The Worst Idea Of All Time - Cult Popture (presented by TWIOAT)

Episode Date: September 25, 2019

The fellas present an episode of fellow Little Empire Podcast Network show, Cult Popture. If movies and TV mattered, they’d be talking about the issues that matter. Home of Film Franchise Fortnights, our podcast where we watch and discuss a randomly chosen film franchise every two weeks!Make sure to subscribe to Cult Popture on your podcast app, or check them out oniTunes (https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/cult-popture/id1124261917)Facebook (http://goo.gl/9EFEIa)Youtube (http://goo.gl/ITdEhK)Twitter/Instagram (@Cultpopture) Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Hello to you, a listener to the Worst Idea of All Time. We're doing something a little different on the stream today. Tim and I will be sharing an episode of fellow Little Empire show, Cult Popture. We're doing one of those things where you present another show. So this is Worst Idea Presents Cult Popture. And you can't see us, but we are both wearing finery. We are draped in jewels and silk. We are feeling very pompous.

Yes. We are draped in jewels and silk. We are feeling very pompous. Yes. So Cult Popcha, it's an unrestrained, big, fat, nerd movie analysis show hosted by legends Alex and Richard. These guys are legends as well. And they've got a great motto, Tim. What's their motto?

So the motto for this podcast is, if movies and TV shows mattered, we'd be talking about the issues that matter. I think that's brilliant. It's funny. These guys love it. They're super funny dudes as well. I've known Alex for a few years.

He teched a comedy show I did ages ago, like three years ago. What show was it? Vote Bat. It was very technical. That was a very tech-heavy show. He had to edit a video while the show was happening for me to play at the end with some photos that were taken at the start of the show. It was fucking sick, and he pulled it off anyway he is very into film in a very cool way like his reviews are brilliant and he does um they do like video essays on youtube as well

yeah fucking good real good the video essays are really quite popular as well aren't they yes some of them have gone viral massive yeah i saw that um anyway with three years and over 130 episodes already under their belt and episode topics ranging from marvel or star wars to air bud and the sister of the traveling pants there was a a break between air bud and the sister that's not a crossover franchise that you don't know about how good would that be hell of a spinoff um this show is like injecting pure concentrated geek culture directly into your veins now the episode you're about to hear is from the film franchise is from film franchise fortnights which is cult popchase fortnightly show where they watch and discuss an entire movie franchise so they've got a couple kind of regular features that they do within their podcast

periodically and film franchise fortnights is is one of them yeah and uh the franchise that they're discussing here is uh the fast and the furious series one of my favorite film franchises in the history of cinema yeah honestly it knows what it is i mean you don't need to hear me wax on about it you're about to hear these guys do it much better justice but the nine adrenaline pump films from the humble beginnings of a boy racer, DVD heist movie, to the rock Jason Statham spin-off about secret agents and super soldiers, no series has changed genres,

accumulated as many stars, or given their films such horrible titles as this one. If you're a fan of the show, then make sure to subscribe to Cult Popture wherever you get your podcasts, and check them out on all their social links, which are available on the show notes. In the show then make sure to subscribe to cult popcha wherever you get your podcasts and check them out on all their social links which are available on the show notes in the show notes um they're good dudes they are they're very clever they're very funny so i hope you enjoy this this is the worst idea of all time presenting cult popcha Hello Richard

Hello Hello you the audience That was a very slow and mild intro for this episode of the podcast I was expecting fasten your seatbelts, put the pedal to the metal, something like that Something a bit more quicker and angrier. Yeah. Well, I will be getting angry on this podcast, so don't you worry. This is, of course, the Cult Pop Show podcast,

and this is Film Franchise Fortnights on the Cult Pop Show podcast, where every fortnight Richard and I consume a film franchise. Nom, nom, nom, nom. And then we get together to talk about what we liked, where every fortnight Richard and I consume a film franchise. And then we get together to talk about what we liked, what we didn't like, what we have no feelings on. And what we love, which is each other. Each other, yeah, exactly. Because we're family.

Yeah. And this is one last, we're just doing one last podcast and then we're retiring. Yeah. And this is like the fourth one and then there's gonna be no no yeah then we continue to do this podcast for another like four years yeah yeah um so yeah film franchise fortnights fast and furious ah what a segue the film and the franchise fortnights got them fast and furious film franchise fortnights today we are talking about the

fast and furious franchise alternatively known as the fast and furious franchise or the fast franchise or the furious franchise i've never heard it called the furious franchise well baby yeah i made that up this has been a long time coming for our podcast richard i think this is probably one of the most well-known and most interesting movie franchises currently going you know currently out there um and it is ranked as the 10th highest grossing film series of all time so definitely one that we need to be talking about as the emperors of talking about franchises because i'd never seen any of these films before this wow i had seen uh i saw the fourth one in cinemas and then I remember watching the first one being on at a party and

I remember thinking that like the one scene I remembered from the first one is actually in the fourth one there you go for me it got to the point where by the time people were telling me they were actually really

good I hadn't seen any of the previous ones then I was all i'm not gonna go to them and then when the eighth one came out we were doing this podcast and i was like well i'm not gonna i'll do it one day yeah yeah well because you didn't want to for ages i remember oh i i don't know i feel i i i'm on record saying i prefer doing the more obscure franchises and not the 10th highest grossing franchise but look never on the show have we covered a series of this length which as is as diverse as it is the series has accumulated a massive a-list actors it has sequels prequels midquels and spin-offs it has a couple pieces of dark behind the scenes trivia and it spans multiple eras genres critical receptions and titling schemes in short this is in terms of structure

and production the franchise this podcast was made for like this has a this has it all you know this is everything that we dissect when we dissect the frog that is the franchise for film frog frog franchise fortnight um and since we have nine films to cover this episode we're going to be covering each of them one at a time uh but just to give you what they're called up top richard without looking can you tell me the names of each of the films yes i certainly can uh so you've got 2001's the fast of the furious then you've got 2003's too fast too furious then 2006 brought us uh the fast and furious tokyo drift and then 2009 we had fast and furious the the fastest and most furious title up to that point uh and then 2011 we had fast five um even more fast and then fast and furious six and i believe 2013 and then fast no um wait sorry furious seven i forgot

what i was up to um furious seven came out in 2015 yes and then you have fate of the furious 2016 2017 sorry and then fast and furious presents hobs and shore or just hobs and shore in 2019 a week ago yeah that was all without looking as well so that's um yeah well yeah it's it's it's the it's the weirdest thing i've memorized i think yeah was was the titles of a nine-film-long series I hadn't seen. Yeah. So, yeah, the first film was The Fast and the Furious in 2001. This was directed by Rob Cohen, and it has a Rotten Tomatoes score. Do you know what that Rotten Tomatoes score is?

I believe that the first four are rotten and the other five are all fresh so going off that i think it's like 54 53 nice it says i'm 54 but i'm only 53 53 very nice little little hot fuzz reference reference in a podcast about something very different. Thus confirming that the Corredo Trilogy will be our next film franchise, as often happens when we mention another franchise up top. We get it randomly decided because that is the fate of the franchise podcast. All right. What is The Fast and the furious about so uh the fast and

furious is about uh lapd officer brian o'connor played by paul walker who goes undercover to investigate an illegal street racing gang uh suspected of stealing valuable valuable electronics uh there he meets and befriends dominic teredo played by vin diesel and eventually uh brian lets um again in a hot fuzz reference because it's very similar to the ending of point break because it's essentially a remake of point break um that brian uh lets him get away because he loves him so much uh and then he's yeah disgraced from the force but we get into that more in the sequel it has a casablanca ending of um brian letting dom right off into the sunset instead of arresting him yeah firing his gun up in the air and going ah yeah so i i didn't think this movie was very good what did you think uh yeah i mean it's about 54

it's very 2001 it's like again it's fun as like a uh a remake of point break with like a new skin a very 2001 skin on it um where it's you know like paul walker's haircut in this one compared to like four and five onwards he's got like the sort of almost justin timberlakey long blonde um hair well not long but like you know shaggy blonde hair um and it's just very it's similar to mission impossible 2 and it's kind of visual style as well that very in your face um slick kind of yeah yeah yeah but as to what i thought of it uh yeah it's a bit of fun but it definitely is on the lower half of the franchise it's strange isn't it because people say to you like like there there are there are there's a a um section of the fast and furious fan base which which prefer the the street racing films to the later films and it's like this isn't a very good

movie by any yeah i've read a couple of like ranking all of them including hobbs and shaw and a lot of them have this in like the top two or three yeah which is it's so wrong yeah stop being stupid and i thought i thought the characters were pretty flimsy i thought the story wasn't very interesting um and it's also representing and we'll get to this well this probably come up a lot in the first half of this franchise it's representing a section of society which not only do i not identify with but i don't really respect either you know i don't think street racers are cool I think they're dangerous They should wear a helmet They should wear their seatbelts And I mean You get a lot more in the earlier movies than the later movies

Though it does show up in the later movies There is some pretty What am I trying to say? Yeah I'm wondering that myself The sexualisation and objectification of the woman in this in these earlier films can be not even just in the earlier films dude like there's a lot of butt shots throughout the whole franchise and it's very male gazey which is to be expected from a franchise which is probably the poster child of the male gaze as a concept yes yeah um

i also one of the things you didn't mention in the synopsis but we can talk about now um dominic teredo played by vin diesel his sister's name is mia and brian and mia eventually in the rest of the later movies they get together and all they get together in this one as well but i couldn't i didn't understand watching this film if brian was either being very morally ambiguous and seducing her and playing with her heart to get more information or if he's being really unprofessional as an undercover cop and actually like actively pursuing a relationship yeah well i think based on uh his behavior throughout the rest of the franchise, he is being a bad cop, you know,

because he does a lot of bad cop things in these movies. Yeah, there's no scene where he's talking to his, like, superiors and he's like, falling in love wasn't part of the plan, you know? Like, I think it needed... It needed that scene. It needed specifically that line of dialogue. Yeah, I mean, it has all the other fucking cliche ones. It just wasn't clear,

and it stops you from fully getting on board with the character because you don't find out he's a cop until maybe a quarter of the way through, which is probably one of the more interesting things this film does. And so, yeah, I wasn't too sure on that. Would you say you were invested in the family by this point? At this stage? No, like, I definitely, like, watching these films,

this is something I guess I kind of didn't really expect, but I probably should have expected, is that, like, Paul Walker's definitely, like, the hardest franchise, and Brian O'Connor, and because the first movie is it like he's the main character of the first movie i would say first two yeah yeah yeah first two yeah um but yeah like the first one especially where you think of it as just like a vin diesel vehicle but it's it's paul walker's story and um yeah he's definitely like the heart of the franchise. And I was kind of surprised how quickly you just like him more than all the other characters.

Sure. Yeah. I'd agree with that. Because obviously knowing what was coming as well, I was like, oh, I wonder how like emotionally affected I'm actually going to be by this. Yeah. So despite this being kind of like one of the go-to films, you'd say, when talking about like a turn-your-brain-off movie. And I was texting you while I was watching it, and we both agreed that we were getting pretty lost in some of it.

And I think it's more out of being bored by the movie and then missing crucial elements. Yeah, I think it's more like bad storytelling as well. Yeah, yeah, sure. There's some parts where you're like, wait, who's this guy? Why is he coming to it yeah yeah i i was genuinely shocked when the credits started rolling because i thought we were like about to go face the big bad you know yeah yeah i didn't realize that the people that just chased died and that they were the bad guys and then it ends he's

like all right i'm letting you go and then the credits roll and i was like didn't they have someone else to chase where was the big boss fight um and but also the film kind of leads you down the garden path and thinking that dom is innocent of stealing all the dvd players which is what this feels about but he it was him right it was It was him. Yeah, so he gets away with it. Yeah. But it's strange, isn't it? Because it's set up in a plot structure way of being like, despite what you think, Dom's actually innocent, but it's actually like, nah, he's a criminal.

Yep. Yeah, but he's cool. He's cool. He's so nice to his friends and his family. Well, his friends are his family, dude. What's the difference? He doesn't have friends. He's got family.

