Fast & Furious Is Back to Teach Us How to Throw Ourselves Out a Car Window Without Messing Up Our Hair

“They really turned a drag race movie into the Avengers,” my husband said as we sat in front of my computer screen riveted by the latest trailer for F9, the ninth installment in the Fast and Furious franchise. Yes, friends, Dominic Toretto and company are back to teach us about cars, planes, physics, and how to throw yourself out of a window without getting hurt or messing up your hair.

I am constantly reminded while executing my job that it is important to stay away from making hyperbolic statements but if ever there was a moment that called for unbridled hyperbole, this is it. This trailer has literally everything I want in a pointless film. Attractive people, explosions, Helen Mirren, the resurrection of a character that died several films ago but was never addressed, a plot that I’ve been following since 2001, and the icing on top of it all, John Cena. I mean, do you need anything more?

What I appreciate about the FF franchise is that every film teaches me something new about automobiles and driving in general. It seems that for this film we will be learning about magnets as is made clear by Tyrese’s Oscar-worthy line, “So we messin with magnets now?” As a car enthusiast myself I understand that cars have parts that are made of metal, an element that attracts magnets. But now the magnets are strong enough to move the cars? How? I don’t know but I look forward to Ludacris explaining it to me.

The subject of family is also coming up again in this film because as Vin Diesel is contractually obligated to say in every film, family is everything. But the new twist is that Dom has had a secret brother this whole time which is very different from the movie where he had a secret son. So now we get the absolute pleasure of John Cena doing some of his best heel work as a villainous car (and possibly airplane) driver who also maybe has super strength considering a building once fell on top of Dom and he survived it. But maybe the super strength is not a gene that brothers can share. Anything can happen in the world of Fast and Furious and thankfully for viewers, it’s not our job to make it make sense.