Fast and Farcical

About a year after listening to the How Did This Get Made podcast ep, we watched F9: The Fast Saga (2021). That meant we had heard all the spoilers, but it didn't matter because they were just as shockingly batshit whether you knew in advance or not. 

It starts with a flashback of Dad Toretto getting killed in a race. Baby Dom blamed Baby Jakob - his until-now unknown brother - for his death. Note that the actor playing baby Jacob is about a head shorter than the actor playing baby Dom. 

Back in the present, Dom and Lettie are raising Dom's son on a remote farm, when Roman, Tej and Ramsey show up to let Dom know that (something complicated happened involving Charlize Theron). I could look it up, but let it stand. Dom says "Tough. I'm retired to look after my kid," but changes his mind when (detail emerges). He wants to go on this mission alone, but Lettie insists on coming. We assume the kid is packed up in a box or something.

So they all run around to various cool locations, meeting almost everyone who was ever in this franchise. For ex, we meet Helen Mirren in the middle of a jewel heist, just so she can tell us that (something something) is going down in Edinburgh.

Everywhere they go, Jakob is there to thwart them. Grown-up Jakob is played by John Cena, and when we say grown-up, we mean it. He's now a head taller than Vin Diesel, so Jakob must have hit a growth spurt in his thirties. Jakob has a super-magnet that he uses to jam comms, but our guys steal it and use it for "magnets don't work like that" stuff. 

Jakob plans to launch the McGuffin into space to take over all terrestrial and satellite communications, which leads to the most famous part - Tej and Roman in space. It's not as crazy as the rope bridge scene in the first part.

As far as absurdities go, the best on was... Han is back! Sung Kang makes a triumphant return as the guy who was conclusively killed in F6. Still a favorite of ours and so many others, so he had to be revived. Hope to see Gal Gadot as Giselle back in the next one. 

It's no secret this series has become completely ridiculous. Roman even notes that they've risked their lives hundreds of times and never got a scratch. He almost figures it out. It's a good thing they are wrapping it up in another movie or two, because they've already done amnesia, dead come back to life and about all the fan service they could squeeze in. As long as they don't try to bring back Brian (he was babysitting the kid, it turns out.)