"Fast and Furious 6" spoiler talk.
Moving this conversation from Tumblr to DW so people who want to avoid spoilers can.
This is the AICN post containing an unverified spoiler about Fast 6/Fast 7 and the death of a major character. I emphasise that this has not been confirmed (or denied, so far as I can tell) by the studio or anyone connected to the production.
DISCUSSION AND SPOILERS FOLLOWS. DO NOT CONTINUE IF YOU DO NOT WANT TO BE SPOILED/HAVE NOT READ THE AICN POST.
Okay, so the skinny is that, according to the poster, during the course of Fast 6, Dom's crew wind up killing Owen Shaw (baddie played by Luke Evans), and subsequently pissing off Shaw's brother Ian, played by Jason Statham. The final scene of Fast 6 - which will possibly be an after-credit scene, like the reveal of Letty being alive at the end of Fast Five - retcons Han's final race in Tokyo Drift: everything pretty much happens as we saw it in that movie, except that a cameo from Statham will show that Ian Shaw was behind the wheel of the unidentified vehicle that crashed into Han's car in an intersection, and caused it to flip over and subsequently explode, killing Han. Ian then rings Dom on a mobile phone, telling him what he's just done, thus setting up Dom's arrival in Tokyo at the end of Tokyo Drift, putting Ian in place to be the villain of Fast and Furious 7. /end spoiler
CUE SCREAMING AND MASSIVE HAND-WRINGING
SO, ON THE ONE HAND, I love Han - variously called "Han Lue" and "Han Seoul-oh" (say it out loud) in cast info. He's the main reason that I've stuck with this film franchise over the years (the second and third reasons would be Vin Diesel and director Justin Lin). I love his cooler-than-thou unflappability, his dry humour, his nihilistic philosophising in Tokyo Drift. I LOVE what he's got going on with the equally badass Gisele Harabo. I love that he is an Asian American character who steals every scene he's in, is uber-competent and reliable, and gets the girl.
I was never okay with the fact that Han died. I mean, characters do die in the FATF movies, but usually secondary members of the gang. Han's death in Tokyo Drift is more like the (apparent) death of Letty in Fast and Furious. We've spent time with him, gotten to know him, and it fucking HURTS. Not the secondhand pain of knowing that this hurts Dom or Mia; the pain of Letty and Han's deaths is direct and to the gut, Han's especially because we kind of know that his own reckless actions brought it about, and there is some horrible poetry to a mentor's death. (It reminds me a bit of Django Unlimited Unchained now, come to think of it.)
I am not okay with this spoiler because I want Han to keep being in the FATF movies, and for Tokyo Drift to remain in its own bleak and strange parallel universe. And because I don't like the implications of Fast 6 being followed directly by Tokyo Drift: in which, remember, Han is still in exile (so much for those full pardon's Agent Hobbs promised), and there is no sign of Gisele or any of Han's friends anywhere.
BUT ON THE OTHER HAND, though... while I wish they would just ignore what happened in Tokyo Drift and let Han live forever, If they are going to bring Tokyo into the main canon and join the story arcs, I'm glad that they did it in a way that gave more meaning to Han's unnecessary death. It would mean that Han was probably not unreasonable to think that he could outrace DK, and had it not been for Ian's actions he might have gotten away. And it gives new meaning to Dom's arrival at the end of Tokyo Drift, because Han's friends haven't abandoned him, and Ian Shaw is going to pay for what he did.
There's one other reason why I am not completely negative about this: Neela, played by Nathalie Kelley, who was my second favourite character from Tokyo Drift. I was actually thinking about this the other day, before I read the spoiler, about how it might be possible to bring Neela - and Neela alone, not Neela-and-Sean - into the gang without acknowledging the events of that movie (and Han's death). There no way to know yet if Neela or Sean are going to be in Fast and Furious 7, but I suppose it's possible now, so I shall keep my fingers crossed.
