The global appeal of Fast and Furious is clear, its fandom less vocal but as ever-present as those who follow the Marvel Cinematic Universe, its every car-focused action spectacular being a guaranteed profit-maker for studio Universal, with its contents becoming ever more wacky and over-the-top with each instalment.

The Fast and Furious franchise is a go-to for avid movie watchers and casual cinema goers alike given its mix of simple but enthralling action and ever-building mythology. With its diverse cast now more stacked than ever, we at The Film Magazine are taking a deeper look at one of the world’s most successful ever movie series. That’s why, in this edition of Ranked, we’re ranking all every Fast and Furious movie from worst to best.

Follow @thefilmagazine on Twitter.

11. 2 Fast 2 Furious (2003)

It’s easy to forget how fragile and niche of a project Fast and Furious once was. Back in 2003, the Furious films were no more than relatively low budget car movies aimed at teen boys.

With Vin Diesel moved on to pastures new, Universal seemed to double down on this fact, hiring rappers turned franchise stalwarts Tyrese Gibson and Ludacris to fill Diesel’s gap with their own brand of early 2000s cool.

As is the case with many second movies, this Furious film tried to capture lightning in a bottle all over again, sending Paul Walker’s Brian O’Conner on another path from do-good undercover cop to bad-boy street racer. The twist this time was that the gangsters and menial criminals he surrounded himself with were ultimately willing to help the “good guys”, twisting the narrative of Brian overlooking his duty to support Dom (the man he was investigating) in the first film.

2 Fast 2 Furious in many ways felt like the commodified version of The Fast and the Furious that Universal would have released if that film wasn’t made for so cheap and with such low expectation. It was more glamorous, with the colours, the cars and the cast being suped up just as you’d expect one of O’Conner’s Japanese street racing cars to be – it looked and felt well made, but that only seemed to distance it from its roots even further.

2 Fast 2 Furious was fun, sure, but overall it lacked the draw of Vin Diesel’s charisma and felt too disconnected from what had come before it, isolating it as the most disappointing and least rewatchable Fast and Furious movie to date.

10. The Fast and the Furious: Tokyo Drift (2006)

Back in 2006, the Fast and Furious franchise was on its knees, so Universal sent it to Tokyo in an attempt to reach out in a different direction and hit new audiences. This meant that The Fast and the Furious: Tokyo Drift would be the first film in the franchise without leading star Paul Walker, and as little of Vin Diesel as humanly possible, the result being something of a disconnect for core audiences and one of the franchise’s few outliers in terms of universe building.

The years have been kind to Tokyo Drift however, Fast Five working to establish its place in the universe as more than just a failed spin-off and the creative talents of director Justin Lin put to better work on four sequels. For audiences just catching up with the franchise, Tokyo Drift seems like the normal spin-off approach any of the big franchises have tried (Star Wars, Marvel and even Pirates of the Caribbean), which makes this film an easier pill to swallow than it seemed to be for 2006 audiences who saw it in fewer numbers than any of the franchise’s other films, Tokyo Drift pulling in a franchise low of $159million at the box office.

In looking back on Fast and Furious, there’s an odd sense of nostalgia towards Tokyo Drift as a movie set in a more sensible and less spectacular universe, and while that doesn’t make for one of the franchise’s better entries, it does earn it a space in the canon as a welcomed caveat to the main story.

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Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 3 (2023)
Director: James Gunn
Screenwriter: James Gunn
Starring: Chris Pratt, Zoe Saldaña, Bradley Cooper, Dave Bautista, Karen Gillan, Pom Klementieff, Vin Diesel, Sean Gunn, Chukwudi Iwuji, Will Poulter, Elizabeth Debicki, Maria Bakalova, Sylvester Stallone, Nathan Fillion, Linda Cardellini, Asim Chaudhry, Mikaela Hoover

How many trilogies really stick the landing?

In 2018, writer-director James Gunn was unceremoniously fired by Disney after some bad taste jokes from his early days as a comedian were unearthed on Twitter by right-wing trolls who objected to Gunn’s outspoken political views. Following a passionate campaign from fans and Gunn’s friends and colleagues, a year later he was brought back on board at Marvel to finish what he started. If you love this particular bunch of a-holes, Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 3 is going to be an emotional one.

Scoundrel-turned-superhero Peter Quill (Chris Pratt) is in a dark place after making a mistake that doomed half the universe and lost him the love of his life, Gamora (Zoë Saldaña). The Guardians were restored following the defeat of Thanos, but a different Gamora – one who doesn’t even like Peter let alone love him – now stands in his paramour’s place. When an attack on the Guardian home base of Knowhere leaves one of their number mortally injured, the team set out on a quest that brings them into conflict with mad scientist the High Evolutionary (Chukwudi Iwuji) and causes Rocket Raccoon (Bradley Cooper) to confront his traumatic past.

What James Gunn has been hiding in plain sight up to now is that the Guardians of the Galaxy trilogy is really about Rocket above anyone else. This is his journey, one that takes him from a bad start in life to being a full and happy person with people in his life he can trust and rely upon.

Much like Gollum in The Lord of the Rings, if Rocket didn’t work as a VFX creation, then nothing else in this instalment (where he’s driving pretty much all the action) would either. Thankfully, the time-lapse transition between a terrified caged raccoon and Rocket’s older, cynically twitching nose that opens the film puts those doubts immediately to rest. Gunn’s empathy for all living things, but particularly those who have been mistreated, is what gives this story its power, and Bradley Cooper’s pitch-perfect vocal performance has the strength to make you feel all the feelings. Just as a raccoon crying over his lost tree friend made us shed tears in 2014, his relationship with his fellow abused creatures brings on the waterworks all over again here with some almost unbearably intense scenes in captivity. We don’t get to spend all that long with young Rocket’s animal experiment friends Lylla the otter (Linda Cardellini), Teefs the walrus (Asim Chaudhry) and Floor the rabbit (Mikaela Hoover), but we quickly grow to love them just as deeply he did.

