“The Fast and the Furious” Matters

Look, “The Fast and the Furious” is silly, but I saw a trailer for “F9” the other day that cut quickly between most of the leading heroes. There they were: Black, Latine, Asian.

It sent me spiraling back to what I was watching as a kid growing up in the 90s. Who saved the world and stopped the bad guys then? It was Bruce Willis, Kurt Russell, Harrison Ford, Pierce Brosnan, Mel Gibson, Nicholas Cage, Sylvester Stallone, Tom Cruise, Arnold Schwarzenegger. Sure, we had Keanu Reeves, but marketing departments knew in that world audiences should envision him as white, that discussion of his Native Hawaiian and Chinese descent might hurt his box office. It really wasn’t mentioned. Even John Travolta got a damn action career. John fucking Travolta.

If not for Will Smith, we wouldn’t have had a mainstream actor of color consistently lead action movies in the 90s. The best we had otherwise was the occasional Wesley Snipes movie, though he was as likely to be the villain as a hero. I grew up just outside Chicago, and WGN loved to run Carl Weathers TV movie actioners, mostly B-grade Schwarzenegger knockoffs. That was about it.

The first character of color I saw lead a dramatic show on a week-to-week basis was Ben Sisko on “Star Trek: Deep Space Nine”.

You could forget the concept of a Latine actor leading a mainstream movie or drama series. That was unthinkable. We were villains, and often silly ones. At best, we were the comic relief. But most often, we were portrayed as gangsters, the scenery in the background to prove how tough the hero was when he dared to step into our lair. We were bodies to be disposed of by that hero in the zeitgeist of a country that grew up on those narratives to believe that immigrant and refugee children must also be bodies to be disposed of before they too become gangsters.

Imagine being a young Latino, and everything you watch reinforcing that this part of you doesn’t matter, that there are no heroes in your blood, there’s just second-rate villainy and gang violence but not the white kind we celebrate in Mafia movies, and – if you really get lucky and work hard – you might be the comic relief. You know what, you can survive that. It instills a lot of weird shit you have to get over later in life, but it’s survivable.

Now imagine being a young Latino, and everyone around you having that view reinforced, everyone around you thinking you’re just a villain they can test their strength on, they can gang up against, that the best you’ll do is being an obstacle or sidekick in their story. Imagine the bruises that earns. Imagine coming home with a black-and-blue chest or a broken nose or a ringing headache because you’re the Latino kid. Imagine doing everything perfectly and getting straight A’s, at first because you liked it and enjoyed the challenge, but later because if you fought back, that academic standing was the only thing that made them believe you over the white kid.

I saw what happened to the kids of color who didn’t do well in school, how often they were believed, how often they were sent home for daring to punch back as they were hit again and again by three or four others. I went from being a good student because I loved learning, to being a good student because it afforded me protection and it was my ticket to having those with authority believe me. I went from loving learning to viewing it as a shield, and I went from enjoying doing well to viewing it as exhausting, a power exchange I struggled with resenting.

None of it was because that was my path. It was all because I had to react and manage what my peers and many of my teachers and administrators expected to be my path, because it was never about defending myself – I was the tallest kid in school who trained in taekwondo and kickboxing. I didn’t worry about defending myself. I worried whether others would defend me after I had. The greatest protection I had was being a Latino child who exceeded expectations so much that adults with power actually forgot what I was for a second and gave a shit about me. They forgot that I was supposed to be disposable, the bad guy, the foil for their white kids to succeed, the obstacle. That was the bar I had to clear.

I loved school, until it became less about learning and more about proving others wrong, until getting A’s was less about being proud of myself and more about making others forget I was supposed to be a dumb joke or a future threat to be beaten down until he knew his place. If I got A’s, you couldn’t make me that because it took the adults around us permitting it. And let me tell you, that burden on a kid makes it really hard to still do well.

Toward the end of the 90s, we started getting the “Blade” movies, often forgotten in the discussion of franchises that legitimized the comic book superhero movie. Keanu Reeves’s background started to become part of his appeal and less of an ‘issue’ in marketing. Jackie Chan made crossover films that took place in the U.S. Samuel L. Jackson began breaking into the mainstream more and more.

And yet, I still couldn’t imagine a major franchise being led by eight or nine actors of color. I couldn’t imagine an ensemble of actors of color having crowds cheer for them as they fight white villains. I might sit here in my 30s and roll my eyes at another “The Fast and the Furious” movie. But the part of me sitting there at 10 is in a quiet, needful sort of awe that such a thing is possible, that he could be viewed as a hero or just the protagonist in his own story. Imagine the other kids, the white kids, thinking that, treating that possibility as real. Imagine the white adults thinking that, maybe listening to the kids of color who don’t get straight A’s or perform whiteness or successfully hack their fucked up social system of power exchange.

