A.J. and Grace’s permanent bond, Rockhound’s near future, the crew’s promised rewards, Harry’s legacy and backlash, Bay directing Fast and Furious, and cinema’s longest time jump
A.J. can never break up with Grace after Harry’s sacrifice without destroying the moral premise of their relationship. — Bill Simmons
Rockhound’s hero fame, loan shark, criminal exposure, and destructive appetite suggest he may survive only six to twelve months.
Bear’s Lincoln-bedroom request may need to happen before the presidency changes. — Bill Simmons
Harry initially receives a rig, statue, and possible holiday before a later environmental and workplace-behavior reassessment dismantles the hagiography.
Bay directing Fast and Furious is rejected as too bombastic and likely to create immediate conflict with Vin Diesel; Justin Lin is defended as the franchise’s center.
The opening 65-million-year cut from dinosaur extinction to the present is proposed as perhaps cinema’s longest temporal jump.
The first trailer premiered on Vin Diesel's Facebook page in December 2010; Puerto Rico's tax incentives moved the shoot from Rio; a 420-foot cable camera rig shot the rooftop chase; the vault was real with a truck hidden inside and destroyed over 200 vehicles; Tyrese commuted to Transformers; the train stunts were real and nearly derailed the train; Giselle's name is never spoken; Michelle Rodriguez learned of her twist return in the theater
The first trailer was released on Diesel's Facebook page in December 2010, believed to be the first use of that marketing approach; he had 20 million subscribers, the rest of the cast followed on their own pages, and the groundswell laid the groundwork for how movies would be marketed this decade.
The production intended to film in Rio de Janeiro, but Puerto Rico offered nearly $11 million in tax incentives so most of it was shot there; asked what a tax incentive means, the explanation that it saves money in the budget begins with 'I think basically', which signals not knowing; the production contributed $27 million to Puerto Rico.
The rooftop chase across the favelas was filmed in Puerto Rico with a 420-foot cable camera rig for a bird's-eye view plus cameras on cranes on roofs and alleyways, a scene worth a documentary; the bank vault chase used camera cars including crane-mounted cameras on a Porsche Cayenne and a Subaru Impreza with a steel cage, and the Subaru's driver occasionally collided with the vault, which is why there are sparks.
A revelation: the bank vault had a truck inside it, a real vault plus a mock-up fitted around a truck that was driven inside to give the illusion the cars were pulling it; six versions of the eight-foot vault were built and over 200 vehicles were destroyed by it.
Tyrese was committed to Transformers Dark of the Moon, so he flew between Puerto Rico and Atlanta to do both films at once, the Deion Sanders of our lifetime; the brawl between The Rock and Dom took several weeks of rehearsal and more than a week of filming, with minor injuries to the actors and stunt doubles.
Tyrese gets a bad rap in these movies but is loved and called perfect; the people who knock him can go fuck right off.
Justin Lin had the cars really jump out of the train at full speed, a 1972 Di Tommaso Pantera (as transcribed), a 2007 Chevrolet Corvette GS Roadster and a Ford GT40 replica rather than a genuine one costing millions; the flatbed truck slamming into the moving train was real, not CGI, and the collision nearly derailed the train.
The reaction is to find Justin Lin's birthday and pray toward whatever city he lives in; he is back for Fast 9, and learning that what seemed like CGI was done for real, Mad Max style, is called unreal.
Gal Gadot's character's name Giselle is never said in the film, though maybe it was in Fast 4; in an interview while filming Fast 6, Michelle Rodriguez revealed she did not know about the twist ending with her in it until she saw herself in the theater; as Letty she is responsible for two of the six best fights and the three best driving stunts in the franchise, and bringing her back may prove more powerful long-term than adding The Rock.
According to Vin Diesel, the role of Hobbs was originally developed for Tommy Lee Jones; on his Facebook page Diesel saw a fan who wanted him and The Rock in a film together, and he and Justin Lin redesigned the role for The Rock.
Picking a most rewatchable scene from this movie is hard; the opener, where the gang frees Dom from the prison bus, is nominated first as a great scene.