This does have the feel of a victory lap, bringing everything full circle and giving everyone their time to shine. Everyone loves the literal-thinking lunk Drax (Dave Bautista) and towering tree-man Groot (Vin Diesel) but it is stoic cyborg Nebula (Karen Gillan) and eager-to-please empath Mantis (Pom Klementief), previously both pretty one-note, who end up being the undisputed highlights here. The former’s gruff and tough personality has gradually been eroded over her time with the Guardians, and the rare occasion when she lets down her guard and lets emotion overwhelm her really hits hard. The latter is the heart of the team, gets most of the funniest lines, and her unique power helps her and her friends out of a few tough spots in some unexpected ways.

Newcomers to this universe include Borat 2‘s Maria Bakalova as Cosmo the talking psychic cosmonaut dog who has an adorable film-long argument with space pirate Kraglin (Sean Gunn), Will Poulter as genetically engineered gold man-child Adam Warlock, and Chukwudi Iwuji as the High Evolutionary, arguably the most evil and irredeemable bastard in the galaxy who will mutilate, torture and thoughtlessly dispose of countless living things all in service of his delusional mission to create a “perfect society”.

The action is all very polished and exciting, and because this is the team’s last ride it all feels a lot more dangerous for our heroes somehow. A fight in a corridor in the final act might be the finest couple of minutes of action in the MCU to date – not only is it meticulously choreographed, ludicrously entertaining and set to a killer Beastie Boys track, but it lets the team work in violent harmony and gives every member of the team a chance to showcase their special abilities, each getting their own big character moment at the same time.

James Gunn has always happily leaned into the sillier visual and conceptual aspects of space opera, and rarely have such strange ideas been more convincingly brought to life as here. From a bio-formed space station seemingly made of meat to learning that the city of Knowhere (built inside the skull of a dead space god) can actually be driven to a new location, and even to a mirror image “Counter-Earth” populated by humanoids forcefully evolved from lower lifeforms, big swings are taken. Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 3 is an epic, galaxy-spanning quest, but all this imagination vitally remains in service of a very intimate story. 

A minor criticism that could be levelled at this particular Guardians iteration is that the soundtrack isn’t as memorable or pitch-perfect as in the previous two films, with John Murphy’s (Sunshine, The Suicide Squad) original score extensively incorporating choral singing provoking a stronger reaction than the vast majority of the needle-drops. Similarly, the final act of the film, after over two hours of putting every Guardian through one life-threatening incident after another, keeps piling on the jeopardy to an almost absurd degree even when it is already fit to burst.

Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 3 brings this unlikely team’s journey to an immensely satisfying and appropriately epic conclusion. It is spectacular to look at and really funny, but it is also easily one of the darkest stories in the Marvel universe and does not pull its punches to make its pretty explicit discussion of abuse and animal testing any more palatable. We may see some of these characters again down the road, but for now it’s a fond farewell to them all, especially the acerbic Racoon who just wanted to be loved.

Score: 21/24

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F9: The Fast Saga (2021)
Director: Justin Lin
Screenwriters: Daniel Casey, Justin Lin
Starring: Vin Diesel, Michelle Rodriguez, Tyrese Gibson, Chris “Ludacris” Bridges, John Cena, Jordana Brewster, Nathalie Emmanuel, Sung Kang, Michael Rooker, Helen Mirren, Kurt Russell, Charlize Theron

The key discourse surrounding the Fast and Furious franchise is its ever-increasing absurdity. The Fast and the Furious followed a cop infiltrating a street racing gang, and by Furious 7 the series’ heroes were jumping cars out of planes to fall perfectly onto a single secured road in the mountains of Azerbaijan. The franchise has seen its fair share of dead characters return, and most of the main cast (including Brian O’Conner, played by the late Paul Walker) have managed to come away from each adventure unscathed, ready to sip Corona and eat barbecue at Dom’s place. F9 maintains the absurdity of the previous films, but fails to live up to the heart of those predecessors.

F9 follows Dom (Vin Diesel) and his family as they pursue his brother, Jakob (John Cena), a seasoned spy who is after yet another world-ending MacGuffin, Project Aries – a sphere divided in half which allows the one who holds its key to control all of the weapon systems in the world. Though the drag racing is at a minimum, there are plenty of car-based action scenes that help to maintain the original notion of the franchise. Alongside the globe-trotting chases are flashbacks to Dom and Jakob’s past, including a portrayal of their father’s death as described in The Fast and the Furious.

These flashback scenes are ret-conning at its best, crafting a bond between Dom and Jakob in real time that feels as if it could have been there all along. Jakob was banished by Dom because he believes Jakob killed their father, and it’s clearer now more than ever why Dom seeks to build and protect his new family.

The film could stand to have more John Cena, whose cool demeanor contrasts with the fiery Dom, their scenes together being reminiscent of those between Diesel’s lead and The Rock’s Luke Hobbs in Fast Five – two muscly stars face-to-face, exchanging verbal jousts before they finally get around to exchanging blows – but Jakob’s energy keeps it from feeling too similar. Jakob also explains why Dom and the family were brought into the world of espionage despite being a random group of street racers from Los Angeles, since Jakob has presumably worked as a spy since his exit from the Toretto family.

