STOP MAKING FAST AND FURIOUS MOVIES!!

all across the internet i hear the cries i see the memes and they are biting painful nasty and sometimes actually well-founded so what's the message of all these memes and all these screaming people are basically saying stop making fast and furious movies i hear it every day dms private messages whatever most of you know my youtube channel was initially built around the behind the scenes stories of these early movies and the later movies all the while i've been a loyal fan an ambassador a historian and even a cheerleader for the franchise for the last 20 years so why am i suggesting that the franchise has run out of gas i'll share those thoughts right after the break stay tuned confession i hate cleaning my own cars that's why i love adam's polishes whatever you want to clean polish or shine adams has a specific product just for that even for matte finishes since 2000 adams polishes has been offering premium car care products dedicated to the enthusiast whether you're a professional detailer or a weekend warrior their innovative and effective products will enable you to achieve amazing results on your prized possession adams made with pride and passion in the usa most of you already know that i worked on the first three movies and several of my cars were cast in major roles i also had the pleasure of working with and getting to know paul walker personally and as i've said many times over i was treated very well by universal pictures and have cheered their success with these movies unabashedly i've seen every one of them in the movie theater i have all the dvds and so you could probably say that i was what's considered to be a super fan and of course i haven't worked for universal since 2006 so the opinions that i'm expressing here are completely my own and this video is not a conflict of interest in any way like many of you i recently sat through the two and a half hour cliche fest that was fast nine i went in with an open heart and an open mind i've defended this franchise since fast five when the movies were already then moving away from street racing and some would say from reality if i'm being honest movie franchises often struggle to go beyond a couple of sequels and few succeed and when i say succeed i don't just mean monetarily with box office sales i mean with super fans and professional movie critic saying that the the sequel was good that doesn't always happen movies like aliens a christmas vacation godfather 2 terminator 2 and star trek wrath of khan were movies that were sequels which were at least as good as or better than the first movie and that's pretty rare as it turns out in fact there are several more that i could list but it's still a pretty short list what usually happens is that the sequels tend to stray away from the original recipe that made the first movie so good and successful and as any chef will tell you you can add some flair but if you completely change the recipe it's no longer the same dish and this is what happens with a lot of sequels but with action movie sequels the stories usually get more convoluted the special effects get more grandiose and dramatic and the stories made most of these mistakes some sequels were so bad so terrible that they destroyed the franchise for example xxx state of the union and superman 4 come to mind two horrible movies a movie can survive a bad sequel or maybe two rocky five comes to mind a movie that was panned by critics and fans and it should have destroyed the franchise but creed came along and breathed new life into the franchise so it is possible the james bond movie casino royale rescued that franchise movies like moonraker octopussy and a view to a kill had become so rife with silly storylines cheesy character names and cg so ridiculous that even roger moore said these films were just way too far-fetched and then enter daniel craig with this new regime the james bond character was no longer invincible the torture scene in casino royale proved that the double 07 character is human and not invincible and that was a big thing because after 50 years of james bond walking away from every scenario without so much as a scratch audiences saw that there was no real danger in these movies they always knew he would come back and he would survive not all franchises are wise enough to recognize that they've morphed their movies into unrecognizable parodies of the original film because they're too close to the project producers and directors often live in a bubble focused primarily on one upping themselves and the action sequences and taking the movie to what they call new heights and then rationalize poor decisions in the name of moving forward or character development some of those things just don't work in the first fast and furious movie we got an entertaining movie set in the world of illegal street racing too fast too furious was still pretty much built around this world and tokyo drift doubled down by taking audiences to the global capital of illegal street racing in japan unfortunately both of these sequels performed poorly at the box office very poorly justin lin came back for fast four a movie that seemed to struggle to come up with any real danger the story was at least plausible though if not tired i mean chasing mexican drag cartels is so cliche it barely raises an eyebrow in the united states and doesn't move the needle at all in california but since then the plots have become so thin so stretched that it's hard to remember how we got from the first movie to where we are in each new installment of the fast and furious and when the foundation of the franchise fades into memory when the scriptwriters succumb to pressure to reach deep into the abyss of the absurd just to one-up themselves from the last movie a film franchise becomes a parody of itself at that point they're just trying to move each action scene and each stunt sequence up a notch with little regard to story continuity and that's when the movies suffer