24 Thoughts About F9 in No Particular Order

- Going into this movie, the number one thing I was excited about was seeing the Tokyo Drift crew join with the main series crew. But honestly a little disappointed at how unnecessary they feel here. Hopefully this was just a test run to feel out their acting chops before they get more involved with the series.

- A LOT of good callbacks to previous movies. This movie feels the most nostalgic about itself and, if it's true that this is the first in a final trilogy, it feels fitting.

- Bow Wow's Twinkie is still really into Jordans, which is awesome.

- Shea Whigham popping back in as generic government cop is always great. Also love that his nose is still busted the fuck up from every time Brian's beaten his face in.

- I kinda feel sorry for Lucas Black not having a bigger role. After Tokyo Drift, I was hoping that his character would have grown a street legend as the new Drift King and have a connection with the yakuza or something.

- Opening the movie with the shot of Dom's father in a racecar is such a good way to open this movie for people who have been following these movies. Along with Han, the story of Dom watching his father die is one of the few genuinely emotional moments in this series and it was a surprise to see them make it such a huge part of this movie.

- Also, constantly having scenes with the young Furious feels like their way of nodding to time travel without actually doing it.

- Speaking of which, I was impressed with how many cameos they were able to fit in by having Furious Babies in 1989. Fucking Vince and Hector were there.

- Roman beginning to see through the fourth wall and wondering if he might be invincible was…interesting. To me, it feels like they're setting things up for some character's deaths in the future.

- Tej's face when he thinks he's just seen Roman die is the most acting that Ludacris has ever done, and it worked on me. These are some dumb movies but these two have gone through a lot.

- I like Charlize Theron but Cipher is still such a bland character for me and it's really hamfisted how they keep trying to elbow her into being a main villain.

- I'm not too impressed with their explanation for Han's return. It works, but there is this swirling retcon vortex forming around Han's crash that is getting way too rickety. Like it feels like the camera will zoom back even further and we'll see that the Templars were involved.

- Also, mysterious new brother that has always been there is so dumb and it's especially dumb for such a one-note character. John Cena's whole character is basically someone who isn't somebody.

- The fucking magnets. I really feel like they should have been cooler but it just felt like CGI bullshit.

- The way the magnets work also varies wildly, sometimes in the same scenes. Like in one moment, it's strong enough to pull a knife out of someone's hand but then if somebody on the Fast crew need to use a knife they can hold onto it. I know the Fast movies are 60% dumb logic but still.

- At first, seeing Dom's cross on his father's rear-view mirror added so much new weight to the importance of that cross. But then, seeing exact duplicates around baby Dom and baby Cena's necks just watered down the importance even more. Add in a basic parallel to the Fast series in general here.

- Tej and Roman crash a car into a satellite. In space. These fucking movies.

- There were actually a lot of retconned new characters, now that I think about it. Han now being an adoptive father to a little girl is so strange. At first, I thought Elle was going to Han and Gisele's daughter, but then it turned out she had met him sometime slightly before Tokyo Drift, maybe? And we never saw her?

- Somewhere around ¾ into the movie, I think I noticed that Brian Tyler's Fast and Furious theme hadn't been used yet. It felt so weird that I had to check if he was still the composer. He is, which makes it even weirder that the theme was never used in any of the climactic scenes.

- The film begins with the crew learning that Kurt Russell's Mr. Nobody was in a plane crash and they go to investigate since he's so important to them. And then they find some MacGuffin and go on a sideways quest to stop the end of the world…and then never go back to trying to find Mr. Nobody. Do they just think he's dead now?

- Han driving a car with the same colorway as his RX-7 from Tokyo Drift was pretty good. But then it was lame that he almost immediately leaves it and it gets used by John Cena instead. It was just another little thing that kneecapped Han's comeback.

- Sean seeing Han alive was a pretty good moment.

- The more I think about it, the more the plot of this movie is making less and less sense and the parts that do make sense are held together with wire and tape. It's actually kind of weird, considering how relatively tight the Fast movies have been so far. There might be twenty retcons too many in this one.

- 3 > 5 > 6 > 7 > 8 > 9 > 1 > 2 > 4. We're going downhill.