By The Movie Psychic
Charlize Theron won’t join an action film franchise anymore unless it pushes a leftist agenda. Don’t for one moment think that this film is any different. She helped George Miller transform Mad Max from a macho snuff hero into a feminist warrior. Now it’s Dominic Toretto’s turn – the beefed up petrol head is now a spokesman for global warming and green energy. He will be driving electric cars in this movie and the final two Furious movies (Tesla are in negotiations for future films).
At a quick glance, it looks like this installment is called The Fat And The Furious. But it’s not. It’s called The Fate Of The Furious (Global warming! Get it!). They’ve ditched the name Fast, just so audiences don’t expect too many car chases. Car chases are fun, but they’re not an efficient way to use up your power resource.
You know, there really isn’t much action in this film at all – it’s mainly a character driven existential crisis narrative relating to the perpetuity of what constitutes a “family” in the modern world, and what kind of world we want to leave our children.
Charlize Theron (Cipher) plays a robot from the future, The Robot Queen, who has an odd curiosity for fetish domination outfits. She comes back in time to warn the macho petrol heads of 2017 to start using renewable fuels or we’ll end up like her character in Mad Max: Fury Road (Fury Road? Fate Of The Furious? It’s all connected). She’s on a mission to convince the world that global warming is real, and the people who stand up and do something about it are the real heroes.
The first person of influence that she’s able to “turn” is Dominic Toretto. The rest of his team, however, don’t believe a word she’s saying, so Dominic has no choice but to turn his back on them.
The main theme that The Fate Of The Furious keeps driving home, is “What’s family without a planet?” Helen Mirren’s role as Mother wasn’t lost on me. After Dom “turns”, it’s Mother that he confides in for spiritual advice. He’s turned his back on his family for what he believes in, but she reassures him that saving the life of all the people on the planet is more important. Dom gets so turned on by this that he starts a relationship with his new mentor, The Robot Queen.
In Dom’s absence, Hobbs becomes the leader of the team. He doesn’t believe in global warming and when he catches wind of Cipher The Robot Queen’s plan to convince the world, he breaks out of prison (with the help of the CIA) to stop it all from happening.
We’re taken all over the globe to see the effects of global warming, through the eyes of the film’s thrill seekers. We see the damage done to the icy plains off the arctic Barents Sea, the harm that we’re doing in our cities with rubbish and corporate emission, and finally we’re shown the people that are first affected by our sins, namely the poor people residing on small islands in the Caribbean.
So basically this film is a cross between every over-the-top bad 80′s action B-movie you’ve ever seen and An Inconvenient Truth. Whether this film will convince the petrol headed thrill seekers among us is another story, but credit has to be given to Universal Pictures for trying. They’re really putting themselves out on a limb here, which is rare in Hollywood these days.
This is a worthy installment to the franchise. I really enjoyed the transition into social critique and I can’t wait to see how the public takes to it. Something tells me that this is going to be HUGE!
