Fast Cars, Fistfights & Family: Male Melodrama in the ‘Fast’ Films — Part 8: The Fate of the Furious
Start from Part 1 here, or catch up on Part 7 here.
Wow guys, we made it. Here we are, on the mountaintop, almost 20 whole years after The Fast and the Furious premiered back in 2001. The most recent installment of the Fast films is The Fate of the Furious, released in 2017 and directed by F. Gary Gray, known as a prolific music video director in the 90s’ and director of Friday, The Italian Job, and more recently, Straight Outta Compton. It’s the start of a new post-Brian chapter of the franchise, and in his absence, the Toretto Family will be shaken to its core.
Fate of the Furious poses the question: what could possibly make Dominic Toretto turn his back on Family? The plot is that while on his honeymoon with Letty in Cuba, Dom is approached by a strange white woman with dreads and a deep V neck. Her name is Cipher (Charlize Theron) and she wants Dom to work for her, doing some real international hacker villain shit like stealing nukes. She demonstrates detailed knowledge of his comings and goings and shows him a video that appears to convince him to do what she says.
Meanwhile, the crew which now consists of Dom, Letty, Roman, Tej, and Ramsey, is called in by Hobbs to stop the theft of a huge EMP device because you know, this is just like their day job now. They succeed, but Dom goes rogue, crashing into Hobbs and stealing the device at Cipher’s instructions. The team is then tasked with stopping him by Mr. Nobody, and his new protege, Little Nobody (Scott Eastwood) who bring in a surprise guest, Deckard Shaw. Sparks fly but everyone eventually puts their personal feelings aside For the Good of the Mission, as it turns out Shaw knew Cipher and may be able to help find her.
Meanwhile-meanwhile, we find out the reason Dom turned on his team: Cipher has Elena kidnapped on her untraceable plane, along with hER BABY WHO IS DOM’S SON BOOOOM! Elena says she found out she was pregnant right around the time Dom learned Letty was still alive and peaced out, and that she was going to tell him, but then she got kidnapped. She calls the baby Marcos but says that’s his middle name, she wants Dom to give him his first name.
From this point on we just watch Dom turn into a ball of paternal rage, barely contained by the knowledge that Cipher will kill his son if he doesn’t do everything she says. She has him steal God’s Eye right from under the team, threaten a Russian minister of defense for nuclear launch codes, and reboot a submarine with nukes onboard so she can hack it. But don’t worry she’s not one of those bad bad guys who just want to destroy stuff, she’s only in this because she wants the people in power to know she has nukes and can use them whenever, if they ever fuck up. You know, very normal and stable.
During the mission to get the nuclear launch codes, Letty manages to get the football away from Dom, and he hesitates to stop her. When one of Cipher’s team, Connor Rhodes (Kristofer Hivju) threatens to kill Letty to get the case, Dom threatens back, aiming his gun at Rhodes’ head and Letty gives up the case. As punishment for stepping out of line, Cipher makes Dom watch as Rhodes kills Elena.
In the Russian nuclear submarine fight sequence (honestly you’d think I was just stringing words together at this point but it’s real, this is real) Dom bides his time until he can fight back against Cipher. When time is running out and the team needs his help, he gets the call he’s been waiting for, Owen (he’s back!) and Deckard Shaw have boarded Cipher’s plane and secured the baby. See, during a previous mission while Dom was out of sight of Cipher, he had a meeting with Magdalene Shaw (Helen Mirren), Owen and Deckard’s dear old mum, and tells her he can help reunite her family if she’ll help him protect his.
Deckard Shaw gets his Hard Boiled moment when he fights off all the security on the airplane holding a baby carrier, while the team is busy on the ground pushing torpedoes along the ice with their bare hands, exploding out of the ice, and redirecting heat seeking missiles to ultimately destroy the submarine. Shaw is about to kill Cipher when she grabs a parachute and opens the plane door, disappearing into the atmosphere and increasing the likelihood that her character will return to the series at some point.