Okay, well, that's about all I've written for the first film. Did you have anything you wanted to say on that? No. Well, yeah, for the start of the franchise, well yeah it's for the start of the franchise it's one of the more um unassuming films in the series to talk about yeah um yeah so in 2003 we got too fast too furious directed by john singleton now what do you think this has on rotten tomatoes uh 40 it's 36 nice and what is this movie about so uh after letting dom get away at the end of the previous film brian is now street racing to to make ends meet um it's a bold move hey you're like a disgraced cop and you're like all right i'm gonna go and do the thing i was disgraced for

just in broad daylight using my real name yeah uh so he gets caught uh by the cops but he take he takes like a makes a plea deal kind of thing uh to take down a miami drug lord um along with his childhood friend roman pierce uh in exchange for his freedom and then so they team up together and take down a miami drug lord yeah um this film sees the introduction of tyree skipson as roman pierce as you said and as well as uh ludacris's tej yeah who become um staples of the franchise later on uh they were actually only introduced because vin diesel was busy filming the chronicles of riddick um so this is the only sequel until hobbs and shaw to not feature vin diesel and frankly i think that's a good thing because

I hate Vin Diesel and watching these I didn't hate Vin Diesel properly until I watched these movies and I was like I was like I'll get well this will be a recurring theme throughout this podcast is me slowly revealing how much I dislike Vin Diesel um but it wasn't just because he was filming the Chronicles of Riddick he didn't like the script either um and he said that they didn't take a Francis Ford Coppola approach to it yeah no shit Vin Diesel they didn't take a Francis Ford Coppola approach to the sequel they approached it like they did the sequels of the 80s and 90s when they would drum up a new story unrelated for the most part and slap the same name on it oh what a tragedy oh no oh no um however he brought back the integrity to the strangers um vin diesel reflected on this decision in july 2014

in a report from uprox saying i would have said don't walk this is what i think what he's saying what he would have said to himself if he could go back to 2003 um i would have said don't walk away from it just because the script sucked and too fast too furious because there's an obligation to the audience to fight no matter what to make the film as good as possible i might have had a little bit more patience or belief in the long term of it well you're such a hero oh my gosh vin diesel is so dreamy um so okay what did i think of this film i prefer this one to the second one i know this to the first one sorry um i know that this is a classic bad sequel like yeah this is this is one of those ones i've heard is like uh despite the title being such a

meme and people think it's such a cool title um it's it's considered you know very poor and the um uh the ron tomato school reflects that but uh yeah i thought it was fun i i sort of enjoyed the paul walker tyree skibson um chemistry more than the paul walker vin diesel chemistry um at least in the first one anyway um just and because they actually feel like they're friends and yeah and and as well that roman pierce's throughout the whole series is the uh comic relief so you just have a bit more fun with them than dom teredo who's trying so hard to be the alpha in every scene and no so vin diesel is trying to be the alpha dom teredo is no so vin diesel is trying to be the alpha dom toretto is the alpha because of all the work vin has done behind the scenes to ensure it's like that yeah

yeah so i would say yeah i actually found this one more fun it is more fun and i think that's why people think it's worse is because it's it's and it's a precursor to how silly this franchise gets in a fun way. Yeah. You know, it goes a little bit more ridiculous. But I know it does feel like a sequel, doesn't it? Yeah. Like, in ways I can't properly articulate. I feel it in my gut. Like, the new characters and the plot and, like, only one of the characters returning.

Yeah. The new love interest and the lack of impact it has on the rest of the series yeah it's not um capolean yeah yeah no very distinctly uncapolean um and but even like the location of miami and the color palette somehow yeah yeah yeah that's sequely miami is such a like sequel location yeah yeah um and this film we also meet eva mendez's monica who's an undercover cop um who up until writing this episode plan i'd completely forgotten appears again at the end of fast five yeah but then she never comes back she appears at the end of fast five you're like oh they really are bringing all the characters back and then until

i was writing this i was like even mendez wasn't in any of the other sequels after Fast Five. You just reminded me as well of one thing I was going to talk about. But at least definitely the first three films, I'm pretty sure, have a real intense torture scene. Yeah, that's the next thing. We're on the same wavelength, dude. It's because we're family. Yeah, so the first film has a scene where

um someone there's like a pump oil thing um and he forces oil into this guy's mouth and all over his face to essentially waterboard him with oil um and you know like poison him i guess as well and then in this scene they do the thing of um putting a rat inside a bucket upside down on someone's stomach and lighting the uh the bottom of it so that the rat is forced to crawl away from the flame uh through the person's stomach you described it so much better than how i wrote it down dude it's just a mess of syntax errors and run on sentences run on sentences try with the way i wrote it i was like how do i describe this how did you write it i wrote there's a scene in the film where the bad guy traps a rat in a bin

which is face down on a man's stomach and then starts heating up the bin to try and force the rat to bury its bury its way through the man's body to escape and then i wrote it's metal as shit um what it doesn't end up happening which is kind of well it does it scratches through yeah yeah yeah but my question for this scene do you think that would have actually worked do you think a rat yeah it's like an old um form of torture really yeah because i i was watching it i had my arms crossed and i was like i don't know if this would actually happen um yeah but because i mean like the rat is in danger it's forced to crawl away from the danger and i mean like rats are fucking strong they can like chew through concrete and shit so human your body and organs um i ain't got shit on concrete i'm sorry but they don quick are rats uh they're pretty

they're pretty fast actually yeah what do you think their temperament is um like in my experience at least they've been pretty furious and in some cases they've been too fast and too furious yeah um yeah so this is considered i actually it's not but i thought it was i thought this was considered the worst film of the franchise by critics it's actually not um but apparently some critics now consider it underrated so isn't that nice that is nice yeah well i think it's like you said it's the ridiculousness of the franchise that comes in later on then now it's like um it was a hero we just couldn't see it at the time um yeah because it's yeah the first one takes itself a little bit too seriously whereas i don don't think this one does. You know why it takes itself seriously and this one doesn't?

Why? Guess who wasn't involved in this one? I wonder. What very serious producer wasn't involved? Because this one wasn't directed by Francis Ford Coppola. Vin Diesel is the Francis Ford Coppola of our time. Francis Ford Coppola is still alive. Is he?

Yeah. I thought he was dead. No, it's... Stanley Kubrick's dead. No, Marlon Brando I was thinking of. Okay. Well, because he worked with Francis Ford Coppola a bunch of times. All right, all right.

I'm a film buff. I've seen The Godfather once. I've watched a bit of Apocalypse Now, okay? I've seen Too Fast Too Furious The three couple of films that everyone studies in film school Any more thoughts on Too Fast Too Furious or shall we drift

on over to the next one The Fast and the Furious Tokyo Drift from 2006 The first film in the franchise directed by Justin Lin. And what do you think this has on Rotten Tomatoes? So we had 53 and then...

36. 36, so I'm going to say 44. 38. Two points above Too Fast and the Furious. And what is this movie about? So this is when a teenager, in quotation marks, Sean gets in one little street race and his mom got scared and said,

you're moving with your father in Tokyo. So yeah, he gets into a race with Brad from Home Improvement. And yeah, he's forced to move to Tokyo to straighten out. But he immediately uh gets into drift racing uh he befriends a guy called han uh who ends up dying in a fiery crash which will revisit later on um and then he takes on the drift king and um yeah i forgot about the drift yeah dk yeah what is dk savera put a pin in that what did you think of this film um so this is one that i'd heard people say um like obviously obviously everyone knows after fast five they actually get quite good

or like quite fun but then people go actually the third one's real good or like the third one's still one of the best and they're watching it i was like how the fuck does anyone like this movie like what the hell like but then uh finishing the movie and having some time to like sit with it in the week and now having seen all of them as well i do kind of get what they mean it probably is my favorite of the first three um which is and it's even more testament to how good good in quotation marks the film is um that i rank it like that because it has the worst main character in any film i've ever seen yeah like worst performance just like a horrible oh my god like maybe Actually, maybe not the worst main character, but one of the worst lead performances I've ever seen.

But then Han is a really cool character, and it's a bummer to see him die, but then we'll get into what happens there. And it's like, I guess the drifting, the change of scenery is also quite fun as well. It did shake it up a bit, which I guess is what they were trying to do. It's a distinct

threequel right because now we're in a different country we're not just in miami yeah now um yeah sean sean is probably the worst character in the entire series like the worst main character yeah and by series you mean every any film ever made yeah yeah and in the history of film um because we're introduced to him as this calm and collected racer and then he races against brad from home improvement for the prize of having ownership over brad's oh my god can we talk about because this was like what the fuck are you doing like so brad brad and sean i can't remember brad's name um it's just brad yeah brad and sean get into this fight. And he's like, I'll race you for your girlfriend. And Brad's like. And then Sean's like. Yeah.

So they're like, oh, what are we going to race? Because Sean's got a real shitty car and Brad's got a real nice car. And they're like, oh, I'll trade you for the pink slips or the keys. And then Brad's girlfriend's just like, I know, winner gets me. And then Brad's like, oh. But it's so stupid. Like, make Brad better's girlfriend. Like, you just feel sorry for him.

Like, oh, your girlfriend's such a fucking bitch. Like, holy shit. She's just, like, willing to walk away with away with this like dumb-faced fucking hick who like oh my god like actually he's forrest gump this character and then uh but she's like yeah sweet i'll just i'm in this happy relationship presumably with brad like they don't really set up that she's unhappy particularly do you think after the race brad and the girl like they go away and he's like i want you to know you're really playing on my insecurities by um betting yourself yeah just be like hey just so you know like that actually really hurt my feelings but then she

went away with sean anyway didn't she no um sean like smiles at her but his mouth is full of blood and she freaks out oh yeah but um yeah like the you can fix this by just having Brad put her up to bet. Yeah. And she's unwilling, you know? Yeah. But you have a girl, a female character in your film, making herself an object, a prize, and we're supposed to be like, oh, what a twist.

What a fun little thing there. It's subverting gender roles. I hope Sean gets to have sex with this object when he wins her um yeah and so the two of them they've raced through it like a construction site and there's one part where sean cuts a corner to get in front and it's treated like a smart move even though like that's cheating i don't know it's not cheating in Crash Team Racing. Okay, sure. But there is like a clear track and Sean like drives through a building to beat him. But then when he gets back out into the main track, he's not even in the lead.

It's not even a shortcut. It just takes him just as long. Yeah, because he had to crash through the building, which slowed him down. Yeah, yeah, yeah. log um yeah because he had to crash through the building like which yeah yeah um yeah so uh this is the set our second franchise in which the third film was intended to be a standalone anthology movie but then every sequel after it returned to the original storyline after halloween did that season of the witch um and i think both this film and too fast too furious are definitely the most like inconsequential films in the series their only real purpose overall is to introduce new characters to the

family you know they don't they don't like have plot carry over they don't have you know anything like that it's just characters that you see for the first time yeah um and i think by at this while watching this film um i i felt like i'd started to feel like fast and furious is a straight to dvd franchise in the body of a theatrical release franchise yeah yeah like this franchise is bring it on for lads like bring it on lads there are high school sweethearts all across the world, I bet, where the girlfriend's favorite franchise is Bring It On and the guy's favorite franchise is Fast and Furious. Yeah, and I just would not want to hang out with that couple. No, no, neither would. They wouldn't want to hang out with me.

Yeah. So, yeah, before you said that you felt this was the best one of the first three. And I think it's either the best of the first three or the worst because of sean's accent um so i fluctuate i can't decide but um i pulled up some reviews here for it from the time so mick lasalle of the san francisco chronicle said the main character has no plan and no direction just a blind desire to smash up automobiles and steal a mobster's girlfriend um which is different to brad's girlfriend yeah um as for the racing scenes who cares about this

is this made me laugh as for the racing scenes who cares about the finesse move of drifting compared to going fast who cares about drifting um one really funny thing in this film as well is that um when he's like drifting what's that and um like that's not exaggerated as well that's what it sounds like um and han explains how drifting was invented like because drivers would like come up to the mountains of japan and like practice their drifting and it's like the stupidest fucking like yeah why to make it like a mystical but that's true is it really actually how drifting was invented like well that's good then that's a good yeah that's like a cool like yeah yeah um the review goes on to say and who wants to watch

guys racing in a parking lot for that matter who wants to watch guys race down a mountain with lots of turns um and rob cohen who directed the fast and the furious um was very critical of this film saying if you were to just watch tokyo drift you'd say i never want to see anything related to fast and furious again um okay yeah so han is introduced in this film you quite liked han did you want to do a little monologue about how much you like Han? Oh, I didn't realize I was supposed to like him that much. No, I just thought he was a cool character. Especially when your main character is so horrible

that you gravitate towards the cool expert. He's always snacking. Especially in Fast Five, he's the Brad Pitt from Ocean's Eleven, the cool one that's always snacking. Yeah, yeah. Man, I just keep thinking about Sean's accent, and I'm like, there's no way this is the best of the first three. Yeah.

