First off, cards on the table. I'm firmly, enthusiastically and, as friends who have suffered through my various rants will tell you, vocally of the opinion that the Fast & Furious series is the best thing to come out of modern-day Hollywood. It's inventive, inclusive, hilariously over-the-top with the warmest of hearts - and when Paul Walker scrambles along the top of a bus teetering over a cliff-edge I put it up there with anything by Kubrick when it comes to cinema as a spectacle (also at the end of Fast & Furious 7 I was one of around half-a-dozen people who sulked off to the toilet for a quiet cry, because of course one of cinema's most emotional moments stars a Supra Mk4).
So yeah, I'm a Fast & Furious fan, and with the release of F9 now postponed until next year the prospect of getting an injection of nitrous, adrenaline and out-and-out entertainment the series provides was more than welcome. And Fast & Furious Crossroads is by some margin the most promising crossover yet - its development has been an open secret for years, with automotive experts Slightly Mad Studios teaming up with Vin Diesel's own Tigon Studios, and with Diesel himself onboard as Dominic Toretto, bringing Michelle Rodriguez and Tyrese Gibson along for the ride as they reprise their roles in support of a new cast of characters. It should be brilliant.
But something here has gone horribly, horribly wrong.