five, because they’re respectful people who acknowledge Tokyo Drift and remember the faces of their fathers.
This was an error. This was a travesty. A disastrous decision was made in 2009, and now I must sit in its ruins.
Welcome to Fast & Furious. Or “2009”, as I guess we’ll have to call it. Fine!! Doesn’t bother me!!
Since Vin Diesel mysteriously absconded from the Fast franchise, taking the kids and Riddick in the divorce, we have tracked his career trajectory. It is, I would argue, a trajectory akin to that of Icarus. Simple achievements like being the face of two hit franchises wasn’t enough for Vin. He didn’t want to be just an action star for hire. He wanted to be an auteur, the master of his own fate. He wanted to be Riddick.
Like Icarus, Vin’s wings melted, in a perfect metaphor for his own hubris. Riddick failed. On the way down, he grabbed onto whatever he could, from The Pacifier to Find Me Guilty to Babylon A.D., none of which are films which exist. He knew that he still had a potential meal ticket, as shown by his willingness to put in a cameo in Tokyo Drift, but Vin’s career as Hollywood’s pre-eminent muscular bald man was in serious danger. Sure, he had the rights to Riddick, but Vin was bumping up against the cold and cruel reality that he cares more about Richard B. Riddick than the vast majority of humanity.
In the distance, a thunderclap sounds. Another muscular bald man - this one taller and even more jacked than Vin could ever be - appears on the horizon. He is racking up a steady couple of film credits a year, gradually nudging his way into action roles. and his career seems on the verge of an explosion. That is an issue for next time. That is a bald man for next time. But he’s there.
Something’s cooking. Can you smell what the unnamed bald muscular actor is cooking?
Anyway, in the event, Vin would star in just one movie in the three years after Tokyo Drift. It’s not looking good for our boy Mark Sinclair. But as it happens, he’s not the only action man in a bind. Paul Walker, having aged out of young heartthrob roles, is struggling too. His mid-2000s credits are a series of poorly reviewed and mostly unsuccessful star vehicles, with names such as The Death and Life of Bobby Z. He gets a gig in a Clint Eastwood joint, but it’s one of the ones that nobody remembers. Aside from an oddly successful Disney movie in 2006 which he befriends a pack of huskies, it’s not great for him. The king of 1999 is looking mighty peaky by 2009.
Huh. As it turns out, Michelle Rodriguez is on the rocks too. She failed to truly break out following her role in Fast and the Furious, and her own list of credits has grown sparse too. Admittedly, she’s secured a reasonably important role in James Cameron’s Avatar, but half of Hollywood thinks that project’s a boondoggle anyway. Matt Damon turned it down, and who the hell are Sam Worthington and Zoe Saldaña? If you’re sensing a pattern here, then keep going. Jordana Brewster is also struggling, having had the misfortune of landing a lead role in a Texas Chainsaw flick, only for it to be one of the shit prequel ones they made in a panic.
Gosh. If it’s any consolation, at least Vin’s not alone. Still, it’s never pleasant to see four attractive celebrities suffering a mid-career crisis. If only all four of them had starred together in a hit movie years ago, and if only enough years had passed since said hit movie that it’s entered the nostalgia cycle. If only said franchise was active but struggling, a still-viable brand that could certainly use a shot of star power.
Just how is the Fast & Furious franchise doing circa 2007?
Not well, as it turns out. Tokyo Drift was nominally successful, but sort of in the way that The Crimes of Grindelwald was successful, in that it made money without anybody feeling particularly excited about it.
(This is a reflection of their commercial performance. It is not a reflection of their quality. God forbid we compare those two movies.)
Certainly, nobody was all that excited about the prospect of catching up with Sean Boswell and Twinkie again. The option that was allegedly being kicked about at the time was a bleak one: that the series would go direct-to-DVD. If you are unfamiliar with the ignominy of a film series going direct-to-DVD, allow me to use the example of the Open Season franchise. The 2006 animated comedy Open Season was modestly successful, but apparently not enough to warrant a theatrical franchise. Instead, they made three sequels, in which star names gradually depart the franchise to be replaced by increasingly cheap facsimiles. By the fourth instalment, the lead star is “Donny Lucas”. It receives a theatrical release in eastern Europe only, and makes less than $2 million. One of the top Letterboxd reviews for Open Season: Scared Silly says “They fucking pulled an X-Men: Days of Future Past”. God knows what that means.
A DVD of Open Season 2 would make a cameo in season five of Breaking Bad. You may notice this image does not highlight it, instead focusing on the surprising revelation that Jesse Pinkman owns a copy of LittleBigPlanet 2 on PS3. I was about to make a joke about a washed-up alcoholic Sackboy struggling with unemployment, but my research has turned up the existence of Sackboy: A Big Adventure, released in 2020.