It is such a blemish on this already average film, that main character. Yeah, yeah. Yeah, so Vin Diesel agreed to make a cameo at the end of this film in exchange for Universal's ownership to the rights of the Riddick series and character, a property which he's done, like, one thing with since 2003. Yeah, although it's just recently announced, though, isn't it, that they're making another one?

Probably. Yay. 2003 yeah although it's just recently announced though isn't it that they're making another one probably yay um and so he took that instead of getting paid for it oh really interesting he cares about the series dude um but isn't it interesting how much more diesel would end up investing in the fast and furious franchise which was a a franchise he was trying to get away from and be like he only appeared in it to get the rights back for it this other dead franchise that he hasn't done anything with yeah and now it's like fast and furious is his thing yeah yeah it's called the chronicles of riddick furia yeah fast and furia all right so in 2009 richard um severed from the ties of tokyo drift but not really because same director and same characters return um we had fast and furious which was directed by justin

lynn what do you think this has on ron tomatoes uh this is the last one it's like 29 29 i don't know if i agree fuck off this is so bad this one's the worst there are echoes of what's to come in the series though well yeah we'll talk about that but this is the worst one 100 all right well what's without a doubt in my mind this is the worst one so um dom's crew has disbanded since we last saw them in the first film was really um but then he's brought back in for one last ride after his wife, their married wife or partner. We don't know they're married yet.

Letty, Michelle Rodriguez, is seemingly killed. Noted I said seemingly. That'll come up later on. And he ends up back in contact with Brian O'Connor, who is now an FBI agent for some reason. Because that's your career trajectory. You betray the police twice and then you get upgraded to FBI. And then they work together to take down a drug lord.

This film is so bad, man. This is the worst one. It's just made so much better. I don't know. What you were saying about how there's shades of it. This film walked so that Fast Five can run. Yeah, sure. Like this film is so bad, but it's the necessary.

You couldn't just like Fast Five couldn't be the one after Tokyo Drift. You know, right. Like, whereas you need Fast and Furious that still has the street racing racing elements but hints that they want to try and do something bigger with this franchise sure okay yeah i've i sort of i wrote it's the awkward forgettable middle child yeah it's the it's the connective tissue between the last two film the for the first the previous films and the future of the series um yeah and so this film and the next two so fast five and fast and furious six are chronologically set before tokyo drift yeah um which before i saw these movies properly and just had heard about them i presumed was just a cheap easy way to

reincorporate han back into the series even though he died but then he's barely in this one except for in a couple of scenes yeah well i mean like do you have do you have uh written down somewhere the reason why they did it no oh because it was to bring back harm um it was i was reading interview with the screen because the same guy's written like most of them and talking about hobbs and shaw and um yeah he was talking about how because they're like oh you know we're going to get more about han in the future and he's like look, look, we all love Han and the actor, Sung Kang, I think his name is. And he said, like, we changed the timeline of the films just to do three more with him. So, yeah, that is why.

Can anyone out there, if you're listening to this and you're a fan of the fast and furious franchise because this is something that i not sure if i had misinformation or i still just don't quite understand i always thought that it was a twist at the end of six that it's a prequel because i'd heard like it's i heard people say it's revealed in six that it's all a prequel to the third one um but then like the first character you see in this film is han who just died in the last film so when faster furious came out if you if you're a fan of the franchise when the fourth one came out did you like was the general consensus the assumption that han survived the crash or did we know going into these three that they were prequels no i think the twist

at the end of six was that jason statham yeah yeah but that's what i'd heard i got that was how it was pitched to me was like have you heard about the twist at the end of fast and furious six and i was like when am i ever gonna watch that movie what is it and they were like jason statham's in it um yeah you my my my brent taylor's and my um but uh you know my other boys out there um tim arta bores um tim arta boy he's a good one um yeah if you guys were into the fuck i just want to know that what the general consensus going into faster furious was uh what they had they had announced that it was a prequel though so but you're almost saying did people know that yeah like like was this just like people went into this one knowing it was a prequel or not right um or was it a was it a huge surprise that the end of tokyo drift vin diesel's like i rode with

han he was one of my pals so i don't know i think yeah interesting um because it doesn't communicate in any way that it's a prequel until right the sixth one yeah sure um i speaking of vin diesel i feel like this is the first film that really like cemented my feud my one-way feud um because it's clear he has a very inflated view of himself because he is a producer on the film so he definitely has creative control and he'll these films don't get made without Vin Diesel's credit on them. Well, I mean, they do, because Hobbs and Shaw. So this kind of thing comes into play later in the series with the various feuds with his co-stars.

But I think it begins here with the introduction of Gal Gadot as a possible new love interest for Dom. And he rejects her in the film because he's still continuing to mourn letty for at least one more film um but it starts to become clear from here on out that vin diesel thinks he's so cool that like gal gadot would be into him you know but i don't think he's cool i think he's lame and creepy yeah because you said that there's that famous video that drew gooden did a did a thing on that Yeah, like, you should actually, if you're listening to this,

you should go search Drew Gooden's video, Vin Diesel, The King of Cringe. Yeah, because I'm not just being mean to an actor I don't know anything about. I've seen him in interviews, and there's that one interview where he's, like, essentially sexually harassing his female interviewer, and it's very weird. It's very weird.

It's what happens when you get so famous that you think you can get away with shit like that yeah but like it's not like uh it's creepy in a weird way it's creepy in the way that he thinks he's being flirtatious and funny but because it's been oh my god you're beautiful oh when like when this turned into i love you yeah it's like weird lines yeah it's it's seeing someone seeing someone with no game flirt yeah but he's famous so yeah it doesn't it doesn't occur to him that he's got no game and he's got this weird mumbly growly voice so it's also very strange vin diesel should play alma fudd in the looney Tunes live action movie. He would never do it, but he should.

He's too famous. He looks like him as well. Vin Diesel is Alma Fudd, I'm saying it. In 2011, we got Fast Five, directed by Justin Lin. And, you know, Justin Lin's directed the past two, and neither of them really landed with critics. So it's like, Justin, what are you doing? Why are you rolling this dead thing out for another film? Obviously, this one isn't going to be any better than the last two,

but guess what? It has on Rotten Tomatoes, Richard. 69. It's got 77 on Rotten Tomatoes. Isn't that insane? Have we ever covered a podcast, a franchise that has this trajectory of critical opinion before? Like this isn't the pattern, you know?

This isn't the first one or two are high and then, like usually like the third or fourth one are real bad and franchises this long. Or you'll get the occasional one where it's like Mission Impossible where the second one drops but the other ones are real bad and and franchises this long or you'll get the occasional one where it's like mission impossible where the second one drops but the other ones are real great but like usually usually the first one's considered one of the best yeah yeah and in this series it's like down up and then down again yeah um yeah it's it's almost it almost feels like the series starts here yeah this is this is where you would tell someone to start you know yeah um but so this one is about the gang uh the family yeah

the family sorry um plans a heist to steal 100 million dollars from a crime lord in rio de janeiro um and so while they're doing that, and this is very much a heist film, the new character, Luke Hobbs, portrayed by Dwayne The Rock Johnson, is hot on the heels of Brian and Dom, specifically. Yeah, and so this one completely reinvigorates the franchise. It ends with this great, great scene,

this chase of the two cars towing a giant bank vault behind them through the streets of Brazil. This is Brazil. And, yeah, presumably killing and injuring thousands of people. But it's very fun to watch. It's okay because Rio de Janeiro, the entire population is corrupt cops. So it's okay. Yeah.

So what did you think of this film, AJ? Yeah, it was pretty cool. I understand why it's the best one so far. Because you're famously not intelligent enough to to watch heist films but how did you follow this one honestly the high stuff lost me for a little bit like i got back on board um because because this has the classic heist thing as well which i know that you're not a fan of of like oh no it didn't work but wait a minute here's one thing we didn't show you yeah um yeah don't do that with you you want to see your main characters

all the way through you don't want to that's something you save for a villain reveal not a hero i i so disagree it's such a great trope of heist films that um you know that the main character has one more thing up your sleeve um and i guess if you don't like that trope you're just never gonna like a heist film because they all do well i mean i liked this movie that's good yeah this film was great man i thought yeah like yeah there's an argument that this is the best movie of of this kind in the last 10 years yeah yes for sure um so this this film makes fast and furious our third franchise which has released its second third fourth and fifth entries in 2003 2005 2009 and 2011 respectively with the fifth being a prequel uh although whether or not you'd call fast five a prequel i guess is up for debate because it's a sequel to fast and furious which is a prequel to

tokyo drift but it's a mid-quill for the series yeah um uh also with that extremely specific piece of trivia was brought to you by richard earlier this week texting me and i was like all right i'll put that in the plan yeah um so and that's um after x-men and final destination um because people are being like what um but also the fact that like so they each have the fifth one be a prequel but it's kind of like a prequel with an asterisk because um final destination obviously you don't realize it's a prequel to the end of it um this one like you said it's it's a sequel to fast and furious but it's still part of a prequel trilogy to tokyo drift and it's a midquel and then also x-men is first class which is like is it a reboot or is it a prequel um so yeah they're all kind of like prequel asterisks.

Yeah. So this is such a strange entry to the series because it's actually good. Because it's such a departure from the other films. When people talk about how, you know, the first one's about DVDvds players getting stolen and this one's like a crazy heist film it's like yeah this is the like fast and furious the fourth film dip to toe and changing genre and this is like we are in a different yeah category and video easy now yeah um but it's the franchise is so much better for it yeah and it's better for it

because dwayne johnson joins the party dwayne dwayne the rock johnson johnson which i call him that because i don't think he likes being called the rock anymore people don't talk about this he hasn't gone by the rock officially in years and i don't think he wants to be called it now but everyone always calls him dwayne the rock johnson which means that now his nickname is dwayne the rock johnson meaning he's dwayne dwayne the rock johnson johnson um i want to get back to that talking about dwayne johnson and and being called the rock um but because there's an article that just came out this week about the egos of the stars and we're going to talk about that in a bit that just came out this week about the egos of the stars.

And we're going to talk about that in a bit. Yeah, we will. Because we'll bring it up then. I'll put a pin on that. Yeah. Is Dwayne Johnson, in his first scene in Fast Five and the whole series, is he doing an accent and then it never comes back? Yeah, so he's got kind of a southern accent, eh?

I want to say it's like a regional specific american accent that isn't his own american accent yeah there's a bit where where he like recruits elena who's his partner he's like give me that girl and they're like why she doesn't she doesn't have any of the da da da and he's like i like her smile and he says it like that and i was like this is dwayne johnson as i've never seen him yeah and then by the time we get to um hobbs and shaw he's like yeah from summer but no but by the time we get to the end of fast five it's gone it's so funny it's like it's they must have filmed that scene first i guess yeah and he's got like a real thick black goatee and like the rock looks the same in every movie now and it's so interesting to see him

except for fast five yeah exactly that's what i mean like fast five is like the last time he looked different in a movie to what he looks like now like he's not wearing his car keys he's not he's not completely bald and and clean shaven yeah yeah yeah yeah uh so this this film is the first as i said before this film is the first departure from the series from street racing movies into blockbuster action and from here it's really funny to see how desperately they try to reincorporate cars and racing back into stories that don't really need to involve any to any large degree like this this one they kind of get away with it because it's like they're coming from that background and it's like we need street

races to rob a bank and it's like cool that's the story but then the next ones it's like they're like oh fuck the series is called fast and furious we have to throw nos in there somewhere yeah uh yeah uh and it's the universal chairman adam fogelson's has been on the record saying the question putting fast five and fast six together for us was can we take it out of being a pure car culture movie and into being it being a true action franchise in the spirit of those great heist films made 10 or 15 years ago which i think is a really interesting quote because that's the first and not that i've looked into it but that's like the first kind of acknowledgement from the creative

forces of this pivot into a different kind of movie yeah um but like but like we said is that like um fast and furious f4 um yeah kind of bridges that gap yeah exactly yeah um last thing for fast five that i want to talk about is personally i love how frustrated vindisa would be uh that the first film in the franchise to actually be positively reviewed by critics is probably the one he would now regard as where the series started going downhill because you know he'd be like oh it's when dwayne johnson got it's when dwayne johnson got involved and stop being about the family you know like i like I reckon Vin Diesel's favourite is Fast and Furious. I reckon that's his favourite Fast and Furious movie.

