4. Fast & Furious Posters (1-5) w/ Steven Lyons | Poster Podcast

In this episode I chat with Auckland based comedian Steven Lyons about movies 1 through 5 of the Fast & Furious series. Steven's a super smart designer who really knows his stuff and I felt totally out of my depth discussing this with him, so I hope that I bring the everyman charm to the banter. Check back next week for the remaining 5 posters!

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https://www.facebook.com/StevenLyonsComedy
https://twitter.com/stelyons
https://www.instagram.com/stelyons

0:00 Intro
2:26 The Fast & The Furious
14:06 2 Fast 2 Furious
31:08 Wild Speed 2 (Japanese Verson)
34:49 Tokyo Drift
42:24 Fast & Furious
48:42 Fast Five

Intro Music:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TN3tXX2XgjY

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Intro Music:
Funky Retro Funk by MokkaMusic

Transcript

Welcome everybody to The Postal podcast my name is Taylor Ruddle and I like posters it's about as much as an intro as I do for these things I've got my first guest on this episode uh Steven Lyons from up in Auckland thank you for joining me today oh my God I'm the first guest you are indeed the first guest this is it yeah this is it how exciting my pressure yeah my loyal uh 15 or so listeners will remember I gave you a bit of a shout out in one of the earlier episodes and then like sort of coincidentally we met like a week after that and uh we've kind of been talking shop and stuff since and we figured we'd get on here and have a bit of a yarn about some posters and I figured given that we've got a new Fast and Furious movie coming up uh why not talk about those you thought you'd go with someone who didn't drive a car for seven years well that's I mean if you think that uh if watches Fast and Furious drives cars that might be um cutting out a lot of the market there I think um I don't think I could drive when I saw them for the first time I was about to say I think a lot of Their audience probably legally can't drive a car yes we used to just recreate it and uh Need for Speed underground too that was usually there the vehicle great fun there yeah yeah man Need for Speed must have done so well out of this franchise absolutely yeah I think they kicked off around the same time I know they used to always just see skylines even like in person because of the second movie I used to work at a pizza shop that was right next to a bottle store and on Fridays it would just be Skyline Skyline Skyline because of the sunset's so beautiful yeah exactly no we're up to two puns now that's a good uh are you quite a punny comic as well well I mean if we're talking about cars then yes my puns could get exhausting brilliant so I'll really try my hardest yeah geez okay if I go too much then I might need a hand breaking nice nice okay so in case you haven't guessed or or seen from me uh telling it in the last episode Stephen is also a stand-up comedian he is much more seasoned than I am very very I think the puns would help with that introduction he's a very good comedian but he also does puns well you know they're not mutual excuse exclusive so I think we'll just crack into talking about the posters we'll begin with the first one which was the Fast and the Furious I should have checked when these all came out but I think it was around 2001 I think the first one came out does that sound about right I mean yeah yeah yeah I've got ADHD so I have no concept of time but I remember when the first one came out because uh I mean it would have been around when I was actually at University studying design and uh and the posters were I'm not a car guy but the posters were like maybe I maybe I could get into cars because they it's a the marketing on this has been incredible like yeah and I mean it is what are they at like 20 years of of doing Fast and the Furious so 21 I think it was I I checked very briefly the other day and I think you're right they in the films as well they really captured that speed of light um like the speed of like travel when they would push the nitrous and uh yeah all the colors would blur and they would kind of rock back into the seats and yeah you're right there so do you remember any first impressions of seeing this poster when the movie came out oh man it's I mean it's also they did a bunch of different posters for every movie like they were yeah that was the tricky thing to be one of those movies where they it was right at the start of people just being like I don't know make a bunch of movies it'll be fine a bunch of posters make all the posters we'll work it out yeah um the the first one for anybody that's just listening is uh it's quite difficult to describe actually there is the faces of four people around the edges which are the four characters uh Paul actually I'm going to use their real names he's called Dominic in the movies isn't he oh wow has it been that long Thomas Vin Diesel right yes different diesel family and I can't remember what um Dom's sister was called I really should have researched this before we started but I thought it would just be nice to kind of make it Nostalgia chat then it came out of nowhere yeah that's that's I think I hope what's going to be some of the charm of this and it's it's funny when you look at the the scale of the crimes they were doing in the first movie they were just stealing VCRs and televisions at the back of a truck and then you see where the franchise has gone and they're looking at this because the first movie is like the most all about family movie yeah yeah right like yeah like no one's suspending a pickup truck from a helicopter in the first movie they're actually going like hey maybe it is about family they're quite grounded in the beginning aren't they although even even as far back as the second one they were doing that ridiculous Bridge jump and stuff like that so they I suppose they had these sites set High um did you actually enjoy the first movie oh I'd love that I'm an action movie dude so like for me I love all of them I uh like if if you ask me to explain the plot of any of them I have no idea all right yeah like you could put on you could put on like random scenes and I would be like this still works yeah it's it's because they're they know what they're doing they're like did we get a car yes yeah did we get away not yet all right Antics it's like around movie four is when they all become kind of the same movie to me like I can remember the kind of the plot of the first three and then when they came back because something that I found kind of interesting is the second movie Vin Diesel didn't come back for it and then they had this deal where he did a cameo at the end of number three and do you remember have you read about this they they did some kind of deal where his agent or his Studio got the rights to Riddick and that was his like