Scraps of superhero noise by now

Rating: Null/10 (4 August 2015)

I happened to follow this franchise, not in the sense of someone who gets great filmmaking matter out of it but I liked some of the whiz and spark. We're in the basements of a corporate building with this where makers are trying to piece together a contraption that will make sparks.
Like many of those, it isn't driven by a maker of some vision, it's a matter of how different things come together. It was marketed to teenagers for a couple of films, then Diesel came back bringing notions about family and brotherhood that he can support. That was while Nolan was taking Hollywood by storm so they sent a team to write narrative in that vein.
How it went from nothing to something being seen again widely is basically the production and filmmaking teams changed and some of the parts fit together well enough around Diesel.
I don't find a single one of the films to be great from start to finish but certain hues and stretches in the fourth and fifth worked. Tangible mechanics of car crash. Diesel could anchor formulaic notions in a low key way that didn't grate. The heist team wasn't cleverly fancy like Oceans but that too felt alright - it became about sticking together the way families do. It was the same gravity across all these things.
But now more things in this bloated entry fail to work than actually do and it was always a fragile balance. The energy is less the zip of French Connection and even more the noise of Marvel. The attempt to build Nolan gears into it is like a spare part bolted there. The narrative is more a stitching together of set pieces for actors to strut in like Expendables. There are even more superhero stunts, more computer and Diesel is less the center of something he can ground.