Chris Hadfield Has Major Praise for F9: The Fast Saga's Space Sequence

Astronaut Chris Hadfield says there's one part of space travel F9 "portrayed so well."

By Jamie Jirak

When it comes to film and television, there is one big location countless fictional characters have traveled to: space. Of course, a lot of real-life astronauts have also made their way into space, and one recently critiqued some of the onscreen representations of space travel. Chris Hadfield retired from the Canadian Space Agency in 2013 after serving 35 years as a pilot and astronaut. Hadfield recently did a video for Vanity Fair that saw him reviewing aerospace movies, including Top Gun: Maverick, Transformers: Dark of the Moon, Star Wars: The Return of the Jedi, and more. The astronaut even had some criticisms about Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 3. However, there was one surprising movie Hadfield had positive things to say about, and that's F9: The Fast Saga. After years of fans calling for The Fast and the Furious to take to space, Tej (Chris "Ludacris" Bridges) and Roman (Tyrese Gibson) finally made the journey in 2021. 

"This is F9: The Fast Saga," Hadfield began. "Like a billion other people on earth, I really like the Fast and Furious series. It's just almost just purely a cartoon, but unavoidably fun to follow and watch it. They launch off the back of that airplane. That big like, it's like a C-141, but with two engines. Their engines fire and now they're rocking to space, and like 30 seconds later they're in orbit. It took me eight and a half minutes, so they really went fast, you know, they were getting crushed."

"This is a 1984 Pontiac Fiero flying in space," he added with a laugh. "I haven't driven a Fiero in a while, but I've flown some rocket ships, and they don't actually have a transmission that you shift. That's not how rocket ships work, but it's okay. I understand it. It's a Fiero, what else are you gonna do? But I love the scene when those two guys and you see it reflected in their visors, are suddenly, actually seeing Earth from space. The beauty of that and the wonder of it, that they're emoting there, it feels just like that."

"Suddenly all of the blue is below you," Hadfield continued. "You're out in the eternal blackness and all of life is laid out there on this beautiful curving arc of the world under them. And I'm really pleased that they, they put that into the movie and then portrayed it so well."

F9 Director Talks Going To Space:

F9 director Justin Lin took the film's space trip seriously and put in some work when it came to putting it off in a somewhat realistic fashion.

"I'm on the phone with scientists, learning about fuel and physics," Lin told THR. "It was great, having the scientists on the other line going, 'Wait, what? What are you trying to do?' I love it." 

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Lin shared that as soon as he came up with the idea of how to bring the franchise to space, he drove over to Vin Diesel's house and laid out the sequence for him, and they both agreed it was the way to go.  

Did you enjoy the space sequence in F9? Tell us in the comments!

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