 I don't drink coffee or non herbal tea or soda in general but really caffeinated soda in specific and it's not like I have any kind of noteworthy negative reaction to caffeine that I'm aware of and I really should know somewhere in my childhood bedroom is a document that tells me how I metabolize a wide variety of chemicals because my psychiatrist got in on the whole genetic testing thing way before that was cool and in doing so confirmed something that I had already learned the very hard way which is that my brain is not a fan of selective serotonin reuptake inhibitors like good golly did those not work properly point is there's no real reason that I don't drink caffeine there was a time when I would partake in the occasional coke whose namesake ingredient is in that document somewhere but eventually I decided I didn't want to as an extension of a pre-existing commitment to straight edginess no drinking smoking snorting or etc and if I'd already gone that far why not just cut out caffeine be a real douchebag about it why not really commit to the bit and ensure that no one would ever want to hang out with me because I have made both bars and cafes functionally useless as meeting spots committing to the bit is important and once I've decided to is real hard to change my mind which is why I haven't experienced so many cultural touchstones sure I like seeing things in the MCU and sometimes Star Wars on the big screen but I have not watched anything on Disney Plus because Disney is bad and I refuse to have a monthly recurring charge on my credit card statement reminding me that there is no such thing as ethical consumption under capitalism eventually I've avoided something that I would probably enjoy for so long that it just becomes a joke being played on myself for nobody's benefit and isn't that the best kind of joke case in point for the last 20 years I missed and then just avoided sitting myself down in front of the cinematic titan that is the fast and furious franchise because I've made it this long so fuck it but then movie theaters shut down for a year and now that they're back and my AMCA list subscription has been reactivated I'll be damned if I am not going to see all of the blockbusters hello by the way and welcome to the week air of you you can call me a guy who has never gotten a speeding ticket and today I am talking about f9 the fast saga now the fact that I haven't seen anything from the fast and furious franchise doesn't mean I am totally ignorant of it I only watched one season of Game of Thrones years after it had started because I needed some context for a video game that I was reviewing but I sure did read all of the breakdowns of that final season and spent at least as much time watching youtubers tear it to shreds as I would have just watching it play out myself I haven't dug that deep into the critical discourse around the fast and furious but I have read my share of think pieces and know that everyone hates tokyo drift and adores fast five I have seen breakdowns of wild stunts and supercuts of dominic toredo saying family I know about the feud between dwayne the rock johnson it occurs to me that a lot of young people probably don't even know who the rock is and just think of him as dwayne johnson and that's weird and vindiesel who remembers the fact that the trend that would explode as chuck norris fax actually started out as vindiesel fax anyone just me good times that resulted in the two of them refusing to be on set together during the filming of the eighth entry and of course I know about the tragic death of original series protagonist paul walker and how the seventh film handled the departure of such a central character and honestly I think pretty much everyone who's even vaguely plugged into hollywood knows all of that there is a certain amount of information you inevitably receive via cultural osmosis whether you know the context or not you could say which series birthed 10 points to griffin door and I am your father and I live my life a quarter mile at a time nothing else matters seeing the acclaim for fast five led to the first twinge of frustration that I had missed the previous entries but when you see everyone talking about how deeply connected the series is and how hostile it can be to newcomers and also remember that everyone fucking hates tokyo drift it becomes easier and easier to just not catch up especially because each new entry sees more of the same discourse we are now as many fast inferiuses away from fast five as it was from the beginning what are the chances I'm going to catch up now a week ago they were zero and now they're like five percent the difference of course was my first foray into the franchise something a friend told me was a terrible idea without even a youtube summaries context but I made a promise to my discord when I came up with this idea that I would only do it if I overall enjoyed my experience because let's be real if all I had to say about the ninth film in a franchise was that I was confused about who the characters were and so it was bad I would be rightly pilloried in the comments because that shit is fucking obnoxious and I am not here for it or to do it it was important that I saw fast nine in a theater for a lot of reasons but the real critical factor for me was being there with an adoring crowd because that told me a lot about how the movie actually works a film nine does not need to make me a newbie happy but it needs to make the true believers happy and they fucking loved it every time two characters were together on screen talking about anything the people around me exploded and I'm sure I have been that audience for some other unsuspecting individual and it's a weird place to be but not necessarily a bad one like let's be real I was very confused for most of the first half of this movie after which the plot just gives way to chaos aside from not knowing who anyone was I genuinely don't even understand what this group is or does like are they super spies or mercenaries or just a ragtag group of bros doing super spy mercenary shit like it doesn't matter really but it's it's