From a patchwork to the most profitable film history, how long can the "Fast and Furious" series last?

"Fast and Furious 10" was first released in China, and the box office exceeded 10 million yuan in five days of release. The picture shows the "Fast and Furious <>" movie poster.

■ Reporter Liu Qing

"Fast and Furious 10" was first released in China, and the box office exceeded 140 million yuan in five days of release. The <>-minute film is "unfinished", ending at the moment when the main character first appears, and the head-to-head duel between the male protagonist Don and his old enemy is about to start and slam on the brakes. Will a film cut in half end the entire series, as promised by the producers? It now looks full of uncertainty, after all, even dead characters can return full of blood, and there is no "mission impossible" for this film series that defies gravity and Newton's laws.

The first "Fast and Furious" is just a B-grade film that makes a quick money, who would have thought that 22 years later it would become a series as important as Bond, Mission Impossible, DC and Marvel Heroes, and almost the only remaining fruit of the new film series after the 21st century.

From a patchwork to one of the most profitable series in film history

Daniel Craig's Bond films and Tom Cruise's "Mission Impossible" have ambitions to integrate contemporary geopolitical issues into the spy war genre. In "Quick" 9 and 10, although the protagonist "Donald" and his family have traveled all over the world, from Azerbaijan and Georgia on the border of Europe and Asia to the Vatican, the center of Mediterranean civilization, the choice of location is only to create the needs of the landscape, can not be given more plot meaning, this series has always been a simple and crude superposition of profligate drag racing scenes and absurd soap opera plots.

2001's "Fast and Furious" is a hastily made patchwork, the main creator took inspiration from a magazine article, the main plot of the film is appropriated from Catherine Bigelow's 1991 directed "Breaking Point", the title comes from an old film produced by the "King of B-movies" Roger Koeman, this kind of operation will be suspected of plagiarism today. The producers and directors of that year held the mentality of "earn one vote and run", and found the starring pair of Vin Diesel and Paul Walker, although Diesel had previously starred in Spielberg's "Saving Private Ryan", he and Paul Walker at the time were regarded as "movie store actors" because most of the movies they starred in were directly released on DVD. Unexpectedly, this drag racing film with an investment of 3800 million US dollars finally won 2 million US dollars at the box office. With such a return on investment ratio, it is difficult to end without making a sequel.

At that time, Diesel was not optimistic about the "Fast and Furious" series, and he missed the second and third parts one after another. By 2006, Diesel starred in the "Star Legend" and "Extreme Agent" two series of movies, the sequel reputation and box office were not satisfactory, and this year, Chinese director Justin Lin filmed "Fast and Furious 3: Tokyo Drift", sweeping away the trolleybus-style chaos of the previous two "drag racing cop films", and established a film brand's distinctive personality and selling point: to treat cars as important roles as actors, and create wonders around cars. So, Diesel returned to Fast and Furious 4 as a starring and producer star, and he bet his career on the film series, and years later, his name and "Quick" could not be separated.

Character characters and actor halos cover up the plot shortcomings

Due to the lack of planning in the early days of the project, the three films left a bunch of chaotic characters and timelines, but this shortcoming mistakenly made the later "Donald Family Universe". The concept of "family" came from Diesel's proposal, because he was dissatisfied with the story line of the first draft of the fourth script, he proposed to use the "family concept" as a parallel literary logic to the drag racing action scene. The "family" in the film includes the kinship network between Don and his old mother, sister Mia, lover Letty, and his friend and brother-in-law Brian by traditional blood and marriage, as well as Don and Roman, Taiji, Han, Ramsay, a group of like-minded partners who meet each other but form a big family of friendship.

In the eight years from 2009 to 2017, there have been four sequels, although the story line is sloppy and the dialogue is childish and ridiculous, but in the accumulation of time, the actors full of personality have given the characters in the film a personal charm that overrides the plot, and also created all kinds of humorous details that are outside the plot and big scenes. For example, Diesel's Don always speaks slowly, Letty exudes a powerful aura far larger than her petite size, and the living treasure-style Roman has become a "harlequin" who grabs the camera. As for Paul Walker, who played Brian, died in a car accident during the filming of the seventh part, it gave the entire series a layer of nostalgia.

From the fourth part, as a producer, Diesel has increased the scale of investment in the film, and also used his personal connections to attract "Dwayne" Johnson, Jason Statham, Gal Gadot, Helen Mirren, Chariz Theron, Brie Larson and other superstars and actresses to play supporting roles with different roles, the attraction effect created by the combination of fancy character characters and actor halos conceals the single lack of a single lack at the drama level of the entire series of films. For example, in the tenth episode, the rational logic of the blood feud between the villains Dante and Don is not important, and the actor Jason Momoa is superimposed on the character's labelled personality: the contrast between the swaggering appearance and the strong man's body, the two sides of the aria-style pompous temperament and the cruel cold-blooded antisocial personality, the external posture of this character comic outweighs his inner rationality.

"Automobile" and "Family": Two fulcrums of emotional satisfaction mechanisms

The indulgence and transgression of desire by spectacle consumption is ultimately balanced by an ever-changing view of "family", with additional emotional comfort.

From the third part, director Justin Lin has achieved the core competitiveness of this series in the field of spectacle films, that is, the imaginative development of car functions in every way, and the corresponding destructive wear and tear. In the eighth part, the car flew, and by the ninth part, Newton could not stop the protagonist group from driving to the sky to release satellites, in contrast, in the tenth part, which was just released, Don drove the Tiber River to the wall or rushed down the steep slope of the dam into a deep pool, showing humility to respect gravity. Cars sliding out of the cabin of a military plane in flight, parachuting on the highway, vintage Fords being fitted with cannons – the fun of the series is to continue to challenge the boundaries of the audience's imagination of "owning a car" and "spending a car", and unrestrained to output the big scene of speeding cars. Again and again, the roaring luxury car in the movie and the enchanting female under the male gaze appear in the same frame, which constitutes a naked image of desire, and the car becomes a hormonal trigger and an object of desire. This is an undisputed cool film that satisfies the audience's desire to consume excess energy in an audiovisual way.

Interestingly, the internal drive of each action of Tang and his friends is not based on lofty and ambitious goals, but a simple and direct "saving the family". As for the barbecue beer party after each successful operation, it is even more literal "for the reunion of the family". The emphasis on the concept of "family" is an expected cliché in mainstream Hollywood movies, but the fun of the "Quick" series is that the "contemporaneity" that is ahead of the industry trend is erupted in the routine - while Bond, Captain America and Ethan Hunt are still rightfully telling the legend of "white men breaking into the world", "Don's family team" has long practiced ethnic and gender diversity. In this regard, no matter where the future of "Quick" goes, it is indeed the undisputed film brand of this generation.