A little over a year ago I reviewed Furious 7 to coincide with the theatrical release of the spinoff film, Hobbes & Shaw. On a quick side note Hobbes & Shaw was a surprisingly bad detour for the series that I would rank right at the bottom with 2 Fast 2 Furious as the only two subpar entries from the franchise. It is safe to say I do no plan on reviewing it here. What I am reviewing today is the latest core entry in The Fast and the Furious brand in 2017’s The Fate of the Furious (trailer). Fast & Furious 9 was supposed to hit theaters earlier this summer, but the pandemic and current closure of a majority of theaters prompted Universal to push it back to April 2021. So while today’s entry will not have the honor of coinciding with the latest theatrical release like I did with my blog last year, it does have consolation prize of coinciding with the blink-and-miss-it release of the critically panned videogame, Fast and Furious: Crossroads, a couple weeks ago. I have yet to play the game, but I feel safe to say The Fate of the Furious is likely exponentially better than it.
Veteran director Gary Gray takes his first attempt at directing a F&F film and opens The Fate of the Furious off with Dom (Vin Diesel) and Letty (Michelle Rodriguez) enjoying themselves in an extended honeymoon in Cuba before Vin’s cousin finds himself in trouble and Dom has to naturally race the local goon to settle the score. It is one of the best races of all the films where Dom tricks out his cousin’s lemon of a ride with a Cuban formula of NOS that propels Dom to push the car to its limits and have a thrilling finish which raises the ‘yeah, right’ factor of the F&F films to new heights, but in all the right ways.
Not all is peachy for Dom though because not long after that killer opening he meets this film’s antagonist, Cipher (Charlize Theron). Fate of the Furious quickly establishes that Cipher is no pushover villain as she forces Dom’s hand to turning on his team on a routine black ops mission in Germany where he steals an EMP for Cipher. From here the film shifts into how Cipher has her hooks into Dom and has him doing jobs for her across the globe to setup one ultimate heist in Russia to close off the film in a dazzling array of the eye-popping stunts and special effects the brand is known for.
Seeing how Dom’s team responds to his betrayal and try to stay on his toes is a fun game of cat and mouse. Mr. Nobody (Kurt Russell) returns to assemble the team on these unofficial black ops missions and has a new apprentice by his side going by Little Nobody (Scott Eastwood). Roman (Tyrese Gibson) has a fun friendly rivalry with Little Nobody throughout the film. This is probably the best performance Tyrese has put in throughout the series, with him disposing of several baddies with his signature flair in the last act especially standing out for him. Tej (Ludacris) and Ramsey (Nathalie Emanuel) return to display their hacking prowess. A quick line of dialogue addresses the Paul Walker dilemma by the gang respecting Brian and Mia’s choice to live their family life and not get them involved. Hobbes (The Rock) is as awesome as ever in his larger-than-life persona. One of the most entertaining scenes in the film is where Hobbes finds himself locked up with Furious 7’s villain, Deckard Shaw (Jason Statham). Watching the two go on a showcase prison break was a delight and a half to consume.
In a questionable twist, Hobbes ropes Shaw into working for the team to help bring down Cipher and Dom. Surprisingly the rest of the team has no problem welcoming Shaw into the team despite Shaw murdering their former beloved comrade, Han, in the Furious 7. I have a big problem with this since Shaw shows no remorse for his past and no one on the team confronts Shaw about Han’s assassination here. Shaw does play a big role in the final big Russia action scene to help assist the team, but it is quite the stretch to say it absolves him of murdering Han. Granted, there are a lot of suspend disbelief moments with any F&F film, but this is a glaring flaw that goes unaddressed in this film.
Speaking of ‘suspend disbelief’ moments, as far as the action and stunts in Fate of the Furious goes, I can safely assure that this film lives up to the high bar the series has established. There is a absurd scene involving an army of hacked smart cars that I was able to turn off my mind and roll with. Same goes for a military grade tank and submarine chase on the Russian ice. Gary Gray pulls out all the stops in that final act at the Russian base and the final half hour will fly by before you know it. I remember coming off my initial theatrical viewing of this thinking that Cipher’s ruthlessness seemed too forced and put on, but I came around on her in my second viewing. Her constant bullying over Dom to keep him doing her bidding throughout and being presented as the mastermind of all hackers makes Cipher reside in the top tier of villains for the films. It ultimately all comes together for another outstanding film for the franchise.