end of the bargain for doing a cameo in three and then I guess he came back on as a producer for four and that's when the movies I give him full credit for being like no this isn't the franchise Riddick is the franchise yeah he's like we gotta forget forget about these silly little cars people want to see me in space he can only see in the dark with Sona yeah I never saw that it always kind of creeped me out as a little kid yeah yeah I mean it's a good Sci-Fi it's a fun I think they're making another one of those too 20 years down the line hit that might be his next uh his next thing is to go on a Riddick well I think as long as it's insane yeah like we will do we people will go and people will pay to see it we'll do yeah like yeah you know that you're gonna go and if you like Fast and Furious movies then and it's one of those great franchises where like action movies can still make it at the box office yeah because you know if you had if you're into Fast and Furious you don't want to watch that on your laptop you want to explode at you and you want to be like yes you're right I actually went and saw one of the later ones for the first time in the theater and it is a unique you just can't get that experience um at home in front of your computer you're right there they are sort of it's like an event you go out to cfast and a furious movie you get a group of people together and and um yeah it's good dumb fun you know like no one's turning up to see a Grammy yo Grammy yeah maybe there's probably actually Grammy with Fast and the Furious you're more likely to see a Grammy award-winning performance than a an Oscar nominated performance they had very good soundtracks to be honest um hell yeah I have a memory for this song it's called Danza Kuduro it was from the first one it was a Spanish song and my oldest comedy Mentor Ollie horn who I don't think he's listening right now but if you are hi Ollie he always used to enter to that song and it was in the first movie along with um Corona beer I knew so many people that drank that beer just because it was Dawn's beer in in the Fast and the Furious yeah man if I'd had more notice I would have hooked my I would have gone and tracked down some Coronas so yeah would have got yourself a rosary shaved yeah it would be perfect yeah I don't worry Nature's doing that in its own time yeah I feel like we're all on ticking clock there aren't we oh the poster for the first one is like I think it's gorgeous because it really is like it it really one of the cool things that they always do for Fast and Furious is it's so it's all just people it's like they have two jobs it's like show the people show the car yeah and like and the energy is like all of their um posters have an energy to them like it's it's not a franchise that like like Transformers movie posters there's got to be at least like eight to 20 of those by now but they all just look like robots yeah they lose all of their Silhouettes down there they're all kind of two yeah yeah I know what you mean where's the Fast and Furious kept like Taking Chances and doing weird stuff they really did some of the later movies posters like are just weird and I really respect that that they went yeah why not let's see you are right there there was a lot of variants for each movie had like three or four very different um very different posters for it which was was cool though one thing I hadn't realized but just looking back on them now is um they had actually that fast and the furious logo that I don't know what the font is but they already had that in the first one which then they've continued on with each the title of each of the follow-up movies um I didn't realize they had that like more or less nailed down so early yeah and I um I've used that font and you shouldn't what what did you it's antique Olive nor di italic and it's uh it's a fat font that the more you look at it the worse it gets so a lumpy and stuff aren't they chunky the aces will give you like yeah it is yeah yeah the aces really have that Vibe of this was a beautiful font at some different time yeah and that's one thing I'm glad to have you on the podcast as you actually know the names of fonts if you've listened to any of my first three episodes I used no names um so that you'll you'll have a very good there's a lot of holes in my knowledge and it'll be good to have you um around well I don't want to empower anyone to go out and start using antique Olive because uh yeah you will bleep that out we'll get that in here yeah just every time I say the name of anti-gole just believe that I expect it to be beeped out we'll just we'll replace it with Don saying family yeah that was the thing about the first one as well he actually spoke like a normal human in the first one and then I don't know what point it changed but you hear the trailer for the latest one and he he sounds like he's you're rubbing two handfuls I think people together yeah he really fell into the Christopher Nolan Batman trap yeah it's just like oh can I do this more and they're like I don't know I guess it's working and then he you know there's a couple of movies later he's like a bit more and they're like yeah sure yeah it's coming out yeah yeah family yeah and you're like oh I think you left your car running no no that's Dom talking

and then I'm just going yeah yeah of course you said it now so I think if you if you haven't got anything else to say about the first one we can move on to the second poster I just think it's very stylish I thought it was really bold how they the type goes like you know normal posters left to right uh you know up to down maybe this one is like top left to bottom right it's a very angle on it but I think it looks cool deliciously uncomfortable because it's not even a set like it's not a 45 degree angle it is but the thing about it is that so um visually for um Western cultures because we're reading left to right yeah that drop off it actually creates a sense of speed so it has this vertigo that you have within it um and then it's a nice simple poster yeah I think it and especially because the first one was almost like an indie movie the first one it was just a weird kind of uh let's do a story about street racing and I don't think they had any ideas of how massive a franchise it was going to become I guarantee you someone new like there would have been a couple of people involved in this that were just like oh we can make we can make a couple of these be good I don't know if any of them would have seen but they must have known because it's um when it came out it was like um street racing had been really popularized through Japan at that time and was starting to come through Western cultures uh also through anime because this is around the time I believe Initial D which is where all of those light streaks kind of you know unless you're going to go back to like