it happens to many long franchises and has done so for a very long time as i alluded to before i grew up watching james bond movies moonraker reminds me of fast nine it was a desperate attempt to go to new heights literally and figuratively james bond finally went into space what followed after that movie in the james bond franchise was a series of juvenile movies that were more like parodies than sequels and the franchise began to struggle and struggle badly pierce brosnan stepped in seemingly to keep the cliche of james bond's character alive but critics generally agree that it wasn't until daniel craig took the helm that james bond movies were watchable again and i have to agree but i feel that we're well beyond that point in the fast franchise fast five kind of started the trend of super stunts and super powers in these movies it was in this movie that dom and brian really amped up their stunts and the fact that they spent 25 million dollars just to do the train scene pretty much proof that that shows that the writers were just thinking with their egos and just trying to one-up themselves from the last movie think about it in the first movie they were hijacking trucks for dvd players and vcrs or whatever in fast five it was a train in fast six it was an airplane in fast seven it was an armored bus and fastaid it was a submarine see where i'm going one could argue though that the action sequences although more elaborate from film to film were more exciting in each subsequent film and that's great but the problem is is that in each of these sequences no one gets seriously hurt dom brian letty tedge roman ramsey always walk away without a scratch and beyond a few casualties nothing serious this isn't just absurd it's boring when there's no real danger there's no real excitement because there's nothing at risk for me there were two sequences in the recent movies that had me writhing in my seat in fast seven it was the red lichen hypersport which was jumping between two skyscrapers remember that scene a 12 year old would realize that the physics didn't work i can understand doing it one time and you get away with it but doing it twice no push a matchbox car off a park bench and you'll see what i'm talking about it won't land the same way twice just doesn't happen in fasta it was a submarine scene there was so much wrong with that scene that it was painful to watch submarines can only travel around 35 miles per hour at best look it up does anyone over the age of 10 think a submarine can do 100 miles an hour to chase cars while plowing through ice and then there's the heat seeking missiles which travel at around mach 2 to mach 4 that's two times to four times the speed of sound depending on what type of missile they were if we were to believe what we saw in this movie a dodge charger can outrun missiles that go twice the speed of sound what the torpedo on the top of the ice was also another thing that made me choke on my pop the torpedo is shown to have a propeller at the back end of it that propeller is what propels the torpedo through the water just like a boat's outboard engine when the torpedo is out of the water the propeller does nothing and the torpedo would basically just coast to a stop okay not to mention that this thing weighs about 1200 pounds you can look it up and yet its trajectory could be altered by somebody just simply nudging it off to one side okay and i'm mentioning these technical flaws only to suggest that these movies were made for a very young audience say 12 years old to maybe someone in their early 20s so i get that i'm not the target audience but still what's my point my point is that these movies have moved so far away from the original story that they are unrecognizable from it who are these people these characters have gone from street thugs to superheroes they now have an invincibility apparently the ability to fly superhuman strength martial arts and commando skills none of these things fit the original characters which in case you forgot were just street racing thugs did i miss the movie where dom's crew went through special forces training which one was that was it spin-off because i missed it the original street racing movies are gone now ditched in favor of films that seem to be copies of movies like mission impossible but less imaginative and more absurd but just like a fake louis vuitton bag smart people can spot the difference a mile away this is not mission impossible how do we get here there's a long path we have to take a look first at the math the last true street racing film in the series was of course tokyo drift it was also the worst performing film when it comes to box office take it made a paltry 159 million dollars on a 125 million dollar budget too fast you furious didn't do much better and it underperformed and universal knew that they had to come up with something different some kind of different approach and they did a lot of audience research to choose a new direction for fast four ultimately universal began to really understand that appealing to basic human emotions and behaviors works best this is filmmaking 101 the most successful action movies are built around conflict sadness fear redemption love and loss film school 101 from that point on universal combined as many of those ingredients as possible fast 4 drew audiences in by killing off a character this is the movie where letty dies in the film right and while there was a sprinkling of the street racing roads the movie largely focused on revenge and redemption the 359 million box office take told universal that they were on the right track and moving in the right direction fast five deliberately moved away even further from street racing universal publicly said that this was intentional vin diesel also gave many interviews and said the same thing publicly universal was convinced by this time that the cars were less important than the characters still there were enough cool cars to appease most critics including