Because nitpicks and unanswerable questions are inherent in these scenes, the hosts jump the gun: prisoner transports in action movies always run down an empty highway with no police protection and no explanation, the bus driver alone with forty felons and one guard must be asking the same questions, and a prisoner seeing that empty highway would start to feel he might get out.
The 'all accounted for except for one' beat is loved every time, compared to Michael Myers getting out in Halloween; the TV reporter announcing no fatalities after the bus flipped some 85 times drew laughter in the theater, since handcuffed prisoners without seatbelts would have gone through a window, so throw in two fatalities.
The physics of the car angling into the bus to tip it is a crazy plan that shows how 'precisive' (as transcribed) the drivers are; a controversial take follows, being upset they broke Dom out of prison and wanting a year or two of a Dom in prison movie, and the other agrees the film could have opened with Dom in a prison fight and being moved for his own safety.
For the train heist the hosts first note Vince from Fast One, underrated and given a raw deal as the semi bad guy who was right about Paul Walker being undercover FBI; he is living in the favelas in Brazil when Paul Walker and Jordana Brewster arrive on the run with a job getting cars off a train, one of the craziest four-minute scenes of all time.
Justin Lin wanted as little CGI as possible, so the cars jumping off the train were real stunt drivers; the fight on the train gets agents shot, Brian jumps onto Dom's car and they drive off a mountain, a drop called 350 feet easy; picking nits, they should have exploded on hitting the water, which at that height is like concrete, and the car already in the water is a factor.
The first two picks being the first two scenes shows how incredible the movie is; the slow-motion shot of the car falling away from Brian took one host's breath away, and popping out of the water unwinded is the film telling the audience the series will get more and more ridiculous, so come along; a correction that the agents were DEA, not FBI.
The favela rooftop chase was complicated to film in Puerto Rico rather than Brazil because real people live there; Rock and Vin Diesel finally lock eyes, Dom runs into Elena and she falls for him, as everyone who tries to arrest Dom does, Brian and eventually even the Rock included; Paul Walker and Brewster jump and fall through a house and nobody with a gun shoots, so impressed by the jump.
The balcony barbecue scene after Brian's girlfriend's pregnancy is one host's personal favorite because the writers clearly needed a Vin Diesel monologue at the 45-minute mark and Paul Walker's 'what do you remember about your father' comes out of nowhere; the other is mad at the laughing, defends the question as coming from a man whose own dad wasn't around, and calls it his favorite scene, the same fight they had on the Fast and the Furious episode.
Vin Diesel is called a phenomenal actor in these serious moments, probably talking about his real dad; the other's reason the screenwriters wanted the scene is how Diesel pronounces the word father, as if drunk, which earns a rebuke for making jokes again; they love the scene for slightly different reasons but just the same, and the series always works in a serious Vin Diesel scene whether it makes sense or not.
At the warehouse the team invited to rob the drug dealer gets along, the opposite of the 2019 Celtics, with Vin watching like a proud dad before saying 'toast' as a sentence and giving the money-will-come-and-go speech ending 'salute me familiar' (as transcribed); this cements the family theme, of which the first film had only traces in the quarter-mile speech and the Jesse moment.
Dom fights Hobbs is held for later; the Ambush is underrated and exciting even though Hobbs loses every man he has, a tough work trip for The Rock; the bank vault heist through the streets of Brazil and the ending where they open the safe as the song plays complete the nominees.
Asked for a pick, one host votes for the get-the-team-together montage, the kind of under-two-minute scene to pull up on YouTube, and for a longer one the favela chase, the first time the crew is caught between Agent Hobbs and Hernan Reyes, where Hobbs's team mows everyone down in a flat-out bunch of murder the series had never shown, making the stakes feel real; 'that's my vote'.
Thinking of most rewatchable as flicking channels two minutes before the scene arrives, the other might be with him on the favela chase, a great four minutes, even over the Rock fight; the other choice is the bank vault scene, an all-time 'how are they doing that' with no visible CGI; a son skipped Fortnite to lie back down for the Rock fight; in the end there is no right answer, two guys fighting or Brazilian property destroyed depending on mood, and everybody wins.
