The “Fast and Furious” franchise has been going strong for 18 years now, and it just got its first official spinoff with “Hobbs & Shaw” — though I guess if we’re splitting hairs we could say that “Tokyo Drift” was also a spinoff, it just wasn’t framed as one when it was released in 2006.
I bring up “Tokyo Drift” here for a very specific reason. That movie introduced the beloved character Han (Sung Kang) to the series, and then “Fast & Furious 6” retconned Jason Statham’s character, Shaw in “Hobbs & Shaw,” into the background of that film as the person responsible for Han’s death. Then Shaw was a villain in “Furious 7” before turning hero in “The Fate of the Furious” and getting his own movie alongside The Rock’s Hobbs.
“Fate of the Furious” established Cipher (Charlize Theron) as the big bad of the franchise until it supposedly will end with the 10th main-series movie. But, in the meantime, we’ve got Luke Hobbs and Deckard Shaw running off on an epic side adventure. And, with “Hobbs & Shaw” having a scope to its threat that honestly surpasses any of the real “Fast and Furious” movies, I couldn’t help but wonder going and as I was watching if it was somehow serving as a bridge between “Fate” and next year’s “Fast and Furious 9.”
The plot of “Hobbs & Shaw” involves a cyborg supersoldier named Brixton (Idris Elba) chasing down an MI6 agent (Vanessa Kirby), who has obtained a sample of a world-killing virus that Brixton was trying to deliver to his employers. That agent, it turns out, is Deckard Shaw’s sister Hattie. The two Shaws and Hobbs end up doing a bunch of crazy fights and action sequences to keep Eteon, the evil doomsday corporation Brixton works for, from getting the virus and murdering billions of people with it.
Once Eteon’s plan became clear I couldn’t help but hark back to Cipher’s rhetoric in “Fate” about how the governments of the world couldn’t be trusted and they needed to be kept in check by a third party that could nuke them all into oblivion whenever they wanted. “Fate” definitely played it like Cipher had a fairly small operation running out of her jet, so it seemed unlikely that she could be the mysterious big boss behind Eteon, which in “Hobbs & Shaw” lore had been operating for at least a decade. But anything is possible — “Fate” itself retconned Cipher into being the mastermind behind the villainous plot of “Fast & Furious 6.”
But much to my chagrin, Eteon’s leader was not revealed in “Hobbs & Shaw,” which was extra frustrating after he/she/they kept telling Hobbs that they had some kind of history together. But as of the end of the film, there’s no discernible tie back to the main series. If there is one, then it’s probably something that will only make sense after seeing “Fast & Furious 9” next May.
Honestly, not tying into the main series is just par for the course for “Hobbs & Shaw,” which only just barely acknowledges that there were previous movies in this franchise. Hobbs and Shaw start this movie as people who hate each other, even though they were besties by the end of “Fate.” Shaw has a brother, Owen (Luke Evans), who has actually been a main character in the series, who gets one brief mention before the rest of the movie focuses on a sister we had never heard of before. And there’s a single shoutout each for the big action sequence in New York in “Fate” and their fight in L.A. at the beginning of “Furious 7.” And, oh, the name Mr. Nobody (Kurt Russell) gets brought up once.
If you were hoping for some #JusticeForHan here, you’ll be dramatically disappointed. “Hobbs & Shaw” only makes that whole thing worse by framing Deckard Shaw as being just a misunderstood good guy that whole time.
Otherwise, nobody from Dominic Toretto’s #Family gets mentioned at all in “Hobbs & Shaw,” so I don’t know why I thought the plot might actually matter to the main series while I was sitting in the theater. Unless they manage to make it matter next year in “Fast & Furious 9” — which neither Staham nor The Rock are slated to appear in — it looks like this spinoff is just gonna exist in its own universe.
All 9 'Fast & Furious' Movies Ranked From Worst to Best, Including 'Hobbs & Shaw' (Photos)
The "Fast & Furious” franchise is easy to dismiss as big, silly or even bad -- but it’s definitely awesome. The distinction may seem nebulous, but measuring each film’s success or failure has less to do with whether or not you believe what’s happening on screen than whether what’s happening has blown your mind, scrambled your expectations or shown you something so preposterous that you have to admire it. Ironically, the series began as a more mundane version of Kathryn Bigelow’s thriller about surfing bank robbers, “Point Break” but it's grown so far beyond the parameters of what in 1991 already seemed ridiculous that it’s impossible to evaluate them on a scale of anything from zero to 60 -- the former number being the resting vibration of Vin Diesel’s throaty baritone, and the latter the circumference of Dwayne Johnson’s biceps.
9. "Fast & Furious" (2009)
When 2006's “Tokyo Drift” convinced Universal it was sitting on a largely untapped goldmine, the studio re-hired director Justin Lin and reunited the original series cast for a proper relaunch. Unfortunately, virtually every new decision feels like an “ah, f--- it” solution to problems that subsequent films treated with much more nuance, especially reconnecting Brian, Dominic and the rest of Toretto’s outlaw crew. Meanwhile, an overlong finale set entirely in a cheap, phony-looking, CGI-enhanced underground tunnel robs the film of the tangibility -- and vitality -- that made Lin’s first “Fast and Furious” effort such a visceral delight.
