17 Reasons Why ‘Fate of the Furious’ Makes No Sense but We Love it Anyway

Technobliterator
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The Fate of the Furious is an absolutely absurd film. It’s no secret that Hollywood has a history of disregarding the laws of physics, but the Fate of the Furious takes it to comical heights—and you don’t need to know the first thing about science to realize this. This is a film that’s packed with moments that make zero sense, and we love it—not just because it makes zero sense, but because it’s so unafraid and unashamed to make zero sense. Here are just 17 such moments that make no sense.

There are light spoilers ahead.

Dom gives a basic Cuban car thrusters

fate of the furious junk heap car vs good car race

Right off the bat, we begin with a car chase. Dominic Toretto must rebuild a cousin’s pile of trash car for a street race against a pretty good one. What does he install? Well, nitrous oxide thrusters, of course. Without them, he probably couldn’t win against the local cheating racer with a better car. But does it make sense he was able to create thrusters he could use at will? Does it make sense that he was able to conveniently fit them into what was basically a piece of junk? Does it make sense he was able to find nitrous oxide thrusters at all? Well, we don’t care. It looks awesome.

Dom wins a race in a flaming car driving backwards

While the writers hoped viewers mightn’t notice or care that Dom was able to put nitrous oxide thrusters into a car, they knew they couldn’t get away with letting that car go undamaged by it. So when Dom activates these thrusters to get ahead, he sets the entire car on fire, skids around, and drives it backwards on the track to a very narrow victory. There’s no way driving it backwards wouldn’t have slowed it down, and there’s no way a car that’s clearly set on fire like that still has a working engine. But boy does it look impressive, and boy does it make that victory feel so satisfying.

Dom survives driving a flaming car

Vin-Diesel-as-Dominic-Toretto-in-The-Fate-of-the-Furious car on fire

Yeah, urm, Dom was driving a car that was set on fire backwards. That in and of itself just makes no sense. There’s no way he didn’t catch fire and burn, there’s no way the smoke didn’t get in his eyes and blind him, there’s no way he was able to jump off just in time to get out before it crashed into the ocean…

A prison scene that couldn’t have happened

Luke Hobbs (The Rock) ends up in a high-security prison, and a breakout scene happens. We’ll ignore how convenient it was he ends up in the same prison as Deckard from the previous film. Instead, let’s focus on the fact a high-security prison’s cell doors were all opened by more or less the flick of a couple switches. I don’t care how potent an intelligence agency like Mr. Nobody is—no prison is that vulnerable. Not to mention that the Rock basically shrugs off rubber bullets, often fired just a couple dozen meters away from him. Of course, watching him beat up prison guards like that while chasing an old nemesis makes it worth it.

God’s Eye

God's_Eye fate of the furious

Don’t get me wrong, in a digital age where everyone’s data is collected, I have no doubt that spying on people is relatively easy. But the God’s Eye makes it look so trivially easy that it’s not believable at all. This is a device that allows the user to hack any and all cameras around the world to search for an individual by name. And seemingly, only Cipher (by insane hacking skills) and Dom (by impeccable luck) are able to escape it. To be able to compromise hundreds of thousands of cameras, with all sorts of different security codes, so quickly, is laughable. Also laughable is having a database of faces and names, and hoping these cameras can recognize faces. But it does speed up the story quicker than if a device like this didn’t exist.

An overpowered hacker villain

Speaking of overpowered hacking, Cipher’s hacking skills are pretty ridiculous. From her plane, she can hack thousands of cars at once, government agencies, cameras, and a whole lot more. Any computer that exists is vulnerable to her. For this to come from any cyberterrorist just seems like maybe a little bit of a stretch. Especially when you consider she’s hacking remotely and just how different the cyber security of each device would be. As terrifying as cyber terrorism seems, hacking just isn’t as easy in real life.

Every car is a hackable car

fate_of_the_furious_cars crashing in city

In New York City, Cipher found thousands of hackable smart cars. They were seemingly all connected to the internet and all could just be used remotely. Is it believable that there are a couple thousand electric, internet-powered cars in NYC at one time? Sure. But when Cipher pulled it off, every single car on screen was hackable. It particularly looks absurd that so many are parked conveniently in a car park a Russian ambassador happened to be driving past. That may make scenes look more impressive, but there’s no way hackable cars will all conveniently appear together like that. It looked damn cool, though.

