***This feature is in tribute and celebration of Fast & Furious, one of the most unique and entertaining of modern movie franchises. However, if interested, we would like to please suggest visiting the website for Paul Walker’s non-profit charity for first-responders, Reach Out Worldwide, and consider making a donation. Thank you.
Hollywood has been making sequels for ages, and they will continue this practice until we are old, withered and forgotten in our caskets. Complaining about unoriginality in movies is probably something they were doing in the fifties, eighties, and up until today, because like any business, if the public likes something, you give them more of it. Putting a “part two” behind something is like a warm acknowledgement, a wink from the bartender behind the counter. We know what you like. The usual? Coming right up, sir.
Franchises are different. Most of the time, the studios have no idea how they succeeded the first time around. It can be like a man trying to purposefully re-create an accidental pratfall. Never mind doing it again: Can it be done a fourth time? For decades, Hollywood was content to use sequels as either a repetition of what came before, or an honest attempt to do something vastly different and slap a familiar sticker on the can. A series was merely a collection of “part twos,” with little-to-no connecting tissue. Does it really matter in what order you watch Peter Sellers’ original The Pink Panther offerings? Is any non-fanboy actually arguing if this has been the same James Bond over the years? This approach created a disreputable association with the term “sequel”: If we were continuing the story, then the story specifics didn’t really matter, and each installment would require a new set of questions to be asked and answered before the final reel. No one was ever really chomping at the bit for a part five of anything.
Obviously, the act of franchising has changed all that, despite the irony that most of Hollywood’s franchises stem from finite source material. Comic book movies rule the industry, but most of those are derived from fifty or more years of printed stories. Others, like Harry Potter and Twilight have outlived the source material, leaving studios scrambling for more—enter WB plotting a Potter spinoff for a 2016 release, while producers have openly discussed re-starting the complete Twilight Saga from the beginning. These franchises work because there’s already a template set up for future films. Everyone else in the business, operating from original tentpole material, is simply flying blind.
This must make the Fast and the Furious the ideal, even perfect, franchise for the modern day. Universal is currently at work on the seventh in this massively successful series, and the last few have turned the ongoing story into a supernova of popularity. It doesn’t have a best-selling novel as inspiration, but rather an unlikely source that inspired 2001’s modest The Fast and the Furious: Ken Li’s article Racer X, exposing the world of underground racing gangs. Universal clearly thought they had a dark, edgy crime film on their hands, as one of the names on the screenplay is actually Training Day and End Of Watch writer David Ayer. The core story eventually found these gangs attempting to heist illegal stereo equipment, turning the endeavor into something a little more youth-oriented. Like the car-centric films that Hollywood had been making for decades now, The Fast and the Furious was a basic attempt to latch onto faddish youth culture.
Universal had modestly high hopes for the film, which carried a price tag of $38 million, and two stars that were familiar, though hardly household names. Paul Walker was another post-millennial attempt by studios to create a James Dean or Paul Newman, though only his looks, and not his charisma, were tested by a number of teen-appeal films. His task in the original film was tougher than it looked, however: as undercover FBI agent Brian O’Connor, he had to convey to the audience that he was in control, but green enough to seem in over his head. Matched up against the snub-nosed Vin Diesel, it was a dream pairing, beauty and the beast, golden surfer Walker and the brutish, robotic Diesel together behind the wheel. It’s this combination that makes the film seem precisely like a grift from Kathryn Bigelow’s high octane Point Break. And while Diesel’s seat-shaking growl bore no resemblance to that film’s swagger-licious Patrick Swayze, you didn’t have to squint to find similarities in the deliveries of Walker and Keanu Reeves.
The film was meant to be a one-off, summer counter-programming that could respectably finish below both expected hit Dr. Dolittle 2, as well as the second weekend of the popular Lara Croft: Tomb Raider. Instead, the picture creamed both those films, and it’s easy to see why. While considerably lighter on action than later entries in the series, Rob Cohen’s boys-will-be-boys thriller finds the common ground between double agent action picture and soapy macho drama. Poor Jordana Brewster isn’t in the film to be a love interest, merely a prop to wedge between O’Connor and Diesel’s Dominic Toretto. It was Diesel’s considerable size that added a paternal edge to their bickering, if not a big brother-little brother angle. Cohen, known for dumb, repetitive would-be blockbusters, wisely understood that all he needed to do was trust Diesel and Walker, the former with audience-commanding force and charisma, the latter as a laidback audience identifier.
