The Worst Idea Of All Time - 40: Tokyo Rules!

Episode Date: December 8, 2023

The year is 2006... and also sometime between 2017 and 2021—women are objects, everyone in Japan speaks English and Tim and Guy are over the moon to have watched Tokyo Drift! A straightforward car movie that represents a welcome departure from the self serious experience of Fast Four and (as Guy seems to think) some sort of skeleton key to understanding the entire Fast and the Furious franchise. Monty is so keen he has paid for the movie twice, while Tim declares the age of video piracy is upon us once again. The boys discuss the nominal lead—Lucas Black as Sean —before diving into just how well Sung Kang (Han) did on debut, to have the entire Fast and the Furious franchise bend itself in knots to feature him in every subsequent movie.Join us for the season finale live show on Dec 15, livestreaming at TWIOAT.substack.com Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

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Music Music Music Music Music Music 9, 8, 7, 6, 5, 4, 3, 2, 1 Hello everybody and welcome to an exciting new episode of The Worst Idea of All Time. I've got a big empty seat here where Guy Montgomery sometimes is. He's in his home, surrounded by plants and curtains.

Yep, you've analysed my frame within an inch of itself, Tim. There's a plant here, probably the least happy plant in the house. I've put a lot of time and energy into repotting and really trying to, you know, trying to work on the health of some of our houseplants. This one in the bedroom, a little neglected, truth be told. Oh, I'm sorry. Sorry to hear that. There's no good.

Well, you know, I probably shouldn't talk bad about it right next to it. It's a fighter, and there's hope for it yet. The blind, very functional blind, I tell you. There's those studies where they've got, like, monks to go into a greenhouse full of plants and, like, send them them positive vibes and they thrive. So maybe we shouldn't talk shit about the plant next to the plant. Oh, look, it's a beautiful plant.

And it's been in Chelsea's life longer than I have. So I must show deference and respect to the plant. How, I mean, you know, I can see you've got the empty chair next to you, but you've got a mug of something hot. You've got a notebook. You've got a water bottle. Rocking a mile. I've got a mug of something hot you've got a notebook you've got a water bottle rocking a my love got so many notes guy because you and i have watched tokyo drift for the first time ever boy what a feeling i know and it's quite a movie it's quite exciting

to not know how we respectively feel about obviously it's always exciting when you whip the top off a brand new installment in the fast franchise. And this one, to me, I've had to do a bit of extracurricular reading, but it feels a bit like a skeleton key for the entire season. Tell me through your process of extracurricular research. I'm interested in this. Well, it's just one of those. The first thing I want to know is what became of Lucas Black, the star. Oh, yes.

His username is Bama Boy. Sean. That really stuck out to me too. What does Bama Boy mean? He's from Alabama. I think it's just like – Oh, of course. It's just a nice URL name, you know.

But I was like – Sorry to skip it here, but just to let all our listeners in there is a scene where sean who we've been calling texas this whole time but i insisted on taking some notes on people's names main character's name is sean he's got a southern drawl it's from alabama he's in a classroom situation in tokyo japan where he's got an instant messenger up and his user handle is Bama Boy. And it stays, it jumps off the screen for some reason. I think it feels like a relic of a bygone era,

which is actually interesting to the point I'll raise, which is where this film falls in the canon of Fast and the Furious. Because the tech feels old, because it is old, but because of the way they've retrofitted this film into the rest of the franchise, we ought to believe it's in the thriving cultural tech metropolis of Tokyo set, I think in the mid to late 2000s, and everyone is rocking the original camera phones,

the flip-top camera phones with the grainy-ass cameras, but that's by the by. I wanted to know more about Lucas Black. And it looks like, you know, because this would have been a big break for him. He's the star of his own Fast and Furious film. Truth be told, I don't think he's probably got the necessary charisma to carry it,

but it's a tidy little film. I really liked it. It was stripped down to its parts. You know, we just had a chassis, some wheels, an engine. the necessary charisma to carry it but it's a it's a tidy little film i really liked it it was stripped down to its parts you know we just had a chassis some wheels an engine and a seat it felt like i was um you know really watching this from the the factory floor of a high-end mechanics and uh he's mostly since this movie been christian more christian than actor it would be fair to say how do you mean like in christian movies like god films not even really christian movies just like from what i could find of his public persona his wikipedia page just generally speaking you know this should have been an access way to being a big star he was on ncis an iteration of

ncis he's since stopped doing that he's got a youtube channel which largely focuses on hunting and fishing he's got a family awesome and he's just a good christian lad but um he's also like he i don't know i think he's 40 now which seems young because in this movie he seems like a 40 year old pretending to be a high school student. 100%. Can I just dig into this a little bit? Because do you think he left the Hollywood life? Because after finishing this film, I was like, oh my God, it is amazing that the franchise picked the wrong dude. Like they put every, Sean was the main guy of this movie. He's supposed to be the star.

