The Fast & Furious 9 trailer includes two songs – one of which is already quite famous among fans of the Fast & Furious franchise. Releasing almost two full decades after the first movie in the series, Fast & Furious 9 (officially titled F9) brings back several characters from previous installments – including one of the spinoffs – and adds some more into the mix. But above all, despite the bonkers, physics-defying action sequences, Fast & Furious 9 is a story about family.
Directed by Justin Lin, who helmed four movies in the series between Tokyo Drift and Fast & Furious 6, Fast & Furious 9 picks up a few years after the previous installment and sees the past catch up to Vin Diesel’s Dom. His long-lost brother, Jakob (John Cena), is now working with Cipher (Charlize Theron), presumably to get revenge on Dom. However, beyond the fact that Dom has a brother, Fast & Furious 9 also sees the return of three Tokyo Drift stars, including Sung Kang as Han.
So to tie everything together and to show that the movie is still about family, the Fast & Furious 9 trailer kicks off with a brief rendition of Wiz Khalifa’s “See You Again”. It plays early on in the trailer – specifically, in the scenes between Dom, Letty, and Brian (Dom’s son). After that, once the action gets going, the Fast & Furious 9 trailer plays the song “Frequency 75” by DJ Snake. That plays throughout the rest of the trailer.
While DJ Snake’s song is new to the Fast & Furious franchise, “See You Again” certainly is not. It was commissioned as an original song for James Wan’s Furious 7, and it was meant to honor Paul Walker and remember him and his character, Brian O’Conner. Needless to say, it was an enormous hit. It was nominated for Best Original Song at the following year’s Golden Globes and, at one point, it became the most popular video on YouTube years after its release. Hearing it again in the Fast & Furious 9 trailer isn’t shocking, nor is it surprising that it plays in a sequence in which Letty and Dom are with Brian, who was named after Walker’s character.
Once again, showing that Fast & Furious 9 is really about family – it’s just that, there’s not only one family involved. Although the Fast & Furious movies evolved from being about street racers and thieves to global conspiracies and revenge schemes, two things have always been at the center of the series: themes of family and wild music. Both of those aspects very much exist in the first Fast & Furious 9 trailer.