uh Akira in the um 80s which is an anime that has amazing like Trails on it yeah yeah um I watched that fairly recently and didn't realize how grotesque it was until the second time around but yeah yes what are you talking about it's gorgeous it's just titsuo exploding with human goodness yeah lots of blood and everything of his um that would be another poster to do that was a very um iconic one I think there's about four manga authors now that directly were inspired by that Akira poster and that is um that poster was definitely a poster I had when I was a teenager yeah absolutely amazing the amount of parodies I've seen of that one like King of the Hill and he's got a ride on lawnmower instead of yeah Mike but anyway the second poster I Too Fast Too Furious so we're getting into the interesting naming conventions um I don't know if you've ever played the game Kingdom Hearts are you aware of that series I am I haven't played it so that game just decided it was going to name the follow-up games whatever the hell it wanted and we were gonna have to deal with keeping track of them um I agree with that I feel like as a as a society well you know let's do whatever we want now yeah yeah you know it's like we used to have to be like oh it's James Bond this and then they like I feel like even Bond learned real quick they were like no we'll just call it whatever we want and people will find it yes that makes it very hard to track down posters because I was going to do a bond episode of this and I had to just remember what they were all called yeah but you don't need to because you got Wikipedia next exactly yeah it did come in handy that was one thing that Ryan Wilson uh oh geez the the author of um knives out and Glass Onion he is really annoyed that they had to put a Knives Out mystery in the subtitle of glass and he wanted them to just be like Agatha Christie standalones yeah yeah I very much got that feeling for based on that yeah I saw a gorgeous poster yes that I think I might wait until a few more of them come out but definitely I love how each one has its own she got this Optimist like they're just gonna keep making these churn them out I want as many Knives Out movies as there are Bond movies I mean it does make and it's like let's face it it's I'd way rather watch Daniel Craig in a Knives Out movie than a Bond movie yeah he definitely is a lot more uh interesting more fun yeah yeah absolutely and he's only gonna he's you know in the same sense that uh Dominic eventually uh what's the term the term is flanderization if you've heard that before no so the it comes from the idea that Ned Flanders in the first couple of seasons was just a well-meaning Christian neighbor but by the end he's a Jesus Freak just like that little um little bit every season and it's the same thing with Dominic the voice and I'm really looking forward to seeing how like fabulous sorry Benoit Blanc becomes by like the third or the fourth uh knives that's serious yeah at some point he's gonna there's gonna be you know if they make if they make four of them you know that at least one of the next two he's gonna hit rock bottom oh this is gonna be like something's gonna go wrong yeah yeah then he has to like get his groove back or that kind of yeah or do you think it's just all down gets his Groove Back I love it um so yes uh Too Fast Too Furious this one I really remember this poster quite vividly because it was the one that I saw I think that was kind of more cognizant I think the first one came out when I was about 10 or something and then this one here was when I was uh more cognizant I think is the word and yeah interesting choice that Vin Diesel didn't come back for the second movie I don't know if he's ever said why I guess maybe he just felt like he'd done it what do you mean you know why why why didn't he come because you can sit here and be like hey why didn't he come back for this massive franchise but that's not what it was yeah it was a car movie that did okay yeah and they went [ __ ] we could make another one and then diesel was like I don't want to get Typecast yeah there's the car guy that's fair and then it became an iconic franchise and he's like well like yeah I don't play that yeah okay we could come back for that yeah I could I could clear my schedule a little bit the last Riddick movie didn't do so well no yeah he's like don't talk about it yeah um Too Fast Too Furious I think as well was the peak of all those do you remember the neon signs uh not neon signs excuse me the neon lights underneath the cards yes yeah yeah that was the peak of and all of the I don't know what you'd call them I think the subculture in Japan now is called itasha which is like cringe and it's when they're like covered in anime stickers and whatnot and I don't think they were quite on that level but they were definitely like what is this JDM is the the subculture the the arch type or whatever yeah um and then from this movie I think they toned it down a little bit because nowadays they just drive I don't even know what they drive they're just black part of the Fast and the Furious is to be like it's meant to be a taste making show like you like this [ __ ] it's you know that it can't work without you watching it and going I want that car yeah that's true like that's part of it is when you see I mean the reason dorm is so great is you look at Dom and you're like great I could you know I can be bold you know yeah that's an aspirational look I can have milia yeah yeah but it is that thing of like you want to be able to drive those cars you want to feel like they are very there's a chance that you could yeah and I think that yeah for us we can look back and go oh yeah lighting underneath cars is a bit weird but I like this though I love it and it's still around it's not like it went anywhere LEDs just got more affordable yeah that's true you do see them in people's bedrooms they did go in terms of fashion and style yeah they are not as in fashion at the moment yeah yeah it's more of a statement now to have like under car lighting than it was when this movie came out when this movie came out it wasn't a statement it was a cool thing to do everyone was doing it yeah and I think I don't remember that this might be like the nitrous thing that they used to do where they would push the button on the steering wheel and they would like go flying into hypers hit that NOS it was there was a real thing wasn't it people actually were putting it into cars yeah people still do that I was gonna say I still get turbos put in your car right yeah I wasn't just the whole industry is dedicated to it interesting I honestly wasn't sure if you still like if people still did it or if the cars were just I don't know getting powerful now you don't need it I have no idea what the legal um requirements would be in somewhere like New Zealand for it but I'm pretty