Like most past F&F BluRays and DVDs, there is a hearty amount of extra features on this BluRay. Gary Gray offers up a solo commentary track which offers up plenty of production facts and insight. Highlights include his love for the opening Cuban race, relating his past chemistry working with The Rock on Be Cool paying off dividends here, pulling off the ostensibly impossible feat of closing off Time’s Square and how Gray slyly snuck in a reference to his past work on Friday that went right over my head. There is a little over an hour worth of additional bonus material on here. They are split up into many smaller features, and of those I would recommend checking out Zombie Cars, Malecon Stunt Race, Streets of New York and Iceland Stunt Drops the most as they all do a masterful job at breaking down the stunt work and the logistics that made these ambitious scenes possible. I re-watched all the previous films along with a commentary track from the crew at Giant Bomb, but all their commentary tracks were planned in time to build up to the theatrical release of this film so instead of a commentary track they released a spoiler-cast analyzing the whole film and ranking all the films at the end. I re-listened to it last night and they do a thorough job dissecting their highs and lows with it. Click or press here to give it a listen.
The Fate of the Furious held up much better than I originally thought. Thinking back on it, a part of me likely felt awkward how to take in a F&F film without Paul Walker and Jordana Brewster undoubtedly played a role in my initial mixed take on the eighth film. It also helped that I came around on Charlize Theron’s performance on my second viewing too. Aside from my reservations with Deckard Shaw being fully welcomed into ‘the family’ by the end of the film, I had a riot with The Fate of the Furious and it continues the roll of outstanding entries in the series since the fifth film. Here is hoping the ninth film does not suffer any more delays and that it will hit theaters this April!
-Greetings and thanks for joining me for my semi-annual coverage of marching through Star Trek: The Next Generation. Today I am covering season five (trailer) of the BluRay collection that I continue to ever-so-slowly progress through at one or two episodes a week. I started season five off in February and wrapped it up a couple days ago by watching at this rate. Part of the side effect of that was taking advantage of extended free trials of CBS All Access and binging through all of Picard and the first two seasons of Discovery within two months while keeping up with an episode or two a week of season five of TNG. There happens to be a couple episodes of this season of TNG that play a notable role in Picard, so the timing of it all gelling together was a lucky coincidence. I gave brief recaps of both Picard and Discovery in my annual TV season recap blog that can be found by click or pressing here. I apologize in advance for the questionable-in-quality pics in this entry from my ancient Samsung Galaxy S7 which makes it worth it to grab so many subtitle moments from this season!
-The only notable cast change this season is the addition of Ro Laren (Michelle Forbes). She becomes a recurring character this season as someone who is essentially introduced as coming off work release after a court martial and working her way back into Starfleet in the lowest rack of Ensign and serves primarily at the helm of the bridge. Forbes is fantastic as Ro and she has a few landmark episodes this season with my favorite of hers being “The Next Phase” where Ro and Geordi (LeVar Burton) are de-moleculed and appear as ghosts to the rest of the ship who responds by throwing a funeral for them in the form of a Mardi Gras-esque party at Ten Forward. Forbes is absolutely sublime here in Ro’s pining curiosity at how Riker (Jonathon Frakes) will eulogize her.
-This was a big episode for other recurring characters this season too. That is kind of a big deal considering season five is the only season of the series without a Q (John de Lancie) episode. I like how they find new ways to bring back Denise Crosby, who was shown as a mysterious cliffhanger to the end of the two-part arc of “Redemption” that finished off season four. It picks up in a big way with how Denise Crosby’s new character is connected to Tasha, and how the Romulans get involved in the never-ending civil war of the Klingons that eventually has the gratifying conclusion of Worf winning back his honor among Klingons. Guinan (Whoopi Goldberg) has her biggest role yet in the series this season in the two-parter “Time’s Arrow” that has the first part wrap-up season five where we discover the origin of Guinan in the 1890s as the Enterprise crew time travels back then and also encounters an antagonistic Mark Twain in an intriguing episode.
