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 25th movie overall to achieve that feat. In addition, it is the 3rd movie
in history to make over $1 billion worldwide (the other two being Titanic and Avatar) and is now the 5th 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 7th Harry Potter movie (a hugely successful
franchise based on a best-selling series of novels) or the 7th 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 7th
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 13th,
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 2nd through 4th
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.
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