Coming this Friday, and every other Friday for the next few months, will be a new podcast covering one of the most important topics of our time: The Fast and the Furious film franchise. To make this extra fun, my co-host, Leslie Hanna, has never seen any of the films.
How is that possible? I have two theories about why people don’t watch the franchise, which I sincerely love. The first is that car people who haven’t seen the films are so overwhelmed by the memes and short clips that they just immediately assume they don’t need to ever toss one on the screen. The second belief I have is that, because the films were subject to so many creative changes and so much bizarre retconning, some of the narratives and characters get lost.
Our new podcast, The Fate of the Curious: The Autopian Fast & Furious Rewatch Podcast, is an attempt to either prove or disprove these theories. I cannot go back in time, wipe my brain, and forget what I’ve seen. Leslie, though, has a mostly clean slate when it comes to these films and can therefore judge them fairly.
We will also be watching them in the mostly correct chronological order, with all the little short films that go in between. This means that we’ll be going from the original The Fast and the Furious straight into The Turbocharged Prelude to 2 Fast 2 Furious and then into Fast and Furious (the fourth one). Part of this game is that Leslie doesn’t know which film is coming next, though we’re far enough into filming that she’s figured out Tokyo Drift might not be for a while (and there’s one more surprise film coming in between).
In an effort to watch everything relevant, we will include the key short films in between. Does this include the Spy Racers spin-off animated series? I don’t think so, though it might include the cut scenes from the Fast & Furious: Crossroads video games.
The series has been designed to be enjoyable if you’ve seen all of the films or seen none of them. The goal is to use this influential series as a way to talk both about the franchise and about how car culture in general has changed in the last 20 years. If we have an episode every other week, we should be able to get to the last episode just in time for the last film in the franchise to debut. Of course, then there’s the TV shows, but we’ll have a little time before those debut.
Here’s a teaser trailer to give you an idea of what’s coming:
Enough people reached out to me saying they haven’t seen the films that I think we’ll have enough guests to come along for various episodes, and one of the fun games we’re going to play is that Leslie will have to describe everything that’s happened up to the point of whatever film they’re watching without having a good idea of the plot of the next film, meaning it’ll be either helpful or extremely not helpful.
This is also an experiment in producing a longer, more produced podcast, with Griffin doing a lot of work to make it look wonderful. Come back Friday for the first installment, as well as an article from Leslie on the whole experience through the first film.
Top graphic: The Autopian
The post Leslie Has Never Seen A Fast And The Furious Film, So We’re Going To Watch All Of Them Together For A Podcast appeared first on The Autopian.