And then it felt like they got to the end and realized they had fucked up so they had to figure out a really crazy way of bringing han back into future fast and furious movies by just sending us on this roller coaster of a timeline that exists after tokyo drift and we barely see lucas black aka Sean, aka Bama Boy ever again. We don't, we get, the next time we see him is, oh, we see him briefly, I think in F7, we see Dom and like a flashback,

we see Dom talking to him or when Dom meets him. Dom makes a cameo at the very end of this movie. This movie, so I reviewed it on Letterboxd and I, you know, nearly every Fast and Furious movie I've reviewed on Letterboxd, I've been doing the same gag, which is I'll watch F6 and I'll say, helps introduce us to a lot of characters we know and love in F7, and so on and so forth.

And I just reached my wit's end with understanding the movies. And I wrote, I cannot for the life of me get my head around the chronology of this franchise. And I wrote, I cannot for the life of me get my head around the chronology of this franchise. And someone, some handy person just wrote 1, 2, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 3, 9, 10. So this is a movie that was released in 2006. And due to some jiggery-pokery and storytelling, it takes place at some point between 2017 and 2021. So that's like- Yes.

So in terms of the chronology of the franchise, you've just got to gloss over the technological challenges associated with believing that to be true. But in the world of the franchise this movie exists between eight and nine uh if i if we are to believe this um letterboxed user i we have had this conversation so many times this season guy i knew that but what i'm surprised by is i kind of thought they had just they'd pushed everything back so that this movie could still have existed in the present of which it was filmed so this movie came out in what oh seven oh six i think later

oh six right so i just thought they would use that as an anchor point and then because it comes much later they say okay so that means four five six seven eight nine oh sorry four to seven happen in like you know pre-2006 but that's just the assumption i made of how they solved this no because look at all the shit they use in those movies like all the if you think about the terrible phones they use in this one yeah so that's not a guide so like in it's in because you know in the in this movie it's it also is crazy to see like the original quote that to me is a flashback to the reference to a quote so in f9 i'm pretty sure when they're problem solving for where han might be i think it's letty Mia, and Dom finds the postcard from Mexico,

and it's like Mexico. And then I think Letty's like, Han always said Tokyo was his Mexico. And then in this movie, you've got Han, who this is, he's being introduced to the franchise here. He is fucking hitting it out of the park.

For the absence of charisma, I feel like that Lucas Black has, Han is just like, he's so alluring. There's a really lovely element of mystery. He's just fantastic. And they're looking over the Shibuya Crossing, the heavily pedestrianized central area of Tokyo. They're looking over a rooftop green-painted football field,

like a foosball field and bow wow's actually got some pretty mean um like trickster moves and han is like han says he says you know those old westerns like you know lucas black or sean is it is saying what's the fucking deal man what are you what's up with you and he's saying you know those old westerns that cowboys make a run for the border? This is my Mexico. And so he has, inside of the chronology of this franchise, this is why I think of it as a skeleton keep, they've gotten away with the Rio heist.

So he's taken the money that they stole when he was part of that pulled-together crew in Rio de Janeiro, and he's set himself up in Tokyo. And inside of this – so that's all happened. And so inside of this movie – also it's crazy that he gets killed in this movie. Like you can almost see that they – you can see all the reasons that they had to retrofit nobody bringing him back and like Statham

sort of being involved in the setup. Yeah, yeah, yeah. This is what I'm saying. They picked the wrong guy. They absolutely backed the wrong horse. And it's actually, I think, inside of the fandom of the universe. It's a neat novelty. Like F9, they basically threw everything out the window

and they got back Bow Wow. They got back Texas or Sean Lucas Blake and they got back. I can't actually remember the guy's name but the he's sort of he's interesting he's an interesting character the guy wait who he's a real big actor he's working on the rockets with them in Germany and F9

