JeddJong

I was hoping Paul would give us a tiny bit of insight into working with Nicolas Cage, and whether there was any awkwardness involved. Paul has a supporting role in Nicolas Cage's upcoming film Army of One.

Could the plot point of water nullifying witchcraft be a tip of the pointy hat to The Wizard of Oz? "And your little dog too!" Also, all this talk about troublesome robot babies brought this to mind:

BB-8's mission is to deliver vital information regarding [spoilerS] to [spoilerS].

I guess you could Dade had Zero Chill. YEEAHHHHH!!!

It's a camera that can see into the future, like the camera that looks into the past in Déjà Vu - only better!

This was a fun episode, the digression into snacking and vaping was a delightfully silly tangent. I know this film is often mentioned in the same breath as The Net, but I lump it together with Antitrust in my head. Antitrust is also dated in a pretty fascinating way, with Tim Robbins as a morally ambiguous Bill Gates-analogue.

There was also a joke in Fast 6 in which Tej had Hobbs listed in his phone under "Samoan Thor" and Roman says, in reference to Hobbs, "so now we work for the Hulk?"

Everyone needs some shotgun-totin' jetski-ridin' Adam Scott in their lives. Everyone.

How many times does Kurt Russell say "well well well" in this film? I'm pretty sure it's at least three times. If this is pretty much The Avengers, then Kurt Russell would have to be the Nick Fury analogue. He's a powerful higher-up in a shadowy government organisation who enlists the skills of our heroes to go on a mission for him. Man, Kurt Russell would've made a far better Earth 616 Fury than David Hasselhoff did. I promise this isn't just eyepatch typecasting.

Kate Beckinsale for the Shaw sister - or if they want to go younger and do a spot of stunt casting, Emma Watson. To add to Paul's point about this franchise becoming the younger, better version of the Expendables, there is the common denominator of Jason Statham and Furious 7 has Kurt Russell and Tony Jaa, both of whom Sylvester Stallone wanted for the Expendables movies. Kurt Russell turned down the first Expendables movie, saying he was "not into ensemble acting at the moment".

This is all conjecture, but perhaps Jason Statham's addition as a member of the Fast and Furious cast was destiny. There is a rumour that the screenplay for Fast Five was repurposed from the screenplay for The Brazilian Job, the proposed sequel to the remake of the Italian Job. The 2003 version of the Italian Job had Jason Statham as Handsome Rob. And because Djimon Hounsou is in this, we get Korath the Pursuer vs. Groot.

Mark Dacascos also starred in the short-lived Crow TV series and was a recurring character on Hawaii Five-0.

When it was revealed that Hello Kitty is not in fact a cat, I decided that she is one of the creatures from the Island of Doctor Moreau who escaped and swam to Japan. Also,

The prison in Escape Plan definitely seems inspired at least in part by the one in Face/Off, intriguing to discover Schwarzenegger and Stallone were considered for this film.