Wesley Crusher (Wil Wheaton) returns for two episodes this season. One is an oddball episode where all on the Enterprise but Wesley and Ensign Lefler (Ashley Judd) are mind controlled by a mysterious augmented reality game. The other episode is much better as Wesley and a few of his squad mates deliver prepared depositions as they are ruthlessly interrogated on the death of one of their peers. The annual Lwaxana (Majel Barrett) episode is about the expected chore to get through in her continued struggles to find a partner where she sets up an arranged marriage that is doomed from the beginning. Props to Chief O’Brien (Colm Meaney) having a kid this season!
-Season five marks the addition of two major personal belongings to one Captain Jean-Luc Picard (Patrick Stewart). One is the iconic jacket he dons throughout most of the season. I have no idea yet if he wears it in the remaining seasons, but it is a slick jacket and gives him a space cowboy type of vibe to him! I bet it sold boatloads in merchandise! The other item is a special flute that is gifted to him in “The Inner Light” when Picard’s mind engages in a Inception-like lifetime of memories in the span of under a half hour where he experiences an all new culture and life. It is a delight of an episode I appreciate the more I reflect upon it. I later learned in the bonus interviews that this flute melody became a common occurrence at weddings.
-I want to make sure to give kudos to some of my other favorite episodes this season. I loved seeing Spock (Leonard Nimoy) finally make an appearance on TNG. At this point of the show, appearances from the core Original Series crew has been extremely rare and limited, but TNG gets the most out of Nimoy with him playing a major role in another two-part arc where Spock tries to reunite the Romulans back into the Federation of Planets. One of the top episodes this season is “Ethics” where an accident leaves Worf (Michael Dorn) paralyzed and according Klingon ritual must self-sacrifice himself for the greater good. This results in some of the best speeches of the season where Riker and Picard implore Worf to reconsider before Dr. Crusher (Gates McFadden) impresses with her surprisingly improving doctor skillset to resolve Worf’s paralysis.
An episode that initially appears to have a silly premise, but I outright loved by the end is “Darmok.” Picard winds up stuck on an island with an individual of an undiscovered species that only speaks in metaphors. Picard is as baffled as me trying to decipher the metaphors at first, but gradually picks up on it and by the episode’s end forms a kindship with him as the duo team up against a new threat. “I, Borg” is an episode that plays into Picard later on that sees the Enterprise take in an injured Borg and give it the ability to have independent thought again.
A guilty pleasure TV theme of mine in recent years is the time loop episode theme in the form of Groundhog’s Day. Discovery had a terrific rendition of it in its second season. I was thrilled to see TNG do their version of a time loop episode in “Cause and Effect.” It has a banger of an opening that sees that Enterprise exploding and eventually the scenes start to repeat that sees the crew start to recognize their situation and attempt to find a way out of the time loop. I came to discover in the bonus interviews that this episode preceded Groundhog’s Day by nearly two years, and unlike that film and all the TV shows that have pay homage to it over the years, TNG plays it in a serious manner and not as a comedy, but the writing for it is so well done that it works and is pulled off in a way that had me invested until the end!
-While there were a fair amount of standout episodes this season, I would be remiss if I were not to go this far and fail to mention there were several clunkers. Some of the ones I recommend skipping is where Riker falls for an androgynous being that has a non-committal ending and the episode plays out totally differently today than it was intended then. Another dud is where them dang Ferangi are up to no good again in failing to kidnap a seductive being that has a strong desire for Picard. The biggest abnormality this season is where according to my notes I surmised the episode as ‘imaginary friend comes to life, blargh!’ Trust me on that being all you need to know on the astutely titled episode, “Imaginary Friend.”
-I want to once again give a shoutout to the podcast, Star Trek: The Next Conversation. Hosts Andrew Secunda and Matt Mira breakdown every episode of TNG and help provide ample background, facts and insight with their analysis of each episode. Because of re-watching TNG and combined with their podcast I have been able to better pickup on countless TNG references in other TV shows and podcasts over these past couple years. Click or press here to give them a listen if you have not already.
-There are nearly four and a half hours of extra features that are nicely spread out across all six discs. In addition, there are also four episodes that have commentary from cast and crew with one noteworthy highlight being Orville creator, Seth McFarlane guesting on the commentary for “Cause and Effect.” A lot of the bonus extra are carried over from the original DVDs, but like previous seasons there are a couple of new HD bonuses for the BluRay. Mission Overview deep dives into the production of a couple of my favorite episodes of the season, “Darmok” and Spok’s return in “Unification.” Tribute to Gene Roddenbury has clips of speeches from various Star Trek luminaries at a building dedication to Gene and has fond memories from the cast and crew of Gene. Intergalactic Guest Stars interviews many of the aforementioned recurring characters on why they keep coming back on.