he's got like a oh that guy who's in this as well yeah yeah I can't remember his name he's barely in this though he doesn't get to do no but he's sort of got the same acting technique and he's barely in this though he doesn't get to do no but he's he's sort of got the same acting technique and he's like everyone else has aged in between the movies and he's kind of got the same energy going han's pretty like in terms of just look han's barely aged a day throughout the the franchise it's just crazy seeing him in such an old film look the same i i get the sense you enjoyed it too i feel um as someone and entirely by our own hand

who has been um performing like really sludgy mental gymnastics this entire season i feel like i'm inching closer to some semblance of understanding as to how it's like i've been doing a jigsaw and i've got like uh the box in front of me i can see the jigsaw i meant to make actually better yet maybe it's uh wasgidge you know those those wacky backwards jigsaws how do they work so there's a picture of there's a picture on the box and you're not you're not making that picture you're making like something that either proceeds or follows that picture so it could be like on the box it might be like a picture of a scenic you know day at the beach and then when you start doing the puzzle it's got a lot of the same

characters and objects except they're all splayed everywhere because there's a big tidal wave coming into the beach and so it's people running all over. So it's like a backwards jigsaw. So this to me feels like I've been doing, and this is, I accept partial responsibility alongside you for creating this problem. I've been doing a wasgidge and I've been looking at the puzzle thinking, why the fuck would anyone make the puzzle this way? There are puzzles you know where you can just do what's on the box

and it's a much more straightforward and enjoyable puzzle experience. And so I've got all these different pieces, and I can't forget how they go together. And then this movie, to me, is the central piece that I put down, and it's got, let's say, six connection points, and each connection point is one of the other movies we've seen so far, and they all just sort of slot in, and I look at it, and I think, connection point is one of the other movies we've seen so far and they all just sort of slot in and i look at it and i think oh you know it just i just feel a little bit closer to a man with his

feet on the ground and his head in the game could i say this watch was the first time it felt to me like we might be the only ones watching this franchise correctly oh wow we have actually stumbled across a more useful way to go through this journey and it's taken uh five movies to get here but we're here now and this is the seventh one we've watched oh this, this is the seventh. Gotcha. Gotcha. And I mean, my mind keeps going to 10 as well. I'm like, what's going on with 10? What happens in 10? They went to space at nine, guy.

I know, but here's the thing. I mean, I know that canonically this comes between eight and nine, but the strength of this movie, I think, is it's got a lightness of touch you know and it's it's not packed out with all of the all-stars it's not packed out with your fast and furious heavy hitters the harlem globetrotters of the franchise but it's a functional story it's really tidy you know all right speaking of should we do something that we haven't done i feel like in

a really long time which is explain the plot of the movie that we just watched yeah who wants to front foot it okay i think let's take turns but i'll maybe kick us off i can't remember the exact first thing i did i wrote a lot of notes so maybe i've got some stuff in here the first scene is iconic oh okay we'll get going then well it's it's uh i keep wanting to call him lucas black but his name's sean you tell me so sean this overgrown uh sort of straight a engineering style high school student he goes to a football obsessed high school i'm pretty I'm pretty sure in Arizona. And the jock, the sort of – I assume he's the quarterback. He's got a beautiful girlfriend. And Sean's just – he loves cars. He's trying to keep a low profile.

He's going to his car. Hold on, hold on, hold on. Do you know who that guy is? Did you not watch Home Improvement when you were a kid? I wondered that. Was that the guy? It's the fucking guy. It's the guy who's not Jonathan Taylor Thomas.

It's the older one. That's crazy. I thought it looked like him. Well, I didn't Google it, but that's him. Energetically, it's got to be him. Energetically, it's exactly the same guy. Oh, dude, it is. I just did a cursory glance. It is guy do you know i was like this you know

i was like there's no way but you knew you've got this thing in you you just knew during during this um sequence by the way we were getting introduced to all the context of what this high school is all about um boy did my anus pucker up at one of the opening shots of a pinata which is just a native american being smashed with sticks by a bunch of all you know all american white white americans it's uh it's a it's a relic from the past both inside of the movie and i'd say inside of um high school sports in america i would like to think it's like i assume it's the it's the emblem of the you know whatever nemesis school they're playing in football that weekend but the whole football culture of the

