Thanks to my write up on the first five films, I’ve become the resident Fast and Furious expert here on Agents of G.U.A.R.D.

The newest film in the series, Furious 7, reveal it’s first trailer. As a film goer who honestly really digs these movies, the first trailer  is a proper announcement that the gang is back.

Plenty to enjoy for me in this new trailer.

The main thing I wanna bring up? For the first time in the series, the title on the poster actually kinda makes sense to the film.

While technically, the last film is called Furious 6 (as stated in the movie’s opening credits) the official poster title for that one is Fast and Furious 6.

Here, I count seven people on that banner. And they are out for revenge. Revenge makes them furious. Hence…the furious seven.

I also caught our first glimpse of Thai martial arts super star, Tony Jaa,  in this trailer.

This is also the first film in a long time to not be directed by Justin Lin. Horror director James Wan (the first Saw, Insidious 1 and 2, The Conjuring) has taken over, and it looks like he’s doing a pretty damn good job so far. It feels like it will fit in perfectly with the other films, but it clearly has a different visual flourish here and there.

No signs of returning star Lucas Black (from TF&F: Tokyo Drift) but I’m sure he’ll pop up in a future trailer.

Here’s one of the funniest things about this franchise.

For a movie series that was, at first glance, a series of movies about goofy car chases, has morphed into a fun action series with a cast of characters I honestly like.

It’s almost perfect timing that the Marvel Studios movie announcements came out this week, because everyone got excited about that. Why? Because the main thing people love about the Marvel movies is how much they love the characters.

As the rest of Hollywood is trying to find a way to make their own shared universe movie series, they seemingly are ignoring that element of the Marvel movie formula. Audiences like the characters.

That’s what making the Fast and the Furious movies work so well now. With out even trying, they actually have the same formula that has made The Avengers and Guardians of the Galaxy and the rest of the Marvel movies worked so well. They made the characters (each of whom were established in their own Fast and Furious film) fun to interact with each other once they started to be a team. This clearly wasn’t the plan when they made the first Fast and Furious movie.  They weren’t copying The Avengers formula because Fast Five (the first film that brought the whole gang together) came out a year before it. They stumbled on to it organically.

If I can be honest, I know that  the Marvel movies are better written, but by movie six of the Fast and Furious series I can tell you the kind of personalities that Roman, Brian, Toretto, and Letty and the rest have thanks to the last few movies, and it’s done with very minimal effort on the filmmakers part. It’s the simplest request I have for a action film, let me got to know the characters personalities. I don’t need to know giant back stories, but I want to see a interesting mix of characters that could be fun to watch. That’s what I get with this series.

So yeah, I’m down. Bring on the furious.

Furious 7 comes out in theaters April 3, 2014.