kind of strange the biggest question I have actually is the most straightforward what why does the beginning feel like that a friend warned me that there has never been a movie less interested in its first act than this one so I wasn't really surprised when Dominic Toretto who at the beginning is living with his son and partner on a farm and gets over his uh no I must be a family man on this family farm about two minutes after his initial rejection of the call and about 10 minutes into this movie that starts with a five-minute flashback but it was still some pretty intense whiplash like was Justin Lin who directed entries three through six and then took a franchise hiatus annoyed at where fate of the furious left off and like pulled a rise of Skywalker to just undo the whole thing or was the farm new to this film but they knew that no one was coming to the ninth Fast and Furious movie to see a man question his commitment to whatever it is he's doing and so just dropped it as quickly as humanly possible I will probably never know but also who cares because it is good to get this man on that plane sooner than later because he needs to go drive cars fast and blow shit up good which he does and they do until Dom's younger brother mucks things up now I actually laughed out loud at the soap opera way that Jacob Toretto was introduced into the canon a tragic moment in young Dom's life and then the camera pans over to the the other guy who was who's actually there the whole time just out of frame why has no one ever heard about this new old family member of the guy who was always talking about family because we're nine movies into this thing Brian deal with it but I wish they'd really committed to doing it melodrama like I wanted to see Vin Diesel and John Cena in young people wigs or even like badly digitally de-aged would it have totally ruined the flashbacks that are meant to serve as the emotional core of the movie hell yeah but it's not like there weren't weird choices already young Jacob is clearly several inches shorter than young Dominic but John Cena is actually an inch taller than Vin Diesel and if we're going to be silly why not just go all the way because so much about this movie is just about taking a dumb idea and committing to it it turns out that this uh Jacob fella that no one has ever heard of is actually also a super spy who's been in the biz for years following humiliation at the hands of his brother and is now being financed by a very wealthy European man who wants world domination or whatever and now the crew must trot the globe causing maximum destruction in the process to save everyone which is more or less what I wanted from the movie so mission accomplished right there and there is some truly imaginative stuff going on during all of this like sure you've got your typical brawls and shootouts all of which are solid if not necessarily inspired but it's when folks get behind the wheel that things really take off that wasn't meant to be a pun but if you have seen the movie or even just the trailer you know that it's actually a really good pun so well done me and that makes sense because it's a fast and furious movie you got to see cars do things that you would never see them do in the real world actually I just remembered that a few years ago I was walking around the Gramercy area of Manhattan and saw them filming a chase sequence for what must have been fate of the furious that was pretty cool and realistically they cannot do in the real world but even if the logic behind them is nonsense there are more than a few times that the nonsense results in real and really cool stunts like the reason that it's fun to watch expensive movies is usually because they destroy a lot of actual stuff and as fun as it would be to not know when something is CGI it does make you appreciate more the times that it's very obvious that oh shit that actually happened followed immediately by the thought oh they're totally dead even if they're not they don't even have a scratch and f9 knows how weird that is but is kind of weird about it roman pierce spends the movie obsessed with the fact that the crew has survived the most bonkers shit imaginable and always without serious injury this whole thing is set up by him getting shot a metric fuck ton of times and even having bullet holes in his shirt and yet none in his body which was a thing that I had thought about moments before he brought it up in disbelief like Dom will get a cut if he is punched hard enough by his brother but there is basically no other situation in which he actually takes damage and that's weird it makes the core cast feel like video game characters who in standard gameplay will suffer the most incredible circumstances but be totally fine in the cut scenes until someone slaps them and then it leaves a permanent mark or something and if there was a middle ground I I expect it was lost many entries ago because by the time you get to an entry nine you're still one upping yourself and so the situations have to be so extreme that they would literally kill any human being who even approached them so these human beings need to be nigh unkillable but the fact that they're nigh unkillable means that even in those situations you're not in the slightest bit concerned but to think about it in a totally different way it's a good thing because f9 the fast saga at its core is an absurdly expensive hangout movie it's just a chance for you to spend two and a half hours with your superhero friends who you've built up affection for over literal decades at this point and see them shoot the shit and do cool shit and all that kind of shit and judging by the audience reaction it did exactly that and maybe next time I'll feel it too 7.0 out of 10 thank you so much for watching thank you particularly to my patrons my mom hammer and marco cat saracada benjamin shiff anthony coal magnolia dentin eliot fowler greg lucina cojo phil baits willow i am the sword timmo and the folks who'd rather be read than said if you like this video great if not oh well if you want to see more please subscribe hope to see in the next one