Yeah, and also as well, at the end of this film, it's revealed Eva Mendes returns and reveals that Lydia is still alive. Yep. And that brings us through into Fast and Furious 6 in 2013, directed by Justin Lin.n again what does this have on rotten tomatoes uh 70 it's 70 so we're in you know there's two two fresh yeah reviews in a row um so what's this movie about uh so having i guess retired uh dom and brian are pulled back into the fold by luke hobbs who recruits them to take down

british terrorist owen shore played by luke evans um and then it's also dom finds out that lady is still alive but she's got amnesia and doesn't remember him and so he uh basically just forces her um to love him again until she remembers everything. Why he's so irresistible, Richard. Exactly. She'd be a fool not to. And then also a post-credits scene for this film introduces Deckard Shaw,

who is Jason Statham's character, and it's him killing Han in Tokyo Drift, which closes the time loop of this franchise, thus ending the prequel trilogy yeah it's yeah i went into this movie not having forgotten that jason statham's not in it till the post-credits scene and i was like all right you know rubbing my hands together like so we're getting a jason's i like because i quite like jason statham yeah and i was like hell yeah dude and then it's like oh yeah that's right um i'm stuck with luke evans yeah most of the movie and also uh keeping and with the last one had the the safe through the streets of rio uh this one ends on like a runway um yeah so they're like racing alongside a plane and it goes for 20 minutes,

which someone has calculated that that makes the runway 30 miles long. That's silly. Which for our Kiwi listeners or British or whatever, people most everywhere except the states now we're doing it uh this is uh that's 50 almost 50 kilometers long and so as you know a runway is not that long 50 kilometers is a pretty long way like yeah like you might think oh you know there might be runways out there they're 50k there There aren't. So I think this is definitely the weakest film of the golden trilogy of 5, 6, and 7.

But at the same time, I do think it has the best introduction a little less willing to like think of another way to bring everyone back into the fray each movie i do think that the family just being a team hired by the government or whoever for a mission of the of the week is a perfectly sustainable way to keep yeah sure you know it worked i guess i'm saying just sorry to interrupt um runways in general uh 1.8 to 2.4 kilometers long and this one's 50 just for maybe it was going around in circles yeah maybe um gal gadot dies as well yeah which was funny because i thought it was really funny because so i i just assumed that she left the franchise to go do Wonder Woman. I was like, oh, she actually dies.

And a very unceremonious and not that focused on scene. Yeah, but they kind of frigid by just making it like, oh, that's why Han went to Tokyo. Because the first film ends with Han driving away with Giselle and um they're like well where do you want to go and he says somewhere else she's like I think I wanted to go to Tokyo and he's like oh we'll get to Tokyo eventually being like uh uh well he's gonna go to Tokyo and he's gonna get because because in after his one scene in Fast and Furious, he says he's going to go to Tokyo as well. It's like they tease it like three times.

All right, Richard, I want to talk about Vin Diesel and how he thinks he's cooler than he is. Because this movie further reinforces this with like his new love interest, who's Elena, who is Hobbes' partner from Fast Five. And at the end of Fast Five, in the the beginning of this one she like sides with him and hobbs is also like won over and lets him go at the end of fast five and in this film he goes as far as to betray the law in defense of of dominic toretto right like he he the you know the the the they're accused of something and so no no they let they let sure go they let sure go against the against like what the superiors are saying and um hobbs agrees to do this because he he believes he agrees that they need to save who do they need to save they need to save someone in that situation yeah it's probably it's probably

letty i can't remember um so if you take that into account and the fact that brian has already turned from being a cop to has already turned from from being a cop to a life of crime twice now because the friendship of dominic toretto is so irresistible it's worth committing treason and becoming a fugitive for like that's what that's how cool vin diesel thinks dominic terreno is is that it's worth it at the end of fast four fast furious and the start of fast five they literally take down a prison bus they flip a prison bus because they flip is in one of the seats to get him out of going to prison for life. Yeah.

And, like, then they're fugitives. They're on the run. I would expect you to do the same thing for me. Okay, but we're good friends. Your friendship is worth it. Is Dominic Toretto even that good of a friend? No, he's good family. I can barely recall any genuine moments of love that he actually shares between him and Brian in these films.

Like Vin Diesel cares about family, but he's not a very warm person. Like when they find out that Mia's pregnant, Mia and Brian are going to have a baby, he like hugs them both. And then there's a few like kind of like nice things he says to him. But he's very cold and standoffish and i just dominic teredo is such a fantasy of vin diesel like he hasn't he hasn't put the work in to make this character have earned the the you know the types of things he stands for especially because the end of furious seven is very for obvious reasons very um you know emphasizing on the love and family between um dom and brian but i just didn't believe that he liked brian that much

but he doesn't you know he likes his he loves letty and he likes his sister but i did i never felt like he was like whenever he does his speeches where he's like the most important people in this room is what yeah that's weird how he's like uh like just remember in life nothing's ever going to be more important than the people in this room and it's like some of you have met for the first time and have been working together for like three days they're doing this for money yeah they're doing this to get 11 million dollars if i was if i was doing that and vin diesel started saying that i'll be like fuck it okay dude like it's a lot of money though like you realize that's why i'm here um so yeah i i would like to put forward the theory

that dominic toretto is not a good friend um wow that's a that's a pretty big bombshell to drop yeah yeah yeah all right so richard now we're gonna move move on furiously um to to furious seven from 2015 directed by james one a new director to the series. And quite a, James Wan's got a fan base, you know. There are a lot of Wan heads out there. Because he did, what did he, he did Aquaman. He did The Conjuring and Aquaman. Yeah, yeah. Those are like his big things.

Or was he, did he start off Saw as well? I want to say yes, let me check. James Wan. Yeah, because he's known for horror, and he's going back to horror. Yeah, so he directed Saw and then went to Insidious and Conjuring. And then Furious 7. And Dead Silence and Death Sentence. Yeah.

And Doggy Heaven. He directed Doggy Heaven. Oh. Okay. Yeah. yeah and doggy heaven he directed doggy heaven oh okay uh yeah so furious 7 directed by james won what does this have on ron tomatoes uh this is like 79 81 man 81 that's a good that's a fucking good score you know like that's, that's a great film, 81. And so what is this movie about? So this is about the gang chasing down. So Deckard Shaw, Jason Statham's character for the post-credits scene of Fast and Furious 6, sends a bomb

to Dom's house after killing Han. And then so they chase him down for revenge. But they can't find him because he keeps popping up everywhere they go and that's kind of the plot of the film it's real weird so they're like fuck where is he oh no he's appeared here better keep trying to find him it's like he's right there like he's coming to you um but this film obviously there has a bunch of crazy action sequences um and then it ends with so brian is now with um you know obviously with dom's sister mia and they've got a baby and uh you know he leaves uh to sort of leave this whole life behind him and finally have his happy ever after um because

obviously this film had the tragedy behind the scenes of paul walker was killed in a car accident and the film was rewritten and uh his brothers came in to be body doubles with um paul walker's face cgi'd on top of them to complete the film and give Brian O'Connor the proper send-off rather than just kind of killing him off or not talking about the character. And fuck, it was good. I really liked this film. And the ending is so tasteful and beautiful.

Yeah, yeah. And it's like, because this film as well. So I mentioned specifically in Fast Five and Six, tasteful and beautiful yeah and it's like because because this film as well so i mentioned specifically in fast five and six you have these amazing uh set piece finales and this film about 40 minutes into it or 40 minutes to an hour into it they drive cars out of a plane and uh parachute into the the base they're trying to infiltrate and then there's another big kind of set piece but then it ends with just kind of like a chase scene it's kind of disappointing um and so i was like oh okay like yeah this for this one's right and then um the the ending came

up which is a scene that i've watched on youtube before like i knew everything about this scene that was coming up it's a meme the the like shot it's the instagram post that we did yeah um but yeah watching it i cried and then um and i didn't think i would and it was one of those things like even going out to i was like i don't know if i'm that attached to to the characters and stuff like that but i think the the real life tragedy mixed with that uh brian is is actually a really lovable character and paul walker is probably the best actor in the franchise um and then like the music and everything and it's it's such a beautifully done tasteful farewell that i cried when i watched it

and then um i was telling jess about it um and I was explaining what happens. I started to choke up again. And then I went to play it on TV for her to show her what it was like. And I had to turn it off because I was like, I'm actually just going to cry again. Oh my gosh, dude. How are you now? I'm fine now, but I should mention, I forgot to mention this at the top, but I was having a pretty emotional week at the time. Oh yeah, I forgot to mention this at the top but i was having a pretty emotional week at

the time oh yeah i forgot to mention this too i was so concerned with my um with writing up this report in time that i'm like yeah so um if you've listened this far um i'll tell you the story so um i was coming home from work on tuesday night and i was actually i was heading home to watch furious 7 and um i probably you probably don't know this about me um but i up until just recently i drove a scooter like a moped um until tuesday night when uh i was going straight up dominion road in auckland and a car pulled out uh pulled out from a stop sign in front of me and um the ground was where i didn't have enough time to stop i only had five or so meters and i was going you know i was going to speed limit essentially so like 40 40 k's and um i yeah slammed on the brakes. The scooter slid out from under me, and I came off it and then slid under the car, which then ran me over as it continued on its way across the street.

They didn't slam on the brakes when they realized they might hit a human being or that they'd just run one over. The tire literally ran over my arm, and I have a bruise there. You might be able to see it, AJ. The tire literally ran over my arm, and I have a bruise there. You might be able to see it, AJ. And yeah, they got out of the car, though, and then they stopped, and she told us we were right. But I got taken away in an ambulance and spent a few hours in hospital.

But magically, amazingly, I didn't break anything. I'm more or less back to normal. I couldn't really walk for like a day or two um but yeah aside from this some sort of movements with my legs and um that you know i'm kind of as comfortable as they have as they usually should be but i am more or less back to normal um but that was a pretty brush with the death um yeah i had uh which is because we had been joking about who would be the the dom and who would be the um brian and our relationship and um we'd said we'd been joking that i was paul walker and in a group chat with jeremy um the last thing he said to me was that i was going to die in a car crash um and then i almost did look and now between furious six and seven as well um watching them

and no one can say we don't devote ourselves to this podcast you know we got drunk for the hangover trilogy you know i got run over by a car for furious fast and furious it is and i i i was very worried about you and i'm very glad to hear that you're okay but part of me was just like you fucking doing this to one-up me this is like when you watch the scream i'm gonna have to drive a car out of a plane to get back um well yeah but yeah so please send your love and support um but yeah so i um because i'm not um i'm not a particularly emotional person um and so i think you know taking my my accident and being in hospital and good spirits um i think just like a chance to be emotional because obviously you know people are

like sending support and stuff like that um but then uh actually crying during um period seven but to be fair in my defense it's a very beautiful moment oh yeah yeah yeah no absolutely and also the song see you again what a what a fucking banger that is that's for for a small amount of time that was the um most viewed song on youtube it's got like 4.6 billion views wow um yeah it was like it just overtook um uh gangnam style and then like a like less than two months later it was taken over by Despacito. So it's like Gangnam Style held it for like five years or something like that. And then See You Again held it for like a week.