Like any accidental franchise, this series almost died right as it was about to take off: Diesel had gambled that he was now a star, and he would not return for a sequel unless he was paid top dollar. It’s not a surprise to see him stick with familiarity, re-teaming with Cohen on the vanity project xXx and leaving Dominic Toretto in the dust. After all, Cohen knew how to make Diesel seem sexy and desirable. At this time, The Fast and the Furious only had the offer of a few more dollars, and the chance to be behind the wheel again. Mr. Walker had no such reservations, however, and Brian O’Connor would return for 2 Fast 2 Furious.
Arguably the weakest in the series, this film reflects the shortcomings of sequel thinking. O’Connor has returned, but the studio insisted on making a two-hander in an attempt to clone the chemistry between Walker and Diesel. Instead of authoritative Diesel, Walker was matched with Tyrese Gibson’s Roman, a lighthearted old childhood buddy that effectively turned O’Connor into the big brother. It wasn’t a neat fit, and their bickering and jokes seem to suggest a less-than-compelling backstory that’s hinted towards as if it was some sort of storytelling Rosetta Stone. It doesn’t help that Gibson is an intolerable screen presence, wisecracking and roughhousing with Walker as if he were a toddler.
What 2 Fast 2 Furious does do, however, is cement the world that these characters inhabit. The first film was grittier and more down-to-earth, but the glitzier follow-up, from Boyz N The Hood director John Singleton, is all about the cars and the races. Going bigger is usually a mandatory step for dumber sequels, but here it expands an already-established milieu, turning a subculture into an entirely different world. Law enforcement lingered in the margins of the first film, but here it’s practically nonexistent, the better to showcase increasingly absurd races, many presided over by Tej (Ludacris). Now that we know who O’Connor is, we can indulge in the stakes with greater abandon.
Of course, 2 Fast 2 Furious is not a good sequel in and of itself, and there was the sense that audiences were aware of this. The picture cost considerably more than the first film and ultimately grossed less, giving Universal the perception that they had squeezed everything they possibly could out of this lemon. Walker would just end up becoming more expensive, as Diesel had, and they’d have to keep facing diminished returns from films by directors as indifferent as Singleton, who himself was merely making a pit-stop on his road to big studio mediocrity. At the time, Universal was grooming their direct-to-DVD market to thrive, spotlighting sequels to several of their bigger budgeted franchises – eventually they would reap massive profits from a series of DVD-only American Pie sequels that successfully convinced them to return to the big screen for American Reunion. Given the cheap-ish nature of films about car racing, they saw The Fast and the Furious as a viable brand for this experiment.
Fortunately, they changed their mind and opted for a theatrical release, taking their chance on an unproven director named Justin Lin. Cohen was an old studio hand on the first film, and Singleton a struggling artist who couldn’t find his way in the industry after lower budgeted success. But Lin was hungry; he hustled to make his first film, the Asian-American drama Better Luck Tomorrow, before helming the naval drama Annapolis and the mini-budget Bruce Lee satire Finishing The Game. Lin had a background in multiple genres already, and his lack of breakout success meant that he would be the most affordable choice to take the keys. The result was The Fast and the Furious: Tokyo Drift.
It’s important for a film series to throw a curveball in the audience’s direction. The small, starless Tokyo Drift might be the series’ lightest, most enjoyable effort, focusing on a young American named Sean Boswell (Lucas Black) who gets wrapped up in the underground racing world of Japan, where he, and the audience, learns about “drifting.” This method of drifting differed from the open-road speed-based competition of the earlier films, necessitating a higher emphasis on swift twists and turns around tight corners. If the earlier films were like bump’n’grind, this was like ballet. The climactic chase alone feels neither fast nor furious, but rather like it’s occurring on another plane of reality, as if Lin were directing from on top of a cloud.
Without any real franchise commitments to honor, Lin was free to put his own personal stamp on the material. Amongst the cast is a smooth-talking player named Han, played by Sung Kang. Kang’s Han is a carryover from Better Luck Tomorrow, the sort of sly suggestion for Fast and Furious superfans to latch onto. One can’t build a franchise anymore without those sorts of winks, wrinkles enjoyed by maybe two or three percent of the audience. Furthermore, Lin’s film gets a last-minute visit from one Dominic Toretto, loosely tying it into the universe of the previous two films. While Diesel only logs about a minute of screentime in the film, there was the sense that this was the actor acknowledging he didn’t have much going on in his career after a number of flops, including xXx. Tokyo Drift would go on to make half of what 2 Fast 2 Furious collected, but considering this was a much lower budgeted entry with no names, it kept life in the series.
