Furious Seven (James Wan)

[number8]

That was on How Did This Get Made.

[number8]

This is the first 2015 movie to make a billion dollars.

And people thought the battle was going to be Avengers vs Star Wars.

[number8]

Also, damn, the nearest multiplex to my house playing this is all sold out tonight. On a Thursday night, two weeks after release??

[Henry Gale]

This is the first 2015 movie to make a billion dollars.

And people thought the battle was going to be Avengers vs Star Wars.

Not to mention it broke the all time opening day record in China with $68.8 million.

I knew it'd hit a billion worldwide a cross $300M domestically, I just didn't think it'd do it already.

[number8]

LOL, even the Wiz Kalifa song is breaking records. Most streamed song in one day and one week on Spotify.

[number8]

The hit sequel, which features the last on-screen appearance of Paul Walker, also broke a global record by becoming the fastest film to ever make $1bn at the box office. By the end of Sunday, it had made $1.153bn, which now makes it the seventh biggest film of all time.

Juggernaut.

[[ETM]]

And people thought the battle was going to be Avengers vs Star Wars.

I still haven't seen any of the F&F films. Well, I saw most of the first one, and some of the second one.

My money is still in my pocket, waiting.

[transmogrifier]

I saw the first. Maybe I saw the second? I can't remember. Haven't seen any since and yet I still find the slow evolution of the series into a phenomenon fascinating.

[Watashi]

I think they're all fun movies and enjoy them all. The series doesn't really get great until Fast Five when it becomes a legitimately well-directed action series. I'd take Fast Five over most Bond movies.

[DavidSeven]

Yeah, Fast Five is a legitimately great movie and coincides with the series' explosion as a cultural phenomenon. Series probably dies off without that movie renewing people's interest and expectations for the franchise. Transitioning to the "team" model and casting actors of color and/or diverse nationality in a bunch of the prominent roles was also huge (see 8's demography stats earlier in the thread).

If you want to skip to the meat of current story arcs, you could probably get away with starting with Fast & Furious 4 (which isn't very good IMO) and continuing from there. You can skip 2 & 3, though Tokyo Drift isn't that bad for what it is.

[Dukefrukem]

Saw this instead of Max on Sat.

It was OK I guess. Still not good enough for me to YAY it. I haven't really liked these since Fast Five (the one where they drag the safes across Miami). The first scene with Black and Diesel is funny, because Black ages 10 years in 15 seconds. Tony Jaa's scene was a bit of a disappointment. Wish he played a bigger role.

The plot is just so simple and stupid and stupidly Batman-like. There's nothing that ever feels at stake because they ALWAYS come out on top. Then there's the incredible dialog. "Life is binary. Zeros and ones. Only one thing keeps a group together"

I dont know what the percentage is of men vs women seeing this movie, but F&F7 seems like they jacked up the female sexualization 600%. Not that I personally don't like it, just an observation. Though there was 1 line from the Rock that I thought was out of place. It was in the vein of "dont tell me what to do woman!"

Michelle Rodriguez looked gorgeous in this. She was always pretty, but always had a Tomboy thing going. New teeth help the matter.

Love Ronda Rousey, but she cannot act. Gina Carano really needed that role.

Yeh, the sendoff was really good.

[number8]

I posted the percentage on the first page.

[Dukefrukem]

I posted the percentage on the first page.

Oh yeh, 49%. Well then...

[Irish]

Agree with what everybody else said, except where you all went off on that weird tangent about Torque being satire. Because c'mon.

I liked this more or less but it's also exhausting. The whole movie is a series of loosely connected set pieces with no narrative rhythm. You could switch all the action around around and put each piece in a random order and it wouldn't make any difference, because every set piece is insane and over the top and has exactly the same energy level. And all of them feel like the finale of other, lesser action movies.

Entires 5, 6, and now 7 are beginning to blur together for me. I hazily remember this series' self contained mythology. What's interesting about Furious 7 is that it doesn't really give a shit. It sorta pulls a Wrath of Khan, in a sense, because there are a bunch of story elements which allude to previous events, but those allusions aren't ever explained and in the end it doesn't matter. This makes the movie accessible to anyone but it also gives all that mythology less narrative weight.

Yeah. They wasted Tony Jaa. I don't know why Hollywood hires top flight Asian actors and then give them the equivalent of walk on roles (see also: Jet Li in Lethal Weapon IV and The Expendables).

I would have paid $10 just to see The Rock fight Jason Statham. I mean, that scene alone. But yeah. Why hire actors with that much athleticism and then not take advantage of it? The only thing I can figure is that it comes down to production time and insurance premiums.

Statham was a great villain and I hope he does more of that. (Although, it would have been nice if they gave him more to do than occasionally pop out of the shadows and trade quips with one of the heroes. For that matter, it would have been nice if the characters had individual goals or the movie had any kind of story outside of "Kill Jason Statham before he kills you.")

The ending on the beach was graceful and gracious. It was just ... a decent thing to do. I didn't expect that.

I think I'm gonna tap out of the franchise now. The last three entries have their own little peculiar formula and I doubt 8 and 9 and 10 will stray from it. Besides, without Walker it just won't be the same.

[Skitch]

This was a Fast & Furious movie.

The most unbelievable thing in it is that any one of those characters could land a single punch on Tony Jaa.

[Scar]

Ugh. Too over the top. It was ridiculous in the wrong kind of way.

I would have ate this shit up in my 20's.

May need to go watch Fast and Furious 5 to cleanse my palette.

[Scar]

As much as I didn't care for the movie, that send off left me with a lump in my throat.

[Ezee E]

The whole Kurt Russell Secret Service company popping out of nowhere is the dumbest plot point for movies in years.

There's so many plot points that come out of nowhere that I can't appreciate any of the action here.

This is so bad. I can't believe this got good word of mouth and made so much money.

[TGM]

[transmogrifier]

The weakest of the last three. The parachuting cars and the trip through the high rises were the right kind of insane, but then they went and threw it all away with a completely dull, dim, boring gunfight battle at the end. After this and 6, I hope they give up this penchant for night battles to end these things.

[Dead & Messed Up]

I yayed this because I do not regret watching it, and probably because that classy ending left me with nostalgia and contentment... but this movie was all over the place and didn't really escalate the lunacy so much as fiddle with the volume. There were more groans and eye-rolls than cheers and giggles. And if Wan is so disinterested in establishing shots that he has to direct them all like cynical beer commercials, maybe he could just stop. Or at least be equal opportunity and throw in a few shots of men's asses so I don't feel like I'm trapped inside a frat boy's wet dream. (I mean, maybe I still would be, given the frat boy.)

[megladon8]

So the series isn't exactly where to go if you want realism, but Vin Diesel Dead lifting a car was where I fully checked out.

[Dukefrukem]

So the series isn't exactly where to go if you want realism, but Vin Diesel Dead lifting a car was where I fully checked out.

Just wait for 8.

[Skitch]

This series needs to crossover with xXx so we can have double Diesel.

[Spinal]

So the series isn't exactly where to go if you want realism, but Vin Diesel Dead lifting a car was where I fully checked out.

His character mysteriously gets super powers somewhere around the fifth film. It's one of the stranger aspects of the series.