As for The Rock, it is his and Jason Statham’s absence (not to mention Paul Walker’s) that is really felt in this film. The “family” is reduced to Dom, Letty (Michelle Rodriguez), Mia (Jordana Brewster), Tej (Ludacris), Ramsey (Nathalie Emmanuel), and Roman (Tyrese Gibson) for much of the runtime, and they are often split up between vehicles, locations, and emotional distance. There are a lot of roomy shots that highlight the lack of a full crew, and the locations are noticeably larger than those of the previous films. Dom feels similarly as isolated to how he did in The Fate of the Furious – he doesn’t spend much time talking to the other crew members without a walkie talkie – and the film misses the interactions of Hobbs, Shaw and the rest of the enjoyable characters from the previous films, with Tej, Ramsey and Roman offering the best dynamic of F9, yet still being hardly able to carry what feels like half of the film.

While Fast and Furious is hardly renowned for its performances, the actors tend to be excellent at naturally embodying their characters (particularly Ludacris and Tyrese Gibson). There is, however, some inexcusable nonchalance that ruins the (debatably) tense sequences and heavy, heartfelt moments. In an early action scene, Michelle Rodriguez runs as if there are no bullets being fired at her – “run” might even be too strong a word for the motion she was engaged in. It can be hard to buy Vin Diesel’s performance in the more serious emotional beats because he seems dazed and disconnected, delivering one-liners as if they were just told to him for the first time right before filming.

Of course, everyone is really going to F9 for the over-the-top action sequences. Long, drawn-out chase scenes involving car magnets test the boundaries of audience credulity and can be a slog to sit through as waves of faceless soldiers are mowed down or tossed about. The best of the action are the fist fights between Dom and Jakob, Mia and Letty with faceless soldiers, or Tej and Roman with faceless soldiers. It takes away from the monotony of cars driving, slamming things, and ultimately not doing much at all. Towards the end, a key point of an action sequence is told through montage as another character monologues, and it leaves one wondering why the film spent so much time on the boring parts instead of what should be the tensest part of the scene. They’re absolutely absurd, over-the-top, and well-CGI’d and choreographed, but that doesn’t make up for how poorly paced they feel for the most part.

F9 was never going to be a masterpiece of cinema, but it’s also a weaker installment compared to the last five (maybe even six) films in the franchise. There are some incredible moments and interesting talking points for those who are interested in the “universe,” but, overall, the movie lacks enough to carry its nearly two-and-a-half-hour runtime (which feels like an eternity).

Hopefully the whole family can come together in the tenth film and bring back the excitement of watching a close-knit group experience the everyday trials of international drag racing spies.

12/24

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In the past twelve months, we have been offered two brand new releases from the new look DC line-up and have seen Netflix enter the sphere with a major conversation-stirrer for the first time. We even finally got The New Mutants after years of delays and rumours about whether or not it would ever be released.

Starring the likes of Charlize Theron, Vin Diesel, Margot Robbie and Gal Gadot, the comic book adaptations of the silver screen in 2020 haven’t been lacking in star power either, and whether they’ve headed straight to cinemas, streaming or Premium VoD, the comic book films of the the year have offered us just the slightest bit of reassurance that enjoyment can be found even in the darkest of times.

In this edition of Ranked, we at The Film Magazine are looking at these five wide release comic book movie adaptations and judging each on quality, enjoyment, critical reception and audience perception to see which are the worst and which are the best, in this, the 2020 Comic Book Movies Ranked.

Follow us on Twitter to keep up to date with more articles like this one. 

5. The New Mutants

The New Mutants Review

This could have been a half decent Disney Channel movie if it had applied any logic and was rewritten several times to eliminate every eye-rolling dialogue exchange.

The serviceable final act may convince some they’ve seen a movie that “wasn’t that bad”, and we should be conscious of all the issues this film faced before heading to the release window (studio changes, reshoots with a cast that had aged significantly, distinctly different visions from executives in charge of the project, and year after year of delays), but make no mistake that this was a whimper of a final bow for an X-Men franchise that at one time wrote the rule book for modern comic book adaptations.

Perhaps the only major shining light coming from The New Mutants was the performance of Anya Taylor-Joy, who added this Marvel-adjacent movie to her list of rich and impressive performances from 2020.

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4. The Old Guard

The Old Guard Review

2020 wasn’t exactly short on comic book adaptations that seemed to be nothing more than a series of fairly uninspired moments precariously taped together by cliché and questionable outlooks on life, and The Old Guard was certainly amongst the worst of them – its “pre-ordained by a mysterious and unspoken force to be the ultimate moral compass over humanity for all eternity” group of so-called misfits lacked any significant depth and not only came across very “secret society” (and thus difficult to root for), but each of them was so unspeakably invincible that the stakes were also incredibly low.

Setting The Old Guard in contemporary times also felt lazy (flashbacks of battles in ancient China signalling to us the movie we should have got instead), and this pro-war-in-the-middle-east, pro-guns and pro-vigilante justice amalgamation of bland and outdated themes and visuals was just about bin-worthy. Quite why the likes of Charlize Theron, Kiki Layne, Matthias Schoenaerts and Chiwetel Ejiofor would attach their names to this uninspired dross is anyone’s guess, but if famous faces doing their own stunts (no matter how bland and last decade said stunts are) is your thing, there’s something here for you. Probably.

The Old Guard survives the bottom spot by way of not being a blotch on the record of a mostly great franchise as The New Mutants was.

