Most Rewatchable Scene
Beach farewell ending; car drop and mountain bus sequence
In the discussion (34)
Approx. transcript time · 00:21:59Read transcript
- Four scenes are picked, with the other participant invited to add more afterward; the first is Statham versus the Rock in a dark, empty FBI office after Elena leaves.
- Elena is joked to be 15 or 16 months pregnant by the film's chronology without showing it.
- Statham at the Rock's computer, the "standing right in front of you" exchange, the Rock Bottom move, a grenade, and Hobbs and Elena falling five or six stories onto a car make a great four-minute scene.
- The reply agrees it is incredible but reads the Rock catching Elena and landing on a car as copying Dom catching Letty in Fast 6, a possible poke at Vin Diesel, likened to a 2015 Durant-Westbrook split.
- Statham is praised as one of the few believable opponents for the Rock and a genuinely good actor; the Rock is said to dial it up in this film, with a joke that producer Craig would ask for it turned down.
- Inventive camera angles make the fight look even despite the Rock's size advantage.
- In an aside on Dom's hospital visit to Hobbs, the hosts sense no warmth given the real-life tension, keep the scene for the information handoff, and wish writer Chris Morgan had leaned into alpha-dog tension.
- The second pick is the car drop, called one of the most absurd and phenomenal scenes in the franchise; the hosts riff on a name for the crew's hijack unit.
- The hosts report the drop as practical: a Lockheed C-130 Hercules dropped cars from 12,000 feet, cameras were mounted on the cars, skydivers filmed, 70% landed perfectly, and the landing shots used a pulley system and cranes removed with CGI.
- The reply had assumed all the stunts in the movie were real.
- After the drop come Tyrese struggling to land, Dom and Shaw driving off a cliff twice, and Brian jumping between cars at 80 miles an hour, even shoving Ramsey onto a car.
- Brian's bus fight, the bus dangling over the cliff, his run up the bus with Letty catching him, and Dom driving off the second cliff are called all-time in a theater, with three ridiculous moments listed.
- A correction: Brian's bus opponent is "Tony Jha" (as transcribed) from "Aung Bak" (as transcribed) and The Protector, not the guy from The Raid; the matchup is likened to Kobe and LeBron guarding each other in an All Star Game, and letting him survive reads as respect.
- A favorite franchise moment is Brian running up the falling bus and Letty's fishtailing catch followed by a deadpan "you good"; the speaker rewatches it once or twice a month with his youngest son, who screams at the TV.
- The Shaw-Rock fight is ranked the fourth-best fight in the franchise; each of the top four has Letty or the Rock in it.
- The bus run is said to have been done for real by a stuntman rather than Paul Walker, in an early sequence already filmed; the set piece runs 10 or 11 minutes.
- The God's Eye rationale is summarized in 12 seconds, followed by jokes that Shaw keeps showing up anyway and that Dom's crew does not kill people, as the speaker's son noticed.
- The third pick is the Abu Dhabi building-to-building jump; Ronda Rousey's casting at her "Mike Tyson stage" made a Letty fight feel like Tyson-Holyfield.
- Dom holding up a car with a strained face is compared to Stallone in Cliffhanger, and Shaw keeps showing up while they seek God's Eye to find him.
- The car jumping from one glass tower to another, Brian's expert roll out of the car, and Dom nearly going out the window are called harrowing and well shot; the picker calls it his runner-up favorite scene.
- The addition is the Letty-Rousey fight: after Letty's Fast 6 fights with Gina Carano, including a subway fight called the franchise's best fight, or else the Rock versus Vin Diesel in Fast 5, it delivered, capped by the 20-foot fall onto a piano and Rodriguez's winded face; this is also called a runner-up scene.
- Two dressed-up women fighting at an Oscars-like party is called a rare wrinkle that plays as a full-speed fight rather than a spectacle for men, like "Tony Jha" (as transcribed) versus Walker.
- The building jump is framed as the point after which nothing is too absurd for the franchise, leading to Fast 8 on the ice and the Rock redirecting a submarine missile.
- The first film is named a favorite; Fast 5 perfected the recipe of family and action, and Seven turned the volume up as high as possible without losing the emotional weight that Eight and Hobbs and Shaw lack.
- The last pick is the ending; after Letty revives Dom, the theater wonders how the Walker exit will be handled, and Ramsey's presence on the beach is questioned, with the reply that she was never noticed there.
- The shots of each character watching the beach, Vin Diesel's "it's never goodbye" and the song kicking in are described, and a Vin Diesel impression is praised as the best of about 200.
- The montage back to Fast 1, the two cars side by side, Walker's car turning toward the water, and the "For Paul" card are called masterful and perfect.
- The reply expected Brian to sacrifice himself; the chosen direction is called smart and beautiful and compared with the opening of Up for never losing its effect.
- Other movie tearjerkers such as The Champ, Terms of Endearment, Steel Magnolias and My Girl are dramas, never action movies, which makes this ending an undeniable level of genius.
- One participant says Jim Cunningham and others later made a goodbye-to-Grantland video using the song, showing it makes anything emotional.
- Dom's closing "quarter mile at a time" monologue is read aloud in the Dom voice and praised, with a note on how Dom clips the word brother.
- The ending is named the pick for most rewatchable scene of this movie, of any Fast movie, and one of the most rewatchable action scenes of all time.
- The reply agrees these are the four main scenes but finds the ending too draining to pick, choosing the drop onto the mountain with Brian running up the bus and Letty saving him.
- That choice includes the preceding Tyrese leadership bit and Ramsey profiling the crew, ending with Tyrese's "double alpha man candy" reply; Tyrese is credited with more laughs than anyone in the franchise and the scene is said to represent all of Fast and Furious at once.