These next two are new HD bonuses for the BluRay. The Music of TNG is an in-depth 75 minute discussion with three composers from the series that I truly appreciated hearing the composers dissect some of the most memorable scores and melodies of TNG history. Finally, Requiem is a two part, hour long look about writing the controversial conflicts that have been touched on throughout the run of TNG, and also has additional tributes and testimonials on Gene Roddenbury. Both are excellent thorough takes on both subject matters, and if you dig bonus features as much as I do, then I highly recommend both of them!
-Season five of The Next Generation continues the success of seasons three and four. I would only mark it a notch under those two strong seasons because there seems to be a few weaker episodes this season than in the previous two. I gathered from the bonus interviews that it seemed that this season tried to go all out exploring new conflicts and themes, and sometimes it worked exceptionally well in the cause of “Cause and Effect” but other times it worked against them a few more times than usual this season. Overall though I would still rank this in the upper tier of TNG season and hope to see the final two season keep up this high bar of quality.
Troi got a curious jump on Picard! Meanwhile, Worf cannot catch a break at the piano bar!
A movie podcast I listen to, The Big Picture, did a recent episode on the 10th anniversary of 2010’s Scott Pilgrim vs. The World (trailer). Coincidentally enough, that film remains in my backlog box all these years later, so I made sure to re-watch it before giving that podcast a listen. For those unfamiliar with this film, it is based on a series of six graphic novels of the same name by Bryan Lee O’Malley released between 2004 and 2010. The basic gist is that Scott Pilgrim (Michael Cera) falls for newcomer to town, Ramona Flowers (Mary Elizabeth Winstead). In order to win her over Pilgrim has to defeat Ramona’s “Seven Evil Ex’s.” Scott spends the rest of the film exploring Ramona’s mysterious past and dueling her ex’s while practicing with his band, Sex Bo-Bomb, as they progress through a battle of the bands tournament.
Sex Bo-Bomb is one slick act! Stephen Stills (Mark Webber) is the doom-and-gloom frontman of the band. Kim Pine (Alison Pill) is a 2010 take on Daria and effectively nails her vintage expressionless glares and blunt quips. Young Neil (Johnny Simmons) is the affable, DS-loving, always ready alternate for Sex Bo-Bomb. Their #1 fan and also other girlfriend of Scott Pilgrim is one Knives Chau (Ellen Wong). Knive’s arc is probably my favorite of this ensemble cast as her journey from adoring fan and girlfriend to her final destination is a fascinating quest to see develop and a faithful translation from the books.
I first heard of the books on the videogame podcast, Team Fremont Live where they reviewed the first book and their breakdown of it caught my attention when they dissected all the nonstop videogame references that are peppered regularly throughout it. The film captures that imagery to a T where it feels like Pilgrim is living in a real life videogame. In this world suspending disbelief is required because it is jam-packed with extraordinarily choreographed battle scenes, makes anyone capable of instantly pulling off bombastic martial arts moves in the blink of an eye without any training whatsoever, and quirky little animations of objects like Mario Bros.-esque coins and pixelated items inserted throughout that any videogame fan will pick up on. The fighting game fan in me popped a little each time a thunderous “KO” blared out each time Pilgrim emerged victorious after an evil ex duel. As a lifelong fan of videogames, it was fun picking up on all the references and Easter eggs in the background throughout.
Scott Pilgrim vs. the World hit at an interesting time where Michael Cera was the only established star at this point in 2010 and was riding the last wave of critical success coming off of Arrested Development, Superbad and Juno. Brandon Routh is noteworthy appearing here as one of the evil ex’s after flaming out in his single appearance in a Superman film. However, a few other stars are here right before they exploded into bigger success like the aforementioned Mary Elizabeth Winstead. Chris Evan is here as another evil-ex shortly after his two Fantastic Four films, but a year before donning the Captain America costume for the first time. Anna Kendrick is here in a small role as Scott’s sister Stacey while in the midst of her initial Twighlight run. Finally, Brie Larson is here as Scott’s evil-ex, Envy Adams and she is the lead for her band, Clash at Demonhead in my personal favorite musical performance of the film as they belt out “Black Sheep.”