There you go. Yeah. What a story, Mark. I would have been in such a moral quandary if you'd died. Because would I have like had to recreate? Would I have to make this podcast? You you get my sister to finish i'd get your sister but then also pieces of your audio from previous podcasts um but then but then how would what would be the tasteful send-off you'd give me at the end i just um i'd sing see you again can you sing it anyway and i'll tell you all about it when i see you again actually this ties nicely

into um vin diesel um have you seen the video of vin diesel the ntv movie awards because this won a bunch of ntv movie awards because it's that kind of movie um even though although vin diesel thought it was headed for best picture nomination there's quotes of him out there saying that he genuinely believes this is gonna get oscars yeah um but um there's a video of him being like oh thank you so much everyone like this is for the family this is the sylvul um i guess the only thing left to say is it's been a long day that's you my friend and it's like diesel what do you do he thinks he's a real good singer there's a um there's videos of him saying stay um by rihanna for some reason um and then there's also um yeah quite a few videos of him saying see you again

like in interviews and stuff uh well yeah what did you think of the film i yeah i loved this one i i i was like that's such it's such fucking carry on isn't it it's such it's such fucking carry-on, isn't it? It's such bullshit. It's such a load of shit, this movie, but that's why it's so great. Because you were messaging a group chat with me about what you kind of thought of the films as you were watching them, and we were pretty negative on them.

But this is the first one where it seemed like it got you on board with um the the turn your brain off yeah exactly kind of thing yeah like this is the first one where you took it at face value i think yeah yeah i would say i would say that this is the quintessential fast and furious movie and i think no matter how many sequels they make in the future this will be the one that people think of when they think of the series as a whole you know like this is the fast and furious legacy in my opinion um and it's also the eighth highest grossing film of all time yeah yeah which is probably when you look at the highest grossing films of all time i actually feel like this one

stands out as being a bit different from because the other ones are like um i don't know like star wars and marvel yeah and then it's like this movie about dropping cars out of planes is yeah i think as well that um this was like my one holdout from the top 10 yeah yeah that i hadn't seen um yeah no i mean like at the same time though like it's because you look it's like a couple above it is like jurassic world which i feel like is the same like the well you know what it is event films and big franchises yeah but this one doesn't have other than avatar this is the only one on that list that's like or only modern one on that list that's like not got comic books or like an extended history of titanic yeah oh okay never mind well no titanic does is the real thing yeah well that's titanic i was saying i'd formed that word in my mouth before you said history

uh this is our second film franchise in a row to feature at least one film with the word seven in it after seven samurai slash the magnificent seven and we got a message on facebook this morning from a listener named david ross who told us apparently james wan wanted to call the film furious seven as a nod to the seven samurai yeah i was reading that um the film officially according to the director is called like furious s-e-v-e-n um and he said it's seven because of seven samurai and he said like look at this film like it's it's seven samurai but instead of swords it's cars and he said like this he says like this film is Like, it's Seven Samurai, but instead of swords, it's cars. And he says, like, this film is classic Kurosawa, according to James Wan.

That's good that James Wan can say that about his own film. So we've got Francis Ford Coppola. And what other franchise both has Francis Ford Coppola and Kurosawa working on it, man? It's crazy. Yeah, so the scene where the cars drive out of the plane and and parachute into like this foresty road area is so funny to me because it's such an in-your-face way of being like this isn't about dvd players anymore you know like this is how far we've come and i think what i love most about it is how not foolproof their plan is. Because if that was your plan, you'd think they would be quite down to the minute details of it, right?

But they just parachute cars into forest with a vague idea of where they're going to land. And thank God none of them crash into a tree. You could just get decapitated by a stray branch going through your window. They don't proof it from that. And Roman, who's the last one to tyree skips and who's the last one to reverse the car out of the plane he's too scared to do and the only reason he does is because tej opens his chute which drags the car out which that could have gone very easily wrong he's like fucking spinning around for so long yeah um and so i i loved i loved how silly that was

but they actually did it for real that's not cgi yeah it's um yeah they like drove cars out of the plane and had um cameramen in wingsuits like it's insane and then also the um the other great i was trying to think of the other great um moment in film because you've got that, and then there's also the driving through three skyscrapers in Abu Dhabi. So this is my favourite scene in the franchise, and a lot of people seem to cite it as their favourite scene. They drive a car through a skyscraper and land in the neighbouring building,

but for me it's the fact that they do it again. That's what cements it for me as the best scene, because I knew they did it once, and I didn't know they do it again. That's what cements it for me as like the best scene is that it's not just because I knew they did it once and I didn't know they did it twice. So it's covering three buildings. That to me is the, it's not as good of a scene if it's only one building. It's crucial that it's the three buildings. And the third building is like by accident as well,

because the brakes stop working. Like brakes don't work and they're like oh yeah keep going it's so fun i actually cracked up it's like the first time the whole franchise actually burst out laughing yeah there's a few of those moments in the in the films we're like haha yes like yeah it's those kind of moments where yeah you just get really excited um but yeah i that that is a fantastic scene um that is one of the scenes as well that like when you watch like how they did furious seven um that that was uh his brother the paul walker's brother was in that scene with the cgi over the top you famously have

a very sensitive eye for face replacements and de-aging what do you think of it in this film uh the only place i i noticed it once when paul walker well brian says something can't remember what some like insignificant line he looked a bit funny and the like in the in the famous scene at the end where vin diesel looks at him in the car and he looks there he looks a bit rubbery like what but the thing is because i think because there's actually quite a few scenes of it in the film like the the abu dhabi one is one that you might not realize but i think you kind of notice it a bit more like especially in that ending scene because your brain subconsciously knows this has to not be him um whereas like basically any other scene in the movie you can be like oh yeah whatever exactly because because i was reading like how giordana brewster who plays mia um she was on another film and wasn't available to till the end of the the fast

and furious um the furious seven shoot and so all of her every single scene she's in with brian was actually with her brother was after paul walker died so which is quite sad that you know like she's doing all these scenes especially like in the start of the movie and stuff like that um that every single one of them is isn't with paul yeah that is sad uh yeah well you've basically covered all i had to say about paul walker which is good yeah no need to dwell too much on it one last thing i want to say about furious 7 uh is that kurt russell is like my favorite character yeah he's great and they didn't do like an easy um your twist villain or anything yeah he's not a twist villain he's just just he gets along with them and he's their friend yeah

and i really liked that um one other thing um i just remembered that fits into your anti vin diesel thing um well anti dom turido anyway um so you see him and ladies ladies wedding in this film I just remembered that fits into your anti-Vin Diesel thing. Well, anti-Dom Toretto anyway. So you see him at Letty's wedding in this film, and he's wearing a wife beater to his own wedding. But then at the end of the film, when he's at the beach, he's wearing like a button-up top. It's so funny. It's so gearhead to wear a singlet to your wedding, eh?

Yeah, but it's like a joke, I your wedding hey yeah but it's like it's it's yeah it's it's like a joke i guess like you know do you reckon it's a joke i i think so it's it'll yeah it's it's i think you're supposed to laugh at that scene not be like wow that's so beautiful um but yeah man i just can't talk enough about how beautiful the ns movie is like yeah the look on paul walker's face when he like thought he could leave without saying goodbye and then he like looks like they'd have that like the moment like you said the instagram shot um and just like he's just got the most beautiful smile and the way he like smiles and then is like shakes his head and they start they start driving is like it's so well done it's such a subtle and beautiful thing that, like, how is it in this movie?

Yeah. Except if you didn't know Paul Walker died and then it does, like, the shots of all their friendship, you'd be like, okay. Yeah, yeah, yeah. You'd be like, all right. Because I do think, and we'll get to this now, this probably, in a perfect world, should have been the final film in the series yeah and even even with when we get to continue their franchise there's more there as well but yeah yeah um yeah yeah yeah because the next film we have that came out in 2017 was the fate of the furious um directed by f gary gray what do you think this is in Rotten Tomatoes? This is like 69.

This is 67. So we're the lowest of the new wave now. Yeah. Lowest since Fast and Furious, the fourth film. And what is this movie about? So Dom is convinced to work against his family by the cyber terrorist Cipher, who's Charlize Theron with Dreadlocks, which was suggested by her assistant. Charlize Theron was like, yeah, my assistant just said, like, you should have dreads.

And it's like, get a new assistant. So it's revealed eventually that she is using Dom's child that Dom didn't know he had and we didn't know he had. From Elena from previous. Who he shacked up with when he thought Leti was dead and then immediately ditched when he found out she was alive. With her permission. But she also knew she was pregnant.

I don't know. Continue. But anyway, yeah. So she's using that as like a bargaining chip against. And Cypher ends up killing elena as well um and then so she's like trying to start a nuclear war or some bullshit but it ends with this like the the scene for the trailer is like you know the the submarine chase uh where they're um on like a uh where exactly are they but they're they're on ice they're in russia they're in russia um and yeah it's nice yeah so there's yeah and we're also introduced to um so we get kurt russell's

mr nobody and then there's like little nobody who's uh scott eastwood yeah our second eastwood franchise um a second franchise where an eastwood plays a character who like doesn't have a name and um and uh they're trying they seem to be trying really hard to make him like paul walker yeah i did i clicked that to that as well this is this is the new paul walker um yeah yeah so there is something clearly missing from this film uh which is pretty sad i don't know if i'd necessarily say i need paul walker to buy into a fast and furious, but it's more for me. It's more, it feels like watching a bunch of grieving actors pretend like nothing's wrong.

Yeah, yeah. I know what you mean. And it's, I mean, it just is Paul Walker as well. He was just the most likable character in the films. So it's, yeah, it's hard to get on board with them. And also, I wanted to say as well, so there's the scene in this movie where it's like Dom and Cipher like bust in and shoot up the place. And then Letty's like, what's the matter, Dom? You going to turn your back on family?

And he like turns his back on them. And then like literally and then makes out with Cipher. And that was the kind of like button on the trailer so it was like all the action scenes and it's like oh dom's evil now which makes this our second 2017 franchise with basically the same plot and trailer um because um the last night was the same fucking thing with optimus prime that it's like optimus you turn your back on family and then he makes out with Charlize Theron but yeah no the Fate of the Furious and the Last Knight turn your giant

hulking growly voice main character against his family yeah and speaking of that hulking growly voice main character and him making out with Cipher Vin Diesel gave himself three love interests in this film because that's how irresistible Vin Diesel thinks he is.

So he's with Letty. Him and Elena, like, she's like, we had a kid. So even though they're not still romantically involved, it's still, like, you know, it's in the conversation. And then Charlie's there on, like, kisses him to show, you know, it's in the conversation. And then Charlie's there on like kisses him to show, you know, her ownership over him, which the character of Dom Toretto isn't into. Like he doesn't want to kiss her back. But I bet Vin Diesel was into it. Oh, hell yeah.

Anyone would be. Yeah. again it's just vin diesel genuinely thinks he's that hot of a property that he can convincingly have a movie where there are three women fighting over the other thing about this film is because there's a lot of emotional scenes in this one um like for instance when um cypher is threatening to kill dom's baby and then kills elena right in front of him and uh you very clearly can see that vin diesel is trying to act and is doing what he thinks is probably probably thinks it's a pretty good job yeah um not that he hasn't done good jobs before it's like this is him at his peak you know yeah but it's it's funny seeing someone who who clearly thinks they're doing a good job yeah like you can

you can imagine like you know he imagine after that when they call cut, he's like, man, I had to go to a pretty dark place. He had to think about hunting wabbits. I've been fucking diesel. I think the best part of this film is Hobbs and Shaw. Fuck yeah. Overall, I'd say my favorite, because this is the movie where they uh and overall i'd say my fact because that's this is

the movie where they interact and you know secure people were like we want this hobs and shore spinoff yeah um and my favorite scene is when shore is killing all the bad guys while looking after toredo's baby and he puts like the head that is the best scene in the whole franchise holy shit good that's like oh my god i was cheering. It's so funny. And Jason Statham is so good in it. So, yeah, Cypher's on a plane with Dom's baby, and then Jason Statham goes up there and has the baby in, like, a little baby holder thing. Like a crip.

Yeah, a crip kind of thing. And he puts, like, music in the baby's ears and then it's like it's gonna get pretty loud and then like goes and like kills all these bad guys but keeps on like checking in on the baby and so you get these like pov shots of the baby of jason statham like just like it's so funny man and what what's what's funny about from a plot structure point of view is like they probably knew at that point that they wanted jason statham to join the family but they're like oh but he fucking murdered like yeah two of the main characters what can we do to redeem him let's literally have him save a baby like it's a it's a comically angelic yeah but then yeah at the end of the film then it's like you're my brother we're family. We're family. And it's like he killed Han and no one cares.

So he just joins the family because fuck Han. How would Han feel? You know? Yeah. Imagine if Han could see you guys now hanging out. Hashtag justice for Han. Justice for Han. Yeah.