school gets sidelined because sean's going to his car and when he's getting into it and the car next to it the sort of beautiful viper or some sort of you know muscle car there's a um you know i'd assume the prom queen type figure of the school who's doing her she's painting her nails or something and it's her boyfriend's car and he's like hey how are you doing and she's like oh hi and it's it's a they're a little flirty you know there's nothing untoward there's nothing too cheeky but you think you know these kids could make an honest go of it and then um this jock you know this forlorn figure who's been kicked out of the house of tim the tool man taylor because his dad's had to go to prison for being a snitch on a cocaine shipment uh he's you know he's gonna call him he's got a tough home life tim tim jr struts over he's like you fucking you know i will say one of another another one of the parts of this movie that i think is aged slightly

more poorly is um women do play the role of trophies in this film you know it is crazy how little autonomy is afforded to women in this film and when they get it they trade it away instantly yeah dude for something yeah so it's important to know that and in in this movie and you know i hasten to add filmed in 2006 yes but set at some point between 2017 and 21 that long ago we'll call it set in 2019 it is important that women do not have agency and so so he comes over and he doesn't talk to his girlfriend. He doesn't really – he's done nothing wrong. He goes, basically, fuck you and your dog shit, redneck car. And Sean is sort of like, hey, man, whatever.

I'm just going to go. And he gets in his car and drives away. And then Tim jr throws a baseball through the the rear windshield and then obviously it's all on and they're like let's race and sean's like i want your car tim jr and he's like well i don't want your piece of shit well no no no no they don't yeah sorry they do say let's race and it's like i don't want your piece of shit car what am i racing for and then out of nowhere and i still don't quite understand how this means that sean has anything on the line because he can't he doesn't stand to lose his car

and then his girlfriend who's sort of you know just by existing is responsible for this whole situation says tim jr's girlfriend i hasten to add for clarity me you can race for me and both the boys you know they're licking their lips they're thinking this is great this is really good cinema we have to do this so they go down yeah uh my note is um cars are penises in this film and penises are everything fucking a dude that's beautiful so they go to an abandoned property lot i think it's where the bluth family were developing their houses and uh the race takes place there so uh they go on this crazy race tim juniors got his prized girlfriend in the passenger seat of the car, and he's driving very recklessly.

And Sean will do anything to win, and they're racing and racing. And Tim Jr. starts trying to run him off the road, and Sean just runs the car through like a model home that's been constructed just through all of the structural wood at the bottom, does a sick-ass jump onto the race course. Huskers in the roof. Spins out the, you know, wins the race. But both cars have devastating crashes and uh all parties

are reprimanded and taken to a police i guess what do you call it building and then tim jr and his girlfriend they got rich parents they're chill but the the police officer who's arrested sean is like you're poor and you've done something like this before. You're in big trouble. Basically, you're going to go to jail. He leans right up to his face and he says, I love getting scrubs like you. And I looked at the screen, which was my phone, and I thought to myself, are these guys going to fuck?

Because this is a lot of sexual tension on screen. Yeah. And they don't that we see you know in the same way that we don't know whether or not emily radzikowski and zach efron had sex and we are your friends there's an insinuation they might have uh and basically to solve the problem of this like young juvenile delinquent borderline adult who's sort of on the precipice of a lifetime in a in prison we think he gets sent to his dad who's a naval officer living in tokyo and that's his well briefly there's a moment where it seems like tim jr's mom is gonna have sex with the cop

to get him out of trouble um but they don't kind of fully say that that's what happened but they kind of set that up as as if it's about to and then confusingly he says because we learn that this mum and the son have been moving around a lot he keeps getting himself in trouble with cars he keeps having to move city maybe even state that bit isn't explicit and he says to his mum when they get out of the cop shop with the interview with the cop who i thought was gonna have sex with him and he says to his mum where are we moving to next and she says we're not moving anywhere cut to he's in tokyo japan yeah it's a? It's a pretty sick punishment for nearly killing

probably up to 40 kids and like totalling a car and a real estate development. You have to go and live with your hard-ass naval officer dad in a little apartment in Tokyo. It's also they make a real point of the fact

that his dad is screwing some broad. When he arrives, his dad's like, oh, you're here? And he knew he was coming too. He's like, you're here already? And he's like, yeah. And he's like, okay, hold on a second. This is so not interesting for the movie. And then he throws, or not throws, but sort of ushers some young.

I think she's a sex worker, right? The insinuation did feel to be that way. Yeah, a little bit. And you're sort of watching it and you're like, this doesn't feel like it's adding any essential information to what we're about to see. Oh, come on, man. This is just the tone of the phone.

So that's your setup. That's your setup. And then Sean's in Japan. His dad says, no cars. You go to school. You come home. And Sean just outright ignores him. And Sean goes to school, doesn't speak a lick of Japanese.

