RichC2

Diesel is more or less in charge of this franchise. He's credited with it surviving straight-to-video hell after Tokyo Drift and has more or less been the main producer on the franchise since then (they gave him the keys starting with Fast & Furious). I doubt he'd cut himself out of the starring role while working in the background, and he's already a set producer on 8 and 9. I can see him handing it over after that, as he'll be into his 50s and "change gears" like most people that hit 50 for some reason or another.

HN

with F7 potentially being Universal's first billion dollar movie, aint no one walking away; hell, past players are even rumored to be coming back!

RichC2

I always feel like the comebacks are Diesel's way of saying "Hey, this shit is popular now! Come have a paycheck and hang out!" Or in this case, the token white guy will turn into Ryan Gosling.

nando820

<iframe width="560" height="315" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/95wETGmPlac" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen></iframe>

that's the other thing that kinda bother me, they spend most of the movie trying to get this device that will allow them to track down Statham. But he basically shows up everywhere they go so why not just ambush him next time he crashes the party....

TheMovieman

Well, there are other plot holes. Why did the billionaire prince needed that flash drive in first place. It's all to get to the next action set piece.

Draven

Wasn't he using it to supercharge his car? God's Eye was just hidden on the drive.

TheMovieman

Was that the reason? I just figured they did it just to have an excuse to jump the car through two buildings...

fumanstan

Yeah, the billionaire needed it as part of the car. How the addition of a thumb drive can supercharge his car, I have no idea...

Michael Corvin

Wasn't the jump drive simply hidden in the hard drive casing? That's how I took it. What the hard drive did for the car was independent of the jump drive.

bluetoast

A lot of thoughts after just getting back from it:

Thought it was pretty random/hilarious that Statham's character did all that shit, but his brother was still fucking alive. Like...dude, he's possibly going to recover? Just chill and buy him a stuffed Snoopy.

And I'd bet that if they didn't do the 'separate ways' ending, Kurt Russell would have brought over a keg of Belgian Ale and Dom would be imbibing.

Sucks for the guy hosting the party, his place gets shot up and he loses his car. He wasn't even involved in any of their shit, he just happened to buy that chip from Ramsey's moron friend. They should have been more pissed at him. Cool to see the gang all dressed up though.

The ending was very well done, but on the other hand, the last few movies, Mia was pretty much like "Someone's trying to kill us? Okay, go with Dom, you guys need each other." Even Brian's part in the plan to get Ramsey out was the most risky: "Bri, you're father to my nephew and husband to my sister. Now, I want you to be unarmed, get on top of your own car, so Ludakris can bump it and you jump into the back of the bus that has an unknown number of armed men inside." As such, obviously he still would have continued with dangerous shit even if he has another kid on the way.

Ludakris whooping ass was a bit ridiculous. I don't have a problem with Dom "stomping" the ground, a fucking missile just shot into it. It's not like he actually caused it to break. Although last movie, a 70 ton tank was stopped by a car dangling over a bridge, so you never know.

And even though the group felt smaller due to lack of Han and Gisele/minimal presence of Hobbs (and in the future, Brian and Mia), I'm iffy on Ramsey joining "the family." She's really not part of their scene. They can't adopt everybody whose ass they save.

Having just seen Tokyo Drift and Part 4 for the first time this weekend (and Los Bandoleros), I was hoping for more of a role for Lucas Black, but do realize his character is still in High School, so that's fine. But he's probably "family" now, so hopefully he can show up next time.

The Cow

Yeah, I thought that was just where she hid it.

fumanstan

For some reason I assumed it was her code hidden on the same drive, but even then I'm not sure what kind of program on any drive is the missing piece to upgrading a car like that. That was the point moreso that didn't make sense to me, not where it was hidden.

bluetoast

And on another note, I'm surprised as hell that the studio even allowed a "normal" race to occur in the movie considering how far the movies are from those early days.

Last movie Dom participated against Letty but that also led into a moment with her and a Shaw confrontation. This time, it was just for fun, which was cool.

hanshotfirst1138

I think they try to have a little race at least once in the movies just as a little sop to longtime fans. There was a lot of talk about how it moved to being a different kind of thing after 4, but really, while the direction is definitely different, the whole things still revolves around fast cars. I'm amazed that it managed to survive becoming DTV fare after TD, to be honest.

bluetoast

Man, yeah after seeing TD for the first time on Saturday, it's pretty good. I liked it better than F&F. But the latter movie had one of Dom's best lines: "Are you the boss? Or am I talking to the boss?"

Also, it's been a while since I saw 2 Fast 2 Furious, but Roman has changed a bit since then, from what I remember. He's still great though.

RichC2

Yeah, this was probably posted here earlier but:

How Vin Diesel helped save the 'Fast and Furious' franchise from going straight to video

jdslater1

Enjoyed the hell outta this. Not great fan of the ending. The CG helicopter is so clearly CG it takes you away from the effort they make with all the practical work they do.

I read that someone tweeted that he was annoyed with the CG PW sitting in the car at the end.
He wasn't supposed to die in real life and therefor that scene wouldn't exist you twat!

Also, that opening was the dumbest/stupidest/coolest scene i've seen for some time.

Also Also, I kept staring at Kurt Russells neck. It was addictive.

Daytripper

Wow, 800M so far worldwide. Wasn't this released at the same time every where on 4/3? With other territories to follow soon? I just wasn't sure if it was release outside of the U.S. before that date. That's pretty amazing for just 10 days (11 counting Thursday evening 4/2).

http://www.boxofficemojo.com/movies/?id=fast7.htm

clemente

For further consideration, in 10 days Furious 7 has made as much as 6 did in its entire theatrical run. That's just insane, the metrics of what this franchise is capable of are pretty much being rewritten every day.

Obi-Wanma

The only way the next entry exceeds this is if Vin dies in the middle of making it. If you don't think that has anything to do with the record BO, you're fooling yourself.

hanshotfirst1138

As with The Dark Knight, the death during film is a HUGE point of interest to audiences, and is a major boon to box office. It's foolish to think otherwise.

robin2099

But the movie also has to be good. Death can help the box office but it won't matter if the audiences don't like the movie. It also helps that they have such an international cast in these movies also.

fumanstan

I don't think death is that automatic; along the lines that robin2099 is saying, it also helps immensely that we're talking about a franchise who's last two movies were also huge hits and already had been developing the hype among fans and had brought in new ones. If happened during part 4, I don't think you'd see anywhere close to the box office results just because of Walker's death who to be honest, wasn't exactly a big star for a franchise that wasn't as popular at the time.

Not saying it doesn't build interest, but obviously both Dark Knight and Furious 7 had a LOT of other things going for them at the time.

Michael Corvin

Death isn't the defining draw but it helps. There's no way 8 comes close to the box office of this one.

Solid Snake

I was looking at what pull TDK and TDKR had. To see what the difference was with a death and without, if it mattered. TDKR actually had a bit more than TDK. TDKR had $1.084 billion. TDK had $1.005 billion.

I'm still not sure if TDK had that much pull cuz of Ledger's death or not. It's the Joker, viral marketing was getting so much attention from people too, etc.