Bloodshot (2020)
Director: David S.F. Wilson
Screenwriters: Eric Heisserer, Jeff Wadlow
Starring: Vin Diesel, Eiza González, Sam Heughan, Toby Kebbell, Talulah Riley, Guy Pearce, Lamorne Morris

If this is the beginning of streaming new Hollywood movies from home, we couldn’t have asked for a worse start. No one should have to pay $20 to watch Bloodshot – it’s the kind of film that’s only worth seeing if it’s one of the three allowed in your weekly theater subscription. It’s the sort of unremarkable film that ends up clogging suggestion lists on streaming services anyway, so it’s sort of fitting.

Vin Diesel stars as every action hero he’s ever played except this time he’s named Ray and he can’t die. He has nanobots that live in his body and heal his wounds, making him an android-ish Deadpool without any of the levity or charisma. He’s a soldier who loves his wife, he has super strength, and he mumbles and grunts his way through any sentence he says. Ray is searching for the man who killed him and his wife before he was reanimated, and he’ll stop at nothing to achieve that goal with his new superpowers.

The biggest issue with the movie was that the trailer gives away all of the narrative conflicts, so if you’ve been bombarded by it during previews, nothing will surprise you. On top of that, the Bloodshot seems to think its plot is a strength, and it’s not as clever as it thinks it is. Anyone coming into this wants to see schlock on a Hollywood budget – it’s a Vin Diesel movie after all – so just show us this superman’s fatal flaw and how he overcomes it while blasting through tons of bad guys! Unfortunately, the movie seems to think that flaw is being controlled by a corporation, and we’re subjected to an entire song and dance dedicated to a charade we know is a charade. Plus, his true kryptonite isn’t even the spiritual battle over bodily autonomy – it’s EMP. This guy gets shut down entirely without his nanobots, and instead of giving us a fun story that involves overcoming this crippling weakness, we get a poorly paced plot full of idiots who don’t even think to blast Diesel’s character to death with EMP that we already know works.

Editing in the action scenes is a big disappointment. The best scenes of the last decade like Kingsman’s church scene, Baby Driver’s opening car chase extraordinarily cut to “Bellbottoms” and John Wick 2’s museum fight scene keep at a brisk pace, and they never remain static compositionally. Bloodshot’s first major plot set piece takes place in a claustrophobic tunnel where groups of soldiers wander in the flare-lit confusion as Ray eliminates them, and it feels more at home in a horror movie. We know Ray is invulnerable, so while it’s cool when his face gets shot off and reforms, there is no tension for the audience. He can kill all of these people in a heartbeat because he has superhuman strength, can’t die, and they have no EMP. The choreography isn’t on the level of great action, and while slow motion is nice, it’s way overused and affects the pace of the scene. The best action scene in the movie isn’t even a minute long – KT, a woman with robot lungs or something, uses a night stick to beat up a bunch of guards. It’s gripping, visceral, and quick.

There are some bad accents from Guy Pearce and Lamorne Morris, lame dick jokes and attempts at self awareness that don’t improve the film. Understanding that your cliches or references are not original doesn’t make any of it better. The dancing villain makes one wonder if the filmmakers were aware of Reservoir Dogs, but it turns out that it’s supposed to be bad. The bland scenes where they explain the fake plot to Ray are purposefully derivative – why not just come up with fun stuff that doesn’t involve having to justify being boring?

The most notable moment is a scene towards the end in which Ray kind of resembles the comic character’s iconic look with grey skin and a red chest circle, but it unfortunately works only to illustrate how much of a shame it was that there wasn’t more of that look throughout the film. Gun and tech sounds were pretty satisfying overall, and the rejuvination effects were impressive, but it wasn’t enough to redeem a poor movie overall.

For those reading from the future, Bloodshot was released to video on demand during the worldwide pandemic of 2019/20, and viewers paid $20 to rent the movie for 48 hours. At that price, this movie is not worth it. You’d be better off watching the XXX movies to get a Vin Diesel fix – at least they’re entertaining. Bloodshot is a massive disappointment, and it’s a shame because there’s probably some nugget of a good movie hidden in there somewhere.

9/24

This weekend, the Korean-language film surpassed Mel Gibson’s 2004 epic The Passion of the Christ (£11.08 million) to hit a previously unforeseen mark of £11.5 million in the UK, making it the region’s highest grossing foreign language film of all time.

This weekend also saw the highly anticipated release of Disney Pixar’s latest fantasy adventure, Onward, which took £3.4 million to secure first place in the UK top ten.

After the huge success of the two previous Pixar films, 2018’s The Incredibles 2 (£55.9 million) and 2019’s Toy Story 4 (£63.2 million), it was easy to predict the continued success of the animation giants, though Onward has notably ended the weekend with figures much lower than The Incredibles 2’s £9.7million and Toy Story 4‘s £8.28million opening weekends. With fears of the COVID-19 likely a factor in its underwhelming start, Onward also earned significantly less than Pixar’s last original story Coco, which grabbed £5.25million in its opening weekend back in 2017.

Elsewhere on the chart, there’s a debut for Military Wives from Lionsgate UK, which comes in at third in our top ten this weekend with a strong £968,468. 

The UK box office chart for the weekend of 6th-8th March 2020:

The highest grossing films at the UK box office in 2020 thus far:

As predicted during last week’s box office report, Sonic the Hedgehog has this week surpassed the overall total earned by Bad Boys for Life to earn it a strong 2nd spot on the annual UK box office chart. Though unlikely to remain in the top 5 for the entire year due to the volume of huge releases still to come, this is a sure sign to distributors Paramount of the character’s viability as a franchise leader. To date, Sonic has earned $295million worldwide from a production budget of $85million, all-but securing a sequel.

