‘F9’ rewards fans with ‘Tokyo Drift’ reunion
Crew’s return yields world-building and emotional payoffs
As Universal’s blockbuster sequel “F9” opens stateside, “Fast & Furious” fans are being rewarded with the over-the-top action, Vin Diesel heroics and musclebound melodrama that have fueled the $6 billion brand for two decades.
But among the “Fast” fandom there exists a segment of long-suffering enthusiasts who may feel even more vindicated as director Justin Lin returns to the driver’s seat of “F9,” bringing some familiar faces along with him.
Fans who have loved (and defended) “Tokyo Drift” — the third installment of the franchise — for years well know the rooftop advice that drift-racing sage Han Lue aka Han Seoul-Oh (Sung Kang) imparted to young Sean Boswell (Lucas Black) in 2006’s “The Fast and the Furious: Tokyo Drift”: “Life’s simple — you make choices, and you don’t look back.”
But what if you make choices ... and you do look back? In “F9,” scripted by Daniel Casey and Lin (from a story by Lin, Casey and longtime Lin collaborator Alfredo Botello), the niftiest trick doesn’t involve the manipulation of giant magnets or rocket science, but time.
Bending time, after all, is what first brought Kang’s Han back to life in 2009’s “Fast & Furious,” the first sequel released after the character was fatally T-boned in his Mazda RX-7 at the end of “Tokyo Drift.” Director Lin trusted the audience would go along with a timeline displacement, and the fourth, fifth and sixth installments became prequels — allowing fan favorite Han to ride another day.
Now in “F9,” Han makes the ultimate return — back in action and alive, in the present, thanks to a soapy twist explaining that his death had been faked all along. Not that Kang was counting on a resurrection.
“I really thought Han was put to rest; there’s vigils, there’s a tombstone. How many pictures do you see of Han’s grave?” said Kang, who credits his return to the films in part to the “Justice for Han” fan campaign. “I can’t believe he’s back. Even as the actor who plays him, I’m like, ‘How did this happen?’ ”
Reaching back into the past, “F9” retcons a longlost Toretto brother named Jakob (John Cena), whose bitter history with Dom predates even 2001’s “The Fast and the Furious.”
As the Toretto clan splits up to stop Jakob from acquiring world-threatening weapons tech, a side mission sends Tej (Chris “Ludacris” Bridges) and Roman (Tyrese Gibson) to find a trio of rocket scientists who might help — rocket scientists who happen to be ex-Tokyo drifters Sean, Earl (Jason Tobin) and Twinkie (Shad “Bow Wow” Moss).
Back in 2006, in the first “Fast” movie directed by Lin, they were car-crazy high school students in over their heads with the Yakuza. A decade and a half later they’re engineering experts whose latest automotive experiment
— a rocket-powered 1984 Pontiac Fiero — plays a crucial role as “F9” hurtles toward new heights and
Lin orchestrates his own “Tokyo Drift” reunion within “F9.”
The cast reunions in
“F9” are more than just clever; leaning in to the audience’s long memories, they’re built for emotional, world-building payoffs. With “F9” opening a year later than planned due to the pandemic and audiences returning to theaters after months of isolation, the sight of long-lost friends exchanging loaded emotional glances and embracing in bear hugs might hit even harder. They also speak to the long and personal reach Lin has had in the franchise’s history.
In his first solo film as a director, the 2001 Sundance hit “Better Luck Tomorrow,” Lin had cast Kang as a cool, disaffected character named Han, as well as actor Jason Tobin as Han’s cousin, Virgil.
Five years later when he got the “Fast and Furious” directing gig, Lin brought Kang and Tobin with him — and shaped the sequel to include the kinds of atypical Asian American characters he wanted to see on screen.
“It had been 14 years between ‘Tokyo Drift’ and ‘F9,’ and in those interim years, I had experienced all the ups and downs of being an actor, times when I felt I was a million miles from my dreams. Not once did I think I’d be back in the franchise,” said Tobin.
Reuniting with his “Tokyo Drift” co-stars on the London set of “F9,” Kang enjoyed catching up on life, 15 years later. “Everyone’s a little older, and they’re dads, and it’s cool to see the men who these guys have turned into,” said Kang.
Having spent so many years in the franchise — and with his own “F9” involvement under a tight veil of secrecy as they filmed — Kang became the bridge between his “Tokyo Drift” cast mates and the rest of the ensemble.
“A lot of them hadn’t worked with the other actors,” he said. “I know everybody, so I was like the connective tissue. I wanted them to feel welcome, like, ‘This is your home too. You guys are part of this house, this family.’ ”
Returning to his Earl character was a meaningful experience to Tobin, who saw many familiar faces on both sides of the camera. Seeing fans react to Earl’s appearance in last year’s “F9” trailer was even more unexpected.
“I was really surprised when the first trailer came out, how many fans remembered me and would quote lines back to me,” he said. “I hadn’t realized that my character had meant so much to people.”
The ways Han, Sean and the rest of the “Tokyo Drift” crew are integrated back into “F9” raises questions about what their characters were up to during the intervening sequels. In Lin’s eyes, there’s an entire saga’s worth of story in an “F9” flashback sequence explaining where Han has been, physically and emotionally, since the events of “Tokyo Drift.”
“I wanted to present something where, if you’re interested, there could almost be a movie about how everything arrived there,” he said. “Hopefully you’re intrigued.”
Remember Neela from “Tokyo Drift,” Suki of “2 Fast,” even Idris Elba’s superpowered villain of spinoff “Hobbs & Shaw”? That world-building logic could conceivably apply to any characters of the extended “Fast” family, although further spinoffs have yet to be announced.
“I feel like ‘Fast 9’ is this weird Venn diagram. Or is it Vin diagram?” laughed Lin, who is set to return to helm “Fast 10” and “Fast
11,” “where it’s almost like the intersection of four movies, except three of them you only get a glimpse of. And if you are ever intrigued, there is a whole world and characters that inhabit it.”