sure it's been illegal here for a long time yeah no it is yeah I mean it's a it's basically you know it's a superpower for your car so it's not going to go away so video gamey I think that's why these movies did well as they were very video gamey um yeah I remember but they they made it seem more accessible yeah they made it seem like yeah because not like um turbo like NOS has been in video games since they've ever existed because it's the perfect game mechanic it is of like oh you have a limited burst of SP it's like why but it also that's listed in Drag Racing for a long time yeah and then it was the idea of like and I'm sure that it had already gone into street racing by the time these came out but definitely I mean it's such a great narrative device it is you can only use it once during the race that's your kind of pick the right moment to do it and yeah no it is it is very good for storytelling I remember in the first movie he tried it out and we were talking about the characters being cool before I remember Paul he was kind of a geek in the first one like he was like oh my God he was he was all Tech he was like oh yeah I'm gonna do this Tech stuff and he was sort of like the The Fish Out of Water a little bit amongst these kind of vaguely Latino um street gang races and he's the you know cornfield white guy cop yeah but he gradually just gets cooler and cooler as the movies go on um and yeah I seem to remember like it was a big deal about him getting his nitrous in the first in the first movie yeah um but it didn't help him because then he caught up to Diamond I'm just wearing well I have that too and you've used yours now so like what are you gonna do also the the debut of ludicrous and um I can't remember this character is called tej I think is that him in this poster is he the middle one he's the middle bottom character ludicrous it's from him I I didn't mind him in this movie though he he definitely toned down his look I think he had a big afro on this one and then the later ones I assume he just had his regular haircut and like he kind of does just become ludicrous in the later movies which kind of makes sense right like if anything don't bring him into act just bring him in to be ludicrous with a different name the face on the post the people go oh cool ludicrous maybe I'll go and see it well also he just pumped up the soundtrack like what a great of course yeah those two hand in hand I will say though in terms of design on um the second one the uh you know the poster that you shared had exactly the thing that I constantly am trying to forget existed which is when everyone became obsessed with brushed metal yes and it was like and it was kind of because it existed I mean it's been around forever it was like 80s action movies use that brush steel but to when it came back in the night in the uh 90s when it came back in the early and mid 2000s it was because people could do it easily and it was like often combined with like embossing and it was just very lazy and not fun yeah like it's not like like Terminator 2 makes sense the the robots the steel machines you know and and I'll let them get away with it for some of the action movies because you know it's like hard steel guns explosives yeah that makes sense for this sense for this one it's been one all because make it all shiny make it gorgeous well carbon fiber even would make more sense maybe oh yeah yeah that was the that was the look a lot of people just had the Bonnet I remember um the carbon fiber Bonnet was a big look yeah but it's for the design of the poster it's it is pretty standard like it's another one of the floating heads kind of uh this is very much of that time when every movie was action Stars something about what you're going to see in the movie title yeah yeah I think um they sort of carried on the effect they did in the first movie but I actually liked the grayscale effect they put on the characters a bit more because it felt more stylized um something looks weirdly icy about these characters because it's definitely like a blue it's like yeah I can hit you I can hit you with what that is is the first the first poster they've they're black and white in this poster they've converted them from color into black and white ear quotes but they've got they run blue through the whole thing which is which is the goal and that's what they were trying to do but for us now we're like it's quite jarring because it you know it doesn't quite have I don't know I don't know what it is about it that just doesn't feel it just feels cold yeah yeah absolutely I also think it's funny because I have only sort of noticed this ever since I've started doing the poster podcast is how awfully like just cheesy some of these tag lines are on the posters like at the bottom it says how fast do you like it and I think like it that doesn't really feel like the you know I can't picture any of the characters in the movie saying that maybe ludicrous is character but do you know what I mean they're they they would have just slapped that on there as a an attention grabber like I saw God it was it was the 2004 Godzilla movie that American remake and it it said something on the poster like size does matter and I'm just oh that's so lame you know how many Executives would that have gone through and they would have gone yeah yeah I think people are really gonna they're really gonna honestly writing those taglines must be so hard because it just has to have the broadest appeal possible right yeah it is like those tag lines are because a lot of them are I mean it's meant to be a call to action but that's not what tag lines are anymore like tag lines are like a weird like also you know yeah I mean Too Fast Too Furious how fast do you like it well I guess too fast yeah how Furious do I like it well Too Furious why are you asking me about the fastness and not the furiousness yeah it very much feels like something that they put on the very last minute like oh and also we better put a tagline on there because even the font like it's not the same one as the title it to my eyes right now it almost looks like a digital clock font but I don't think it is I think it's just zoomed out but it's yeah it's similar to a digital font clock it's yeah a little bit of that and then of course it is the uh the three cars in the middle which that car from number two is definitely a bit of an icon there like I definitely remember that or even 20 20 something years later but this is also we're heading into like uncanny valley in terms of the photo shopping is that is about to drive over Ludacris's face like what is the like they've given them no space they've scrunched them all in and been like aren't you having a good time yeah that's one thing that they seem to flip-flop between with these posters later on is they can't decide if they want to focus on the cards or the people