Fate of the Furious does a lot wrong. Not everything, but enough that I left the theater on Easter Sunday 2017 convinced that the franchise wasn't about the stuff I liked about it anymore (F9 thankfully brought me back). But if I could make one simple change, it would be swapping the Shaws.
Fate pairs Luke Hobbs (The "Dwayne Johnson" Rock) with Deckard Shaw (Jason Statham), as a springboard for their spinoff. It should have been Owen Shaw (Luke Evans) instead. Hobbs and Deckard spend almost no screen time together previously, just one long fight, and the scene of Hobbs putting him in a black site prison at the end of Furious 7. But Owen was Hobbs' target for years, pursuing him across the world, and pushing him to strike a deal with outlaws. They've got the connection.
And from the rest of the cast's perspective, he didn't murder any of them. Giselle died while stopping him, but she did so on her own terms, in the heat of battle. That's different from the cold-blooded assassination of Han, or mailing a bomb that could have killed a baby. It's easier to buy a temporary truce with the guy who would rather not have me crash his plane, than the guy who specifically intended to kill me.
It's better for the running themes. This is a series about people having their outlook expanded by contact with the iron will of Dominic Toretto. They say so in the Cuba prologue and its fallout. So Owen having failed with a technocratic team built of swappable parts, entering into and succeeding with a team of mutual support and care, says something. That can pull him places. Deckard goes from seeking vengeance on the team for injuring Owen, to seeking vengeance on Cipher for running Owen. It's not an interesting journey.
What they do instead is erode Deckard's character. He's not evil James Bond anymore, he's Solid Snake. He refused to be used as a tool in murky spy games so he was burned and framed, except for the time he spent working with a repressive warlord to murder our heroes one by one. That one was real. The attempt to overcome the problems leaves it incoherent.
What you lose is action star Jason Statham on the top of the poster. I get that. No executive is going to greenlight Hobbs and The Other Shaw. But they're both in the movie! It still ends with Deckard's action comedy shootout carrying the baby, just give Owen a little more to do, like the final showdown with Cipher. He's the one with more history there anyway.