"This is my Mexico."
Scattered reactions concerning Gisele (Gal Gadot) and Han (Sung Kang) in Fast & Furious 6 and Tokyo Drift:
GISELE DIED YOU GUYS. I was kind of expecting this, ever since I read those spoilers about the post-credit scene, which skip ahead (backward?) to Tokyo Drift and does not include Gisele - bc how else to explain her absence? Break up wasn't an option I was ready to believe in, not judging by how they were shown in the promotional footage/trailers for Fast 6. They were clearly close partners, working in synchronicity, supporting each other, risking their lives for each other, saving each other.
And this was what we saw in the movie. Han and Gisele are lying low in Hong Kong at the beginning, before being called to London to help Don with the new job and save Letty. They've probably been travelling together since the end of Fast 5 (more than six months ago, as Mia has by now given birth), and Han is working up the nerve to have that "conversation" about settling down. In one place. With Gisele. (Maybe starting their own family. Just typing this is making me weepy.)
"You don't wanna lease this body, you wanna buy. You're in looove," Roman teases in typical Roman fashion when he catches on to the way that Han's been treating Gisele. Han doesn't deny it.
20 minutes before the film ending, Gisele was still alive, and I started to feel the barest smidgeon of hope... Should have known better.
Because Gisele's death (unlike Jesse's in The Fast and the Furious, or Letty's in Fast and Furious, or Vince's in Fast Five) wasn't there to push the characters toward the film's climax. It serves no motivational purpose for anybody - except for Han, who goes after her killer like he has a death wish (which, let's face it, he kind of does from this point on). None of the other characters - not Mia or Dom or Roman - even realises Gisele is gone until after the final climactic action sequence, Han's stricken face silently telling them what they have lost, even as they are celebrating the return of Letty and their defeat of Owen Shaw (Luke Evans).
Within the plot mechanics of Fast 6, Gisele had no reason to die at all, let alone 10 minutes from the end of the film. Yet her story here with Han is a continuation - and a conclusion - of the tragedy that was introduced into the franchise in Tokyo Drift, where Han was the seasoned mentor who was unnecessarily glib and reckless with his own life, and who died in a fiery explosion, an ocean away from the people who loved him.
Just hours (or was it minutes?) before her death, Gisele tells Han that they should settle down, and why not in Tokyo? The writers have teased this since the end of Fast 5, when Han says that he's always wanted to go there, and now Tokyo gains an even greater significance. It was the place that the couple had agreed to go together, and seek to build something, before Gisele died.
And the specific way that she died? Letting go of Han (who is trying to pull her onto the moving vehicle) in order to grab her gun and SHOOT THE MOTHERFUCKER sneaking up behind Han, before she falls to her own death. It was a split second decision. The stakes were her life, or both their lives. Gisele made the call, like the soldier that she is - she didn't hesitate.
Time and again, we see Dom and Letty perform the same impossible physical stunts to rescue each other, and come through unscathed. But theirs isn't the tragedy, the line that will always circle back to Tokyo, to Han's death, however long it takes - the ending that could be forestalled, but not avoided. Gisele saved Han, but it cost her her own life.
It also left Han with enough survivor's guilt that he went into voluntary exile - away from Dom and Brian and Roman and Tej, who made it clear that he was always welcome around - to Tokyo, the city where they were supposed to go together. His Mexico; he got there, eventually. It was both emotionally satisfying and absolutely devastating.
Now can we get Dom and Brian teaming up with Neela in Fast 7?
This entry was originally posted at http://the-grynne.dreamwidth.org/980696.html and has
comments.
GISELE DIED YOU GUYS. I was kind of expecting this, ever since I read those spoilers about the post-credit scene, which skip ahead (backward?) to Tokyo Drift and does not include Gisele - bc how else to explain her absence? Break up wasn't an option I was ready to believe in, not judging by how they were shown in the promotional footage/trailers for Fast 6. They were clearly close partners, working in synchronicity, supporting each other, risking their lives for each other, saving each other.
And this was what we saw in the movie. Han and Gisele are lying low in Hong Kong at the beginning, before being called to London to help Don with the new job and save Letty. They've probably been travelling together since the end of Fast 5 (more than six months ago, as Mia has by now given birth), and Han is working up the nerve to have that "conversation" about settling down. In one place. With Gisele. (Maybe starting their own family. Just typing this is making me weepy.)
"You don't wanna lease this body, you wanna buy. You're in looove," Roman teases in typical Roman fashion when he catches on to the way that Han's been treating Gisele. Han doesn't deny it.
20 minutes before the film ending, Gisele was still alive, and I started to feel the barest smidgeon of hope... Should have known better.
Because Gisele's death (unlike Jesse's in The Fast and the Furious, or Letty's in Fast and Furious, or Vince's in Fast Five) wasn't there to push the characters toward the film's climax. It serves no motivational purpose for anybody - except for Han, who goes after her killer like he has a death wish (which, let's face it, he kind of does from this point on). None of the other characters - not Mia or Dom or Roman - even realises Gisele is gone until after the final climactic action sequence, Han's stricken face silently telling them what they have lost, even as they are celebrating the return of Letty and their defeat of Owen Shaw (Luke Evans).
Within the plot mechanics of Fast 6, Gisele had no reason to die at all, let alone 10 minutes from the end of the film. Yet her story here with Han is a continuation - and a conclusion - of the tragedy that was introduced into the franchise in Tokyo Drift, where Han was the seasoned mentor who was unnecessarily glib and reckless with his own life, and who died in a fiery explosion, an ocean away from the people who loved him.
Just hours (or was it minutes?) before her death, Gisele tells Han that they should settle down, and why not in Tokyo? The writers have teased this since the end of Fast 5, when Han says that he's always wanted to go there, and now Tokyo gains an even greater significance. It was the place that the couple had agreed to go together, and seek to build something, before Gisele died.
And the specific way that she died? Letting go of Han (who is trying to pull her onto the moving vehicle) in order to grab her gun and SHOOT THE MOTHERFUCKER sneaking up behind Han, before she falls to her own death. It was a split second decision. The stakes were her life, or both their lives. Gisele made the call, like the soldier that she is - she didn't hesitate.
Time and again, we see Dom and Letty perform the same impossible physical stunts to rescue each other, and come through unscathed. But theirs isn't the tragedy, the line that will always circle back to Tokyo, to Han's death, however long it takes - the ending that could be forestalled, but not avoided. Gisele saved Han, but it cost her her own life.
It also left Han with enough survivor's guilt that he went into voluntary exile - away from Dom and Brian and Roman and Tej, who made it clear that he was always welcome around - to Tokyo, the city where they were supposed to go together. His Mexico; he got there, eventually. It was both emotionally satisfying and absolutely devastating.
Now can we get Dom and Brian teaming up with Neela in Fast 7?
This entry was originally posted at http://the-grynne.dreamwidth.org/980696.html and has
comments.