and it's like often I forget which one it was later on but there was one where you're looking at a very blurry group of people through the wheel arches of a car like which I'm okay with it might hit me with that product you know what I'm here for exactly you're the shiny uh the shiny I don't know what it is the paint I don't know cars at all um but yeah anything else you'd like to mention that like it looks like there's some kind of glistening stars like on Paul Walker and um oh that's the the lights from the um backdrop of the cars of course it yeah I don't know mine might have photoshopped that out if I was doing the poster but I might have Photoshopped it so that the two main characters weren't sharing a spine yeah the floating head movies to produce some pretty interesting um biology don't they well just I mean faster than Furious movies I think they like I mean this poster is a perfect example of this like when brooding was so cool yeah like you look at everyone in this shot everyone's like at an angle on a tilt yeah they're all you know and looking over the show order yeah and then looking like up over their eyebrows like yes that's where the movie loses me a little bit sometimes as it it takes it's the characters seem to be taking themselves very seriously and it's sometimes borderlines into cringe for me especially they didn't know they didn't know what you know they were still working out what the magic sauce was yeah that's true yeah they didn't have the rock to tell them how to do it right yeah not for another few movies exactly they were like oh maybe we're maybe you look fun maybe we're lucky maybe we're mad yeah it's it's up to viewer interpretation as to how they're feeling but yeah yeah I know what you mean about the smolder like Paul Walker doing is um what do they call it in Zoolander the blue steel is that the yeah that was the face and then that also works because they're slightly blued well they are blue steel maybe that's what they were going for oh damn is that what I beat you the whoever designed this like saw blue saw Zoolander and was like that's it we're doing that that's the yeah yeah we're gonna do it everyone we're redoing the photos I want blue steel all round yeah and I feel like the second one I'm trying to remember what cities they take place in the first one was uh California probably somewhere that's where there's a lot of um like Latin Americans living in that kind of like the West Coast uh area right I mean that's most of America at the time though yeah I believe it's set in California because they're doing the very much like the um uh West Coast Customs kind of culture it pops up quite a bit in a lot of movies yeah yeah um where they're like oh we're doing amazing car things and then also like I guess we're all just fitting out cars yeah and then the second one I remember was they sort of made a big deal they moved it to Miami because that was a there was a little mini episode where he was uh it was like street racing his way to to Miami winning uh races and money along the way road trip yeah and then I mean it's no Cannonball fun but they're doing their best yeah I mean they had to rewatch it it uh it's quite offensive now I believe okay it would just be watching it for the first time I really only sort of know it's an adult movie isn't it Cannonball Run yes no Burt Reynolds oh right oh yeah okay Jackie Chan's in it as a Japanese uh driver you'd love to see the um what was that a 70s movie yeah I believe like probably late late 70s yeah yeah I can imagine that maybe didn't age well in some areas um Dom DeLuise is in it I don't know who it is yeah exactly exactly there's anyone else no no someone does someone does and they'll be like oh my God yes sure ah I used to love him okay so now I've picked out one for you to check out which is the Japanese version of Need for Speed oh Jesus I messed that up completely need for speeds the video game Too Fast Too Furious that is the courage title uh do you know what it's called in Japan Too Fast Too Furious no actually the this one might make you laugh the the whole franchise in Japan is called wild speed oh I love that it's a great name they call it a way a little speed or yeah and the naming convention is a lot simpler in Japan um they're usually just called you know wild speed and then a descriptor so the one where they go to space what's called wild speed space mission boring yeah exactly it's too easy to follow yeah yeah and that's not what I'm about but it's also like not easy because like you know they don't have any of the you know like how do you know which what the order is exactly I think they maybe they do a number it looks like this one's called wild speed times two which is which I love they've also done that that metal effect that you love so much on that yeah but but they've compromised by putting this one at a 45 degree angle and a big Fireball on the type yeah yeah they really went all out with the Photoshop on this one um if you told me that this was a poster I designed in 2001 I would not be surprised I find it interesting that the Japanese version focuses more on the cars than the people um although it looks like the images are the exact ones that they used on the English poster oh they definitely are they haven't put that blue effect that we talked about before but they've put plenty of the blur on the on the cars at the top there's definitely the color scheme and the way that they've treated this reminds me a lot of Initial D yes I think that like you say that's probably the reason it's so popular is because um because of Initial D although I mean the whole you know the rift or thing over there is like huge anyway so it makes a lot of sense um I can read some of the text on this so that one the first line of text that's just coming out of four Walker's head looks like it says which is like I think it means remove the limits yeah been underneath them the text just says all the characters names [Music] Gibson and Eva Mendez she was um what was her character but I'm really blanking on her character's name but she was in a few of them and there's only one character name and it's Dom yeah everyone else's family you know the rules that's fair and then this is one thing they always do on Japanese posters is the text that's just above um Tyrese and Suki's head basically just says uh I can't remember what the reading for America is but it says America number one hit which is like yeah every movie that comes out in Japan from America it always it's always a number one hit in America which I think is yeah probably the equivalent of those cheesy those cheesy lines that I was complaining about before is um they always mention how big of a head it was In America which why wouldn't you you know it's like when when anyone tours in New Zealand we did great elsewhere yeah exactly also also make us do good here