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Peter Fenzel and Matthew Wrather return to the franchise that inspires more passionate overthinking than any other — the Fast and Furious universe, as they overthink F9: The Fast Saga. They talk about the organizing visual and thematic material of the film, its ambitions and relations to the previous films in the franchise. TL;DR: Go see it.
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I’ll second the disapproval for podcasts that have settled into nonsensical “television seasons.” There’s even no the painful middle ground of “we’re going to take off the next few weeks, but because we pre-sold ad space, we’ll make sure to fill your feed with reruns” approach.
More related to the movie (which I haven’t seen; one day, I’ll start on the franchise…), I’d like to draw attention to the “what even are we,” which has seemed almost pervasive in the last couple of years. I may have mentioned with Ted Lasso, that all the characters are directly unified in how their character arcs all force them to ask “if I can’t be what I think I am, then who am I?” Three out of three Disney+ MCU shows are about the leads not knowing who they “really” are, absent the forces that previously defined them. In the Heights is about identity and has its own identity crisis, as discussed last week.
It’s better than the incomprehensible “every long-term TV show now needs an episode about going to a prom” trend, but it’s still consistent enough to seem noteworthy.