It feels thematically right for this particular newsletter to see that Sackboy got a second shot at fame.
This is the fate that awaited Fast & Furious. In our timeline, its sequels would go on to make billions. In another, close to ours, a small but dedicated fanbase awaits the release of Fast & Furious 13: Maximum Speed on premium VOD, starring a recurring guest star on the CW’s Walker: Independence.
That couldn’t happen. Vin couldn’t let that happen. He needs this franchise, and this franchise needs him, damn it. They are falling together, and only they can catch one another. The moment has come for salvation.
There’s only one issue left to tackle.
People love Han. If nothing else, they’re Han mad. Sung Kang’s character was the only real breakout from Tokyo Drift, and fans are keen to see Han back too. The ideal scenario would be a film with all the original characters and Han.
But Han is dead. We saw him die. Pretty straightforwardly, too, since you have to remember this was before they retconned it twice over and revealed that Jason Statham and Kurt Russell were both secretly there. Han can’t come back unless it’s a prequel, and if you’re bringing the original cast back, you can’t do a prequel to the first movie, because that’s where all the characters met.
That ideal scenario can’t exist. There’s no way. It wouldn’t be logical. You can’t do that! Tokyo Drift visibly features 2006-era technology, so you’d have to commit to making all future films effective period pieces. Plus, audiences would be confused if Han showed up again after he died, and you’re trying to sell this big return narrative. It can’t work. They could never -
In this day and age, we are awash with nostalgic legacy sequels and surprise role reprisals. Nobody is ever done playing a role in a franchise. Andrew Garfield and Tobey Maguire came back. Michael Keaton is Batman again. Keanu Reeves is ready to play John Constantine again. Tim Blake Nelson is ready to play the Leader again in an Anthony Mackie-led Captain America sequel. The miracle of cinematic resurrection has become banal. No one’s ever really gone.
This, though, is magic.
I was ten in 2009. I was an idiot. I was into Skulduggery Pleasant and literally nothing else. This wonder passed me by, so I can only reconstruct what it might have felt like to see Fast & Furious back from the freaking dead. My best reference point is the Henry Cavill cameo in Black Adam, to which some regrettable nerd grifters reacted as if it was the Super Bowl. But, like, this is the real deal.
There he is again. That other bald action star, rumbling away in the sidelines. Can you smell what the unnamed star of Black Adam is cooking?
Han is back. How is Han back? Well, it’s simple. They simply diverted the continuity of the franchise, retroactively placing Tokyo Drift later in the timeline and turning the new movies into de-facto prequels. This allowed the franchise to have Sung Kang as long as it wanted, with the dramatic twist of his death in its back pocket for whenever it would be best used.
Fucking. Magic.
Sorry if I seem overexcited, reader. It’s just that I’ve gotten so cynical covering all these Marvel movies and their ten-year plans and their reduction of hype to brutal science, and seeing the real thing makes me very happy. I’m not naïve. I know these movies are studio blockbusters which have only become more commercial over time. They all work within the same system. The choices made in the production of Fast & Furious ‘09 were shrewd business decisions resulting in a more lucrative product.
I also sincerely believe that Vin and Justin Lin and Chris Morgan made them because they were cool as hell, and that is a difference we should relish.
Good news and bad news.
Shall we do the bad news first? Fast & Furious ‘09 isn’t very good. In fact, it is nearly the least interesting version of what it could have been. It’s comfortably the worst movie the franchise has seen to date.
The good news is that the movie’s quality does not matter at all. Even by the post-good-or-bad standards we have established to date, it’s completely irrelevant that this movie is mostly a miss.
In fact, Fast ‘09 has just about the easiest layup imaginable for a blockbuster. The contents of the movie are significantly less important than its function as a vehicle to get the franchise’s main stars back . That’s the selling point. As long as the movie includes Vin, Paul, Michelle and Jordana driving some fast cars and at least one street race, it can do whatever the hell else it likes, and nobody will be all that cut up about it.
This is perhaps why the movie itself is so lacklustre. 2 Fast and Tokyo Drift had to prove themselves as new iterations of the franchise, and so their desperation to entertain was palpable in every frame. Fast & Furious has that goodwill in the pocket before the Universal logo even appears on screen. Nobody expects cogent drama or meaningful commentary on nostalgia. They just want to see their buddies.
Naturally, the resulting film feels workmanlike and cursory. If your homework is just to “write a one page essay” with no expectations beyond that, you’re just going to fill up the page with scribbles and hand it in. Homework is hard enough most of the time.
Admittedly, there are still a few decisions here that feel oddly self-limiting.
