With the previous chapter having delivered such a fitting sendoff to the late Paul Walker that audiences were left bawling their eyes out in theaters across the world, The Fate of the Furious faced a tough task in carrying on the franchise’s legacy.
Not only did Dominic Toretto and the family have to carry on without one of their most important members and shining lights, but James Wan’s gloriously unhinged Furious 7 had become one of the highest-grossing movies in the history of cinema after netting upwards of $1.5 billion at the box office, while also scoring some of The Fast Saga‘s finest reviews.
Fate was never going to hit those heights, so the decision was instead made to throw caution to the wind and have the action sequences jump clear over the shark in a blaze of pyrotechnic overindulgence. If it wasn’t clear before the eighth installment, then afterwards there was no doubt; Fast & Furious had officially entered the superhero genre.
Not that it wasn’t a fun ride, but the increasingly loose grip on reality has now pigeonholed the series into an unwinnable situation where it needs to continually top itself, and it’s not a coincidence that the increased focus on the far-flung and utterly ridiculous has coincided with a noticeable dip in acclaim across its most recent two chapters.
It’s still hellaciously unhinged entertainment, though, something subscribers to multiple streaming services have discovered all over again after FlixPatrol revealed The Fate of the Furious to have cracked the worldwide watch-lists on iTunes, Sky Showtime, and ViaPlay all in one physics, gravity, and logic-defying swoop.