Few movie franchises make it to seven installments. By the time a series hits lucky number seven, they’re sputtering down the ‘direct-to-video’ path with no original cast members. But not the F&F saga! With “Furious 7” the franchise did more than survive. It pushed the nitrous button and zoomed to $1.5 billion at the box office.
But the big question is has the series shifted so far into orbit that the original gearhead fans are left in the rearview mirror?
In “Furious 7” the fast family of Dom, Brian, Letty, and Mia are back in L.A., attempting something radical: normal life. Yes, the same grease monkeys who solve problems with head-on collisions are now dropping off the kids at pre-school. They earned amnesty after taking down Owen Shaw in “Fast & Furious 6” but big brother Deckard Shaw is out for revenge after the crew turned his little brother into a cautionary tale.
Shaw’s first target? Han. Poor Han Seoul-Oh. Living in Tokyo, snacking away, playing Mr. Miyagi to Sean’s Karate Kid and then BAM! In a timeline twist that finally puts “Fast and Furious: Tokyo Drift” in chronological order, the audience learns that Shaw was the guy who T-boned Han’s VeilSide RX-7 with a Mercedes S-Class.
While Han’s car burns, Shaw ominously calls Dom to warn ‘vengeance’ is coming. Oh, and just in case that wasn’t clear enough, Shaw has mailed a bomb to the Toretto house.
During Han’s funeral in L.A., the fast family recognizes they’re being hunted one by one, and determine they must regroup This establishes one of the central themes of the film; with individuals acting together as a family, they are stronger and safer. To hammer home the point, during a face-to-face confrontation with Deckard Shaw, Dom Toretto delivers the now iconic line “I don’t have friends; I got family.”
Then there’s the small matter of the CIA asking Dom’s crew — former street racers — to retrieve a global surveillance superweapon called ‘God’s Eye’. The device can hack any phone or camera on Earth. Back in 2015, this plotline arrived hot on the heels of Edward Snowden revealing information about NSA surveillance programs; privacy paranoia was at an all-time high.
But as a plot device, this allowed to fast family to travel to Abu Dhabi where Dom and Brian launch a Lykan HyperSport from a penthouse window of the Etihad Towers. Unquestionably, this movie has fully embraced the absurd action scenes. No… F&F hasn’t just embraced absurdity. F&F married it and took its last name.
Have the filmmakers given fast faithful what they came for; street racing and bikini girls? Yes! New director James Wan understood the assignment and served up two big scoops. In a nod to the original film, there’s a nostalgic pit stop at Race Wars, the a desert drag-racing event from F&F1. Letty is still suffering from amnesia, and Dom hopes that a trip down memory lane will dig up buried memories.
Driving a ’72 Plymouth Barracuda, Letty smokes an Audi R8 while the crowd roars and the bikini girls bounce in celebration.
By now, it’s clear the series has shifted gears. These aren’t just street racers anymore. They’re international spies and street philosophers. To keep longtime fans happy, the film sprinkles in nostalgic callbacks. L.A. is back, Race Wars returns, and even Hector from the F&F1 pops up to remind us of the old days when they just stole DVD players.
“Furious 7” treats its street-racing roots like a drive down memory lane.
Which brings US to the final scene; the last ride. Sadly, Paul Walker died in a car crash during the shooting of “Furious 7” and the movie had to be finished with a combination of GCI and Walker’s brothers Caleb and Cody as body doubles.
The end of the movie certainly acknowledges Paul’s passing, but in the F&F universe, Brian O’Conner lives on. He simply decided to leave the fast life and focus on being a family man with his wife Mia and their kids. The final scene has Dom in his black Charger and Brian in a white Supra driving side by side along a desert road one last time. No explosions or nitrous boost. Just the ballad “See You Again” by Wiz Khalifa playing as the brothers drive until the road splits into two paths, and one very emotional goodbye.
So, has the F&F franchise changed? Absolutely. It went from street racing to action adventure. But somehow, through exploding houses, twisted timelines, and increasingly important use of the word ‘family’ the series has kept the motor running.
And if “Furious 7” does nothing else, it proves that you can take the racers off the street, but you can’t stop them from launching a Lykan HyperSport through a skyscraper window.