Let's be real. When The Fate of the Furious dropped back in 2017, the vibe was off. I don’t mean it was a bad movie—it’s actually a high-octane masterpiece of absurdity that earned over $1.2 billion—but it felt like the franchise was going through a massive mid-life crisis. It was the first "mainline" movie after Paul Walker’s passing, and you could feel the script straining to find its new North Star. It’s the eighth one. Most series are dead and buried by the eighth installment. Yet, Dom Toretto was out here racing a car in Havana that was basically held together by soda tabs and sheer willpower.
The movie kicks off with a street race, which feels like a nostalgic hug. But then? Total chaos. Cipher shows up, played by Charlize Theron with those questionable dreadlocks, and suddenly the "Family" isn't a family anymore. Dom goes rogue. It’s the ultimate betrayal, right?
People still argue about whether the twist worked. Honestly, seeing Vin Diesel go "dark" was a gamble. It shifted the dynamic from a heist crew to a weird, globe-trotting spy thriller with a submarine. Yeah, a submarine. In the frozen wastes of Russia. If you told someone watching The Fast and the Furious in 2001 that they’d eventually be watching a Lamborghini evade a nuclear sub on ice, they’d think you were high.
Why the Dom Toretto Betrayal in The Fate of the Furious Matters
The core of this movie is the betrayal. It’s what drives the entire 136-minute runtime. Cipher has something on Dom—his son, Marcos, whom he didn't even know existed. It’s a classic soap opera trope, but in the Fast universe, it’s treated with the gravity of a Shakespearean tragedy.
What's fascinating is how the movie handles the power vacuum. With Dom out of the picture, the "rest" of the crew has to step up. This is where we see the chemistry really shift. You've got Tyrese Gibson and Ludacris doing their usual bickering, which honestly provides the only grounded humor in a movie where cars fall out of skyscrapers like rain. But the real standout? It’s the forced alliance between Dwayne "The Rock" Johnson’s Hobbs and Jason Statham’s Deckard Shaw.
Remember, Shaw was the villain of the previous movie. He killed Han (well, we thought so at the time). The fan backlash to this "redemption" was immense. People started the #JusticeForHan movement because the movie basically asked us to forget that Shaw was a cold-blooded assassin just because he’s funny and can fight in a prison riot. It’s a weird pivot. It’s the kind of pivot only these movies can get away with.
The Logistics of That New York City "Zombie Car" Scene
If you want to talk about the peak of the The Fate of the Furious, you have to talk about Manhattan. Director F. Gary Gray—who did The Italian Job, so he knows a thing or two about car chases—decided to go full sci-fi. Cipher hacks into thousands of cars in New York, turning them into a "zombie" fleet to trap a Russian minister.
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It's terrifyingly cool.
From a technical standpoint, the production actually dropped real cars from a parking garage. It wasn't all CGI. That’s the secret sauce of these movies; they mix genuine, crunching metal with digital wizardry. Seeing a "rain" of cars fall onto a motorcade is one of those "only in theaters" moments that actually lived up to the hype. But let's be honest about the logic. How did she hack 2003 Impalas that don't even have Bluetooth? You just have to let it go. Don't think. Just watch the metal twist.
The NYC sequence also highlights the sheer scale of the 2017 production. They filmed in Mývatn, Iceland, for the submarine chase, which was the largest film production in Icelandic history at the time. They were in Havana, Cuba, being one of the first major US films to shoot there after the embargo was eased. This movie wasn't just a sequel; it was a geopolitical event.
The Rock vs. Vin Diesel: The Drama Behind the Scenes
You can't talk about this movie without talking about the "Candy Ass" incident. This is the movie where the beef became public. Dwayne Johnson posted that infamous Instagram rant about certain male co-stars not conducting themselves as "professional men" and "stand-up clones."
If you watch The Fate of the Furious closely, you’ll notice something weird. Hobbs and Dom are almost never in the same frame together. When they are, it’s often through clever editing or split-screen techniques.
