'The Fate Of The Furious' Early Buzz: The Eighth Movie Is As Crazy (And As Fun) As You'd Expect [Updated]

UPDATE: We have added a new video review courtesy from our own Peter Sciretta and Collider's Steven Weintraub.

While CinemaCon is technically the place where movie studios entice theater owners and other industry professionals with trailers and footage from their upcoming movies, sometimes they go all-in. Last night, Disney screened Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Men Tell No Tales nearly two months early. And today, Universal surprised attendees with a screening of The Fate of the Furious, offering the assembled crowd a first look at the eighth film in the long-lived (and somehow, still good) Fast and Furious series.

Our own Peter Sciretta was in attendance, so you can find his reaction as well as responses from other critics below.

Here are the reactions, stolen from Twitter by a fleet of muscle cars and dragged through the streets of Rio while an army of cops gave chase. The general reaction online has been very warm: yes, this is another Fast and Furious movie and yes, it hits all of the beats you're expecting. However, the consensus here is that the trailer is accurate in depicting this as the craziest movie in the series (which somehow seems impossible, but here we are).

Series star Vin Diesel, who was among the assembled cast present for the screening, noted that The Fate of the Furious is the first part in a new trilogy of movies that will take the series through entry ten. To quote:

As the world sees this movie, they'll see how its the beginning of a new trilogy.

Is there a word for a movie series that has an internal trilogy beginning with film number eight? Anyway, Diesel added that new characters who were introduced in this movie will continue to play a role throughout the next few films.

The Fate of the Furious opens on April 14, 2017. Here's the official synopsis, in case you somehow managed to miss the trailer where Dwayne Johnson literally manhandles a torpedo while in a car chase with a nuclear submarine:

Now that Dom and Letty are on their honeymoon and Brian and Mia have retired from the game—and the rest of the crew has been exonerated—the globetrotting team has found a semblance of a normal life. But when a mysterious woman (Charlize Theron) seduces Dom into the world of crime he can't seem to escape and a betrayal of those closest to him, they will face trials that will test them as never before.

From the shores of Cuba and the streets of New York City to the icy plains off the arctic Barents Sea, our elite force will crisscross the globe to stop an anarchist from unleashing chaos on the world's stage...and to bring home the man who made them a family.