‘Fast & Furious’ has become the strangest franchise in Hollywood. And that is precisely his triumph

The premiere of ‘Fast & Furious X’, the beginning (and such a beginning: there are still two more installments ahead) of the end of the saga starring Vin Diesel, is quite an event for devotees of the most mindless and self-conscious action cinema. Absolutely everything we expect from the franchise is here.and as always, without any sense of measure.

That is to say, mammoth spherical bombs on fire, use of gargantuan objects as throwing weapons, villains over the top (Jason Momoa seems to have been inspired by a cartoon from Warner to compose his banker-dandy-sociopath), people who seemed dead and who turn out to be alive, relatives of second degree or less that come out from under the stones, very long disquisitions on the family as a concept, as an institution and as self-sufficient microeconomic entity… ‘Fast & Furious X’ is, hell, a ‘Fast & Furious’ installment.

Since the franchise took a literal swerve towards the insanity in which even today it can defend itself as the best installment of the series, ‘Fast & Furious 5’, the series has made the flag of its constants and has refused to move too much from the coordinates that were raised there. Evolution is known to all: from illegal racing movies and lag tuning turned into a crazy heist saga, to end up a saga of pseudo-espionage and secret missions to save the world, completely self-contained in an invisible world of warring agencies and spies with no ties to anything except the family.

What is unique about the series is that, despite moving in very established and almost rigid codes, it has a strange naturalness, a very peculiar honesty that sets it apart from other successful franchises. Of course, ‘Fast & Furious’ are far from being auteur cinema: they are pure and hard blockbusters, planned down to the last millimeter, but which retain a certain organic life within them. And that’s because, despite its mammoth size, despite its pleasant predictability, there’s a strange heart inside.

Vin Diesel, that human being

When Marvel movies, or Star Wars movies, or DC movies work, they do great. But when they fail, there is a certain inhumanity behind the scenes: the worst moments of fan service ruthless, of arguments that only serve to prolong the continuity, of characters that are left over, born from meetings in offices. Successful franchises limp when the viewer perceives that behind them there are a lot of people with ties gathered and comparing algorithms so that mathematically attractive movies come out. And sometimes they do. But often not.

The ‘Fast & Furious’ films, and therein lies part of their eccentric beauty, have found their identity for themselves: testing formulas in each installment, making mistakes and trying again, giving more of what they like and leaving what they like on the way. that not so much This is how this kind of disarmingly sincere mazacotes has been built, those godzillas of noise and lead that are only due to a loyal audience that knows exactly what to expect in each installment.

That does not make them films with a traditional authorship, I insist: they are blockbusters. But…there is nothing special about avoiding market currents, the needs of streaming, the highly planned commercial routes of its competitors that the ‘Fast & Furious’ dodge like someone who uses helicopters with boleadoras? Isn’t there something endearing about “we already know that continuing to use Jason Statham at this point doesn’t make any plot sense, but… are we going to deny that to the fans”?

This is why the “he was the villain, but now he helps the heroes” trick can work, in its own way, the first time. But a second, a third, a fourth, and so on indefinitely, until Toretto’s family becomes some kind of Suicide Squad on wheels of redeemed sociopaths, surpassing scripted nonsense to become an internal law that only makes sense in ‘Fast & Furious’. Marvel and ‘Star Wars’ try to create heroes who are empathetic beyond their fictional universes: ‘Fast & Furious’ forces the viewer to become part of the universe of madness, without asking for permission.

‘Fast & Furious X’ is more of that, in the usual style, with some refined elements (for example, the villain is more extreme to prevent precisely that change of side -the redemption that he plays in this installment is especially crazy- ) and others that preserve / enhance the usual style (the set-piece in Rome is among the best and craziest that the saga has produced). A series that remains unusually true to itself and its fans, in a strange and consistent way. A rarity in today’s Hollywood.

Header: Universal

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