Genre: Action
Premise: (from IMDB) Lawman Luke Hobbs and outcast Deckard Shaw form an unlikely alliance when a cyber-genetically enhanced villain threatens the future of humanity.
About: Hobbs and Shaw contains a ton of drama, and that’s just in the production of the film! Tempers flared when Fast and Furious OG Vin Diesel learned that they were going to make Fast and Furious movies without him. Tyrese Gibson, who plays Roman on the series, even took to his Instagram to call out the selfish Rock for prioritizing the spinoff over the next Fast and Furious sequel. Needless to say, there were a lot of people wanting a lot of different results from the Hobbs and Shaw box office this weekend. The film is said to be a success with its 60 million dollar domestic opening. However, it should be noted that the last Fast and Furious movie made 100 million dollars its opening weekend. So is this really a success? I don’t know. Long-standing franchise scribe Chris Morgan is back yet again to write the spin-off.
Writer: Chris Morgan
Details: 2 hours and 17 minutes
Before I get to Hobbs and Shaw, can I just say something?
F&%$ Christopher Nolan.
No, seriously. F&%$ Christopher Nolan.
There isn’t a director on this planet more full of himself than this schmuck. Talk about a clueless dolt who gets high off the smell of his own s$&#.
If you don’t know what I’m talking about, Nolan put up a teaser trailer for his new movie, Tenet, this weekend in front of Hobbs and Shaw. Nolan, he who still spends his off-time marching for 35mm film rights and denouncing streaming services, couldn’t be bothered to put his trailer up on the internet first. Why? Because he’s Christopher Nolan. A Christopher Nolan film, according to Christopher Nolan, is such a monumental life-changing event, that its trailer cannot, will not, be shown online first. It will only be shown in theaters, the way they used to do it 30 years ago.
None of this would matter if this self-appointed genius’s teaser trailer was actually, you know, good. But let me break this trailer down for you and you can decide. We open on a shot of a bullet hole in glass. Behind the glass is a man who’s out of focus. We then get some weird title card that proclaims, “It’s time for a new kind of protagonist.” We cut back to see the camera moving across the glass and we see… ANOTHER bullet hole. Ooooooooh. Man, the anticipation is killing me. Two bullet holes in glass? A new kind of protagonist with no explanation of what that means!? Wooooowwwwww, bro.
But it gets better. The out of focus man then comes INTO focus and INSPECTS the bullet hole. Yeah. That’s a new kind of protagonist all right. Guy knows how to inspect a bullet hole! I’ve never seen a protagonist like that before. But we’re not done yet. We then cut to a quick stock footage shot of a riot. HOLY BALLS! Riot stock footage! You’re right Christopher Nolan! This teaser trailer could only be appreciated in theaters. Youtube never would’ve done this stock footage justice. Annnnnnnnnd…. that’s the trailer.
THAT’S IT! That’s all we get.
This is the kind of trailer that signifies a director who’s out of touch. He thinks he’s still Six Weeks After Dark Knight Came Out Christopher Nolan. Brother? You put out a sci-fi movie that ended in a bookshelf. You don’t get to cut together 12 seconds of footage that you shot in your basement, throw in a couple of title cards, and people go crazy anymore. You need to give us something of actual substance. I hope this trailer wins top prize for worst trailer of 2019. Because that’s how unnecessary it was. Call us when you’ve actually shot some of your movie, dude.
Hobbs and Shaw.
Hobbs and Shaw is the anti-Christopher Nolan film. There are no spinning dreidels. They are not purporting to do anything other than make people laugh and have a good time. This movie doesn’t carry a single serious bone in its body. But that directive comes with its own set of challenges. Here’s a breakdown of the plot if you didn’t see it.
Hobbs (The Rock) – who I think is a CIA agent? – is called onto a case where a British agent, Hattie, was forced to inject herself with a secret black-plague level virus to escape a bad guy. But now everyone, including the British government, wants to kill her because this virus is so dangerous. It will be up to Hobbs, who is the best tracker in the world (I’m just learning that this movie) to find her and bring her back to safety.
By the way, can someone tell me how it is that when movie people get injected with deadly viruses that could wipe out the entire planet they don’t die themselves? That’s kind of an important detail don’t you think? I mean, you’re trying to convince us that the world is in danger, yet the only person we see that actually has the virus in them is running around and beating the crap out of people without so much as having to re-apply eyeliner.
Anyway.
When Hobbs gets to London to start looking for this girl, he’s told he has to team up with, oh yeah, you guessed it, Shaw (Jason Statham). They actually find the girl pretty quick, but there’s a twist. Hattie is Shaw’s sister! And she’s clearly got the hots for Hobbs. It’s Shaw’s worst nightmare!
The three of them are attacked by self-proclaimed “bad guy,” Brixton (Idris Elba), who could do so many villainous things if he could just get his hands on that virus! But after a couple of car chases around London and, I think, Russia, the three of them escape the pesky Brit, who I forgot to tell you has been fused together with an artificially intelligent machine so that he has super strength. I swear I didn’t make that up.