This time next week, we could see Parasite jump The Gentlemen for a spot in our annual top 5.

Friday 13th may be unlucky for some, but there are plenty of films being released this weekend to distract us from such worrying fates. 

The Hunt is an action-horror film telling the terrifying story of a group of strangers who wake up in an unknown location. They don’t know who they are, where they are or what they’re doing there. They soon find out that they have one purpose, The Hunt. After the success of The Invisible Man (£5 million in the UK so far), we can expect great things from what should be a thrilling adventure. 

Vin Diesel (Fast and the Furious; Guardians of the Galaxy) is Ray Garrison, a soldier who is brought back to life by a team of scientists after him and his wife are assassinated. Enhanced with advanced technology, he then becomes a superhuman who becomes obsessed with avenging his wife death and goes by the name Bloodshot. Sony Pictures must be predicting Bloodshot to be a success as it is rumoured to be the start of a shared comic book universe using other characters from the Valiant Comics series. 

Britt Robertson (Tomorrowland; The Space Between Us) and KJ Apa (The Last Summer) star in I Still Believe; a romantic tale of a Christian musician whose journey teaches him the ways of love and loss, bug above all, hope. Sure to tug on heartstrings of cinema goers up and down the country, I Still Believe is in cinemas from this Friday. 

Also being released this weekend is the crime drama The Postcard Killings starring ‘The Walking Dead’ star Jeffrey Dean Morgan, a real life drama starring Javier Bardem titled The Roads Not Taken, and the emotional drama Never Rarely Sometimes Always, which is being released in select cinemas. 

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With all of this in mind, I have taken inspiration from Ioanna Micha’s original Character Introductions article to offer my thoughts on 5 More of the Best Character Introductions in Movie History.

1. Trinity

They Call Me Trinity (1970)

The first image shown in They Call Me Trinity is a pistol dragging on the ground. Trinity, a dirty, sleepy cowboy, lays in a sled attached to his horse, napping even as they travel through a river. Looking at the film, you’d likely think that the gun is just a deterrent; there’s no way this cowboy, who’s even too lazy to ride his horse, is a threat.

Incidentally, that’s just what a couple of bounty hunters think when Trinity enters a stagecoach station for a meal. He takes an entire skillet of beans and clears it as they taunt him by referring to him as a starving animal. Trinity gets up from his table and walks over to the men and their bounty. He tells them his name, and they realize he’s The Right Hand of the Devil, the fastest gun in the West. 

Trinity isn’t one for bragging, and he scoffs at the thought of being called the fastest gun. He takes their bounty and leaves. The men decide to test Trinity, pulling their guns at the window, but Trinity fires without even turning his head. Both men fall over dead, and Trinity places their prisoner on his sled so he can take him back home.

There is a song over the credits that bluntly tells the viewer about Trinity, but the scene does a great job of showing audiences his character. Trinity seems self-assured despite a disheveled appearance, he’s got a sense of humor and a penchant for vengeance. While the filmmaking is a little rough, this is one of the best written scenes in any Spaghetti Western and truly captures the man at its heart.

2. Deadpool

Deadpool (2016) 

There are three things you need to know about Deadpool: he breaks the fourth wall, he makes near-constant jokes, and he’s an efficient mercenary whose enemies meet gruesome fates. Deadpool doesn’t beat around the bush in driving this home; first presenting the man also known as Wade Wilson sitting on the side of the freeway doodling a picture of himself killing Francis, his archnemesis, in crayon, before he turns to directly address the audience. Ryan Reynolds is the difference between that address working and it spectacularly flunking. His delivery is perfect, and it’s hard to imagine someone else looking into the camera and talking about Wolverine’s testicles without inducing a significant eye roll.

Wade mentions that he needs to fix his face, his goal for the duration of the film, and steps off the highway to fall through the sunroof of a speeding SUV. The action shots are tight inside of the vehicle, but would Deadpool have it any other way? He brings his brand of humor to the fight by loudly announcing that he’s punching a man in the genitalia, laughing after he throws another out the back, and pulling out his crude drawing and asking one of the bad guys if he’s seen Francis.

Deadpool finds creative ways to kill his enemies in close-quarters using various body parts and other people’s weapons. He’s not Batman or Iron Man, he snaps a dude’s neck with his feet and shoves a cigarette lighter into another’s mouth before flipping the car and throwing bodies everywhere. This ingenuity is also key to Deadpool, as his ability to improvise is put to the test later in the film when he accidentally leaves all of his weapons in a cab. This character introduction is chaotic, but Deadpool is chaotic too. There is simply no better way to introduce him.

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Avengers: Infinity War (2018)
Directors: Anthony Russo, Joe Russo
Screenwriters: Christopher Markus, Stephen McFeely
Starring: Robert Downey, Jr., Chris Evans, Josh Brolin, Chris Pratt, Chris Hemsworth, Tom Hiddleston, Chadwick Boseman, Scarlett Johansson, Tom Holland, Elizabeth Olsen, Karen Gillan, Carrie Coon, Pom Klementieff, Sebastian Stan, Zoe Saldana, Dave Bautista, Benedict Cumberbatch, Idris Elba, Letitia Wright, Vin Diesel, Danai Gurira, Paul Bettany, Bradley Cooper, Gwyneth Paltrow, Mark Ruffalo, Anthony Mackie, Benedict Wong

Unforeseen and unprecedented, Avengers: Infinity War delivers a conclusion of a lifetime that you’re going to want to see on the big screen and ahead of someone spoiling things for you. May you never have concerns about Marvel’s lack of conviction again…

10 years and 18 movies in the making, Infinity War was asked to juggle the massive expectations of its audience as well as the need for each of its franchise leading characters to be served appropriately. And, through some of the Russo Brothers’ now trademarked story-centred action, a premise that demanded attention and stakes, and a strong effort to invest in the arc of the villain, this full stop on the first 10 years of the MCU has managed to do just that. This is more than a superhero movie, it’s a defining moment in modern cinema.

