The Fast and Furious Series is Actually Great, So Shut Up
Name an American film franchise that (1) is not based on preexisting IP, (2) regularly produced major theatrical releases for over two decades, and (3) never resorted to a reboot or a remake.
Having trouble? That’s probably because you can’t bring yourself to admit that the only franchise that meets these criteria is the wildly popular yet much-maligned Fast and Furious series, which recently released a trailer for its tenth installment, Fast X.
The existence of this film has brought about much wailing and gnashing of teeth, with very serious people saying that F&F has turned into the MCU, and citing the upcoming movie as an example of Hollywood’s dearth of creativity and overreliance on adaptations on reboots.
And to this I say: Shut up. You’re wrong.
F&F is not the MCU. The MCU is a series of overlong cartoons about mutants and aliens based on a century of dopey comic books. And Fast X is not a reboot, remake or adaptation. It’s yet another installment of a long-running film series that, apart from borrowing heavily from Point Break for its first installment and retconning Han into a character from Better Luck Tomorrow, only involves characters and storylines created entirely for the film series itself. Complaining about “yet another Fast and Furious movie” is like complaining about “yet another James Bond movie.” Only it’s even stupider than that because James Bond is a character from a book (and Casino Royale was arguably a reboot!)!
So shut up.
F&F is that vanishing unicorn of American cinema, a long string of blockbuster films that developed entirely organically from original content. Seriously, what other film franchise has ever done that, let alone is still doing it today?
So whence F&F’s popularity and longevity? What is it about the franchise that has people pouring into theaters ever 2–3 years, and other people going in the newspaper and holding it up as an emblem of Hollywood’s doom? Let’s start with the basics.
The franchise began in 2001 with The Fast and the Furious, a low-stakes urban action movie that, as I said, is a loose remake of Point Break. Paul Walker plays Brian, an undercover police officer investigating a string of electronics thefts. He infiltrates am Echo Park street racing gang led by Vin Diesel’s Dominic Toretto, and by and by is drawn into Dom’s “family” and goes native (Jordana Brewster’s Mia, Dom’s hot sister, does a fair amount of skid greasing here). Following a climactic car chase, Brian lets Dom go, but instead of surfing to death like Patrick Swayze Dom drives off into the sunset to have more adventures.
This is not fine cinema. But it’s fun to watch, doesn’t take itself seriously, and has plenty of eye candy for everyone. Did I mention Letty, Dom’s paramour, played by Michelle Rodriguez?
This is a film that demands nothing of you other than being entertained for two hours. It’s not beholden to a beloved novel or comic book series. The world is not in peril. The characters are hot and witty. The cars are sleek, fast and loud. The script is a tight three acts. This is turn-of-the-millennium cotton candy. If you’re mad that this movie exists, you shouldn’t be.
The success of the first installment naturally led to a sequel, which for various reasons only brought back one original castmember but critically introduced two more recurring characters. It’s another low-stakes crime caper, this time finding Brian in Miami teaming up with an ex-con pal to take on a drug lord and make googly eyes at Eva Mendes.
Chapter 3, Tokyo Drift (my personal favorite), is a Karate Kid story with an extremely tenuous connection to the rest of the series (that will be somewhat stitched together a few movies later). A strapping teenager moves from the U.S. to Tokyo with his dad, is bullied by the local street racing gang, learns Tokyo style street racing from a mentor (a wisecracking Lil Bow Wow rather than a sage old Pat Morita), and ends up becoming the new “Drift King” and, you guessed it, getting the hot girl.
Chapters 2 and 3 hew closely to the spirit, if not the quality, of the first movie. Hot guys, hot girls, fast cars, low stakes, and scripts that don’t let the grass grow. A fine way to spend a couple of hours on a Friday night. Cotton candy.
I won’t belabor the rest of the series, but, briefly, Chapter 4 reunites (most of) the original cast, with Letty having been killed by a (different) drug lord, and Brian and Dom competing with each other to take down the bad guy — Brian because he’s an FBI agent now and Dom seeking revenge (spoiler: they reconcile at the end). Fast Five finds the reunited family in hiding in South America pursued by Dwayne “The Rock” Johnson doing his best Tommy Lee Jones, and mutates into a heist movie (spoiler: The Rock lets them go in the end). These two transitional installments admittedly get a little bogged down, but the bones are still there. And we’re falling in love with the misfits from Echo Park all over again.
Which brings us to Fast & Furious 6, Furious 7, F8 of the Furious (I love that) and F9. Each of these movies effectively has the same plot: A bad guy/girl has stolen or is trying to steal a weapon that threatens the whole-ass world, and the only way to stop the villain is by having Dom and his crew drive fast cars at them. I’m only simplifying a tiny bit, I swear.
Now, if you’re charitable, you may be thinking, “That sounds absurd, but it probably makes sense in the universe of the movies.”
And here’s the thing: No it doesn’t. But you know what? It’s still fucking great.
Why? First and foremost, while the world is now in peril, the characters are still hot and witty, the cars are still sleek, fast and loud (though there’s a disappointing decline in street racing minutes as the series goes on), and we’re still munching on cotton candy. Even though the stakes have been ratcheted up to a ridiculous degree, the movies studiously resist taking themselves too seriously. They’re orders of magnitude more self-aware than the other idiotic movies hitting theaters every year (in F9, Tyrese Gibson’s character has an ongoing existential crisis as he lampshades how over-the-top their adventures — which include poor Tyrese driving a car into space — have become). If you’re mad that these movies exist, you shouldn’t be.
But there’s more. I mentioned that Dom’s crew is referred to as a “family,” and that’s a key theme throughout the franchise. Family is the most important thing for these characters, and that includes blood relations and “found family” as the crew gets ever larger as enemies become friends and new crew members are picked up. In a real world where every conceivable social tie is disintegrating, F&F presents a group of people who are supremely devoted to each other through organic bonds. And the family is permanent, inviolable, even surviving the untimely real-world death of the series’ original leading man.
And, critically, they’re just normal people. We’re not asked to care about Tony Stark, wizards (space or British) or godlike aliens. The crime fighting gang is diverse without seeming forced. This is a franchise that asks, “What if a group of working-class car guys and girls from Echo Park became an elite mercenary force?”
These are the people we see at the park, at the supermarket, at church.
Which brings me to what is perhaps the most under-emphasized aspect of what makes F&F so popular. These are movies that are infused with faith without being about religion. The characters are overtly religious, not because they’re crusading for God in a godless world, but because they’re normal working class people and that’s how normal working class people are.
In none of the movies is this clearer than in F8 of the Furious. Here, Charlize Theron plays the villainous Cipher, a materialistic nihilist (the atheism is implied) who believes that family bonds are useless evolutionary artifacts. When Cipher exploits these namby-pamby family feelings by kidnapping Dom’s son, Dom is forced to turn against his own “family” to save him.
But, of course, family wins in the end, and the crew (Dom included) leverages various familial relationships to get a reinforced crew together to take down Cipher. And as though this weren’t overt enough, the crew are able to infiltrate Cipher’s undetectable ghost plane by smuggling a homing device on board disguised as a cross.
In short, F&F is an original film series centered on a racially diverse cast and traditional themes of faith and family. That’s why it’s popular, and that also explains why it’s so annoying and inscrutable to New York Times writers.
Movies are at their best when their characters are relatable, and the guys and gals in F&F are much more accessible than Indiana Jones and Ant Man. So yes, there will be a tenth and eleventh Fast and Furious, and they will make shitloads of money off of dorks like me, after which the series will purportedly draw to a close and serious moviegoers can stop being bothered by them.
In the meantime, give some cotton candy a chance. And shut up.
