A great moment... made even better by my mother's exasperated groan-harrumphing "Oh, come on!" from the next seat over.
It's a shame it was in the trailer really because it'd have been even better if I hadn't known it was coming!
Plus on a technical level, the physical stunt work is really up there and its a joy to watch that sort of stuff on the big screen: [yt]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=l294BE5wS78[/yt]
Absurd and false are synonyms? Okay, I should have said that absurd and stupid can be synonyms. http://www.thesaurus.com/browse/absurd
Saw it last night. Wasn't as good as the last few, but it was still a lot of fun. The script was okay, but I thought the direction and camera work wasn't quite as good. But I think that's mostly because Lin is much better than most give him credit for. This was really Wan's first crack at action, right? (Horror?) It seemed like he was playing it safe and relied too much on generic post-Matrix troupes. I did think the ending was brilliant. I got choked up a bit. I was kind of confused why they even bothered having Black in it at all. It was a total blink and you'll miss him. And half of his screen time was reused footage from TD. I was really hoping there'd be more of him. I thought they were going to set him up to join the crew/replace Walker, but it didn't seem like that's where they're going. I haven't seen anything about him being in the next one. Russell was fun. I hope he comes back in the next one. I love Statham, but I thought his whole character/story line was the weakest part of the film. It was basically just Statham being Statham in a silly revenge plot that ended rather anticlimactically. Hounsou is enough bad guy for one film. I think it would have been better had the story focused mostly on him and saved Statham for another day. Solid B for me.
I knew about that, but that article is almost two years old. A lot has happened since then. And some of the articles about FF8's confirmation a few weeks back listed several of the actors but not him.
^ Hm. Well, it's not hard to imagine the filmmakers keeping him off the press junkets, to avoid everyone repeatedly asking him if he'd be stepping into Walker's place as the cast's token white dude, and maybe Black's role was dialed down in production for the same reason. At this point, it could go either way, but if they do bring him back, I'm sure they won't regret having kept his cameo in this one.
I wonder how far they'll go with the retcon when it comes to Black/Sean. In Tokyo Drift Sean is a teenager (a very old looking teenager, but a teenager none-the-less) who's sent to live with his father in Tokyo following events in the States. TD was made at a time when with a loooottttttt of leeway and hand-waving Black could "pass" for a "teenager" by movie standards. But the continuity of the franchise has been stirred up placing Tokyo Drift as taking place between 6 and 7. (Strictly, between the end of 6's regular story and the mid-credits sequence) I think it'd be a pretty damn big stretch to have Black still be a teenager in the franchise, not to mention any scrapes the gang gets into now that'd involve Black would include a teenager and not an "adult." (Even though he'd be over 18 and an adult, he'd be a very young one compared to the rest of the crew.) Which brings me to the idea that FF (no definite articles, the fourth one) was a very, very soft reboot. Not in terms of resetting the franchise but very much blurring the events of TD. Not only making them take place later in chronology but possible even re-writing it to where Scott went to Tokyo for reasons other than being a teenager sent there by his mother to live with an estranged father. It'd take a touch of exposition in the next movie to "rewrite" TD in such a manner, pretty much taking it out of the franchise, but I'd argue it has to be done in order to make Sean as old as Black and on par with everyone else's ages so he could more realistically be involved with everything going on rather than, you know, being a friggin' teenager who should be starting to attend college or something or otherwise would have parents out there -including a father in armed services- concerned about him.
I think there's enough leeway in the timeline that they could advance the characters/time place of FF8 forward a few years, sort of like what they did between TMP and TWOK. It wouldn't be much of a stretch to suggest the Dom of Furious 7 isn't 15 years older than Dom of Los Bandoleros. Or rather, the time passage between the events of the film are the same as the real-time passage between the films' releases. I mean, there's no way six years passed between 2F2F and FF. And an argument could be made that the events from FF to F7 happened over a span of two or three years instead of six. So they could use up some of that slack and move the story ahead six or seven years. So, if Sean was 18 in TD, that make him mid 20s in F8. I suppose an argument could be made that some of the technology (like the God's Eye) dates the films, but that's really one of those things not worth worrying about.
For all its impressive cast and character retention, this is a series in which a disgraced ex-cop became an FBI agent, and in which Hobbes pulled a gun on a general to demand a terrorist go free and yet remains a law enforment official. I could see someone cracking a fourth-wall touching joke about how Sean sure looks old for a guy in his early-to-mid-20s, but I don't see the writers stressing overmuch on this issue.
Nope, no argument at all. In FF Mia is pregnant. In F7 we see Brian picking up his son from grade-school. Being generous his son is in kindergarten, meaning 5-6 years passed between FF and F7. Between FF and F5 would have to be probably the better part of a year if not flirting with two years. Enough time for Brian et. al. to have been on the run for a while, to rekindle something of a connection with Vince (I doubt he'd take Brian in so easily and quickly out of the blue) and for Mia to be pregnant. Hell, nine months pass during F5 since we see Mia's baby-belly at the end of the movie. (The months passing between opening the safe and Hobbs catching up with them.) Has 15 years passed between TFTF and F7? Argument could be made that it has if we don't consider, at the very least, the car models we see see them. In F7 we see Brian salivating over that super-car in the Dubai skyscraper, this car being a present-day one released in 2013.
I enjoyed Furious 7. The action scenes felt a little too over the top this time. Instead of bending the laws of gravity like in previous movies, they utterly ignored it! I'm really glad they didn't kill off Brian because of Paul's death. I loved the final tribute at the end with the song. My favorite is still Fast 5.
Really, in the next movie they should just say, "Fuck it! It's 2017, flying cars exist in the F&F universe. Flying-car race scene!"