So he doesn't even say, sorry, I killed your friend. Vin's just like, yeah, nah, like, I trusted you. I saw it in your eyes. You're my brother. And then he names the baby Brian. Yeah, and he names the baby Brian as well, which in-universe is kind of weird. It's misguided. That he's just, like, named his baby after his friend who moved away.

Who's not there. Yeah, I mean, like, but like but then like how would you feel if they named him paul they you'd have to not do a big deal about it you wouldn't be like this is paul i'd have to be like i think paul's a nice name or something like that yeah oh yeah um well richard it wouldn't be fast and furious if we didn't briefly touch on the uh testosterone fueled here we go man baby fights that apparently are rife with behind the scenes and sort of started with this film or at least came to light with this film uh there's a lot of shit out there and i like duane johnson but he's kind of one of the biggest i don don't really like Tyrese Gibson and I don't like Vin Diesel,

but like Dwayne Johnson kind of started it. And I've kind of summarized it because there's like scrawls of Instagram paragraphs because it's all on Instagram. Fuck these people are babies. Yeah. Jason Statham should save them. So Dwayne Johnson posted this during the filming of fate fate of the furious he said there's no other franchise that gets my blood boiling more than this one an incredible hard-working crew universal studios entertainment have been great partners as

well my female co-stars are all amazing and i love them. My male co-stars, however, are a different story. Some conduct themselves as stand-up men and true professionals, while others don't. The ones that don't are too chicken shit to do anything about it anyway. Candy asses. When you watch this movie next April and it seems like I'm not acting in some of these scenes and my blood is legit boiling, you're right. Bottom line is, it'll play great for the movie and it fits this hobbs character that's embedded in my dna extremely well the producer in me is happy about this part final

week on fast eight and i will finish strong for crazy i've read that before and i thought that was vin diesel that wrote that but no it was dwayne johnson wow okay yeah interesting um and everyone assumed he was talking about vin diesel but this is not confirmed tyree skibson also downplayed it in a statement and so did duane johnson a few days later doing another post which emphasizes team efforts in which you can almost read my agent made me write this between the lines and then after this michelle rodriguez came out and said that female actors aren't treated very well on on the set which is later like vin diesel who's not really doing like he's posting very vague instagram videos of him talking about how tired he is and then like he posted a video with michelle

rodriguez and he's like everything's fine we don't you know treat our female co-stars poorly um and then after this a completely different thing, where Tyrese Gibson absolutely threw his toys out of the cot when Hobbs & Shaw was announced, he called out Dwayne Johnson for delaying the release of Fast 9, which is such a weird thing to get angry at your co-star for. It's so weird. And he threatened to not appear in future fast and furious installments

alongside duane um i think everything is quote unquote settled now but tyree skibson still spells duane as d wayne in his instagram posts so there's clearly some bitterness yeah there's a lot of posts from tyree skibson that you go look them up because they're quite funny um but yeah like the whole thing of because i remember this was going on you and i were chatting about it and just like imagine being tyree skipson and thinking that you have as much pull as dwayne dwayne the rock johnson johnson exactly man um because yeah he's like if dwayne if you do because fast nine was supposed to come out this year and it's actually um funnily enough because fate of the furious feels like it just came out but um now the gap between um fate and fast nine i think is the longest in the franchise's history weeks um but uh because it's like it's been there was uh two no three and four were three years

apart um and but this one's like three it's like slightly longer and um but the rest of all been two years apart um yeah so but yeah like because tyree skips and thinks that fans value the regularity of these films. And that's why people see them is because you can count on there being one every two years. What's disappointing to me is to see Tyrese Gibson act, do something that his character Roman would do. You assume when someone plays a character like Roman that they're self-aware enough to know that this is the character they're playing. But I'm surprised someone, as Tyrese Gibson has proven himself to be, would be okay with being the butt of the joke in all of these Fast and Furious movies. Because it seems like that would piss them off. Anyway.

As well, there's... Because one quite funny bit there was Tyrese Gibson. as well there's um because one quite funny but that was tarry skipson um with like uh the example of his character doing something like this is when they find out that like all of them are in like the top 10 most wanted list and um but roman's number 11 yeah um that's quite funny i think but yeah um uh because roman asks mr nobody wherever else ranks in the list and he's like he's six, she's eight nine and ten and he skips seven because

in tribute to Paul Walker that would be like his number because he left during the seventh film yeah there's another feud that's sort of broken out out now we're not a feud but you probably know more about this than me because i don't really look into it but you mentioned it earlier in the episode and to me today about like the in hobson shore there needed to be equal

amount of punches thrown by each of the stars what you you tell it you you tell it better than me you tell it i'll just i'll just quickly find the article um okay so there was a um an article that came out uh recently it was through the wall street journal uh which goes behind the scenes of the fast and furious franchise um talks about the demands of its male leads specifically specifically Vin Diesel, Dwayne Johnson, and Jason Statham, and the lengths they go to in order to avoid being seen as weak. So they've all got pretty fragile egos by the sounds of it. Yeah, it's pretty obvious. I think it's been known about Vin Diesel for a while.

So this is the statement. According to producers and crew members on the films, Mratham 51 years old negotiated an agreement with a shooter that limits how badly he can be beaten up on screen mr diesel 52 um has his younger sister a producer on the films police the number of punches he takes and mr johnson 47 enlists producers editors and flight coordinators to help him make sure he always gives as good as he gets um so um the like the fights for the female characters michelle rodriguez and ronda rousey fight they don't have the same kind of um score keeping but apparently jason statham is known to swing by the editing room to weigh in on fight scenes um so no moment in the movies appears too small for the actors to nitpick and a scene in 2017 is the fate of the furious that

required mr johnson to join johnson to be lying on the ground at mr diesel's feet he insisted his character be at least sitting up according to a price price production crew member mr diesel's sister samantha vincent weighs in on rehearsals that edits people familiar with the situation said he's falling down right here she wants to observe during a fight rehearsal um and then saying we need to make sure that he gets his legs back in um it's interesting because i i feel like out of the three of them jason statham would have the most sense of humor about himself yeah and um there's i mean i get this like because there's one like it says about how he's um uh about how bad how badly he can be beaten up on screen and so i mean imagine that's you know to do with making sure your face is still good enough for like um the thing but it seems like

and this is just my image of these people as well as that um dwayne johnson is very much knows the product of his films and what he's trying to sell and a lot of it comes from that um because like even rampage originally had like a sandy sad ending but he came in and and changed it because he's like no people can't know my films because they want like this and they and so i think he's he's real into that old school action hero that can't get hurt. And I think he's trying to help that. Whereas I think Vin Diesel is a little bitch who

can't handle looking weak. Like I think, so I would say Jason Statham seems to have a sense of humor about himself. The Rock knows what his fans want and vin diesel has a very fragile ego yeah that's what i want to believe yeah that's that's what i want to be but i actually think the rock has a pretty um fragile ego as well if you look at his twitter uh when people um that's true didn't didn't review baywatch so badly he you know when he did this whole like tirade of like oh the the fans love it but the critics hate it like yeah let's take down those fucking critics and um a singer i like charlie simpson

um tweeted to his friend about jumanji welcome to the jungle being bad and then the rock replied to it and was like oh how about this how about we listen to your fucking music and see how you like it and and i'll and i'll tell you it's shit and it's like welcome to the jungle's great yeah i mean yeah i disagree with charlie simpson on this but it is also like the rocks just like trolling through twitter trying to find negative reviews to his film and then just calling people out that are like i mean like having especially something like baywatch having a sense of humor about um it being bad or like because eventually like a year later they won a razzie for it he was like haha yeah like i'm accepting this um it didn't turn out as well as we wanted but um you know we still had a fun time it's like that's the attitude i want to see from a movie star when

their film is bad yeah well speaking of the rock we are now moving on to fast and furious presents hobs and sure the final film in the franchise so far this was directed by David Leitch and what do you think it is on Rotten Tomatoes uh it's like 67 or something 67 so same as Fate of the Furious yeah and what is this movie about so uh Luke Hobbs and Deckard Shaw um from the Fate of the Furious are forced to work together to battle the evil brixton law um who is a cybernetically enhanced human uh when shaw's sister steals a super virus which is capable of wiping out the human race uh their battle with brixton uh takes them all across the globe uh eventually um leading to a standoff in some war yes and i guess spoilers for hobs and shorts still in theaters so there's your warning um i like this film i thought it was fun uh it doesn't have vin diesel which was great

but it does have jason statham and the rock which are great uh and has idris elba which is great and then ryan reynolds shows up yeah and has like extended scenes and then kevin Reynolds shows up and has extended scenes. And then Kevin Hart shows up at one point. Yeah. And it's so funny. So this is directed by David Leitch who did Deadpool 2. Right. And so, yeah, Deadpool shows up and then Peter shows up from Deadpool 2 as well.

Yeah. He's the other FBI agent. And because I'd heard, I saw a comment that was like oh i had the two cameos spoiled for me um and so i was like i won't make sure not to read any more about hobbs and shaw but i knew there was celebrity cameos coming up and then ryan reynolds shows up um playing deadpool essentially yeah um like the very ryan reynolds got a super interesting career of where he's at now compared to like just preeadpool, the kind of roles he shows up in. And then he's the guy that recruits Hobbs,

and then we see the guy that recruits Shaw, and it's Rob Delaney, who's Peter from... And I thought those were the two cameos. And then just Kevin Hart shows up. As an air marshal named Dinkley. Yeah, and it's a very funny scene yeah and ryan reynolds stuff is very funny as well like when he's sitting in the diner on these talking on the phone and and it's closed yeah yeah very funny ryan reynolds is named lock and

and kevin hart's named dinkley which is like these are very we want our own spinoff surnames you know lock and dinkly you don't just call characters um yeah i mean it does seem like they're bringing in um they were trying to construct their own team that ryan reynolds would yeah show up in a sequel potentially um but it's very clear that they only had ryan reynolds for like a day as well yeah or two days because he appears in a post-credit scene where he's now clean shaven and he he's in two post-credit scenes he's only in one location um but yeah we see him in the film like three or four times and he's only ever in the same location yeah so i want to talk about that because i i have some i basically only i didn't i didn't hate this film but i don't really have too much good to say about it. For the record, I really enjoyed it.

I had a great time. I had a great time too. And also the other thing, Eddie Marzen plays a scientist in this who's also in Deadpool 2 because they keep just having the whole cast in Deadpool 2. I keep trying to figure out who it was. It kind of feels like this franchise

has started copying the mcu's homework um without really understanding the narrative reasons for what drive a lot of these decisions and this to me those mid and post-credits there are three mid post-credit scenes uh which i think are some of the worst mid and post-credit scenes i've ever seen yeah they're very strong because whenever I go to a movie like this where there's a potential of a post-credit scene, as soon as the credits start,

I'll Google post-credit scene, like Hobbs and Shaw post-credit scene. And then it was like two out of, because there's one that's just like, there's a website that you go to and it says, does it have one? And it says, yes, state of the credits.

And it was like, how Hobbs and Shaw's mid-credit scene sets up the sequel. And it doesn't. That's the thing is that, first of all, it's two scenes spread over three post-credit scenes. So the first one is Ryan Reynolds talking to Hobbs over the phone. Then the second one is Hobbs talking to Shaw over the phone.

Swatting Shaw, yeah. Yeah, and then it goes back to the first scene for the final one which is i have so many issues with that i'm gonna try articulate them because i don't know if i can like first of all it's confusing to say hobbs is here then he's here then go to the final one then he's here again yeah like if it was if it was like hobbs and ryan reynolds and then just sure and then hobbs and ryan reynolds again it'll be fine yeah yeah and also they are not as the the scenes with ryan reynolds and hobbs are not a pair of scenes that needed to be split up they should they should have just been stuck together yeah and also um so there's there's like three credit scenes one starts like right after the credits but so the credits start and then we go to some more

and we have the big family reunion, which then cuts to Ryan Reynolds and Hobbes. And then we have more credits and then we have the swatting one and then we have more credits and then we have the final. Yeah, so it's like very strange. It's very strange editing, right? Like it feels like these were the final scenes of the film because the actual film the credits start rolling maybe a touch too early as well like they've just defeated

the villain and then the credits roll and it's like oh my god okay and so this is i think that that they were like we need to give this movie post credits like it didn't have them these were just the final scenes of the film yeah which which and it does look like oh we got ryan reynolds back oh i've shaved is that okay oh yeah it's fine yeah yeah um and and also the probably the biggest problem with it is they don't do what post-credit scenes are supposed to do they're just two jokes they're two they're two sets they're They're three scenes and two jokes. And it's like, okay, well, that's not really.