When all is said and done and explanations have been made, the Fam gets together for a rooftop barbeque in New York, where Dom introduces everyone to his son, Brian Marcos Toretto. (I think I got something in my eye…)
We definitely feel Paul Walker’s absence in The Fate of the Furious. There are no images of him at all, only a handful of mentions, including a moment when the team is feeling confused and betrayed by Dom and don’t quite know how they’re going to deal with the situation. Roman says that Brian would know what to do, but is quickly rebuffed by Letty who says they can’t bring Brian back into this life. But even so, we know that Dom is missing his brother.
The lack of Walker also means that Vin Diesel has to carry the bulk of the emotional depth of this movie on his shoulders, and he does… okay at it. Diesel in these movies usually just has to be mean and tough; occasionally beat some guys up, say some lines in his Batman voice about Family, and look cool driving. But this time, he’s faced with unexpectedly becoming a parent, dealing with a dangerous criminal who loves to give him speeches about how actually he chose to be here, losing his ex-lover, betraying the people he loves, and not being able to talk about it to anyone. It’s… a bit of a leap, and what we mostly end up with is Dom either keeping his cool and telling Cipher she’s gonna get hers eventually or losing his cool and hulking out.
This is essentially the franchise’s way of shifting the spotlight to other characters, particularly Hobbs and Shaw, who are becoming our new pair of strong bros in love. Dom’s story is ending, like Brian, he knows this life is unsustainable if he wants to have a family and keep them safe. With a new baby dropped in his lap, things are going to have to change with a quickness. Brian and Mia are already retired, so it’s hard to imagine a reason why Dom wouldn’t join them now, with a son of his own and a hard look at how lil’ Brian Marcos could be at risk in the future if Dom doesn’t get out of this racket.
In terms of melodrama, this is probably the weakest of the franchise for reasons already mentioned. The focus is too narrow, Dom shares a little of the emotional moments with Letty, Hobbs, and Shaw, but that’s pretty much it. Tej, Roman, and Ramsey are all embroiled in a jokey love triangle sideplot that just serves as an opportunity for Tej and Roman to dunk on each other. The best melodramatic reveal is the baby, and all the tortured glances Dom gives when he’s watching his son reach for him behind bulletproof glass. Hobbs and Shaw also get some more development and realize they’re not so different after all (aw!) but it’s such a small part of the movie.
This time, we get no post-credits scene because it is difficult to say where the main series goes from here. The possibility of a spin-off was announced back in 2015, after the release of Furious 7 so fans knew a story like Hobbs and Shaw was possible. It was officially announced in 2017, the same year Fate of the Furious was released. With Fast and Furious 9 in the works and Fast and Furious 10 announced and slated for release in 2021, it’s difficult to say how the team of writers and producers that have been with this franchise from the beginning will wrap the central story up.
In the meantime though, we can probably expect more spin-offs like Hobbs and Shaw which comes out August 2nd. If the trailers are anything to go by (and they’ve certainly shown glimpses of a LOT of stunt sequences in those trailers already) Hobbs and Shaw is sure to be a wild ride, the perfect summer blockbuster to carry the Fast & Furious mantle. We’ll see whether or not it measures up to the beautiful and ridiculous melodrama on display in the Fast films, but the forecast does look promising…
I hope you’ve enjoyed this series as much as I’ve enjoyed writing it, and even if you’re not a fan of the Fast films (how did you get to this point?? I’m not even mad, just impressed) I hope this perspective has given you a new lens with which to view them through, one that might give you the chance to have a little more fun with them. Also, if you do go see Hobbs and Shaw, I recommend going to one of those theatres where the seats recline and they serve alcohol. Settle in with Dominic Toretto’s signature drink, a Corona, and whatever snacks your little heart desires and just… enjoy the chaos. It’s truly how I believe God intended these movies to be experienced.