and they always say when they come over down there yeah and it's like we know you're International you're not from here yeah we don't know you by a first name basis as we do most of the other comedians is your name guy well then you're probably foreign yeah so with all that sort of wild speed and Minds we let's have a look at the third poster which was where the series took a pretty big Divergent um at the time I think and they rolled the dice they did a risk I think it's one of those polarizing movies like for me it's one of my favorites but I know it was not popular um with people that really liked the whole Dom Paul story um a little history yeah I mean as a poster it's gorgeous look at things it's still missing they're still missing a lot with the use of white space which is great still sticking with their guns on black and white photography characters yeah yeah it even says wild speed and one of the sign one of the neon signs it just says the the Japanese name of the movies I didn't realize that until I saw it today but that's very cool Easter eggs yeah and this is really the first one that I remember actually like kind of properly watching outside of being a child and it's quite funny because the plot of this movie is almost exactly Karate Kid except instead of karate it's um drifting cars if you look at the Beats of the story of each of them they're basically the same movie but just then which is not a bad plan no I mean it's not like the but like the storyline didn't work out for them uh for the Karate Kid people and yeah just like this one I remember all of the promo for being really stylish and it was like it just seemed to me like this was the coolest movie uh you know wow Japan that's such a that's a really interesting and foreign place and they're drifting cars and they've got this all the stickers and the Neons and the cars and just yeah something about it seems so like and then the more and more that you learn the more you're like oh wait that's not it's not weird for for these cars to be here this is way more logical for them to be here than on the streets of Los Angeles um yeah exactly this makes much more sense drifting seems much more required when you have winding mountain passes versus an 18 Lane Highway yeah yeah because they used to just do drag racing and in those first couple didn't they they would I can't remember what does Dom say he used to live his life a quarter mile at the time which I guess was a couple of blocks on a on a um an LA street but yeah do you remember did you see this one when it came in oh I definitely did I think I was working for a radio station and got free tickets to this that's awesome um yeah I mean it's a romp it's not my jam but it was great like the thing about it is that it's like if they just take in the western elements out of it it would have been great oh yeah pseudo white savior kind of thing right yeah yeah where they're just like hey it's like now we're good we're good we don't we don't really need you here yeah I wonder if there's probably stuff that hasn't aged super well so I haven't seen it in years but um one thing I definitely remember because today I used to live over there no yes I lived I lived in nam fukogo which is the southern island queue show it's like the capital of there and this movie really set up my expectations badly for how how well people could speak English there like he runs into like you know he runs into like 12 people that all speak English on his first day and I remember because when you actually go there the Japanese people are like no we've got we got our own thing going right yeah we don't need English we need to integrate and um but yeah I remember being like oh we're just Fast and Furious lie to me like this is terrible like I can't understand anyone yeah yeah they deeply lied to you yeah exactly even down to the fact that they're like that this movie implies that the Japanese are like interested in American culture yeah yeah how much I'm sure there are people they like Starbucks and baseball so that's um yeah but you could be keen on specifics but you know you're not getting like it definitely isn't a thing where if you turn up not able to speak Japanese and go so I'm American can we hang when people are like yeah let me know when you speak my language I don't know what the hell you're doing I used to get uh I used to get mistaken for being uh American or German that was the two that people thought I was and I always you know very quick to let them know that I wasn't American because you know a little bit of history between those two countries you know you know if it was an old guy just randomly out in public asking me if I'm American it's like no one elsewhere like I mean I'm half American and I still say no to that yes I guess uh you gotta play your cards um close to your chest with that one sometimes yeah yeah but yeah I don't know what else to say but I just this poster is a nightmare all right they the kerning on this is disgusting all right and I'm gonna ruin this poster for you in a few very specific things if you look at the o on Furious now it's an optical illusion because they haven't spaced the letter correctly so the O blooms it's like it's awesome and part of what that is is because your eye is being tricked by the fact that they've gone back to their incredibly infuriating pun intended dropped capital of the F yeah so the f is like slightly hanging like the lines on this are chaos because you've also got a poorly italicized typeface so if you ever feel like the world's close in on you just to head into the middle of Tokyo because they haven't bothered to Kern the K and the Y there and there is a Chasm yeah it's a nightmare even noticing I didn't realize that the T and the D hang quite a bit below and then the um before Furious doesn't line up with the bottom of the f I think that's probably a line to the but then it's like what are you guys doing why would you do that because I guess they they were trapped by their own um style and they had to make this uh completely different set of words look like really it just are all over the place on this one in terms of the name though Tokyo Drift I think is a cool it's a cool movie sounding name yeah you'd I'd go and see Tokyo Drift I don't need you know link yeah call the Tokyo Drift a fast and furious story all right what's the problem exactly yeah I think that at the time it was you know they were like oh [ __ ] how do we keep this franchise how do we keep the ball up in the air they need people to know that it's a part of the part of the franchise yeah I don't think I have much else to say about this one I I like it but it might just be my my pink Nostalgia Shades um 100 this is not a well-designed poster a completely White Road they're standing on but you've also yeah you gotta go what is the feeling that they're trying to create there's no