The most pressing positive from the film comes from the brains at Marvel Studios – headed by studio head Kevin Feige – whom seem to have listened to concerns regarding the quality of the universe’s villains and made rectifying that issue their first port of call regarding Thanos in Infinity War, ensuring that the character’s desires were not left without explanation; that we were given the correct amount of insight into the tyrannical titan’s motivations, as well as his – for lack of a better term – humanity. In the space of a few hours, the most important of peripheral MCU figures became directly important to the story of the film and the future of the franchise, spearheading the direction of the conflict not as “generic ‘unwelcomed other’ number 4” but as a genuinely believable monstrous being with all the bells and whistles needed to make him a credible threat – on a scale of Malekith in Thor: The Dark World to The Dark Knight’s Joker, Thanos was a lot closer to The Joker.

That’s not to say that Thanos encompassed the entire film in the same way that The Joker did however, as the directors and their writing team did an incredible job in ensuring that each of the heroes was given their moment to shine too, with the franchise’s most prominent figures each finding room to manoeuvre in a cast of characters larger than arguably any in history. Thor, Hulk, Iron Man, Starlord and Captain America were each given important direction and a lot of screen time through which to fulfil their tasks, and their interactions with secondary characters made for moment after moment of fan service that reached levels so high that Infinity War is almost untouchable in such a regard. This hectic and all-encompassing presentation did make performances harder to judge, and it’s fair to assume that there won’t be a single Infinity War cast member being nominated for their role in the movie at next year’s Oscars, but that’s not to deny the gravitas of Robert Downey Jr, Chris Pratt and Chris Evans in particular, each of whom offered tidbits of how special each of them are at important moments in the film; with Josh Brolin’s Thanos performance also being notable in its own right despite being so heavily masked by CGI.

Questions will also be raised about the quality of Infinity War to viewers unfamiliar with the franchise’s predecessors as the movie clearly placed a lot of its content against the backdrop of an expected familiarity between those watching the film and the characters within it. And sure, to a person fresh to the universe, Infinity War is hardly the film it would be to a person who’s a fan of the MCU, a reader of the comics or even a film goer who’s seen the vast majority of other Marvel movies, but to judge the 19th instalment of a universe with such traditional film criticism credentials would be to misunderstand the very nature of this once in a lifetime beast. Infinity War isn’t a film that 99.9% of people will begin their Marvel Cinematic Universe journey with, and though they’ll need a lot of catching up if they do choose to go down that route, the film’s lack of exposition and direct-to-action approach is actually to the movie’s benefit, keeping the run-time as low as it can be, the action and excitement high, and the story at the forefront of everything on the screen.

It’s in the story that Infinity War, and particularly the work of the Russo Brothers, comes to bare fruit, because for a film with so many must-see names, characters and moments, set across planets in different galaxies, everything somehow miraculously not only fits together, but also makes sense. The film’s narrative through-line is so strong that Iron Man can be fighting in one place while Star Lord fights in another, and at no point does it seem unnatural to be with one character as opposed to someone else, and while the film is filled to the brim with action set pieces and beautifully put together CG, the Russo Brothers ensure they never lose touch of the main arc of the film in what can only be described as a spectacular feat in direction – one that is complimented by every other aspect of post-production.

In short, this superhero-war-action movie is a moment in time that you shall never forget. This is a film so entwined with the history of a genre its own predecessors have come to define that it cannot be overlooked as anything other than a year defining, decade defining, genre defining all-time classic that belongs in the same echelon as The Dark Knight and The Empire Strikes Back in terms of quality blockbuster material. If you get the chance to see this on the big screen, do it. This is an event invitation you’re not going to want to pass up on; the near perfect comic book movie.

22/24

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Star-Lord and crew are back for the most anticipated Marvel sequel in years, and with a few notable stars added to the mix, and a host of 70s and 80s pop gems providing the musical backdrop, James Gunn and company have managed to capture a lot of the original’s magic in a funny and colourful romp that didn’t quite manage to spark lightning in a bottle for a second time but was still mountains of fun.

Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 2 is, first and foremost, evidence of the sort of summer blockbuster tentpole movie that we, as audiences, deserve and have come to demand. Typically, such movies are modes of escapism filled with oceans of beautifully constructed CGI, so many high profile names that the movies barely know what to do with them, a rocking soundtrack and the oh-so-important comic relief at times of high stress; and Guardians 2 is all of these things. Where James Gunn’s movie separates itself from the lesser appreciated members of its genre, like Suicide Squad, X-Men: Apocalypse, Ben-Hur and Independence Day: Resurgence, is in the filmmaker’s loyalty and admiration for the characters at the heart of his movie and the ways by which he trusts the audience to work some things out on their own. Guardians 2, much like its predecessor, is more than its genre’s simple constructional parts, it is a character driven spectacle movie that successfully combines awe with empathy and vitally doesn’t let marketing interfere with story. As is the case with any film of its ilk, there are moments of forced connection where a rising score works to try and create a sense of empathy where there isn’t one, but Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 2 seems to hit the emotional beats nine times out of ten, and nine out of ten ain’t bad.