At that point, Universal could have reasonably cut ties and opted to shift the series to an anthology, transitioning to DVD or even TV to capture the stories of the world’s various street racing scenes. But that also ignored the strong life of the first film on television and home formats, constantly replayed, quoted and enjoyed by an entire generation. Eight years later, that film remained a phenomenon, and the studio saw the chance to recapture past glories. But this wasn’t just a reunion for Walker and Diesel, who had not become A-List stars quite yet. It was a shift in genre: There was racing in Fast and Furious, but it felt isolated from the rest of the story, like a mandatory inclusion to please some fans. This was now a series about action, about chases, fisticuffs, gunplay. Re-teaming O’Connor and Toretto wasn’t just a simple reunion: Where originally Toretto held a vague distrust of this newcomer, now he knew that he was a federal agent, and their alliance was an uneasy and unhappy one, ultimately. The late Walker, never the most convincing actor, has to give a real performance as an agent ambivalent about the requirements of his job, and the surrogate family he clearly betrayed. His surprisingly palpable apathy laced with regret makes the fourth film that best honors Walker’s legacy and proof of the star’s basic charisma.
The story in Fast and Furious, so named for both its familiarity and subtle grammatical immediacy, is ultimately minor, a mess of drug trafficking and Mexican border drama. John Ortiz’s Braga is probably the best and most clearly-defined villain of all the films thus far, however, and the heroes’ basic motivation is simple: Revenge for the death of Letty (Michelle Rodriguez), Toretto’s girlfriend. The picture itself feels like a steroidal return to the elements in place from the first movie, and under Lin, the direction is crisp and exciting. An early foot chase where O’Connor pursues a perp was the best action sequence at that point in the series. Lin even gets Han in on the action, despite the character’s death in the third film—a line of dialogue implies the film occurs before the events of Tokyo Drift, an audacious nugget that transfixed fans. How does Toretto find himself in Tokyo? Why is O’Connor not in Tokyo? The earlier films were coming from somewhere. Fast and Furious was going somewhere.
Perhaps learning humility, perhaps having too good a time, and perhaps realizing that the rest of their careers were a non-event, Walker and Diesel gladly returned for Fast Five. The novelty of this fifth entry, however, wasn’t that it was returning the successful parts of the first film, but that it was rejoining the elements from all the films thus far. Lin was back in the director’s chair, and so was Sung Kang’s Han. Matt Schultze’s shady Vince returned from the first film, Tyrese’s Roman and Ludacris’ Tej from part two, Tego (Tego Calderon), Santos (Don Omar) and Gisele (Gal Gadot) from part four. Fan service is one thing, like when a Joker card is revealed at the end of Batman Begins. But fan reward is rare, and rejoining the stronger elements of all these films felt like a “thanks” from the creators to the fans who had followed every film. And once again, someone suggests to Han that he should go to Tokyo, another sly acknowledgement of the third film.
Fast Five cemented the group as a gang and as a family, with Toretto in charge. No longer were they street racing: Now they were Robin Hoods, stealing from the rich to live comfortably off the grid. Fast Five still finds Diesel and Walker in front, but it feels like more of an ensemble, foregrounding one of the key elements of this franchise’s appeal. Unlike other film series’, this one had cross-racial appeal. Walker and Schultze were the lone white guys in the gang, while Diesel’s Toretto always carried an undetermined ethnicity. Tyrese and Ludacris were black Americans, while Calderon and Omar would always be chattering to each other in Spanish, and the shapely Gadot had Israeli lineage, and Kang’s Han Seoul-Oh was Korean. With studios uncertain about greenlighting blockbusters with minority leads, these films had proudly waved their multicultural heritage.