doesn't make sense does it no stars in the sky oh yeah they should have taken those stars from the second poster you're right yeah come on that's where they ended up and then the thing there's like I guess they've waited out the street behind the characters but then Sean is randomly standing in front of a car that's sort of like half cut off behind him yeah and it looks like because he's on the road yeah it looks a bit maybe brushed it lightly with a like a masking tool or something yeah I do wonder if the perspective on this checks out because it looks like like that car is up higher then it's not important there's like nine other movies that we can worry about this is true we we probably should crack on so the next movie is number four and this one I couldn't figure out what was the official movie poster because I'd seen a lot of them but this was the one on Wikipedia so it was the one I I took as the you know quote unquote official uh by now like by this point there were no official posters I think I think for Fast and Furious they were doing proper like Market testing where they're just like what about this what about that sure yeah that would make a lot of sense and yeah I don't know if I like this poster I like the car but but the faces to the top but feel like I guess they've obviously tried to make Paul Walker and Vin Diesel more prominent than the other two but they just feel like kind of giant compared to the two ladies faces well so what's happening is you've got um clearly four different photo shoots you've got four different face sizes you've got different um alignments so you know like you've got two of them you can only see one eye two of them you can see two eyes one of them is basically straight on and all of that stuff you have to remember our brains are massive decoding machines yeah so and human faces are like one of the main things that we're set up to decode because that's how we tribalize and stay safe amongst people so when you have a poster like this where there's so many different lighting angles happening and so much like fake perspective and shape you know like they can't stand this close together but also they're not pretended like it's they're not all in the same uniform setup so it's so um emotionally exhausting if you're quite empathetic you look at this and you're just like what is happening and why is everyone like like how tiny is the last woman in this poster yeah yeah definitely it's which is a shame because the juxtapos like the coloring the use of the like the grayscale imagery versus the like color on the car is actually a really fun juxtaposition yeah but by then we're like all squeezed in and they've put all of the copy for this on the car it's really crashed together but not recognizing the actual shape of the car no like the whoever's designed this I don't know if they own a car because they've put the text going straight into the tire yeah which that again makes you feel uncomfortable because you're like oh is there not enough room for the tire yeah also uh if you want more things to break your brain they've they've centered the type and then they've like left and right aligned the type as well so the tagline is oh yeah right aligned to the credits but semi-centered it actually looks like it might be left aligned to the U of urius I think you're right there actually just hold that thought I just realized my laptop wasn't actually plugged in I better go and do that before it does oh no meanwhile I will say that they brought back the uh brushed steel and it does not look terrible this time around and so these are very low resolution we got to get you some higher resolution imagery yeah they do look a bit sort of um it does look a bit amateur um compared to some of the other ones I think I guess the light they must have done in one shoot for that uh fast and the furious two blue steel shoot right yeah I mean they probably would have so many photos by now of the stars of this movie looking brooding yeah they could they could probably uh yeah they could have um any you could make a three-dimensional um yeah rotating thing with those and in terms of like I guess this movie was when I won't say the franchise like came back but it was I remember a lot of people being like happy that it was following the original story again yeah it was a reboot I mean they knew that when they named it right they're like Fast and Furious it's like oh you can't just can't just go back and basically call it the same and they're like no actually we can we checked they just got rid of the the titles what do you think of the Chrome sort of effect on the the title in this one way nicer way nicer yeah it's we've stepped out from that photoshop brushed steel yeah um but what they've done which they are notorious for doing is they've scaled the type up so they haven't made the type bigger they've just scaled it up so you end up with these really fat letters or thick letters when the font itself is already thick oh see they would have done like a like an offset path or something to make them a bit chunkier rather than well they needed to do the reverse you need to make them thinner so they actually match the type yes I see what you mean they just yeah they share no um they don't they're not the same schedule yeah you do a drop cap your drop cap is generally you know like it's either its own thing or it's a bigger version of what's there but it's the same bigger version still has to read with the rest of it yes yeah you're right it's like yeah if you blur your eyes a little it's just like asked and urius that might be a good a good name for the next one they're going to make are stenerious get up to speed is that what it says on the poster or is that a yeah yeah that's the tagline in there oh it is too right at the bottom in red just before yeah this um I I like the the texture I put on the title kind of goes with the Chrome bits of the car as well it feels like it kind of belongs in that world yeah which I think is good but other than that I don't think I have a lot else to say about I can't even remember what the movie was about no one can now here they got a new model but it had the original parts okay yeah it's um this is when the movies all sort of begin to blur into one for me I remember there was um I think they had Han from the third one the the Korean guy who was like living in Tokyo because he was fleeing America I think he was in this one as well which people were pretty chuffed about um Emma coming back because he was a popular character yeah other than that yeah I don't know much to say so let's just crack one with the next one this was another one that it was like you say a lot of Market testing for Fast Five there was they all were very minimalist though um the one we're looking at now I'm interested to hear your thoughts on the logo which is combining I don't even know