Guardians 2 is, despite this, quite a stretch from being as great as the first movie. The ways in which it seems to falter the most are due to a number of developments that have occurred between the two films. Firstly, the Guardians’ huge critical and financial success in 2014, and their confirmed involvement in Avengers: Infinity War, have placed different demands on the filmmaking process that have seemingly restricted Gunn to a sensibility much more like the film’s Marvel Cinematic Universe brethren than the original movie ever came close to being. What was once a standalone product with self-referential and almost meta humour (including, remember, a dance-off as the epic final show-down between good and evil), has filtered much more into the typical Marvel way of doing things, with much less of the convention busting jokes and therefore just a little bit less heart and originality than Guardians 1 so marvellously contained – pun intended. Second of all, it seems that the success of the movie’s original gifted Gunn the sort of budget that the filmmaker didn’t really know what to do with and thus was freely done away with in scene after scene of ‘cool CG’ battle shots, aircraft boarding, etc. that left the earlier parts of the movie feeling heavy and slow in comparison to the picture’s quicker and much more satisfying second half. Along the same lines came a seemingly more typical presentation of the story too, with countless establishing scenes for the movie’s many characters precursing a huge universe-saving battle – revolving around an entire planet – which was the centrepiece of the movie (much like every Avengers film ever). We’ve seen it all countless times before and, despite providing a relatively high-stakes version of the trope courtesy of a well developed villain – somewhat of a rarity in Marvel movies – and a much more convincing threat to our heroes than in the original or much of the MCU, Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 2 still couldn’t quite overcome how over-used its formula was.

This did, however, create the spectacle that Guardians 2 needed as an excuse to present its outstanding visuals, the likes of which are without comparison in the rest of the Marvel Cinematic Universe. Each scene was filled with a vibrancy unlike much of the ‘clear as day’ cinematographic techniques in the rest of Marvel’s central Avengers franchise, separating it from the pack in terms of visual appeal. As referenced above, the CGI was also hugely impressive and leaps beyond much of the work done in The Avengers or Avengers: Age of Ultron. There were a few sequences in which the camera worked against the wonderful work of the CG to create an effect whereby the film felt like more of a top-end video game than a cinematic work of art, but these were small missteps in an otherwise fantastic piece of visual artistry.

Crucially, the camera was also pointed at the right people. The Guardians were their usual fantastically individual and different (for action comic book movies, at least) selves, only with improved individuality for Gamora (Saldana) and Nebula (Gillan), two characters of whom much of the original’s criticism was dealt courtesy of being underdeveloped. The building of each of the core group’s members was as cleverly constructed and well performed as in the original only with the benefits of not having to introduce them anymore, with this movie tending to lean towards more typically emotional fare than much of what occurred in Guardians 1, something that helped to grow the characters of Rocket (Cooper) and Yondu (Rooker) substantially and brought out some of the best work from its cast. The crucial addition of Kurt Russell was a welcomed one too, with an immersible performance to boot, but Sylvester Stallone and Elizabeth Debicki who played Ogord and Ayesha respectively, seemed more like bonus features by the film’s end than any meaningful casting choice or character addition, with each performer bringing very little to their roles. It was, however, the Guardians as a collective upon which the film hinged, and in the writing of their group dynamic and the strong comedic performances by much of its cast (particularly Dave Bautista as Drax), the same sense of comrardery between them felt as real and present as ever, with a closer family dynamic seeming to occur naturally as the result of their actions in Guardians 1.

The group was, of course, brought together by music, a theme that is highlighted throughout much of the franchise and is present from the very opening sequence in Guardians 2. The promotional material for the film paid the music a great deal of attention and the film delivered on its promise of using it as creatively as in the original. The soundtrack was a symphony of classic hits with some of the titles being highlighted by the characters themselves as being useful metaphors for the situations they were going through or had been through in the past. Usefully, this brought about a more conscious attention as to the meaning of the songs being used in the film and thus utilised them as a source for emotional input for characters who were holding emotions back at certain points, therefore enhancing them as heroes worth routing for without the need for expository dialogue or out-of-character declarations.

Where Guardians 2 most prominently succeeds is in the presentation of the family of outcasts that it brought together in the original, and the ways in which they’ve grown to appreciate each other despite each of their less likeable qualities. Much like the franchise originally was to Marvel, the group are different to everyone else, and James Gunn’s presentation of the ways in which their differences make them the only people capable of defending the good of the galaxy is one of the more drawing aspects of the franchise as a whole, and particularly this second movie. The Guardians of the Galaxy franchise is much like the misfit toy we all played with as children or that many of us felt like at certain points in our lives, and that is what is truly identifiable about it and particularly the group of heroes. It is this connection that fuels the success of everything in this movie and does the most difficult job of making you care.

Conclusively, Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 2 may not be quite as good as the original, but through the passion of its screenwriter-director and the world class work of its cast and crew, creates an identifiable group of characters on a romp of an adventure that could be the blockbuster of the year and is certainly worth your ten bucks.

18/24

Author’s note: if you haven’t seen this yet, be warned that there are five post-credit scenes.

Warning: Minor Spoilers

The family is back, and with 7 movies under their belt and nearly $4billion in box office receipts, it seems they have no intention of slowing down anytime soon. This time the cast of recognisable characters is led by Straight Outta Compton’s F. Gary Gray, whose task in the director’s chair was vastly different to his predecessor James Wan’s but in many respects equally as difficult. Some obvious “different shooting day” sequences between feuding stars Dwayne Johnson and Vin Diesel aside, The Fate of the Furious/Fast & Furious 8 (2017) was a typically loud and outrageous affair that may have lacked the heart of Furious 7 (2015) but certainly delivered in terms of action, spectacle and even comedy, all the while remaining loyal to the family dynamic of its characters.