It's not really introduced as a problem to be solved because conveniently for us, the English-speaking audience because conveniently for us the english-speaking audience and sean the english-speaking man in japan everyone chooses to spend the rest of the movie speaking english and well you should know most of the time yes like 90 of all the conversations happen in english but um listen i torrented the film fucking come find me universal studios do do what you will uh i've i've had a bloody long day of it so you come and find me jesus here's to to allay any of the the you know lawyers from universal being sick don tim i bought this twice not because i wanted to i bought it once on apple tv but i could not watch it on my computer because apparently

my apple tv account's been authorized on five different pieces of technology including your tv so for the future reference simp there is a legal version of tokyo drift available to watch on the apple tv at your house that my account is currently logged into doesn't it just flick one of them off i don't know what was happening but then i had to buy it again on youtube so um the good news is we're actually our hands are clean we have legally bought the movie twice i just want to hit pause on the fast and furious tokyo drift conversation to say i'm calling it what's today it's uh i don't usually do this but

sunday time of recording it's the 26th of november 2023 we're back in the piracy era guys they've they fucking had their chance okay they've made quite a lot of money for a few years off us all. We've all had our fun. Shit worked on the tally for a little while, but it is too dispersed. Everyone's racking up the price too much. And Apple, one of the most highly capitalized corporations on planet Earth, is pulling this kind of shit to my boy, Monty,

who's just trying to enjoy 90 minutes of objectifying women and stereotyping Japanese people. I mean, come on. Yeah, you had your cake and you were eating it too, but you did it for too long. And now guess what? I declare we are back in the era of piracy once again. Torrents are back on the menu, boys.

I wish you'd told me 32 New Zealand dollars ago. But so anyway, I can't actually even remember what we were talking about before we got into the particulars. Where were you up to in the movie? We're in Japan now. His dad's there. Yeah. Oh, that's right.

So you can turn subtitles on when you buy it. He goes to school and he becomes friends with Bow Wow. Sorry, that's why i interrupted because i did not have any subtitles at all but some were super on the screen but not often yeah yeah anyway he goes with bow wow to this quite cool like uh car culture takes place in sort of car park buildings it appears in this part of tokyo and the main style of driving from whence the title comes is drifting and uh you know we've got American muscle learning a totally different style of driving and it felt I don't know a lot

about cars or you know the accuracy of the representation of car culture in these films but it felt kind of like I liked it I liked that he had to learn how to drift i like that first race between him and dk who's like the the arch nemesis he sort of plays the antagonist for the movie um and he spends a lot of the movie befriending han and learning how to drift and that's sort of that's your movie and the fit there was a pretty good summation there's also the kazoo you get i'm sorry the yakuza get involved because the antagonist dk whose actual name is takashi but they're like people going to this movie aren't going to remember a japanese name so we've got to call him dk um so his uncle is a

yakuza warlord uh and a really weird hat let me say that he looks like a pimp yeah um but the hat i was like it's a pretty bold choice i don't know do yakuza's dress like that i don't know don't know i think one of the great things about being anyone with influence and power is don't you just get to dress how you want don't you get to wear that don't you get you can wear the daftest fucking hat anyone's seen in their life and if anyone looks twice at your head you go what the fuck are you looking at you know like isn't that one of the joys as you just get to wear real goofy shit and if anyone looks twice you're like you better not be looking at this goofy shirt i'm wearing because this is my killing shirt and you go no not the one with goofy takashi's uncle is the yakuza dude and takashi's grandma took in

mila who was the love interest for 90 of this film that sean is trying to win over so they're kind of like in some ways non-blood relatives but also they fucking they're a couple and um it is kind of the whole source of tension through most of the film is that sean's making moves on mila mila is owned uh by takashi and takashi's not happy about the what's going on and as we talk about it now i'm realizing like all of the plot all of the story none of it is necessarily canon in the universe like sung kang who's who plays han is so spectacular and dazzles so bright in this feature film debut in the fast and furious franchise that justin lynn vin diesel like all of the behind the scenes people labored tirelessly to facilitate his introduction reintegration and revival yeah just so they could have several more