It’s probably true that, of the four main stars of the original Fast, Michelle Rodriguez popped the least in that film. This is nothing to do with Rodriguez’ talent as an action movie star, which would be proven plenty in the years following, and a lot to do with the film’s old-school macho stylings that forced her into a mostly cosmetic role where she wasn’t allowed to participate into most of the action. There’s a logic to how quickly this film writes her out. It is, however, a stupid logic, undermined by the film itself.
That first scene, where she’s a full participant in all the action, shows her slotting in perfectly into the new-iteration team dynamic as a capable scene partner for Vin, and there’s a goofy heart to their brief scenes after, even if Vin will never manage the task of being a convincing romantic lead in these movies. Her enlarged role in the franchise suits her. Then, off-screen, she crashes her car, and she’s gone.
With the benefit of hindsight, we know that Michelle Rodriguez will be back. She is the first of many Fast characters to pierce the veil of death and return to our mortal world. She’s only really gone from the franchise for a movie and a half. But within the confines of this particular movie, she’s outta here, all for the sake of a moody revenge plot that turns Vin into Batman, a role for which he does not really have the dramatic chops.
It’s a weird “no girls allowed” choice that feels as if the movie is holding onto the original’s testosterone-fuelled vibe like a comfort blanket, but it particularly rankles because it makes the movie feel familiar. In time, Fast would establish its own tone similar to but distinct from its action contemporaries, and much of that would be down to its willingness to diversify its cast and soften up its lead characters’ personalities to let them talk about family and love all the time. Here, it’s all gunmetal masculine brooding, and we’ve seen all that before. Gal Gadot’s strange femme fatale performance where she spends half the runtime throwing herself at a completely unaffected Vin does little to compensate for all that.
(It’s a testament to how insanely busy this era of the franchise is that it’s a footnote that that it launched Gal Gadot’s career as an action star and drew a direct line to Wonder Woman. In moderately disturbing trivia, Gadot has said that her background as a combat fitness instructor in the Israeli Defence Forces helped her to land the role in Fast.)
For a film rightly sold as the big return of the franchise’s main stars, Fast ‘09 is also curiously reticent to have them on screen together. The third act is all Paul and Vin, but before that, there’s a thicket of scenes where Brian does FBI investigating and Vin threatens people in garages. Individually, the two characters - and actors - are far less interesting than they are together, but the film doesn’t really seem to get that. Instead, it assumes an intense interest in seeing how Brian O’Connor’s law enforcement career comes to an end. Even the presence of character actor king Shea Whigham as Brian’s douchey partner can’t enliven these scenes.
Again, it spikes what would prove to be a key point of appeal for the series - the ensemble vibe, and the camaraderie that comes with it. If Fast is a Batman story, it’s not one where Batman moodily works alone, stalking the shadows like Vin does here - it’s one where Batman is a surrogate dad taking care of his seventeen vigilante children such as the eighth Robin and Nightboy.
Rarely has a series in transition been quite so visibly in transition. Fast ‘09 is caught, in its narrative, between the franchise’s old pretensions to gritty crime drama and its increasing appetite for unrealistic destruction. It tacks too hard towards the gritty crime drama (who on God’s green earth cares about Arturo Braga?), but you can see its heart is in the weird destruction. Meanwhile, the entire narrative is slowly nudging the characters into a place where they can all work together, but it only gets there in the very final scene because of how much effort it expends patching up Vin and Walker’s absences from previous movies.
Also, Han is back, but barely. A lot of effort is expended bending the flow of space and time for a five-minute cameo from Sung Kang. Granted, it does start the hilarious three-film streak of Han consistently suggesting he go to Tokyo because it’s really fun there and nothing bad could possibly happen, but the rest of the movie could have used his easy charisma.
Again, it does not matter. It really, truly does not. Fast ‘09 had the bare minimum to accomplish, and it manages that just fine. It’s nice to see our boys and Jordana Brewster back on screen together. The movie does what it needed to do, and in retrospect, its role in bridging the chaos era of Fast to the illustrious success on the way seems pretty vital in making the whole thing work. Perhaps we’d look on it differently if what followed didn’t work. But we don’t have to worry about that. This is the fourth of ten and counting, remember?
By the end, everything in its right place. We don’t have to worry about the FBI, or the trauma of Mia having been left behind by Brian, or Vin’s angry grief about his fridged wife anymore. The slate is clean. It took a little while, and the process was not glamorous, but the Fast franchise is back on the road. Time to do something fun with it.
Next time: Oh, I’m excited for this one. It’s Fast Five! After a long run-up, the revived franchise realises what makes it work, and it soars.
Now, I just have to deal with that smell coming from the kitchen. It’s the smell of cooking, but I can’t smell what it is.
Can you smell it? Can you smell what the unnamed new addition to the Fast & Furious franchise is cooking?