Fast and Furious Retrospective Part 1: Planting Seeds in Plotholes
Furious 7 comes out next week, and unlike all the other releases in the wildly popular Fast/Furious series, I’m actually really…REALLY excited to see what Brian and Dom are up to. A long time ago, I watched the original The Fast and The Furious and just didn’t get it.
It seemed like a movie targeting real douche bags. Like, wife-beater in public, trucker hat turned sideways, Kid Rock bumping, douchebags. I also blamed that movie and its dumb sequels for making every suburban middle-class white kid with a Honda Civic think that if he put some exhaust and an erector set spoiler on his car he was suddenly a badass.
And while I wasn’t wrong, per se, I failed to see the charm in the ridiculousness. It also didn’t help that I had a personal hatred for Paul Walker’s acting, or lack there-of. That movie was the absolute realization of every type of attitude, culture and persona I wanted nothing to do with.
As of today, I can say comfortably, my opinion of the series was immature, short-sighted, and most importantly…wrong. These movies are wonderful for so many reasons that are not visible on the surface. Ironically, one of of those reasons is the lack of there being any other layers beneath that surface.
The amount of narcissism these films play with is unprecedented. Everything is canon, and nothing is off limits. If you think something doesn’t matter, wait long enough and you’ll find that not only does it matter, but its now been ret-conned to be more important than the movie it was originally in. The Fast films are up their own ass in exactly the right way.
Don’t get me wrong, these movies are not good, especially not the first three. However, through a haze of horrible acting, nonsensical plots, pretty faces, silly action sequences and the longest quarter miles ever, this series has turned itself into THE monument to dumb Hollywoodland Entertainment. Let’s break down the first 3 films.
The Fast and the Furious
The beginning…created clearly as a way to get pretty faces and fast cars on the big screen The Fast and the Furious is a shallow movie whose front men are a dolt and a charismatic anti-hero. Bucking tradition, the charisma doesn’t come from the pretty-boy white guy(Walker), but the ethnically-neutral brooding pile of muscles(Diesel).
The story is predictable and all the set pieces and costumes are in service of building the world. They really want you believe everything in the movie is normal and part of an established narrative you should be excited about. No matter how ridiculous, or unbelievable it may be, that world exists, this movie forces you to believe that. All subsequent movies stroke that narrative just enough to keep you excited to suspend your disbelief for two and a half hours.
I find it better to think of these films as low-fantasy/science fiction movies. While rooted in the real world, this first movie makes it clear that regular human logic doesn’t apply. It creates an ego and every second of every movie after it, was created with the sole purpose of feeding that ego. The concepts of family, “I live my life a quarter mile at a time…”, just one last heist, fast cars, multicultured stars, brutal unintentional racial stereotypes, over the top everything, Paul Walker’s anti-acting, undercover/not so undercover/used to be undercover cops, are all spread across this first movie and all of its spawn.
The Fast and the Furious is the film equivalent of Joe and Katherine Jackson. Over 16 years they just kept popping out children and while most of them were a Tito or a Latoya, every once in a while we got a Michael or a Janet. Either way, they were always distinctly Jacksonian. Ha, truthfully I don’t know how well that metaphor stands up, but to think of this first movie as a the parent of much better movies later kinda works.
2 Fast 2 Furious
Arguably the worst film in the series, 2 Fast is obviously a business decision come to life. Your two stars are blowing up, but only one wants to come back. The money for the sequel is there, so you write a story centered around Paul Walker, the boring one of the two stars.
The same story beats are followed, with the absurdity turned up quite a bit. 2 Fast, out of all the other movies, plays in the world of the original the most. The same stereotypes, the same premises, hell even the same color schemes.
Tyrese and Ludacris are brought on to replace the sorely missed Vin Diesel and placing the movie in Miami really helps make it feel like Fast and the Furious: Gaiden. What we learn in this movie is that Walker cannot carry a film by himself. He barely gets it done with Tyrese by his side. Also, despite having the most forgettable plot, 2 Fast plays a huge part in future films and even though it should probably be ignored, the producers refuse to do so.
2 Fast is blissfully unaware of what it brings to the series. Tyrese and Ludacris have become the second most useful things 2 Fast donated to the Furious lore. The first being a complete disregard for the laws of physics, averages and probabilities.
Watch the first film and then watch the trailer for Furious 7. The first thing that will come to mind is, “How in the hell did it get to this? What steps were taken that bring us to skydiving cars?” The answer starts with 2 Fast 2 Furious.
The Fast and the Furious: Tokyo Drift
There is something to be said about the balls that it took to get this movie made. Anyone could have told you that making a Fast movie without Walker or Diesel was a bad move. Universal and Justin Lin were having none of that and out of that decision comes the most bizarre and arguably most important movie in the series.
How could a movie with no apparent ties to the other movies be so important to the series? Three reasons: One, it proved the series could stand without its stars. Yeah Tokyo Drift is bad, really bad, but it was profitable. While almost doubling its production budget, it was the first one in the series to do better business outside of the U.S. Two, Justin Lin and Sung Kang, The action director’s Fast debut was Drift, but the director came back for Fast and Furious, Fast 5 and The Fast and the Furious 6 but we’ll talk about Justin Lin later. Sung Kang’s Han character plays the ever important glue role that makes the events of Tokyo drift matter. Three, that friggin’ cameo.
Vin Diesel’s cameo at the end of Tokyo Drift is the most effect cameo I can ever recall seeing in any movie. It’s completely unexpected, it ties this awkward Japanese based drift movie into the greater canon, and hints that there’s more story to tell. Anyone I have ever discussed Tokyo Drift with always mentions the cameo as the best part, its the part that excites them, and the part that truly defines how important Diesel’s character is to series.
I firmly believe that without that cameo, and the overwhelmingly positive response it got, the series would have ended and fizzled out, or further movies would be one offs, or even straight to video. Dominic Toretto showing up and saying he used to ride with Han is the most important scene in Fast and Furious cinema history.
As for the movie itself, it has the worst plot of them all, worst acting and the worst race sequences, but even with its foreign setting it clearly fits into the world created by the original movie. Street Racing is cool, and is crazy-easy to find on the streets. Drivers always have tons of cash and young hot girls naturally gravitate to street racing thugs. Its world-wide!
What’s next?
Next time we get to the bread and butter, Fast and Furious, Fast Five and Fast and Furious 6.