bites of the han apple like it's you know i it's like seeing color and the wizard of oz for the first time like that's the impact that his appearance in this movie has it's like you know i don't take these movies too seriously but when han is delivering that speech looking over the the rooftop soccer field you know looking over all of tokyo and he's saying this is my mexico he's saying he's saying like i you know i it's trust and character i need around me you know you choose who to be around you and then that lets you know who you are he's really like and they're pretty hokey lines but there's something in his delivery and like it he is the he's the um he's the core he's the essence of this movie and sort of carrying i guess the the the notion of family and connection that is is uh sewn throughout the entire franchise i just think

it's crazy to show up for like a one-off basically spin-off version of a franchise film and hit it out of the park so hard that the entire rest of the franchise their timeline spun out of whack like everything has shifted because of how you act that's a good day they totally had to reorganize the universe around um putting this guy in with the intention of him doing one movie and him just burning so bright it must be a real uh point of pride for han what else has he done? Who knows? I don't even know if he's in F10 because we refuse to watch it You know It's funny how shit

Texas slash Sean Slash Lucas Black is At driving At the start when he gets to Tokyo And he goes up against Takashi In the first like mano emano Drive race I think they call it i think they call it a race guy when you compete using cars uh in the medium of speed yeah i think

that's called a race and they do a race and he fucking wrecks han's car because he's he's over in japan he doesn't even have a car and han just looks at him being all mouthy to takashi and he's like he just throws him his keys he's like he's mine and so you're like oh my god this guy's this guy's gonna be so good he's gonna show up dk he's gonna be crowned the new drift king which did you think did you truly think that was gonna happen well we just sort of drive like a pretty good maniac uh in the opening scene of the movie where he won the race there that was oh wait did he win or did they both just get completely fucked and he he wins technically because actually and that was a kind of funny moment so they

his car crossed the finish line the other car doesn't and he spins like his car spins like you know 10 times or whatever and he's everyone's pretty bloodied up like the girlfriend and tim jr both they've been punched in the face by the airbags and uh you know sean's got blood across all of his teeth and they're all being held in the police um foyer or whatever and he's won so technically he's won the race. And technically the bounty is his. And he looks at the girlfriend and he smiles with all the blood in his teeth and he winks as if to say, pretty good, right? I did like it. I did like it.

So there, I mean, I was set up with the expectation we're going to get treated to another one of those. But instead, he just fucking wrecks this car around every single corner. We know it's Hans. We know it's not his car. And it's real damage. Like, there is a filmic quality to this movie, which I mean in the very literal sense. And it looks really beautiful it looks like 35 millimeter

film as opposed to the you know digital recording that we're so used to nowadays and I really I do think there is something to that you know it adds a when it comes to stunts and like wasting a car and metal scraping against a concrete wall there is something added by the fact that it's not digital. It's not that hyper clean look where it's like, I don't quite know if this was made on a really good camera or a really good computer. It's like, nah, this is an old film camera and that car got fucking wrecked for real.

And I guess it says a lot about the character that it's like he's losing this race so badly and he's destroying this car so hard. But at no point does he lick his wounds and just start driving the car up the car park quickly but normally. He's like, he is trying to do something he cannot do at full pace at every single corner. And it's a richer race for it and a richer movie for it we keep talking about how good the guy portraying han is but the character as well is like such a cool

character because the whole just this guy's being absolutely fucking demoted by one man just trying to negotiate negotiate his way up a ramp and he's just he's cool as cucumber just putting another chip in his mouth emotionless it's all unfolding he's he's eating it's like he bursts onto the screen eating and it's you know it's the same harm we know and love from i i mean now i'm now i'm gonna get myself in knots again now i'm trying to visualize man I tell you what. What revelation has just occurred to you, guy? Well, like when they revive Han in Fast 9, that's connecting for me the way it must.

I'm now like experiencing what I imagine were the many audible gasps in the room of like Han. Because they kill the shit out of him they kill him more than they kill letty in the next movie you know they they really kill it like they show him at the bottom of a wreckage and then you're like damn that's going to be tough to survive and then they blow up the car and you're like that guy's dead and then you're telling me, you know, seven movies later, after he's still been in these other movies,

fuck, I can't think about this stuff too long. I know, it is difficult, isn't it? Because then you've got the situation where the real Fast and Furious fans are like, so we killed him in Tokyo Drift, but, you know, how do you describe it? The next film that came out in real life you know we get him a bunch of times but then we get up to the point in the timeline where he's supposed to be dead and then he comes back like it doesn't well he's actually dead yeah it doesn't