To take any Fast & Furious film too seriously has become somewhat of a crime in of itself in recent years as the franchise once centred around an undercover cop drag racing to uncover the truth behind gang crime in Los Angeles has developed into an all-out action franchise as unafraid of cheesy one liners and over-the-top explosions as the best of its 80s and 90s counterparts. The Fate of the Furious is, in almost every way, a development of this sensationalist and easy to understand formula, with its flurry of one-liners lighting up the otherwise very serious dialogue in much the same way that its explosions light up its chase scenes. Similarly, as was the case with the action movies of the 90s, the cast is so stacked to the brim with star power that each face empowers different portions of the film with an added gravitas that many of its modern contemporaries do not have the luxury of exploiting. It’s a formula for success that F. Gary Gray delivers to the line, providing further proof that the Fast & Furious franchise is a powerhouse of modern action cinema and the box office.

The formula of The Fate of the Furious is just as it is in every other movie in the franchise: the bad guys are set a morally good task to uncover a greater truth or, as is the case here, save the world. This time it’s Vin Diesel’s Dominic Toretto who takes the role of bad-guy, with former antagonists Hobbs (Johnson) and Deckard (Statham) teaming with the once rogue Letty (Rodriguez) and the rest of the morally ambiguous crew to track their family leader down and uncover the truth behind his actions and, of course, save the planet. As was the case in Fast Five, Fast & Furious 6 and Furious 7, the plot is less important than the action sequences it sets up and, much like the aforementioned predecessors, The Fate of the Furious often relies upon the rekindling of the cast’s “family” roles and overall dynamic to grab any means of real investment into the stakes of the narrative.

In this respect, the 8th Fast & Furious film pulls out all the stops to ensure its twists and turns are met with an emotional response, bringing back characters we haven’t seen in a while and even bringing one back from the dead at a vital moment in the picture’s third act. The reason we are asked to care is because of their history together which, despite being underdeveloped for a long time now, still seems to ring true as being a unit of individuals who have become entirely reliant upon each other in much the same way as a family would be. As has become common practice in the franchise’s development, The Fate of the Furious also helped to create additions to this family, with Helen Mirren and Don Omar looking likely cast members of the two films Vin Diesel has announced will be following this one. Perhaps the most attention regarding the ‘family’ leading into this film’s release however, was on the casting of Mad Max: Fury Road (2015) star Charlize Theron as the chief antagonist of the movie Cipher, though the presentation and delivery of the character rarely hit any notches beyond bland and was used entirely to make Diesel’s Toretto look even more like a superhero than he already did. This was a surprising and ultimately disappointing aspect of the film as Theron has clearly established herself as a world class leading action performer and having her role be limited mostly to a small control room seemed to be wasting her talents.

Perhaps most importantly regarding the casting and Gray’s presentation of the characters in The Fate of the Furious was the movie’s clear absence of leading character Brian, formerly played by Paul Walker. Not only was the actor a mainstay of the franchise and Brian O’Conner arguably its leading character, but he was also positioned within the narrative as being the moral compass and somewhat of a levelling factor for the outrageously over-the-top characterisations of his fellow cast members, and was now, of course, entirely absent. Even with the rest of the cast returning to their roles and rekindling old dynamics whilst fusing new and entertaining ones with the likes of Scott Eastwood’s Little Nobody and Jason Statham’s Deckard, Walker’s O’Conner was missed in such a way that the picture’s little tributes only made his absence more glaring and unfortunate.

Visually, The Fate of the Furious is probably as good as it’s ever been. The CG effects were, at times, astonishing, and leaps beyond the often hoaky CG sequences in Furious 7. Submarine chases across icy terrain and piles of cars falling from multi-story car parks looked phenomenal and vitally made Fast & Furious 8 tick the most important of all action movie boxes: the “I’ve never seen that before” box. The choreography of the fighting sequences were equally improved, with a prison escape scene centred around Dwayne Johnson and Jason Statham being a particular highlight for its authentic and exciting stunt work as well as the creative ways the filmmakers went about distinguishing the differences between the two characters’ physical capabilities. As has been the case with the last few movies, much of the The Fate of the Furious was shot around the globe, with Berlin, New York, Cuba and northern Russia being vastly different yet equally appealing locations from which to present many of the action sequences, ultimately distinguishing this film from the rest in the franchise and, of course, creating an entertaining visual spectacle upon which the eyes could feast. The Fast & Furious movies have always been well known for their achievements in filming in difficult to negotiate locales, such as Rio De Janeiro in Fast Five, and have accomplished tremendous feats off the back of such difficulties, with the work done in Cuba and Times Square, New York, being this movie’s additions to the list; enhancing the box office repertoire and fan appreciation of the franchise even further.

In many respects The Fate of the Furious has reiterated the archetypal modern action movie tropes that three of its seven predecessors (from Fast Five to Furious 7) have so strongly driven home, and in doing so has created another visual spectacle worthy of your time. The Fast and the Furious may be on to its 8th film, and this movie may pale in comparison to Furious 7 or the original, but with this level of outrageous over-the-top action, fun and laughs, it seems to matter only a little that characters are left underdeveloped and that the plots are recycled, for this is easy-watch escapism at its finest, something the approximated $110million+ US box office opening can certainly vouch for. I say “watch it”, because movies this fun are truly hard to come by these days.

17/24