I love it you do like it I love it I mean it's completely broken yeah but it's so it's great so so one thing that I will say is like all all of the posters so far that have kind of they've lived in um it's minimalism but it's uh I think the movement was called new Simplicity where it was kind of going against like um post-modernism of like all of the things and so it's so great like by the Fast Five which is the one where we've got all of the space and they've done so well because they're not going they by now they trust so much In Their audience yeah that they're like look at all the space we're gonna fill that with cars and explosions and they know they're like you've had four movies to learn like if you need us to tell you what's gonna like the rock is here you can relax yeah you know um and Fast Five I think like I don't know what that conversation was or how it happened where you've got the F from Fast being also the F from five that's what I was trying to articulate it but you know where it's one if and they just roll off the top of the F and then the middle bar of the F but it is when you think about it in terms of marketing and branding holy cow it's so great because if you don't know what that means you're not part of the family this fun little Club yeah yeah and so this is where they really start to go we've got our own language we're doing our own thing yeah and you're either on board or you're not and we know that enough of you are on board yes we don't have to beg you to come and see a fast and furious movie by now yeah at this point you're gonna watch it or you're not and yeah you're like look there's Vin Diesel there's Paul Walker there's the rock you know you Dwayne Johnson's gonna it's yeah what have you got what more do you need there's some little bits of cars which is great because they're like we're not even gonna show you the whole cars yeah because I think this is when they started to um they started to Market it quite divided as to here are the people and here are the cars and it was like those are the two things that you need to know about the and it's like it's not even oh man this is like you think about none of these that we've seen so far do the posters tell you anything about the narrative you're right yeah we can't tell what the what the movie is actually about yeah there's like none of them have like oh we have to get this back oh we have to go and no it's just you can relax all right we're gonna bring you a bunch of cars a bunch of beautiful people probably some strong boards you know there'll be some there'll be some explosions there'll be some you know but like I love this as a concept because it's blue guys like literally they're just like oh it's blue skies now but you just wait until the movie starts that's right yeah and it's also a um like I don't know how to articulous it feels so different to the other posters because the others were dark and like monochromatic and like super stylized whereas this is just like looks like they've done a really quality photo shoot and gone yep that's what we want I think it's just they've done better to hide the photo shoot I mean I wouldn't be surprised if half of these images are like on set Stills yeah and they're just because the perspective is still a mess like you look at how close the people are behind Dwayne Johnson yeah like those people are about maybe three and a half feet tall according to the perspective that we can see but but they also know that that doesn't matter look at the ground this shape of the car the size of the cars completely changes and like the ground almost could just be a gradient um the ground is not even a consistent gradient it's a shifting skit it's like it's whatever it needs to be for the car that's sitting on it to look the best I wonder if this um because I do remember reading about the backstage drama I guess if you will where maybe ego has got quite pumped up and there was there was a movie it might be the following one but it's the one with Jason Statham in it as well and Vin Diesel I mean allegedly Vin Diesel the rock and Jason Statham had a like a contract clause where no one of the three was allowed to land more hits on the other two or vice versa whenever they all had to they assigned a point system for each strike a head that was Five Points a punch was two a kick was three they they had to have the same amount of points between them was this a real thing I mean I wasn't there but this is what I've heard I'm very happy if it is because that's the thing is um I think you know you've got someone like the rock who was pretty famous for being quite generous and wrestling did you ever watch professional wrestling yeah yeah I'm very familiar with the people's eyebrow yeah he was pretty easy he's a little after my time but yeah definitely am aware of yeah the fact that he was but it's also you've got all three of these guys are not there you've got the rock who comes from this massive heart this beautiful like build the family lift each other up like be a badass but work your butt off Jason Statham is a commonwealth games diver I think he's gonna be like all right now I'm gonna hit me more than I hit them you're like bro you were in crank too like Vin Diesel I guess it's you kind of understand why it's it's always kind of been his franchise um and yeah I don't know the rock because they had to split him off and make another film of um Hobson Shore I think and that was I think the kind of these three oh these three co-exist good on you guys if you get to a point in your life where you're like I'm yeah but equally I can imagine all all of them are at a stage in their career where they're like hey can I not work with that person because we don't get along and if the answer is yes why wouldn't you um yeah I'd love to I'd love to have been a fly on the wall when they were deciding how to do those those um they call it fast and furious presents or something like that because it was another we need to make sure everyone knows it's in the series but it's not really in the series thing uh but I think we'll get to that in a second I think I've sort of run out of things to talk about with Fast Five fast and furious six yeah number six probably should have seen this coming giving that there is 10 movies that we're talking about but I did not expect this conversation to get so in depth and go as long as it did so what I'm going to do is I'm going to split this conversation into two parts and we'll end the first one there and you can check back in I think next week for part two of this riveting discussion which will also be followed up by the after dark segment where we talked to Stephen about what's been going on in his life and so on and so forth so with that we'll see you next week thank you for listening to part one of our Fast and Furious discussion of the post podcast we'll see you next week