If They Made a Movie About This Movie, I Wouldn’t Believe It

This past weekend, Furious 7 made the news yet again.  For the fourth consecutive weekend, it was #1 at the box office.  That makes it the first movie since The Hunger Games: Mockingjay Part 1 to do so and only the 25^th movie overall to achieve that feat.  In addition, it is the 3^rd movie in history to make over $1 billion worldwide (the other two being Titanic and Avatar) and is now the 5^th biggest box office hit of all time.

Let me repeat again…the SEVENTH movie in this series has made over $1 billion.  It would be one thing if this was the 7^th Harry Potter movie (a hugely successful franchise based on a best-selling series of novels) or the 7^th Star Wars movie (a franchise that has become a modern-day mythology).  But this is a series that was began by a 2001 rip-off of Point Break.  While the first movie was entertaining and nicely made (for what it was), if someone had told me back then that the 7^th movie in the series would be one of the biggest box office hits of all time, my immediate response would be “this movie will have SEVEN movies???”

With most franchises (Star Wars & Harry Potter excluded), you tend to follow the law of diminishing financial returns.  Each sequel usually makes less than the previous one and, after a few movies, audiences tend to get bored of the topic and it becomes a joke.  Horror movie franchises (Friday the 13^th, Saw, Nightmare on Elm Street) are perfect examples of this.  Most of the time, it is because the filmmakers are following the same formula again and again and, after a short while, audiences ask “how many times am I going to watch Rocky beat up an opponent?” or “how many times can Bruce Willis save the world?”.  And, because the films are following the same formula, laziness of movie making starts to set in and the quality quickly drops.

The Fast & the Furious serious, on the other hand, breaks all those rules.  While the 2^nd through 4^th films just barely kept the series going (Tokyo Drift is fun but feels like a Direct to DVD release).  But the fifth film (with the hilariously quasi-imaginative title Fast Five) turned it around.  I still remember seeing it in the theater.  At that point, I was growing bored of the series and went to see it in the theater, expecting to trash it and say how dumb it was.  But, as I was sitting there watching a very well-directed and well-choreographed chase through the streets of Brazil, I sat there and realized, to my shock, that I was seriously enjoying this.  The movie was trash to be sure.  After all, it had The Rock sweating in every scene for the simple reason he looked good that way.  But, it was fun trash.  I was never bored by the movie and it was clear that Justin Lin found the perfect tone for it – knowing ridiculousness.  By pushing it so far over the top, it allowed him to get away a scene like the one where the gang drag a room-size safe down the road at top speed.

It was this sense of fun and ridiculousness that has carried the movie forward.  The films also made the smart decision to get away from simple street racing onto different style plots and more elaborate stunts.  This has come to a head in Furious 7.  In one scene, a series of cars parachute from a plane.  Note, I didn’t say the men parachuted; I said the cars did.  And, of course, they landed safely on the road and immediately started speeding in a wonderfully orchestrated street chase on the side of a mountain.  At this point in the series, you are laughing so much with the movie that when one of the characters drives his car down the side of a mountain, you just shrug your shoulders and go “whatever”.

The ultimate secret of the movie and the reason why audiences have responded to it so positively is its treatment of the characters.  Even though the stunts are increasingly over the top (at this point, the only way they can top themselves is drive the cars on the moon), the characters have relationships that ring true.  From the first movie there was a sweet bromance between Paul Walker and Vin Diesel that has carried through the series.  Never is it more apparent than in the ending of Furious 7.  During the filming of the movie, Paul Walker died in a car accident.  Because he was such a fundamental character (he had starred in 6 out of 7 of the movies), they couldn’t ignore him.  Thus, the filmmakers were stuck trying to find a tactful way of handling his absence.  They came up with an ending that was sweet and heartfelt.  At the end, Walker’s character decides to leave the life and spend time with his wife and children.  At that point, Vin Diesel, in voice over, makes a very loving and kind speech that acts as both a summary of his character’s feelings and acts as a kind eulogy for Paul Walker.  It’s tough to watch that scene and not become somewhat misty eyed.  What’s sweet is that it feels sincere and non-manipulative.  You can tell that it was done out of love for the actor and the character.

It is this sincerity that carries the series.  We are willing to go with the slow motion Looney Tunes-style fights between Vin Diesel and Jason Stratham or seeing cars dive from the tops of buildings as long as the characters ring true.  Because no matter how cartoonish the action is, it is done with such skill and such affection, that you can’t help but smile.

Is this high art?  Hardly.  Is this damn entertaining?  Definitely.  Will I go see Fast 8 regardless of who is in it and or what the plot is about?  Count me as already having bought the ticket.