It's been 20 years since the first Fast & Furious film was released. In that time, most people have seen at least one or two installments, and become familiar with their story and formula. With the ninth film in the franchise, F9, finally hitting the big screen after many delays, one thing fans are most excited to see is the addition of wrestling superstar turned actor John Cena joining the crew. While upon first glance this seems completely fitting, the character he's playing actually seems a little contradictory to the message of the franchise.
The story of the film centers around a crew of what originated as car hijackers, led by Vin Diesel's Dominic Toretto. While the first part of the franchise focuses a lot on illegal car racing and different shady behaviors, it has since morphed into a lot of heists and "saving the world" missions. It's a series known for its ridiculous action, often focused on completely unrealistic plots and car chases. While it all seems surface level and most of the time it is, there is also a huge emphasis in this series of family and community.
Overall, Fast & Furious really has a strong message of family meaning everything. Family and friendship are incredibly important to these characters. When one of them is struggling, in danger, or perhaps has died, none of these characters are afraid to get emotional. This is a bit of a different take on the action genre, especially one that has so many iconic masculine action hero actors in it. It's an interesting quality for the series to have and part of why it makes the franchise appealing to some who normally aren't big action fans, but it also means that John Cena's character makes no sense at all.
John Cena's character is debuting in F9 as Dominic's brother, Jakob. With the incredibly strong and sometimes overpowering messages that Fast & Furious gives regarding the importance of family, this just seems really weird and out of the blue. Especially as so many of these moments come from Dominic. Dom is the main character of the franchise and the leader of the heroes. He's the one instilling these messages into his friends, and the viewers. For him to have a younger brother that no one has heard of, makes no sense.
It is established that they are estranged and that Jakob is working with the bad guys in this film. As many theatres around the world are still closed and F9 is not on VOD however, not a ton of people yet know why this is and are still confused. The estrangement surely does explain away some of the confusion as to why this brother hasn't been mentioned even though family is seemingly so important, but it still feels strange. There have already been eight other films to explain this part of Dominic's story, and with family being his life it feels like something fans should have known about previously.
Unfortunately, this move just kind of follows a pattern that these films seemingly must follow. As a whole, they are ridiculous and make no sense. Vin Diesel, who has really taken on this franchise as his baby, is even proud of this fact. They're always planning on doing the biggest, most surprising moves. Even if the overall story continuity suffers, or events would in real life be totally impossible. Multiple characters have died and been brought back to life, and there have been completely nuts and unbelievable evil plots from the villains of the film. This doesn't even get into how crazy the car chases and action sequences have been, with them constantly pushing the limit as to how far they can go.
John Cena as a person seems a very natural addition to the cast of this franchise. So many of the biggest action hunks have been involved, from Vin Diesel to Jason Statham to Dwayne Johnson. He's also a household name with a massive fanbase and a lot of Internet hype. Adding him as an actor and person is not the issue here and makes complete sense with the series. However, it does feel like an after-thought. There's just no way that a brother has been planned for Dominic because he would have been seen or mentioned at this point. It would be part of his backstory, and fans would be anticipating his entrance to the series, but this came out of nowhere and feels only done for shock value.
Fast & Furious is one of the only franchises that scares its fans with its bravery. While many continue to watch the series because they fell in love with the characters and real family aspect, as well as the car chases, the last few films haven't quite been home runs because of how ridiculous they are. Fans love the kooky and outrageous aspect of the films, but they also want a story to make sense and they don't want cheap twists for shock value. Using someone like John Cena, in a character that makes absolutely no sense with the messaging of the franchise, feels like a cheap twist for shock value.