‘The Transporter Refueled’ Trailer: Why Hast Thou Forsaken Us, Jason Statham?

As much as we adore Jason Statham, we’ll never pretend that he’s picky about his projects. Roughly half of the time spent being a fan of that scowling, head-butting British import involves suffering through his poor choices. So it’s weird to watch the new trailer for The Transporter Refueled and realize that this was the point where Statham decided “Nah, I’m good,” removing the one and only thing that could possibly make us interested in a fourth movie in this series.

Also, remember that new star Ed Skrein bolted from the absurdly popular Game of Thrones to star in this thing. This may be the darkest timeline for Mr. Skrein. But hey, at least he’s in Deadpool and people are awfully excited to see that one.

The Transporter Refueled looks exactly like the other Transporter movies, just cheaper and with 100 percent less Jason Statham. It’s impossible to judge a performance based on a trailer alone, but Skrein does appear to be trotting out a decent impersonation of Statham’s trademark growl ... which only serves to remind us that he’s very much not Statham. Sorry, guy. You know what they say about being damned if you do and so on.

Anyway, this new chapter in the series once again finds that crazy ol’ transporter in a heap of trouble, as he delivers the wrong package for the wrong people, pisses off some nasty folks, breaks a bunch of limbs in hand-to-hand combat, and out-drives explosions and such. The great Ray Stevenson even pops up, looking very sad to be playing Ed Skrein’s father in a fourth Transporter movie.

The Transporter Refueled may very well scratch our B-movie itch, but you can’t escape the feeling that the next proper Jason Statham movie will scratch it better. We’ll find out when it opens on September 4.