have the same uh moment of surprise that a film would have that's just going in linear time where you kill a guy and then bring him back later in the franchise this is like we kill a guy the franchise keeps going but that's all set backwards but then we got to the point of movie three when we got to eight and whoa he's in eight it's like why did you see him in seven but i acknowledge that that was in the before yeah yeah it's it's a it's cool that he's back but it doesn't quite have the same punch as like a normal franchise but i get you know like it's it's uh yes exactly but also what a nice trick to be like you know to you go to the cinema and you're like oh it's a shame han's not going to be in this one this is do you know what this is how good han is and the actor portraying

him is that even after having six more bites at the apple they still couldn't relinquish having this guy in the movies you know even at that point they were like we can't get rid of him he's too good and also like think about the reason that they revive him aside from the fact he's good for the franchise the reason inside of the storyline of the movie they revive him is mr nobody's like i had to revive him to protect this young girl who's the biological key to uh like a emd or something that john cena's after so it's like the reason that they have for him surviving in the franchise is like he had to raise an orphan who is the biological key to like a it's god almighty you know you think this is the thing with a thing with a was gage tim you think

you know what you're solving for and then you look at it again and you think i don't actually know what this is it wasn't an emp it was two halves of a thing that you put it together and then it takes over all technology yeah yeah yeah yeah and and i had and mr nobody had to secretly keep hana alive to protect her from john cena by the way you know this will rubber stamp the episode a little bit um but john cena i don't know how i came across it on his instagram he just posted a photo of the comedian shane gillis with the caption stone cold shane gillis in no further context and i was trying to get to the bottom of it but you know there's certain pockets of the internet that you just can't get your head around. And I was like, well, I guess that's just a funny thing he's done.

Very odd. We lie in wait to figure out what's going on there. Do you know what? Oh, you go. I was going to say the soundtrack in this movie is fucking phenomenal. Built for us. Goes real hard. Honestly, another highlight of the film.

The soundtrack, the straightforwardness of story the introduction of han the kind of enjoyment of watching an actor who's given this big opportunity to be slightly out of his element like it's funny with movies it's funny to think i guess like everyone's taking a risk and you cast people and it's not that his performance is bad it's just like it's difficult for his his level of charisma to carry a whole you know he's a great supplementary character but it's difficult for someone to carry a movie but the soundtrack is part of what made it fantastic oh there is okay the album isn't on Spotify but I'll find it I'll try and get a playlist here Tokyo Drift playlist isn't on spotify but i'll find it i'll try and get a playlist here tokyo drift playlist well i can tell you some of the lyrics dj shadow and moz def uh we're talking by the way kanye

acorn that that dj shadow and moz that dj shadow and moz def song they play again that i've singled out in this season of the podcast they play it again in a later movie like you where themes are emerging it's six days it's it's a dj it's a dj shadow remix of a mos def track um i did actually write down in my notes that this was the most tasteful use of the fast and furious musical motif because there's a little bit of string kind of orchestral uh you know a movement if you will that comes through in this one which we hear in all the subsequent ones but it's never sounded quite so nice and it's nice in tokyo drift there's also that like dom torredos you know it's like hearing um john cena's music where you're like i swear to god there's dom torino's music that like sort of uh it's called bandoleros that guitar comes in and you're like oh yeah oh shit here you know it's like he's he's entering the arena and he gives a it's a lovely like that i also researched the

production so that uh cameo from vin at the end first of all he came in after positive test greetings to be like okay this isn't a total turd i can i can show face ah crack up second of all he negotiated the rights as part of the like the appearance fee of of giving his cameo to this film he negotiated for the rights to riddick like the to release the rights of riddick and so he he then got to go away and make riddick how he wanted that didn't turn out well box office wise but that is a bit of a cult classic it's got it's just like it's such a um i i had no idea the sort of tapestry we were unfurling at the start of the season in terms of like how i it's it's just going backwards is just unlocked all of i feel like

every time i think about vin diesel fast and the furious just anything affiliated with this project i feel like i have 5 000 tabs open in my brain and i i cannot retain information and a lot of the tabs to close them it's grayed out like if i try to hit x and the tab just stays open you know yeah and i'm using chrome and you've only got eight gig of ram my man i'm afraid exactly and but do you know what like it's i i feel i feel grateful to be you know at this part of the franchise and to be kind of um i i do feel like we're approaching closure and i'm excited like we're you know we're doing a live screening for the first fast and the furious movie like we're actually we're in the cinema it's on the big screen we're watching it for the first time.