It is worth repeating that I highly recommend suspending all disbelief going into Scott Pilgrim vs. the World and simply roll with it. The battle scenes are a hoot to take in and feature a ton of CG that holds up well ten years later. It is also worth pointing out this film is part absurd videogame battles, part early 20s love triangle drama and to a lesser extent part musical with several performances from Sex Bo-Bomb and other bands throughout the film. Director Edgar Wright tracked down a few bands to play the tracks for some of the featured bands in the film such as Beck performing the handful of Sex Bo-Bomb songs in addition to a slew of other tracks from artists like The Rolling Stones and Blood Red Shoes that perfectly supplement the outlandish tone of the film. It is not too often on here I recommend hunting down the soundtracks for a film, but the soundtrack for Scott Pilgrim vs. the World I wholeheartedly recommend!
I think the Scott Pilgrim vs. the World BluRay may have set the record for amount of extra features for a single film in the near seven years of movies I have covered on this blog. A rough tally on my notes gives an approximate sum of nearly five hours of bonuses, and then four feature length commentary tracks on top of that! I will not detail every bonus, but will give some highlights of the ones that stood out for me. There is just under a half hour of deleted scenes with or without commentary from Edgar Wright. Most of them are extended scenes from the first act to trim out excess background info, but an alternate ending is what stood out the most that Wright explained he changed because it did not go over that well in test screenings. I can always appreciate a good blooper reel, and an excellent 10 minute reel is compiled here that I would rate right up with the stellar ones in the Marvel films.
There are three features grouped together in the ‘Docs’ section of the extras tallying up to a little over an hour. If you only had time for one of the five hours of bonuses I would go there because that has the core making of documentary which breaks down collaborating with Bryan Lee ‘O Malley, nailing the casting, detailing the extensive stunt training and interviews several of the bands about being featured in the soundtrack. Speaking of the soundtrack, there are four music videos included. Definitely check out the four minute animated short, Scott Pilgrim vs. Animation that is essentially a prequel to the film that dives into Scott and Kim’s former relationship. There are 12 ‘Video Blogs’ totaling 45 minutes that are raw on set interviews with the cast and crew between takes that sees the crew up to all kinds of mischief to kill downtime. This BluRay easily has the largest photo gallery of any home video I have covered with several hundred photos. One gallery is labeled ‘storyboards’ but each storyboard panel is nearly identical to the excellent quality of the art in Bryan Lee O’Malley books so that is essentially a free comic book adaptation of the movie buried in the extras!
I experienced all four of the commentary tracks in one re-watch of Scott Pilgrim vs. the World via jumping around to a different commentary about every five minutes. Edgar Wright is on two of them, one with Bryan Lee ‘O Malley and writer Michael Bocall and the other with photography director Bill Pope. The other two commentaries are split among nine cast members, with Michael Cera and the rest of the leading cast on one and the ancillary cast members on the other cast commentary track. Wright has tons of nonstop insight and production facts on his tracks, and the cast tracks are have a lot of fun anecdotes such as Cera failing at trying to get additional people on the commentary via phone call. On top of the commentary I had on during my re-watch was also a factoid subtitle track to really take in the extra features. Despite going on now for three paragraphs about the bonus features, I think I only touched on about half of what is available, and it is truly astonishing to see how much they crammed into one BluRay disc.
A part of me thought going into this that Scott Pilgrim vs. the World would not hold up after 10 years. I would chalk that up to thinking I may have got easily won over with all the hype from being vastly into the books back then and being too caught up into the build to the film’s initial release. I can put those reservations to rest thankfully as I immensely enjoyed this ode to videogame fandom as much as I first did in 2010. Throw in a plethora of extra features to last all year to make Scott Pilgrim vs. the World one of my highest recommendations yet! If you want even more commentary from me about this film than below I have embedded the podcast I originally recorded 10 years ago shortly after seeing the film on its opening weekend. I bring on a couple other special guest hosts that are also ardent Scott Pilgrim fans and we review the film, soundtrack, the books and the videogame. Enjoy!
I brought on a couple other Scott Pilgrim experts on as guest hosts on my podcast to review the film, books, videogame and soundtrack shortly after they all released 10 years ago. Check it out in the embed above for more Scott Pilgrim goodness or click or press here to queue it up for later.