Lin and company also knew that simply re-assembling old parts would grow tiresome to the audience, so additional ingredients were necessary, in this case adding, for the first time, a formidable antagonist to the franchise. The mammoth Dwayne Johnson is Agent Hobbs, a car-freak right on their tails and posing, for the first time, a serious physical threat to Diesel and company. Johnson’s the biggest star this series has seen thus far, literally and figuratively, and Lin showcases a sly wit in a foot chase when the hulking Diesel turns around to see what massive behemoth is actually chasing them. Hobbs and Toretto end up having a common enemy, but that doesn’t stop the film from realizing that a Diesel versus Johnson fistfight is the sort of thing even non-Fast and Furious fans waited to see. Playing to the fans was fine, but Johnson’s addition ensured that this series was also trying to recruit those that hadn’t yet sampled the series, a gesture towards new fans that these films offered fresh spectacle beyond burning rubber.
Fast Five also wisely borrowed from other blockbusters, specifically superhero films, to keep interest alive. A post-credits sequence, establishing that Hobbs works with Eva Mendes’ Agent Fuentes from 2 Fast 2 Furious, guarantees one more final original part: Letty lives. Dominic’s old girlfriend would end up being enough of a draw for Fast & Furious 6, with the series at this point relying on the strength of the core group (Tego and Santos are conspicuously absent, however). Hobbs ends up recruiting Toretto’s crew in a heist movie set-up: Letty is assisting an automotive terrorist named Owen Shaw (Luke Evans), who bla bla bla superweapon bla bla bla free world: It’s all generic blockbuster stuff, an excuse to have Dominic and Letty banter with each other about what used to be.
It’s also an excuse for big screen action: Fast & Furious 6 has by far the best and most expensive action sequences of the series, with Lin juggling multiple vehicles in several moments of controlled chaos. The series also manages to spotlight battles outside of the car as well: Fans don’t know much about Gina Carano or Joe Taslim, but Lin doesn’t need to do much of anything aside from film them to make them seem like stars. You want to add new blood, but you want to surprise audiences as well, so that when Taslim lingers in the background like just another henchman, you don’t expect him to eventually dominate both Tyrese’s Roman and Kang’s Han in combat.
By part six, a franchise needs to have a bit of confidence, and Fast & Furious 6 shows this by laying on the continuity heavily. The film’s close is meant to mirror a moment in The Fast and the Furious, with Dominic and Letty reunited, and Brian and Dominic’s sister Mia (Jordana Brewster) nursing a child. The ending also establishes that Han is finally on his way to Tokyo, with a post-credits sequence replaying, without context, his death from The Fast and the Furious: Tokyo Drift. But this time, we see who caused the crash: Owen Shaw’s brother, Ian Shaw. To be in the theater when Jason Statham climbed out of the car to reveal himself as Ian is to hear the sound of the sort of celebration reserved for the knockout punch in a prizefight. Johnson, a formidable presence in his two films in the series, was scary and threatening, but the baggage he brought with him was having featured in a number of kids’ films and generally being everyone’s favorite gentle giant. Statham, who has almost primarily fronted R-rated action films where his heroes freely snap the necks off their enemies, is a whole other ballgame.
The seventh film was recently shooting for a summer ’14 release, though there has been a death in the family: Paul Walker passed on, the fatal result of an off-set car crash. Filming has been postponed indefinitely as the cast, crew and studio mourns. There’s reason to believe the movie will start back up again, and it’s an awful loss to everyone involved. It’s likely the series will re-invent itself once again to cope with the loss of Walker’s O’Connor.
At the same time, Fast & Furious 6 was the biggest film in the franchise, and the fan outpouring for the loss of Walker suggests this series could endure and grow even more. These films have made a tradition out of repairing and re-adjusting what happened in the last film, and it’s sad to see that it now involves the presence of Mr. Walker. Were it not for him, this franchise would not have a foundation from which to change and evolve. Because of his contributions, this series is essentially the ideal franchise. Because of his contributions, it’s likely to continue that way. Fast & Furious 6 drops on Blu-ray this week and will likely make a clean getaway, because Walker and the rest of the franchise’s parts were finely tuned in crafting the perfect and most rare of blockbusters in the modern era: A customized original.
***Thanks for reading. And again, if you are interested in donating to the non-profit charity founded by Paul Walker, please visit the Reach Out Worldwide website. 
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Why would they want another reboot TV show of the series? They had an awesome one a few years ago, with ANOTHER Game of Thrones person (Lena Heady) playing Sara Connor, which was a GREAT show until Fox canclled it after 2 seasons. If anything bring that show back!
I thought the show was a bore.
They need to stop rebooting TV shows and movies of a once successful franchise.