This entry was originally posted at http://the-grynne.dreamwidth.org/979963.html and has
comments.
This is the AICN post containing an unverified spoiler about Fast 6/Fast 7 and the death of a major character. I emphasise that this has not been confirmed (or denied, so far as I can tell) by the studio or anyone connected to the production.
DISCUSSION AND SPOILERS FOLLOWS. DO NOT CONTINUE IF YOU DO NOT WANT TO BE SPOILED/HAVE NOT READ THE AICN POST.
Okay, so the skinny is that, according to the poster, during the course of Fast 6, Dom's crew wind up killing Owen Shaw (baddie played by Luke Evans), and subsequently pissing off Shaw's brother Ian, played by Jason Statham. The final scene of Fast 6 - which will possibly be an after-credit scene, like the reveal of Letty being alive at the end of Fast Five - retcons Han's final race in Tokyo Drift: everything pretty much happens as we saw it in that movie, except that a cameo from Statham will show that Ian Shaw was behind the wheel of the unidentified vehicle that crashed into Han's car in an intersection, and caused it to flip over and subsequently explode, killing Han. Ian then rings Dom on a mobile phone, telling him what he's just done, thus setting up Dom's arrival in Tokyo at the end of Tokyo Drift, putting Ian in place to be the villain of Fast and Furious 7. /end spoiler
CUE SCREAMING AND MASSIVE HAND-WRINGING
SO, ON THE ONE HAND, I love Han - variously called "Han Lue" and "Han Seoul-oh" (say it out loud) in cast info. He's the main reason that I've stuck with this film franchise over the years (the second and third reasons would be Vin Diesel and director Justin Lin). I love his cooler-than-thou unflappability, his dry humour, his nihilistic philosophising in Tokyo Drift. I LOVE what he's got going on with the equally badass Gisele Harabo. I love that he is an Asian American character who steals every scene he's in, is uber-competent and reliable, and gets the girl.
I was never okay with the fact that Han died. I mean, characters do die in the FATF movies, but usually secondary members of the gang. Han's death in Tokyo Drift is more like the (apparent) death of Letty in Fast and Furious. We've spent time with him, gotten to know him, and it fucking HURTS. Not the secondhand pain of knowing that this hurts Dom or Mia; the pain of Letty and Han's deaths is direct and to the gut, Han's especially because we kind of know that his own reckless actions brought it about, and there is some horrible poetry to a mentor's death. (It reminds me a bit of Django Unlimited Unchained now, come to think of it.)
I am not okay with this spoiler because I want Han to keep being in the FATF movies, and for Tokyo Drift to remain in its own bleak and strange parallel universe. And because I don't like the implications of Fast 6 being followed directly by Tokyo Drift: in which, remember, Han is still in exile (so much for those full pardon's Agent Hobbs promised), and there is no sign of Gisele or any of Han's friends anywhere.
BUT ON THE OTHER HAND, though... while I wish they would just ignore what happened in Tokyo Drift and let Han live forever, If they are going to bring Tokyo into the main canon and join the story arcs, I'm glad that they did it in a way that gave more meaning to Han's unnecessary death. It would mean that Han was probably not unreasonable to think that he could outrace DK, and had it not been for Ian's actions he might have gotten away. And it gives new meaning to Dom's arrival at the end of Tokyo Drift, because Han's friends haven't abandoned him, and Ian Shaw is going to pay for what he did.
There's one other reason why I am not completely negative about this: Neela, played by Nathalie Kelley, who was my second favourite character from Tokyo Drift. I was actually thinking about this the other day, before I read the spoiler, about how it might be possible to bring Neela - and Neela alone, not Neela-and-Sean - into the gang without acknowledging the events of that movie (and Han's death). There no way to know yet if Neela or Sean are going to be in Fast and Furious 7, but I suppose it's possible now, so I shall keep my fingers crossed.
This entry was originally posted at http://the-grynne.dreamwidth.org/979963.html and has
comments.