Holy smokes, I plum dang forgot to make a post about this movie! A movie which, yes, obviously, I saw on opening night. And which, yes, obviously, I had a blast with. (If it matters, I did spend a little over a week writing up this thing: https://medium.com/@steve.stanvick/the-definitive-ranks-of-the-furious-f7b873f516df)
Okay, so - this poster kind of sums it up. Who's dead center? It's not Vin - it's The Rock! You know why? Because this is his franchise, now. There's Vin though, over on the left side, looking kind of tired. It's not his fault! He does turn fifty this year. But then, so does Jason Statham, who's right over there on the other side of The Rock, with almost equal prominence to Vin.
I made a similar observation in my rambling post, linked above, but there's a tragic irony here for Vin. The franchise begins, Vin's hot shit, won't come back for the second movie. The franchise struggles - so does Vin - and they reunite in the fourth movie. Saves them both. Enter The Rock, movie five. Franchise explodes. Two more insane over-the-top movies, drawing even bigger stars and making even more billions of dollars. And now the same series Vin was brought back in to save? Yeah - it's outgrown Vin. Which, hey, fine! What a run! Thanks for everything! But when I hear things about Vin getting all wrinkly-nosed at the idea of The Rock and Statham taking things from here or at least doing their own spinoff, I gotta side with Rock and Statham on this one. Vin, don't get in the way of the most charismatic wrestler of all time and one of the greatest action stars of our day collaborating on making your own franchise a better one. Come on!
Lastly, I'll say this - I went into this one a bit skeptical and wary. Reviews weren't great, with a couple of critics specifically saying things like "this franchise has lost sight of what it's fans loved about it," and, "the characters' motivations don't make sense this time around." I have to say, this is one of the biggest disconnects I've ever felt between fans and critics - is this how all the DC fanboys defending Suicide Squad felt? I mean, what are they even talking about? What fans love about these gloriously over-the-top action movies is how gloriously over the top they are. When Dom utters a line or two about family, fine, but we emphatically do not love these movies for being some sort of rich, feel-good familial and fraternal bonding stories. We watch them in order to see cars rain from the sky and take on nuclear submarines and shit. And when have the characters and their motivations ever made sense? All of them are criminals and terrible people - but these are superhero movies, so who cares?
No comments:
Post a Comment