myself however in fast five the actors were still within their characters sort of and the addition of dwayne johnson which tried to sell the illusion that toretto's team we're more now than just street thugs and whatever your perception the precedent was set and the toretto family was basically becoming government mercenaries by this time now fast six was the tipping point this was the first movie where audiences started to realize that universal was just flat out overdoing it remember the 14 mile runway scene the cars trying to hold back a giant russian cargo jet and the concept of a tank doing 80 miles per hour all of that was an insult to the intelligence of anybody over the age of 15. and the fact that letty comes back from the dead just seemed to mock the audiences by saying hey psych we're just trying to fool you insult our intelligence by this time the movies were starting to become forgettable who did what to who and why in what movie i can't barely remember and fast 6 seemed to be just a collection of strung together action sequences each one more absurd and more over the top than the last one to me that movie felt like a parody in in that movie we learned that death is not final in the fast and furious world even when someone dies on screen and even when we see their coffin put into the ground it's not over they can come back the fact that fast six actually was set before tokyo drift and the timeline of fast and furious movies is even more confusing just as a reminder the movie order goes like this one two four five six three seven eight nine and so fast six embolden universal with the 789 million dollar boxed office take so now universal said we're going to the right track let's just keep doing what we're doing and fast 7 was going to have to really pull out all of the stops if they were going to one-up fast six and that's what they were after fast seven is the holy trinity of ripping off elements of some top movies like mission impossible the matrix and transformers and to some extent deadpool all of those movies were put into one souffle of silliness but action sequences in movies like mission impossible the matrix and the transformers are just as extreme so what's the difference i'll tell you the difference in those movies the stunt sequences actually service the story what does that mean they fit within the characters and within the story the characters in those movies are either trained government agents or had technology implanted into their brains or they were literally robots from outer space it fits within the characters but even in movies like mission impossible and the born identity jason bourne and ethan hunt sustain injuries they actually get injured so there's something at risk they can be killed in the fast franchise you almost never see that somewhere along the line the toretto family became invincible special force commandos international spies hackers and weapons experts the characters have now morphed into something unrealistic and inauthentic with fast nine it becomes blatantly obvious that those movies have now become a string of stunts held together barely by razor thin plot lines pot marked with more holes than a five pound chunk of swiss cheese and littered with a slew of cliche plot twist long lost relatives never mentioned after 20 years and nine movies dead characters coming back to life and so on through all of it there's never any suspense and there's no real danger to the family because only the disposable characters get killed off jesse for example we know universal is not going to kill anyone important off and even if they did there's still a good chance that they're going to come back in another movie so where's the risk even universal is confused about all this director rob cohen proclaimed on social media back around 2019 or 2020 and he said this on social media jesse is not dead a few months later he wrote i shouldn't have killed jesse off he's the director of the first movie he's not sure if he's dead or not these movies have had multiple directors and screenwriters and that's part of the problem in the first eight movies they had for directors rob cohen then john singleton justin lin then james wan justin lin f gary gray and so forth and so often does universal even have a long-term vision for the franchise other than to sell more movie tickets i don't think so from where i sit the plan changes with every new director and with every new script writer but some things remain invincible characters superhero powers plot holes unrealistic stunt sequences and a lack of a cohesive plot arc all of these sins would be forgivable if they had just known when to quit fast 7 was the perfect time to quit if you ask me when i walked out of the theater after watching fast 7 i thought to myself this would be the perfect time for universal to end the franchise in my mind the death of paul walker should have signaled that it was time to just wrap it up generally speaking the family was whole again and of course they had added a few members since the first movie and lost a couple but generally the toretto family it was in good shape and that would have been a good time to just call it quits but like a narcissistic poker player not knowing when to quit when delta bad hand universal anted up doubled down and produced fast eight you know why in a word money like any other company nbc universal is a business a publicly traded business with a fiduciary responsibility to make a profit that's just the way it is why would any company stop selling a product that is making them money hand over fist to suggest that they turn all that off would be naive it's just not going to happen and so fast 8 fast 9 and fast 10 were green lighted and here we are once again though they'd have to ratchet up the action sequences as if they wanted the subsequent movies to be exciting fast 8 became a movie built around its stunt sequences the razer thin betrayal plot was simply a way to string their stunt sequences together