It honestly feels like the culmination of a lot of research, like a big research project. It's at the Hollywood in Avondale. This is our PhD dissertation. Exactly. After four long years on one tiny fraction of a subject, we are here ready to discuss our findings and defend ourselves in front of you.

And that's i you know that's on december i just want for everyone in auckland to know that's on december 15 at the hollywood avondale you can buy a ticket and the internet because it's going to be live exactly it's going to be live streamed not the movie we're not allowed to do that but you can watch it simultaneous then you can watch the podcast afterwards i just think torrent the movie we're back in the piracy era i'm not so sure about that but but i just there's an energy entering my body as um we we you know accelerate towards the the finish line of this quarter mile and i um tokyo drift's done something for me that the fourth

fast and the furious didn't that's really cool man which is actually the third fast and furious we you and i we've got to get together we've got to watch uh los bandol bandoleros which is of course bandoleros is dom dom trudeau's theme music los bandoleros is the um straight to dvd at the time sort of uh short film he made which i think i understand in fast and furious canon is like you know if this is a central piece to the wasgidge this could be described as i guess an even more central piece for the real uh matrix heads out there the final flight of the osiris of the fast and furious universe not my best uh analogy but you know you got to give it to me tim what was your shining light really put me on the spot um finding out

that mila was australian blew my fucking mind because not in a million years did i peg that accent as someone's attempt at pretending to be australian and when she started talking about her australian mother and then kind of suddenly an australian twang was introduced just for that little portion of speech but that um it was fascinating it was revelatory and uh I loved it. That's great. I've got to say, and I sort of shouted out. Is she Aussie?

She's Australian. That blows my mind. Australian Peruvian. So there's a few different influences in there. But for me, and I spoke about the Teriyaki Boys in the last episode, spoke about the theme song, Tokyo Drift. But I don't even know what instrument it is. It's that when I hear the clang of some sort of... It's like a cowbell.

It's like an electronic cowbell, eh? It's like, yeah, I will call it an e-cowbell. When I hear the e-cowbell coming in and then the chorus girls singing i wonder if you know how they live in tokyo if you've seen it then you mean it then you know you have to go and then i've never known i i thought they were saying i say fire drift drift they're saying fast and the furious and saying fast and the furious drift Fast and the Furious Drift I heard it I was transported back to my first year

of university Cumberland House on Willis Street 6th floor John Nalon just blasting the song at all hours any opportunity it was crazy how transportative it was and shout out to that memory shout out to my teriyaki

boys shout out to john shout out to justin lynn he's i don't know did he do the second movie i don't know but i'm gonna say yes he did could i end um maybe the episode first like rending on a second shining light for me. And I will, I think in the next movie, get to the five cars I'd fuck from this film. All right. I'm going to, because what I loved about this is I thought the proverb was done at the start.

And then it kept going for about five more lines. And the proverb I will attempt to remember now from DK's uncle, who is the Yakuza warlord. For want of a nail, you lose a horseshoe. For want of a horseshoe, you lose a horse. A steed. For want of a steed, the message doesn't get through. When the message doesn't get through, a war is lost. I think you did pretty well, dude. It wasn't perfect, but that's the shape of it. And it was like, for want of a nail, a horseshoe is lost. I was like, man, that's a crazy Japanese saying.

I wonder what that is about. Because there's a pretty big gap. And then it kept going. And then by the end, I was like, I get it. That's cool. It was up top. Pretty lengthy for a proverb. Yeah, yeah.

Up top, I was like, this is a shit proverb. You know, like, and then they keep going. I was like, oh, okay. You know, power to you. Yeah. What are you giving this movie? Out of a possible 11 floors of the car park that we're drifting our way down. I'll give it 10 unblemished drifts around the corner,

10 perfect corners. And it's like you get nicked up a little bit on the 11th, but you still emerge victorious and everyone's celebrating. That's incredibly high marks. I'm taking points off solely for the first 10% of the movie when we were in America at that high school. Hated all of that. Hated that whole bit. I love it. I can't wait to watch it with you i'll point out why you were wrong

promise you okay right on and i'm therefore going to give this movie 8 out of 11 car park floors that's a good movie i i'm i i am you know it's it's a funny one it's a funny film it's not like traditionally haha funny but like just how it fits in with everything i just you know it's a funny it's a funny way to do a jigsaw puzzle because you know you can buy puzzles where the picture on the box is the thing you're solving that's not us, man. Not us. No way. 9, 8, 7, 6, 5, 4, 3, 2, 1