#JusticeForHan: Does the ‘Fast and Furious’ Franchise Owe Fans Some Answers?
Posted on Friday, April 28th, 2017 by Ben Pearson
(Welcome to The Soapbox, the space where we get loud, feisty, and opinionated about something that makes us very happy…or fills us with indescribable rage. In this edition: what’s up with that #JusticeForHan movement, anyway?)
If you’re a fan of the Fast and Furious movies and you’ve seen The Fate of the Furious, you might have experienced a nagging feeling in the back of your mind when you left the theater. If you’re like me, that thought was, “Wait…what about Han?” Without spoiling things yet, I’ll just say that the new film never addresses Sung Kang’s snack-loving member of Dominic Toretto’s “family,” who was killed off in 2006’s The Fast and the Furious: Tokyo Drift – a death later revealed to be a murder committed by Jason Statham’s Deckard Shaw.
That death – and Fate’s ignoring of it – is at the center of the #JusticeForHan hashtag, which hardcore fans adopted as a rallying cry in order to ask some serious questions about this beloved franchise. Read all about the Han-troversy below, and whether or not the film series owes us answers when we want them or if we should wait for the full story before we rush to judgment.
Warning: spoilers for the entire Fast and Furious franchise, including The Fate of the Furious, lie ahead. Tread carefully (pun intended).
The Road Behind Us
Just so we’re all on the same page, here’s a quick recap of some key events thus far. Owen Shaw (Luke Evans) is the villain of Fast and Furious 6, who capitalized on Letty’s (Michelle Rodriguez) amnesia and manipulated her into working for his evil crew. After Owen is put in the hospital by Dom (Vin Diesel) and his team at the end of that film, the movie’s post-credits scene introduces Owen’s brother Deckard (Statham) and shows him killing Han in Tokyo. Dom, Letty, and the crew spend most of Furious 7 facing off against Deckard, who is eventually locked away in an underground prison by special agent Luke Hobbs (Dwayne Johnson).
But The Fate of the Furious sees Deckard freed from prison and joining forces with Dom and the family in order to fight a new villain (Cipher, played by Charlize Theron). We even see Owen, scarred and fresh out of the hospital, reunite with Deckard to save Dom’s infant son from Cipher’s grasp. But after being so pissed off about Han’s death in Furious 7, I don’t think a single member of Dom’s team mentions Han’s name in Fate, and they all seem to welcome the help of the Shaw brothers with open arms and no serious reckoning with the incalculable damage inflicted on their “family.”
Why Fans Are Upset
At the end of Fate, Deckard shows up at one of the famous Toretto family barbecues and delivers Dom’s son safe and sound. But some fans aren’t convinced that the crew would so easily accept Deckard as one of their own. Not only did Deckard kill Han, but Owen is responsible for the death of Gisele (Gal Gadot), so that’s two family members taken out by these English brothers.
Dominic Toretto is the magnet at the center of this whole franchise, which has always seen any opposing force either die or eventually come around into the open arms of the family. The Rock’s Hobbs, introduced in Fast Five, was trying to track Dom and his team down before eventually letting them go at the end, just like Paul Walker’s Brian O’Conner did at the end of the original movie. (And like Keanu Reeves’ Johnny Utah does with Patrick Swayze’s Bodhi at the end of Point Break, a film on which the first movie is clearly modeled.) So Statham’s Deckard Shaw becoming a new member of the team is in keeping with the saga’s history – although they’ve never accepted someone who’s murdered one of their former members before.
Indiewire film critic David Ehrlich, whose review of the movie you can read here, explained his beef with Fate’s unceremonious treatment of Han in an e-mail with me.
“It’s not that I think Han is an immortal cinematic icon, and that shitting on his sacrosanct legacy is some unforgivable sin,” he said, “but that dismissing the character’s history and the weight that it was supposed to hold in this franchise is emblematic of a movie that completely fails to grasp the soul of its series.”
That’s a fair point – when the death of a character means so much in one movie but nothing in the next, it seems like a sign of sloppy storytelling.
when someone says they love Statham in FATE OF THE FURIOUS that just means they never cared about Han
— BenDavid Grabinski (@bdgrabinski) April 11, 2017
@vindiesel Listen man, Deckard killed Han. But he gets to be part of the "family"? Nah man lol That aint sit right with me. #JusticeforHan
— Rafael Martinez (@RalphyMartz) April 15, 2017
Jason Statham is an underrated actor & gets the best action beat in F8 OF THE FURIOUS but UGH. #JusticeForHan. DO DOM'S RULES MEAN NOTHING?
— Stefano De La Cuesta (@THE_Stefano_DLC) April 13, 2017
Yo @FastFurious that was a cool movie and all but why didn't Dom snap Shaw's neck as soon as he got his kid back? #JusticeForHan
— Kris Yee (@kristofurkey) April 24, 2017
#FastAndFurious8 betray their own family member by forgiving shaw who killed Han #JusticeForHan #fateofthefurious @FastFurious
— suprabh natural (@SuprabhPranjal) April 23, 2017
Continue to the next page to hear what the cast and crew have to say about this and let’s speculate on how the future Fast and the Furious films may address this controversy.