And I don't know. I did like the movie, but I felt Ryan Reynolds and Kevin Hart both felt like scenes from a different movie. Yeah, they show up. Because I was thinking about this watching the movie because I was like, how often do do spin-offs on this on this podcast like we've had earbud but that's like uh but then you're thinking yeah like there's a series of spin-offs and something like ear buddies uh which technically spins off i think the fourth one when they actually have babies but then they're different baby whatever um but it also fundamentally like

changes the rules of the world like now the dogs talk and it's like it's a different example of what you're talking about is Puss in Boots as well. Yeah. Puss in Boots where it's like, it's a different genre really. Yeah. And cause I was like, Hobbs and Shaw is like,

if you were to describe a spinoff, it's like a character who's not the main one getting their own film. Yeah. That's really it, right? Yeah. And then this is one where this is like this is a classic spinoff that doesn't really change the rules of the world but at the same time it does because we're now introduced to like cybernetically

enhanced like superhumans but then at the same time the progression of the franchise this is the logical next step it just happens to be a spin-off if fast nine had a cybernetically enhanced human i would not question it yeah but because it's in a spin-off i'm a little bit like oh they're changing stuff but then it's like i guess they're not really to me it's more that the whole the those two cameos in particular felt like they were from yeah different films yeah and like yeah it like yeah yeah ryan reynolds shtick is not something that the people who have been watching fast and furious and who's both my favorite films fast and furious like they aren't they don't like ryan reynolds you know they probably

like deadpool though that's true i mentioned the crossover of deadpool and um fast and furious and Fast and Furious is a circle. But yeah, it is. It's a very strange movie. Yeah, like Ryan Reynolds and Kevin Hart scenes feel more out of place than a superhuman. Yeah. Another couple of things I found kind of weird about this film is that there are two examples, and one of them is what we've just been talking about,

where it breaks the rule of threes, right? So the rule of threes is like a vague rule in screenwriting where it's like it's basically you do three of something you're right you you do it once you do it again you do establish a pattern then you do it a third final time and in this there are two celebrity cameos right there's there's Ryan Reynolds and Kevin Hart. Unless you count Rob Delaney. Or Cliff Curtis, maybe? But you don't, right? They're not as famous as Ryan Reynolds.

And I knew Cliff Curtis was in the movie beforehand. But it felt like if you're going to do two celebrity cameos, you do 10 celebrity cameos. Yeah, like the post-credits scene should have had another a third one because as well like uh you associate um like it needed um well you don't find out who the big bad guy is because it's just a yeah true voice and i was waiting i thought that's what the post-credits scene was going to reveal was yeah because he's like don't you remember me hubs yeah yeah and i was like it's going to be hobbs's mom from summer like well because it means who would it be because

it could be hobbs's dad because we don't know him no he doesn't talk to him like our dad would talk to his son though i the only possible the only in-universe character would be charlie's there on yeah um but uh and then there's also the um when jason statham and his sister were kids they used to run um like grifts grifts yeah um based on uh famous musicians the keith moon and the mick jagger and um then they do the mick jagger and yeah they do the keith moon the mick jagger and when they say it the words come up on screen in the fast and furious font the keith moon and then we used to do the mick jagger the mick jagger and one one of those the keith moon happens maybe 20 minutes into the film the mick jagger doesn't happen for ages like like over an hour hour and a bit into

the into the film and then they don't do a third one and again it's like you are creating you are creating a visual motif by having the words appear on screen you need to do that more than twice because otherwise you're not establishing a pattern. And also, so the film opens, well, it doesn't open with it, but early on in the film, we see Hobbes and Shaw getting ready for their day and it's like split screen. And then that motif just disappears as well. Yeah, totally. And so I would have had Hobbes introduce the third grift towards the end of the film. You would have had Hobbes do it? Yeah, yeah.

So it's like a subversion of it, right? And it's in Samoa and they do a haka and it's like, we're on Hobbes' home turf. And so there was room for Hobbes to be like, you know what we're going to do? We're going to do the- Israel Kamakavi of Viva Ole. Sure.

Even though he's Hawaiian, but it was filmed. It's very clearly Hawaii, not Samoa. Right. And so, you know what I mean? Like that's how you do that visual language payoffian but it was filmed it's very clearly hawaii not samoa right um and so you know what i mean like that's how you do that visual language payoff is now it's the the guy who didn't you didn't think did griffs when he was a kid here's his one now yeah um the whole samoa thing as well it's very because it feels very contractually obligated by like it's in the rocks contract you know it's very production note from the rock um but it's

like it almost feels like pandering but it's to such a specific audience that it's like this yeah it's it's very strange and um i have some thoughts on that but i don't know if i'm socially aware enough to want to just come out and yeah but but it's also like i mean i guess it's a um commentary on hollywood as well that like they he's like you walk in and you see like every someone looking actor in hollywood and then he goes yeah this is my family we're all related and it's like you guys don't look like family you're just like yeah okay i'll pose this as a question instead of saying this is definite and i'll'm genuinely, and I apologize if this sounds offensive, because I hate when people complain about virtue signaling.

Because it's like, oh, they put a gay character in my TV show. It's like, would you rather they just never get any gay characters and things? You need to do what people consider virtue signaling to get to a point where it's not virtue signaling anymore. So I've got a question. And if you are someone listening to this very interested to hear your perspective is it kind of feeling less like we're going to samoa and more like hollywood going isn't this cute isn't samoa so interesting look at you know that's i'm worried about that like because the same thing's happening with

new zealand i think isn't isn't pacific cultures right like isn't it so interesting Look at, you know, I'm worried about that. Like, because the same thing's happening with New Zealand, I think. Isn't Pacific cultures, right? Like, isn't it so interesting? Look at this, other European nations. Look at these interesting people in these little countries. Yeah, yeah. So I'm worried about this. But perhaps, you know, I'm on the wrong foot here.

But at the same time, I think that, yeah, like, some on culture would get a kick out of this movie as well. Sure, but that's where it starts, right? Yeah. Then next you're going to get a film that isn't honoring about it and it's just real shitty. Yeah, it's the whole thing of like when a movie does well, people learn the wrong lessons from it. Yeah, exactly.

Yeah, so I guess that's Hobbs and Shaw, really. Yep, that's Hobbs and Shaw really yep that's hobs and sure dude yep take the kids down to hobs and sure for a swim okay well richard before we move on to a couple of segments but we will be wrapping this up we haven't got too many segments to go because this is a long episode uh how would you rank the films oh very good question so for me uh the best one is Furious 7 followed by Fast 5. And then I would go – okay, so it's interesting for me because I was talking about this with Jeremy the other night

because I saw Hobbs and Shaw with him, that there's a few ties for me. So it's like Furious 7 and then Fast 5 are like one and two. so it's like uh furious seven and then fast five are like one and two and then fate of the furious and hobs and shore are about the same for me and then um uh then fast and furious six and then uh tokyo drift and then one and two are about the same for me and then four is the worst one i think yeah i'm probably pretty similar yeah i think i'd go i'd go furious seven then probably hobs and shore then fast five then fast and furious six then fate of the furious then the next ones you can fight over the last place yeah um yeah like because a lot of them like the ones

that are tied it's like uh depending on which cool part of it i think about i'll prefer that one like um because you know i can be like fuck like fate of the furious is so much better than hobs and shore because it has the um jason statham with the baby part or i could be like well hobs and shores way better because fate of the furious has this boring shit and then hobs and shore has the bit where um idris elba like skids under a truck yeah and on his transformer mobile there you have it guys that's the cold pops your boys official fast and furious ranking um and so we've talked a lot on this podcast richard about lots of different things vin diesel is one of the things we've talked about a lot. But what we always talk about is titles a lot on this podcast.

We have a segment each week. It's called, we talk about Vin Diesel a lot on this podcast. Yeah, let's do it. So this segment was pretty much invented because of how much the titles of these films had affected my life. I haven't even seen them, right? But it's Fast and Furious and Final Destination which really ignited my desire to see consistent titling schemes across multiple movies in a franchise. Yeah.

Like, this is the origin of it. And so, if you'll allow me, I'm going to do a Conan O'Brien style monologue on my thoughts, except it's not going to be very funny, I guess. Yeah, I don't know why you just specifically said Conan. Because I look up to him. He's my dad. So the weirdest thing about the Fast and Furious titles is that some of them seem to indicate that the creative voices

don't really place any importance on the titles. So you got ones like fast and furious fast five fast and furious six furious seven they all feel designed so that when you go to the movies you just say hi can i have a ticket to fast and furious you know yeah they they ostensibly have the same title yeah yeah but then you get things like tokyo drift or the fate of the furious which feels like the creative voices are very interested in the titles yeah fate of the furious especially is a choice you know it's like a cheesy pun and a film that doesn't really think it's a cheesy pun yeah for anyone that hasn't picked up on it do you want to just explain where it's if it's fast eight fate yeah because it was like advertised with hashtag f8 even before the

title was announced people were like you know the shorthand for it was f8 yeah uh it's also of note that there do seem to be patterns within the certain sequels themselves so like an obvious one would be fast and furious and fast and furious six which you know they're not terribly consistent in terms of where they would be in the series but they're obviously part of the same technique but then i'd also argue that too fast too furious fast five and furious seven are all playing the same game yeah yeah um but also it's worth mentioning this may be in your later in your hilarious monologue but how um so you have fast and the titles are different everywhere and i don't know if you've written them all down yeah i have um but uh and at least when i watched it that fast and furious 6 the title card in the film says furious 6 and furious

7 which to be fair in new zealand is called fast and furious 7 the title card says fast and furious 7 um but i believe in the states it has furious s-e-v-e-n yes yeah so the the titles that we went off for this podcast are the american titles which i chose to go with officially because i think they are funnier and yeah and because the new zealand or the international ones tidy them up a little bit as well yeah yeah um so the fast and the furious tokyo drift is at least a semblance of what i feel each movie probably should have gone for like the the OG movie with the specific subtitle. But instead it stands out like a sore thumb as the only sequel to reincorporate the The Fast and The Furious

from the original film back into the series, with the exception of The Fate of the Furious, which loses consistency points for obvious reasons. Tokyo Drift is probably my favorite title but in a way the lack of pattern has kind of become the pattern you know you get so used to the titles for the series operating on such different wavelengths that fast and furious 6 is disappointing yeah um yeah so too fast too furious is probably objectively the stupidest title in the series yeah and one of its long the series's longest lasting legacies is whenever a movie has an

untitled sequel announced any we've talked about this before that you go to the reddit thread forward and it will be like two blank two blank so like i remember when james bond the next james bond movie was announced people like two sky two fall and then someone was like chicken little too and i was like that's so funny um yeah it's not a funny joke although i did see one that made me laugh which was um a sequel for the dark night called too dark tonight because that's just something you'd say when you don't want to go out it's too dark tonight um my biggest my biggest, kind of issue, I guess, and we've talked about this with Jurassic Park and Final Destination and the Freddy vs. Jason films as well,

is in my opinion, as soon as you drop any letter or words from your original title in your sequel, you can't go back to what it was before. So I hate how it's The Fast and the Furious, Too Fast, Too Furious, then The Fast and the Furious Tokyo Drift. Yeah. how it's the fast and the furious too fast too furious then the fast and the furious tokyo drift because it's not the series isn't called the fast and the furious anymore you know and then it goes fast and furious then there's fast and furious six but it's the first one to

be called fast and furious number you know yeah it's like there's no fast and furious five yeah there's no fast and furious four yeah like what are you doing um yeah and i feel like fast five is the only example where i feel like something was being rectified in these titlings as well yeah like because i would have been happy with like if um save six was the last one if it was fast five and furious six sure interesting yeah interesting stuff so it's also worth noting as you, that the films have different titles in different parts of the world. And here in New Zealand, they're just Fast and Furious number of film. Right?