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8. "2 Fast 2 Furious" (2003)
Despite introducing Tyrese’s goofy, charismatic sidekick Roman Pierce, and to a lesser extent, Ludacris’ Tej Parker, John Singleton’s follow-up to the original film is mostly a turd on wheels. Its attempts to re-create another undercover cop scenario involving Brian O’Conner showcase both the characters’ persistent stupidity and the franchise’s desperation, while Eva Mendes is sidelined as a bombshell love interest with lip-service authority, even as Cole Hauser’s extraordinarily bad impersonation of Robert De Niro as Argentinian drug lord Carter Verone feels telegraphed into the series from another film.
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7. "The Fate of the Furious" (2017)
Bursting with cash but on the verge of bankruptcy for new ideas, F. Gary Gray mounted a handsome, appropriately operatic eighth installment featuring a couple of prestigious foes (Charlize Theron and Helen Mirren) but arguably the dumbest heel turn in modern movie history. No character has ever championed loyalty more emphatically than Dominic Toretto, so when he gets blackmailed into betraying his former friends and colleagues, every second feels more preposterous than the previous one. It features the silliest car action of the series -- though, to be fair, Dwayne Johnson does punch a torpedo. “Fate” also betrays the series’ central "family" theme by making an ally of Jason Statham's Shaw, who murdered a crew member in a previous film, without ever bothering to address the issue.
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6. "The Fast and the Furious" (2001)
A transparent knockoff of “Point Break” set in the world of illegal street racing, Rob Cohen’s slick, comparatively realistic original couldn’t possibly have foreseen the wild and improbable places this franchise eventually went. But Cohen lacks Kathryn Bigelow’s chops both as a filmmaker and storyteller, using instantly dated CGI to “amplify” the intensity of the car-related action while reducing the cat-and-mouse dynamic between undercover cop Brian O’Conner (Paul Walker) and enigmatic hijacker Dominic Toretto (Vin Diesel) to unconvincing macho posturing.
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5. "Furious 7" (2015)
In a giant retcon of “Tokyo Drift” -- including the franchise’s most contentious piece of mythology, the death of Han (Sung Kang) -- James Wan mounts some suitably ridiculous action, including airdropping sports cars over Azerbaijan and jumping a Lamborghini from one Abu Dhabi skyscraper to another, while expanding the series’ rogues gallery with Jason Statham's Deckard Shaw, sibling to a former adversary who later, and to much controversy, becomes a colleague. Through no fault of the filmmakers, Paul Walker’s death casts a bittersweet pall over the onscreen adventures, as Brian’s departure inadvertently underscores the series’ shift away from the core elements that initially made it popular, much less the original cast members who were overshadowed by the likes of Statham and Dwayne Johnson.
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4. "Fast & Furious Presents: Hobbs & Shaw" (2019)
Proving indisputably that this series does not need Vin Diesel, “Hobbs & Shaw” charms immediately by embracing the two leads’ oil-and-water buddy dynamic with their charisma working overtime in a story with its tongue firmly in its cheek. In possibly the best action movie that Michael Bay never made -- if only because Bay would never make fun of himself -- director David Leitch mounts one muscular, inventive action scene after another, supplies his musclebound leads with a truly formidable female counterpart in Vanessa Kirby’s Hattie Shaw and harnesses Idris Elba’s smoldering screen presence as some kind of human Transformer. All the while, he explores the franchise’s fixation on family ties with funny, surprisingly effective humanity.
Emboldened by the creative and commercial success of “Fast Five,” Lin and Morgan go bigger and broader with the next film, giving Michelle Rodriguez’ Letty -- previously presumed dead -- amnesia, and establishing a highly improbable plot where shadowy government organizations hire a team of scruffy, car-obsessed outlaws to investigate and apprehend notorious thieves and terrorists, often in exchange for amnesty or forgiveness of criminal wrongdoing. Some great vehicular action bolsters this installment -- especially when Letty drives a tank! -- but it’s the series’ increasingly convoluted improbabilities that keep this film just below its top-ranking entries.
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2. "The Fast and the Furious: Tokyo Drift" (2006)
Without the participation of the franchise’s two main stars, Justin Lin’s first contribution to the franchise not only piggybacked on the glossy energy of its two predecessors, but thoughtfully engaged more sophisticated ideas about street racing and car culture, especially after relocating to Japan. Lin inadvertently razed the chronology of the franchise in one fell swoop -- a choice whose reverberations are still being felt -- but he also codified a lot of the core franchise elements going forward, not just in terms of cars, crime and thrills, but emphasizing a multiethnic cast and taking the action to wherever in the world it can be most interestingly explored.
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The latest in the franchise was supposed to drop on May 22, so what better time to pick our favorites?
The "Fast & Furious” franchise is easy to dismiss as big, silly or even bad -- but it’s definitely awesome. The distinction may seem nebulous, but measuring each film’s success or failure has less to do with whether or not you believe what’s happening on screen than whether what’s happening has blown your mind, scrambled your expectations or shown you something so preposterous that you have to admire it. Ironically, the series began as a more mundane version of Kathryn Bigelow’s thriller about surfing bank robbers, “Point Break” but it's grown so far beyond the parameters of what in 1991 already seemed ridiculous that it’s impossible to evaluate them on a scale of anything from zero to 60 -- the former number being the resting vibration of Vin Diesel’s throaty baritone, and the latter the circumference of Dwayne Johnson’s biceps.
Universal Pictures