Hobbs realizes that the only place they’ve got a shot at defeating Brixton is in his home state of Hawaii. Only problem is he hasn’t been back there in 30 years and everyone in Hawaii hates him. Lucky for him, his family and friends are big fans of Braveheart. Cause they prepare for a showdown with Brixton and his army (I guess Brixton has an army now) that is a beat for beat remake of that film’s famous battle. Who’s going to win? How dare you ask me such a question. Pay 15 bucks and find out yourself!
Before I break down Hobbs and Shaw, let me tell you what I require from a film like this. First, I want the chemistry between the leads to be great. Honestly, if you pull that off, nothing else matters. Two, I want to see some things I’ve never seen before. The reason I’m paying 20 bucks (with parking) to come see your movie in the theater as opposed to waiting for it to come out on digital? Is that this is a mega-budget movie that can show me things non mega-budget movies can’t. And finally, I require a good plot. It doesn’t have to be great. These movies never have great plots. But it needs to feel like they’ve put some effort into it. Again, I’m paying more money and giving more of my time, which means stringing together a bunch disassociated content isn’t going to be enough. It’s got to be coherent and keep me engaged.
So how did Hobbs and Shaw do in those three categories?
CHEMISTRY: C+
The chemistry between The Rock and Jason Statham is adequate but never good. The script isn’t doing them any favors. Nothing is written here that would imply these two hate each other. The only reason they hate each other is because it’s a movie. That’s one of the biggest sins you can commit as a screenwriter. Not doing the work. Hoping the casting will do it for you. On top of that, watching these two together never feels natural. You can feel them forcing their hatred on one another. And just to show I’m not a blanket hater, I think the chemistry between The Rock and Kevin Hart in their movies is A+. They’re amazing together. Meanwhile, the conflict between Hobbs and Shaw feels phoned in.
STUFF I’VE NEVER SEEN BEFORE: D
There’s nothing here I haven’t seen. All the chase scenes were basic. The fighting was standard choreographed stuff. The best set piece was the running-down-the-side-of-the-building sequence, but that went by fast. The stuff in Hawaii should’ve given us something new but didn’t. I don’t even know why they start these movies without specifically having a meeting about what they’re going to give audiences that they haven’t seen before. Because if you don’t do that, your movie opens to 60 million instead of 100 million.
PLOT: D
I considered giving the plot an F but then I threw on David Robert Mitchell’s “Under The Silver Lake” Saturday night and realized, oh, it can be so much worse. The plot to Hobbs and Shaw made sense in so much as we always knew what was going on. But it was extremely cliched. And I don’t use that word flippantly. The whole buddy team up angle + world-ending virus + the girl is carrying the virus. We’ve seen so many movies using these tired tropes. Everything felt familiar except for the Hawaii sequence and, unfortunately, that had its own issues, namely that we got there too late to set that environment up.
A fun question to ask after watching Hobbs and Shaw is, is this as good as a Fast and Furious movie? If not, why? Well, there’s a major difference in the Fast and Furious films. They contain a specific identity. Car chases + tough dudes trying to get an impossible job done + family. The nice thing about that formula is that if you don’t like one of those elements, it’s never long before one of the other ones comes along. So if you’re not into Vin and his boys having a barbecue in the backyard and busting each other’s chops, that’s okay, cause an amazing car chase is right around the corner.
Hobbs and Shaw doesn’t have an identity. It’s more an amalgamation of every action movie ever made. You can hear the story meetings for the screenplay, “What’s something cool we can do here, or cool we can say there?” as opposed to what they would say in a Fast and Furious meeting, which would be closer to, “We need to weave the family theme into this part of the story better,” or “This car chase is too much like the highway chase in F&F 4. We can come up with something better.” In other words, there’s more of an understanding of what their movie needs to do to give the audience what they want.
I love The Rock. He’s always entertaining. But not even he can save a film that doesn’t know what it is. I mean, I’m pretty sure Brixton is a robot. And that choice symbolizes how all-over-the-place this idea is. If you’re 13, you will love this. But if you’re 14 or older, save your money for something else.
[ ] What the hell did I just watch?
[x] wasn’t for me
[ ] worth the price of admission
[ ] impressive
[ ] genius
What I learned: We’ve gotten to a point where even the people writing these movies treat their “end of the world” threat as a joke. They know the audience knows it’s b.s. but they put it in there anyway because movies need stakes. Did anybody who watched this movie actually think the world was in danger? Same thing with the last Mission Impossible. Did anyone think the nukes would actually be used? We need to get back to basics as a screenwriting community and not only try and come up with stakes that feel real, but also COMMIT TO THEM. If you, the writer, treat the stakes as a joke? So will the audience. Once you go down that “a threat to the world” road, you must commit to it 100%. Try to make it as real as possible so we believe it. But also, believe it yourself!
