Fast Month - The Fate of the Furious

F8? Fate? Pun title. Man, this franchise is old.

We arrive at what’s currently the final movie in this franchise, the Fate of the Furious. Released in 2017, the movie was successful, though not as successful as 7. You could that down to the publicity boost the last movie got from the death of Paul Walker, Universal was not expecting to replicate its success, though it still broke the $1bn mark, not bad for a franchise that barely broke even when it started.

It did dip slightly critically though, dropping to a 66% rotten tomatoes rating with an average 6.1/10 and 6.7/10 on IMDb.

So, is it worth the hype, here are my thoughts.

Fast Month - Furious 7

Well, this is movie where this Franchise entered the big leagues, this movie made over $1bn at the world-wide box office, and got critical acclaim of 80% on Rotten Tomatoes, with an average of 6.7/10, the highest the series has ever gotten and a decent 7.2/10 on IMDb, only slightly below 5.

Compounding everything is the unfortunate death of Paul Walker. He died (rather ironically) in a car crash. Most of the filming had been completed, all they did is re-do the ending, with digital effects houses super-imposing Walker’s face over the body of one of his brothers. We’ll talk about how they ended it later. But here are my thoughts on how the movie stands as a whole.

Netflix Retrospective: Voltron: Legendary Defender Season 1 episodes 2-4

Fast Month - Fast and Furious 6

Fast and Furious 6 showed the success of Fast 5 was not an accident, making $788m at the box office, with a budget of $160m; it wasn’t quite as big a critical hit, though it still holds a respectable 69% on Rotten Tomatoes, with an average 6.2/10 with an IMDb rating of 7.1. But is it on the right path, or were the peaks reached in the last movie? Let’s take a look

Fast Month - Fast Five

We're through the preliminary stages here, this is where this franchise began to make the big bucks. The budget was increased to $125m but the sweet reward was earning over $600m at the box office, and this wouldn’t be the heights of this franchise’s success. And it’s the first to gain a more positive critical buzz with a 77% rating on Rotten Tomatoes (average 6.4/10) and a 7.3 rating on IMDb. What caused this sudden turnaround, let’s take a closer look.

Netflix Retrospective: Voltron: Legendary Defender Season 1 episode 1 - The Rise of Voltron

It’s time to look at a series that doesn’t have hour long episodes and isn’t live action. Yes, this is partly an excuse to narrow my workload as it’s become a little overbearing recently, don’t worry, the long ones will be back. This is Voltron: Legendary Defender

Voltron was a series released back in the 90s, it took a Power Rangers-esque style with animation, intercutting a Japanese series with their own animation to cut back on animation costs. There were a few iterations but the most popular featured 5 lions against a villain Named King Zarkon, this is a reboot of that concept and thus far has spanned 6 seasons. Because of the newly introduced year cut-off date for now I’ll be covering up to season 4, with a gap for the summer hiatus and I break in October whilst I try an Halloween theme.

Fast Month - Fast and Furious

How do you return your franchise to its roots? Apparently, you take the ‘thes’ out of your title. This is Fast Month

Vin Diesel and David Walker are back, and that’s all anyone will really care about. This movie had a budget of $85m, much like the last one, but was much more popular, making $363m, the next movie would go onto making nearly double that but back to business

Critically, this movie struggled to find its footing, a mere 29% rating on Rotten Tomatoes with an average 4.6/10, it was hardly picking up the slack from the previous movies. But it’s been a while now, how does it hold up?

Fast Month - The Fast and the Furious: Tokyo Drift

The Fast and the Furious franchise nearly died here. This movie failed critically and at the box office. It made $158.5m on an $85m budget, would’ve needed to have made about $200m to be profitable. I guess the success of the other 2 was enough to convince Universal to try again with 4, but it could well have died here.

So, what the hell happened here? Let’s take a look.