Drone army of a thousand cars

fate of the furious-zombie-cars

Not to mention how ridiculous the drone army is. The drone army of cars are controlled so perfectly well that they move together as a flock. None crash into each other, but many of them manage to drive through skyscrapers. And off of car parks to stop a vehicle below. This needs no explanation, but viewers aren’t asking for one while watching. It just looks amazing.

EMP ruins Russian base, Dom’s car is fine

Here’s one thing you may be less likely to notice. When Dom drives into a Russian base controlled by a terrorist faction, he activates an EMP pulse that practically shuts the whole base down. Not only does it seem absurd that a base is so vulnerable to EMP like that, but it doesn’t make sense that his own car is fine. There was no explanation given for it, we just accepted the awesomeness of the Furious.

Submarine under ice chases cars that still make it out

the-fate-of-the-furious-submarine-ice

When several military vehicles (and a Lamborghini) drive across ice, a submarine chases them from underneath. This looks so awesome that you would be forgiven for not thinking about how it doesn’t make sense that these vehicles driving on ice are slower than a massive submarine in water. Or that the submarine’s torpedoes never seem to hit them once. Of course, that’s probably not the most absurd part of the scene…

The Rock redirects a torpedo with his bare hand

the-rock-literally-pushes-a-torpedo-with-his-bare-hands fate-of-the-furious
The lengths The Rock will go to for his car

Hobbs, or The Rock, jumped out of his vehicle to grab a torpedo heading for his car and redirected it towards the mercenaries to blow them up instead. Obviously, many people questioned whether The Rock would be strong enough to move that massive torpedo, and asked the Royal Navy. The Rock then took to Twitter to assure us he can, in fact, redirect a torpedo with his hands.

Even if I did believe him, I couldn’t believe that he could make it look so easy doing it in the blistering cold or having enough time to do it before the torpedo detonated for him to make it out of that. But I don’t care, it’s one of the coolest things you’ll ever see in film.

Lamborghini falls through ice, everyone is fine

fate of the furious car falling in ice Cropped

When a Lamborghini falls through ice and ends up in ice water, you’d expect the people driving it to freeze and either drown or get hypothermia. Especially when the car fills with water, as it did. But did that happen to anyone in the family when it went under ice? Nope!

God’s Eye hacking villain can’t spot a fake death

Let’s say we accept God’s Eye and the overpowered Cipher as part of the Fate of the Furious world. We know that Cipher has eyes and ears everywhere, and yet Dom fools her twice. First, he conveniently hides from cameras, somehow knowing exactly where they would be placed and buying enough time to have a fairly long conversation in which to strike a deal.

Second, Dom arranges for someone to appear dead on camera, and for Cipher to believe him to stay that way. But if Cipher really does have eyes everywhere, how would she not notice when that character was rushed off to a hospital and then prepared to infiltrate her plane? S0meone who must overprepare all of her plans as she does, or who is so omniscient, should not be able to miss that. But it makes for such an incredible twist and such a great moment that we don’t care.

Baby fight

baby with headphones on in fate of the furious

While carrying a baby in a carrycot, Deckard shoots up and punches his way through well-trained security guards, makes it look easy, while stopping to make gestures to the kid throughout. “This’ll be a bit scary!” Yeah, you think? Deckard almost got this kid shot, but he made sure the kid had headphones in listening to Alvin and the Chipmunks to avoid all that was happening. This scene is the most quintessential Fate of the Furious scene that doesn’t involve cars: it could never happen, but you’re laughing so hard and you’re just so impressed by how badass the character is, that you don’t question it.

Family shielding Dom with cars against nuke

Finally, the radiation and smoke from a nuclear blast is about to hit Dom. How is he protected? By cars that drive in front of him and cover him from the smoke, causing him to miss all of it. Totally how it works, right? But it was awesome!

Fan of Final Fantasy, Ratchet & Clank, Metal Gear Solid, and plenty of other games! Also been wiki-ing since a long time, so you'll find a lot of my writing and coding throughout the Final Fantasy and Ratchet & Clank Wikis.