Screen Junkies releases an Honest Trailer for The Fast & the Furious: Tokyo Drift. After 2 Fast 2 Furious opened to a mixed response (at time attributed to the loss of original Fast & The Furious star Vin Diesel), plans for the franchise briefly shifted to something more like an anthology series connected loosely by a shared theme of illegal street-racing.
The Fast & the Furious: Tokyo Drift was conceived as a standalone feature to launch the concept, following a troublemaking Alabama teenage racer (Lucas Black) and his “fish out of water” adventures after relocating to Japan and adjusting to not only a new culture but the Japan-centric racing style of “drifting” (and also a Yakuza turf-war, because reasons). But in a nod to fans, the very end of the film featured a surprise cameo from Diesel’s Dominic Toretto - introducing himself as an “old friend” of deceased supporting character Han (Sun Kang).
The threequel, of course, wound-up overperforming, leading the studio to ambitiously reunite its director (Justin Lin), Diesel, original co-star Paul Walker and (through the magic of loose-timelines) Kang for an ever-growing set of reunions that ultimately transformed the previously near-dead franchise into a massive global brand and Lin into a Hollywood A-lister. But for all those good vibes, Tokyo Drift is still pretty silly - perhaps even more so now that it’s relatively small-scale teenage gang rivalry storyline has been folded into the increasingly absurd Fast & Furious mythology. Which of course has made it a perfect target for the Honest Trailers crew.
By now the Honest Trailers formula is almost as familiar as those of the blockbusters they mock: A tongue-in-cheek recap of the film, followed with observations about repetitive plot details or onscreen flubs and capped off with a run of puns on the names of the assembled cast. This time, the offbeat critique centers on the weirdness of retconning a film clearly shot almost a decade ago to take place directly before Furious 7 (“Japan’s retro tech phase”) and the now-curious presence of then-popular hip-hop personality Lil Bow-Wow as a main character. Also coming in for expected mockery is Black’s unusual line-delivery and profound non-resemblance to a teenager, plus the odd fact of the film’s fake-sounding origin for drift racing being (somewhat) true to life.
The Fast & Furious franchise is set to continue later this month with The Fate of The Furious, the eighth installment that promises to shake the series’ to its foundations with a storyline that finds onetime lead hero Toretto transformed into a villain by Charlize Theron’s new nemesis Cipher. Black’s character Sean Boswell, who appeared briefly in the seventh installment, is set to return once again.
Next: Fate of the Furious Early Reactions
Source: Honest Trailers
- Fast and Furious 8 Release Date: 2017-04-14
