It seems that we’ve finally reached the thrilling conclusion of this week’s white-knuckle Fast 8 social media thrill ride, in which one large man said some passive-aggressive things about a bunch of other large men, and then eventually sort of apologized while talking about family a lot. (Ramp some cars over it, get Charlize Theron to glower at it, and we can call this sucker a wrap.) After setting off CandyGate—the social media snit, sadly, and not a magical portal to the mystic Chocolate Realms—earlier this week with an Instagram rant calling out his fellow Fast 8 male co-stars as “candy-asses,” Dwayne “The Rock” Johnson has issued a new statement today, suggesting that all those disagreements are now sweet-butted water flowing under a gingerbread bridge.
As with his previous post, Johnson started out by praising the film’s crew, especially his “ohana,” stunt coordinator J.J. Perry. (Those of you who’ve seen Lilo & Stitch will recall that “ohana” means family, and that family means nobody gets left behind—not even an apparent “chicken shit” like Scott Eastwood.) But Johnson followed that specific praise with a more expansive treatise on family, indirectly asking for bygones to be bygones while not actually apologizing to anybody, because some concepts are so heavy that not even The Rock himself can lift them.
The post presumably comes as something of a relief to the Fast 8 marketing team, which can hopefully take the Google alerts for “candy” and “ass” off their phones, and stop working to arrange “secret meetings” between Johnson and co-star and co-producer Vin Diesel. Presumably, the Fast 8 cast will now be able to get back to their art for the last week of shooting, infusing their grappling-hook-based stunts and sweet motorcycle flips with a shared relief that the candy-assed-shaped stormclouds have finally started to clear, and are no longer plopping a steady gumdrop-rain of derision down on their uniformly shaved and muscly heads.