- They don't share any meaningful "face-to-face" scenes in the second half.
- The tension on screen feels... legit.
- It led to the Hobbs & Shaw spinoff, effectively splitting the franchise in two for a while.
This behind-the-scenes friction actually helped the movie’s marketing in a bizarre way. Everyone wanted to see if the tension translated to the screen. It did. The movie feels fractured, which actually fits the plot of a broken family.
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Breaking Down the Submarine Chase
The finale in Russia is where the movie loses all touch with reality, and honestly, it’s great. We have a modified Dodge Charger, a tank, and a Lamborghini Murciélago racing across a frozen bay.
The physics? Non-existent.
The fun? Maximum.
When Hobbs exits a moving vehicle to "re-direct" a literal torpedo with his bare hands while sliding on ice... that's the moment. That is the moment you either buy into the franchise or you check out forever. It’s ridiculous. It’s silly. It’s purely for the "rule of cool."
But there’s a technical marvel here too. Using the Akula-class nuclear sub as a "final boss" was a stroke of genius by the writers. It raised the stakes from "we're stopping a criminal" to "we're preventing World War III." It’s a massive jump from stealing DVD players in Los Angeles.
The Cipher Problem
Charlize Theron is an Oscar winner. She’s incredible. But Cipher is a polarizing villain. Unlike previous villains who were physical threats, she’s a "keyboard warrior" with a jet. She spends most of the movie behind a screen.
This creates a weird pacing issue. Dom is doing her bidding, looking miserable, while the rest of the team plays catch-up. The movie tries to make her the "ultimate" antagonist of the entire series, retconning her into the events of the previous films. It’s a bit of a stretch. But her cold, calculating demeanor provided a necessary contrast to the high-emotion, "family" shouting matches we're used to.
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What This Movie Taught Us About Modern Blockbusters
The Fate of the Furious proved that a franchise can survive the loss of a lead actor if it leans hard into its own mythology. It didn't try to replace Paul Walker. Instead, it leaned into the ensemble.
It also proved that audiences don't care about "grounded" stories anymore once a series hits a certain level of fame. People want the spectacle. They want to see how the creators are going to top the last crazy stunt. It’s a cycle of escalation.
How to Re-watch (or Watch for the First Time)
If you're going back to revisit this one, don't look for logic. Look for the themes of redemption. Look at the way the camera lingers on the cars—the real stars of the show.
- Watch the Havana opening. It’s the purest "car" moment in the film.
- Pay attention to the prison break. The choreography between Statham and Johnson is top-tier.
- Check the "Family" dinner at the end. It’s a staple of the series, and this one feels particularly poignant given the "betrayal" plotline.
The movie ends with a sense of healing. Dom gets his son back. He names him Brian—a tribute that usually leaves fans a bit misty-eyed. It’s a reminder that beneath the explosions and the "zombie cars," there is a beating heart. A weird, gasoline-soaked heart.
For anyone looking to dive into the lore, start by looking up the actual stunt work behind the NYC car drop. It’ll make you appreciate the film much more than just dismissing it as "CGI junk." Also, if you’re a gearhead, look up the specs on the "Ripsaw" tank used in the ice sequence. It’s a real vehicle developed for the military, and seeing it in action is genuinely impressive.
Once you finish this one, the natural move is to jump into Fast & Furious 9, but maybe take a breather first. The transition from submarines to space (yes, space) is a lot to handle in one sitting.
Actionable Insight: To truly appreciate the scale of The Fate of the Furious, watch the "behind the scenes" featurettes on the practical effects. Specifically, look for the footage of the car drop in Cleveland (which doubled for New York). It changes your perspective on the "zombie car" scene when you realize they actually wrecked hundreds of real vehicles to get those shots. If you're a collector, the die-cast models of Dom’s "Ice Charger" are some of the most detailed in the franchise's history due to the unique weathered-metal design used for the Iceland shoot.