And that's been the way since the fourth film. But you can also find slightly adjusted titles for all the movies. Some of them are the Fast and the Furious 2, Fast and Furious 3, the Fast and the Furious 4, Fast and Furious 4, Fast and Furious 3, the Fast and the Furious 4, Fast and Furious 4, Fast and Furious 5, Rio Heist, which is the most interesting one of these alternate titles. Then there's Furious 6, Fast 6, the word 6, Fast 7, the word 7, Fast 8, the number 8,

and then F8. And in New Zealand, we got fast and furious colon hobs and shore dropping the presents from the title and thus removing the clarification that it's a spinoff but whatever i would you know i wouldn't have it any other way if new zealand can do its little bit to make it more confusing about what order these films are in or what's a spinoff and what's not then that's fine by me yeah because also in other parts of the world, it was just called Hobbs and Shaw with no Fast and Furious in the title. Yeah.

Is that it? That's it. That's the monologue. Well, one thing that I'm not sure if you're aware of, but I'd love to get your thoughts on, the Japanese titles for these films. Oh, I forgot to write this down. So the Japanese titles for these films,

the first one was called Wild Speed. Hell yeah. Which is a dope title. Fuck yeah, dude. Fuck yeah. So then Too Fast, Too Furious was called Wild Speed X2, which could be Time's Till. I'm not 100% sure, but it's Wild Speed X2.

That's better. And then Tokyo Drift was called Wild Speed X3, Tokyo Drift. And I'm just going to go in order because I've got all of them. So the next one was called Wild Speed Max. These are better. And then the next one was called Wild Speed Mega Max. Hell yeah.

And then Wild Speed Euro Mission. Fuck yeah, dude. Then Wild Speed Sky Mission. Yes. And then Wild Speed Ice Break for Fate of the Furious. Fuck yeah, dude. And then Hobbs and shure was called wild speed super combo fuck yeah there's so much better there's so much better even if it was fast

and furious and then all those yeah subtitles that'd be better all right so now we're going to move on to our second to last segment of this episode continue the franchise so this is where we're going to pitch our own sequels to the fast and furious franchise but before we do there are plenty of fast and furious sequels and properties currently in development we have at least two more sequels in development in the mainline franchise bringing us to fast and furious 10 fast and furious 9 is due out next year with justin lynn returning to the director's chair and we'll see all the characters except hobbs and shaw uh and brian and mia come back so this actually me is back oh is she yeah geordana which is stupid i don't want to see her

again i do not want to see her again like yeah there's no way you can bring her back without ruining the ending of furious seven i'm so mad about it i agree i would say i'm furious charlie's there on his back yeah and I hope she's just a good guy now yeah yeah you never see Charlize Theron die and you never see fucking Brixton die Idris Elba and Helen Mirren will be back

despite the fact that she plays Shaw's mum and he's not in it and John Cena has also joined the cast which felt like an inevitability yeah I know that john cena is such a great addition he's replacing hobbs apparently like he's filling that void right two more spin-offs alongside hobbs and shore have also been announced with one allegedly confirmed to be a female-led film focusing on the lady characters of the series uh the fast and the feminine anybody

hey nice yeah uh there's also a net Netflix, an animated Netflix show in development called Fast and Furious Spy Races, which will focus on Tony Toretto, who's Dom's cousin, after he is recruited by a government agency and is tasked with infiltrating one of the most prestigious underground races run by a criminal organization determined to conquer the world. So this is like a kid's show. Yeah. Yeah. But before we get to

our own sequel ideas richard i would like to workshop with you who else you'd like to see join the ever-growing cast because have you ever played or are you aware of the games katamari oh katamari damacy yeah damacy yeah where you roll a big ball around and collect up garbage that's what this franchise is but with a-list actors every movie they just roll the ball and there's like oh kurt russell jason statham oh idris elba charlie's therons helen mirren has been in two it's gonna be in three for yeah and you know how helen mirren is going to be in three fast and furious you know how she got on them yeah she just fucking loved furious seven and was like i really want to be in the next one and then she kept on talking about

she's like yeah i wouldn't have to act i just let you fucking get to drive around it sounds awesome and um even though she hasn't done any driving but um yeah so vanessa was like oh yeah they'll put you in the movie adrian um yeah okay so here are some here's my wish list for actors and some of them have like a reason for it some of them i don't know know why. Samuel L. Jackson feels like he'll join at some point. Yeah, I could see that. Peter Dinklage. Okay. Be like the third Game of Thrones actor to appear in the series.

Oh, yeah, because Natalie Emmanuel's terrible in them. And the ginger guy from Fate of the Furious. I don't think she's terrible in them. Just her character. The existence of her character is just so boring right uh brendan fraser should be a villain in a fast and furious movie yeah um marion cotillard cotillard could see her cotillard could be in one um jermaine clement i feel like something like that'll happen at some point. You know, some hot property Kiwi actor will play a Kiwi in it. Well, Cliff Curtis was some other.

I mean, like a New Zealand character soon enough. And just to make sure that we don't lose the quintessential part of the Fast and Furious series, which is the behind-the-scenes feuds, let's chuck Shia LaBeouf in there because he'll piss them off. He'll do something uh you saw as well we talked about that um dave batista turned down the movie because he said he said i'd rather be in good movies but uh one that i was thinking today that uh was quite good to star in stuber and central intelligence is that what that movie's called central intelligence what one he's in a movie

where he plays like a spy and he's partners up with a little girl and it's like this looks like you would have got confused if you're working on stuber or not um uh central intelligence is the rock kevin hart movie it's got a real similar title you'll look it up and you'll be like i can see why you got that confused okay let me have a look quickly uh i'm trying to find it here we go filmography my spy is that what it's called okay i thought i had a more generic title like that my spy my little lie um yeah so uh one that you know if we just if we just keep introducing um uh shaw siblings um yeah david tennant is a villain Ah yeah, very cool

Would he be a villain at this point? Well no, for one film Right, of course Yeah, because he was Considered to play Owen Shaw, I believe But I was like, yeah, nah, cool Any other Katamari Damacy

Who else have you got? That you wanted to roll back up because yeah like john cena is like such an obvious beautiful who plays glenn in the walking dead um steven yun yeah right yeah yeah yeah yeah he's a fast and furious actor yeah but like yeah i love them adding like prestigious actors at the yeah not into the main family but like in the yeah exactly all right so for a while now you'll see online people have been floating around the idea that we'll eventually see the fast family venture into outer space and while this seems perfect for fast and furious x the 10th film in the series i would like to take it further and over 11 12 and 13 slowly start

introducing aliens I actually think Jermaine Clement could play a real good he'd done it before in Men in Black 3 yeah start introducing aliens alternate dimensions and time travel into the mix my main goal for this is that this continued franchise is that by the 2050s Fast and Furious will still be going and be well known for like crossed several different genre thresholds from its humble beginnings as street racing films to heist films to spy films to insane action movies to sci-fi and beyond and all of them are all of that stuff but from the perspective of people who like to drive fast cars because it's fast and furious yeah nice uh yep Do you have any possible titles for us?

Fast and Furious X was one of them. Yeah. I reckon they'll just eventually call one F and F. Oh, yeah, nice. Like F ampersand F. Like Farfu, just for short. Because the ninth one seems to just be called fast and furious nine um right but and then the 10th ones because because if you look at it it says like fast

and furious nine untitled 10th film implying that that's the title of it i guess but i mean i'm sure that's what people are just like when they're talking about on instagram like you were making fast and furious nine but it doesn't have an official title because i would hope that they would do a proper one um also um interesting to note as well just talking about continuing the franchise um there's a film justin lin made called better luck tomorrow which is um stars sung kang who plays han and he also plays a character called han in this film called better luck Tomorrow. And Justin Lin and Sung Kang both consider that a prequel to the character of Han, and that's his origin story. What the fuck?

Oh, my gosh. And he also, I mean, it is word of God canon, so take it or leave it. But Han smokes in Better Luck Tomorrow, and in Fast Five, Giselle mentions that han used to smoke and then also uh in other films which from years ago that i potentially looked to it um that uh in hobbs and shaw and hobbs and shaw's He has a mini Cooper, which he references having used in a job in Italy, which is, of course, Jason Statham was in the Italian job.

Yeah. And the writer was asked about it. I was reading an interview with the writer when he was asked about it, and he was like, yep, maybe. Maybe this character with a different name in the other movie was the same character. Yeah, changed his name.

Okay, so yeah, the name and yeah um okay so yeah the fast and furious goes to space is like yeah fuck yeah let's do it did you see the the thread on reddit um about it and the top comment was like one of the funniest things i've ever seen um because it was like so it was like the fast and furious could go to space and then um the top comment was just a picture and it was Dom Toretto behind the wheel turned 90 degrees. So he's just pointing straight up. It's so funny. Okay, so I like the idea of Fast and Furious,

again, getting more ridiculous. And I think that's where everyone wants to go with it. So one idea I had was called The Park and the Furious, which is where, for some bizarre reason, the gang has to go to Isla Nublar for their mission and outrun dinosaurs in their cars. And then that got me thinking of, yeah other shit well so i've got a couple crossovers a couple more crossovers as well so obviously that's a reference to jurassic

park the park and the furious um this is my idea for fast nine um so and i've got two titles for this as well so this involves time travel where the gang goes back in time um and also because it has to do with cars as well so they go back to nazi germany um you know with like bmws and stuff um and on an attempt to kill hitler um so this has got two titles this is going it's got two titles either fast nine as in n-e-i-n or the past and the furious very good um if you with an um lot um h uh yeah the past and the furious um and then i thought we could do a remake of the first film um but now that there's the technology is better uh we can uh give them cat ears and cover them in fur um and the cats and the furious which is also owned by universal this is what i was looking at um what's owned by universal just alba yeah just alba as well um maybe he's the crossover he's

where it connects um and then uh dark and furious or the Dark and the Furious, which is the second attempt at starting a dark universe, but using the Fast and the Furious franchise as like a backdoor pilot. Yeah, it's the Wolfman, but if the Wolfman really liked driving fast cars. Yeah, well, no, so like Dom Torito and his gang take on the Mummy and Bride of Frankenstein and the Invisible Man. It's the only way to do the Dark Universe.

And then, so each film- They're tried every other way. Yeah, it'll be like Dark and Furious versus the Wolfman. And then in the next film, they end up recruiting the Wolfman to take on Bride of Frankenstein. Benicio Del Toro could return as the Wolfman. Yeah, Benicio Del Toro is return as the Wolfman. Yeah. Benicio Del Toro is a good Fast and Furious actor. Yeah, exactly.

Cool. Yes, that's mine. Awesome. Well, that brings us to the end of the show, Richard. But before we sign off, we've got to select our franchise for the next fortnight. So, Richard, give us a random number, and that random number is going to correlate to a list we have

of all the franchises we could think of. The last number we've got on this list is 185. Alrighty. Sorry, I had the sound off. Let me... 95. Franchise number 95.

Before I tell you what it is, Richard, I've got to tell you about this little Facebook page called cult popture which is us and our youtube channel and our acast account and on apple podcasts and yada yada yada twitter instagram find us on cop option everywhere you can email us at cop option media at gmail.com and we are going to be doing, I can see you writing something. What number was it? What number do you want it to be? Well, it was 95, right? Yeah. All right, so next fortnight we're going to be doing Robocop.

Oh, this feels like we're going to be dipping a toe in a very passionate audience we don't know anything about. So there are three Robocop movies and a reboot. I believe there is one also in production Yeah, potentially So that'll be us for the next franchise It'll be the Robocop series That's exciting Are you excited?

No Oh, good Well, you know what? It'll be okay, Richard Because we're family Yeah And this is our one last ride anyway i get pulled out of retirement to do one last job which is um to watch and discuss

robocop and its sequels all right everybody thank you very much for listening to this whopping two-hour, over two-hour podcast. We love you and we love fast cars. Hey, we hoped you enjoyed that episode of Cult Popshire. You are still listening to the worst idea of all time stream. That is Alex and Richard, very funny dudes in Christchurch, New Zealand, episode of cult pop shit you are still listening to the worst idea of all time stream uh that is alex and richard very funny dudes in christchurch new zealand who put together that that potty so

make sure you subscribe to them um and once again check the show notes for all the social links as well they put out blazingly good content really good video essays in particular so make sure you sub them on facebook and youtube if you're a youtube person you're a youtube person i love it yeah good stuff we'll catch you in the next episode of something that will be a little more worst idea flavored on this very stream goodbye i also like daily motion