just as they've been doing in the previous movies i mean did anyone think that dom would really turn his back on his family i mean the whole theme of the franchise has been family family family the script writers i think must have started consuming edibles regularly around this time because instead of pulling off truck hijacking or bank heights dom jumps into this super weapon arena by stealing emps and nuclear weapons is this the only government agency that we can bring to bear come on man fasta was such a convoluted fast-paced mess it was hard to keep up still somehow it grossed 1.2 billion dollars indie wire rated at the worst fast and furious movie since too fast to furious that cat pretty much nails it and then we finally get the eagerly awaited ninth installment fast nine proved that they were running out of ideas if you ask me the movie was two and a half hours long but 45 minutes or so were just flashbacks that we already knew about from the first movie another 30 plus minutes was the finality that doesn't leave much meat in the middle universal actually released several trailers while the world was on lockdown because of covid all promising a new twist the twist ended up being a long lost brother who hadn't been mentioned in 20 years and eight movies before not by any character not dom not letting up mia that kind of plot twist feels cheap it like it was stolen from a telenovela or a 1970s tv soap opera after a new teaser after teaser dropped in the united states universal then and its infinite wisdom said oh no we're not going to release it here in the united states first we're going to release it in china why money china has 1.4 billion people the us has one quarter of that dropping the movie in china first gave them a head start on box office results and to some this was an insult to the fans in the usa who were responsible for putting the franchise on the map in the first place and that didn't sit well with anybody then came john cena's apology to china about his statement that he made about taiwan being a country of on its own china claims taiwan for its own territory and for those of you don't follow politics and don't care about the world war iii coming it's not a big deal to you but the apology did ruffled a lot of feathers frankly most people thought it was not a good look for universal and certainly was unbecoming a man like john cena but if you watch the full apology video cena sounds like the new propaganda minister of the people's republic of china not good politicizing this stuff they should just keep their nose out of the waters but they didn't want to lose the money from china so they had to issue the apology the decision to release the movie in china and the apology should make it patently clear that universal is focused solely on profits and they earn profits by selling movie tickets you can't fault them for that that's what they're in business to do but what i'm also saying is that the notion that universal would go back to the days of making street racing movies to make a measly 160 million dollar profit or so when they can make one billion profit on each action movie it's just completely unrealistic naive and juvenile and its conception people just don't understand business and what companies need to do every company on earth is in business to make a profit period end of sentence the decision to move away from street racing to action movies is to make more money and that's exactly what they've been doing the decision to release the movie first in china again was to make more money all that said i want to make one thing very clear i like these movies i like them a lot i go see every one of them i go to the theater and i buy the dvd i turn my brain off when i sit down and strap myself in for a two hour ride it's always an adventure ride as long as there are cool cars big explosions and the terredel family is there i can put up with the little holes in the plot and all that kind of stuff it's still good clean fun despite the unrealistic action the cliches the soap opera plots the cheesy dialogue and the glaring plot holes i can live with all of it but let us not forget that none of these movies has received an oscar nomination for any category that should say something many people suggest that universal should just stop making these movies before they become clown shows others say they've already become clown shows some say the franchise died when paul walker did others say it died after tokyo drift at this point universal has doubled down on this family movie with a tenth film confirmed and with reports saying that it might be a two-part movie so technically an 11th movie if they do i have some advice it's time to bring it full circle back to its roots it started with street racing it needs to end with street racing even if it's just a five minute sequence perhaps the last scene finds us seeing the children of brian o'connor and dominic toretto meeting up at a street race not knowing each other or knowing each other and then they take off and then the screen goes black we also need closure on brian o'connor character what happens to him where did he go what happened in the fast and furious world we need to know that's it so tell me how you think the fast franchise should end in the comments below i'm sure everybody has an opinion and i'm very curious to hear yours that's it for this episode everybody thanks so much for watching and if you wouldn't mind please subscribe to my channel and take a look below for some special offers from my sponsors that's going to be it for this time around and be sure to check my video's description for discounts and special offers from my sponsors take care everybody we'll see you next time [Music] you

Channel: Craig Lieberman

Views: 102,386

Rating: 4.8876696 out of 5

Keywords: The fast and the Furious, fast 9, paul walker, vin diesel, sung kang, tyrese, ludacris, jordana brewster

Id: QJvz2yrPalo

Length: 25min 17sec (1517 seconds)

Published: Sat Jul 17 2021