It wouldn’t be a Super Bowl without an outlandish trailer for a newFast & Furiousmovie. Universal Pictures unveiled a new look atThe Fate of the Furiousduring Super Bowl LI, offering another preview of directorF. Gary Gray’s (Straight Outta Compton,The Italian Job) take on the franchise. This eighth installment in the long-running series findsVin Diesel’s Dom playing turncoat, as he teams up with a villainous character played byCharlize Theronto sabotage his old crew and turn his back on #family.
This is a franchise that I was initially completely ambivalent to that, incrementally, made me a bit of a fan.James Wanmade something close to a new action classic withFurious 7, and, excluding the second and third films, the past volumes of this franchise have been good popcorn fodder. The sentimentality has always been a bit much but it felt increasingly justified, especially inFurious 7. At this point in the series, the cast and the characters, as eye-rollingly thin and obvious as they can be at times, have a worn-in feeling to their exchanges and more importantly, their actions.
The Fate of the Furiouslooks to be similarly kinetic and entertaining, and Gary Gray has certainly proven himself to be an able handler of big blockbuster entertainments. It will be very interesting to see how his thrilling work on the quite goodStraight Outta Comptonwill inform his handling of a far more (sorry) explosive material. Charlize Theron looks to be digging into her villainous role and I might have yelped loudly in my own empty house when that submarine scene played out. If one can check one’s logic at the door, it’s hard not to be impressed by these movies, despite their inherent, well, dumbness. It’s becoming easier to look forward to them as much needed injections of joyful nonsense.
Watch theThe Fate of the FuriousSuper Bowl commercial below. The film also starsDwayne Johnson,Jason Statham,Michelle Rodriguez,Tyrese Gibson,Chris “Ludacris” Bridges,Helen Mirren,Nathalie Emmanuel,Elsa Ptaky,Scott Eastwood, andKurt Russell.The Fate of the Furiousopens in theaters on April 14th.
Here’s the official synopsis forThe Fate of the Furious:
Now that Dom and Letty are on their honeymoon and Brian and Mia have retired from the game—and the rest of the crew has been exonerated—the globetrotting team has found a semblance of a normal life. But when a mysterious woman (Oscar®winner Charlize Theron) seduces Dom into the world of crime he can’t seem to escape and a betrayal of those closest to him, they will face trials that will test them as never before.
From the shores of Cuba and the streets of New York City to the icy plains off the arctic Barents Sea, our elite force will crisscross the globe to stop an anarchist from unleashing chaos on the world’s stage…and to bring home the man who made them a family.