Netflix Retrospective: Iron Fist Season 1 episodes 11-13 - Lead Horse Back to Stable/Bar the Big Boss/Dragon Plays with Fire

Alright, let’s finish this

Fast Month - 2 Fast 2 Furious

Well, the first movie was a hit, so a sequel was inevitable, and because they love puns, 2 Fast 2 Furious, this is Fast Month

There is technically a short film between the events of the first and second movies. It’s entirely skippable so we’ll be skipping over it. 2 Fast 2 Furious was released in 2003, and is the only movie in the Franchise not to star Vin Diesel, he was busy working on xXx, which sounds like a low-rent porno. I’ve never actually seen xXx. Also, the Chronicals of Riddick, which lost money at the box office so… great choice there.

The budget was increased, this time at around $76m, the box office was also increased, but only to $236m, far from the juggernaut it would become later on. The sequel was not critically acclaimed with a 37% rating on Rotten Tomatoes with an average 4.7/10 and 5.9 on IMDb, with 2 razzie nominations for worst remake/sequel and worst excuse for a movie (all concept/no content). But here are my thoughts.

Fast Month - The Fast and the Furious

It’s time to go full Throttle: It’s Fast Month

A Franchise that grew from humble beginnings to a multi-million-dollar behemoth, the Fast and Furious certainly managed to hit the right balance to remain profitable, despite reception of the movies themselves not always being great. Throughout the month of June, I’ll be looking at the 8 current instalments of the franchise and giving my brief thoughts on all of them.

Just a heads up (sponsored by Coca Cola, though not really), Paul Walker may be mentioned in these reviews, not always in a positive light, if that makes you uncomfortable, check out my Iron Fist retrospectives or something, he plays a lead character, I can’t exactly shy away from it. (This was sponsored by Coca Cola, though not really - if you don't get the joke, watch the stupid as f*ck safety warning at the beginning)

With that said, let’s start at the beginning with The Fast and the Furious. Made on a modest budget of $37m, it made $207m at the box office. Not bad for a film about street racing, but modest compared to what this franchise would later earn. It had a mixed reception critically, with a 53% rating on Rotten Tomatoes with an average score of 5.4/10 and a 6.7/10 IMDb rating. But here are my thoughts.

Netflix Retrospective: Iron Fist episodes 9-10 - The Mistress of All Agonies/Black Tiger Steals Heart

4 issue test #45 - Sideways

It’s been a nice few years of reviewing comics, but I’m bringing the 4 issue test to a close. There are 2 reasons behind this. The first is because they have be done much later than my usual reviews, which are usually done 2 months in advance, and I like to at least try and have a 4 issue test out before the 5^th issue comes out. Doesn’t always work, but that’s my intention

The second reason is constant reboots. And I’m particularly aiming my gun at Marvel here, if you’re gonna keep rebooting your titles every year, what’s the point in me even reading them. I’ve basically dropped my Marvel titles to Ms Marvel and Star Wars related stuff. Although a lot of that is down to titles I was enjoying coming to an end, with no other writer taking over for some reason.

Speaking of writer’s taking over, word to DC and Marvel. A new creative team is not enough to justify relaunching the entire title. We don’t need a Superman #1 just because Bendis is involved, especially if essentially it’s just continuing where it was left off. At least when Darth Vader relaunched, it decided to take place in an entirely different period of his history. But rant over, how are we gonna end this, on a brand-new DC Character: Sideways

The event Dark Knights: Metal is a decent one, it brought Martian Manhunter back into the fray after a long absence, delved into the Hawkman/Hawkgirl mystery and more importantly was a decent story in its own right, although it had far too many one-shots and tie-ins. No Justice #1, which followed immediately after was also a good read. But before we got that, we got ‘The New Age of Heroes’ a line of new characters who had origins linking to the event, there were about 8 titles, and I’ve heard good things about some of them, but the one that intrigued me was Sideways.

As plotters we have Kenneth Rocafort and Dan Didio. I’ll leave off criticising Didio, but he was involved in a lot of poor creative decisions during the New52 and even before then. You might remember Kenneth Rocafort, he was an artist during the second Teen Titans run in the New 52, at least the issues I reviewed. That wasn’t well written, but I was OK with the art. Helping Didio out with Dialogue is Justin Jordan, I have next to nothing I can say about him since I haven’t read any of his work.

Rocafort also handles the artwork, with colouring by Daniel Brown. Don’t have much to say about him either, since I haven’t read his work, but he was also on later issue of that Teen Titans volume I reviewed. So, let’s just take a look