Measured by worldwide box office, “The Fast and the Furious” is the fifth largest movie franchise in history (after the MCU/Spider-Man, Star Wars, Harry Potter, and James Bond). It’s the only one in the top 30 led by people of color. It might be silly action storytelling (just like those other franchises), but it matters. It matters to whoever’s sitting there as a child, thinking about how they view themselves as a person of color. It matters to whoever’s sitting there as a child, thinking about how they view others as people of color.

It matters as to how they’ll define and treat children of color when they’re adults. It matters what they’ll put them through, whether they’ll listen, whether that child has to do extra work and perform and learn to resent what they love just to visit equality, or whether they’ll start from the assumption of equality and just get to love what they love and be a kid.

“The Fast and the Furious” matters because it makes us matter, because it makes us central instead of disposable, heroic instead of a joke, decisive instead of dumb, worth listening to, worth admiring, worth your vision of humanness, leaders that white characters will listen to and work alongside. It promises we can be heroes in the eyes of children who will one day be making decisions about who will be listened to; who will tell their own children who gets to be a hero, a protagonist, a leader, who gets to be legitimate.

As a kid, I wanted to be human as a rule, not because I was the exception to someone’s stereotype. I’ll always carry that with me, and you can learn to live with it and compartmentalize it, but it still stretches veins into every part of who you are.

But look at this. Look at this movie, this franchise, these trailers that feature face after face from actors and characters of color. You can’t imagine how that lifts a burden people carry inside themselves, even if just for an hour or two. You can’t imagine that those veins that run through you can be turned to something else because they never have for so long. Representation makes you feel like maybe others can see you, want to see you, want to listen, like maybe what you have to say is worth something. People accepting and celebrating that representation, wanting to see more of it, wanting to seek out more that’s like it – that’s what confirms those feelings.

“The Fast and the Furious” is hardly complete representation, it’s not perfect representation, it’s certainly not as intersectional as it could be – but it is, by far, the most we’ve had in this medium, the most accepted we’ve been in the landscape of popular film. There’s a version of me, before that burden was carried, before those veins spread inside, before those exchanges and performances were asked, that sees these trailers, this movie, this franchise, and stares in awe that it is even possible. That is a calm place, and it’s one I miss because I don’t even remember it. It must’ve been there at some point. It has to have been.

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Over on AC: “Furious 7” is Insane, Important for Minorities, Terrible for Feminism

I put Furious 7 through the ringer in this review. While it’s a tremendous opportunity for many to see heroes that aren’t normally represented on film, it’s also obsessed with the male gaze and objectifying women. I love this film for its action, humor, and especially for how it chooses to bare its soul and cope with Paul Walker’s death, but it has to be taken in context. Read more over on Article Cats:

“Furious 7” is Insane, Important for Minorities, Terrible for Feminism

– Gabe

Not a Fitting End for Paul Walker — “Brick Mansions”

If you’ve seen the trailer for Brick Mansions, you should be expecting three things from the film. One, the late, great Paul Walker, who exuded enough casual charm and quiet heart to keep the Fast and Furious franchise going through some pretty rough days. Two, a showcase of Parkour, the French free-running style that allows expert practitioners to leap rooftop-to-rooftop at full sprint, or scale 10-story buildings faster than you or I could climb the stairs. Three, a cogent story involving a gangster who’s hijacked a weapon of mass destruction and threatens to destroy Detroit with it, and the cop and felon who have to team up in order to disarm it.

Well, at least it has Paul Walker, who plays the police officer, Damien. Before his untimely death in a traffic accident, Walker’s claim to fame wasn’t being a terribly dynamic actor, although he did do some nice work in Flags of Our Fathers. Instead, what he offered was perhaps the hardest thing for an actor to convey – earnestness. It’s the same reason we once bought Kevin Costner as Robin Hood – as an audience, we simply trusted him. The same went for Walker – he wasn’t a great actor, but his bright-eyed enthusiasm always made a film better. It’s a shame he won’t get to bring that charm to other films, and it’s a shame that Brick Mansions, the last film he fully completed shooting, doesn’t give us a quiet character moment or two with Damien in which to consider and appreciate that earnestness.

Not many have seen District B13, the French movie on which Brick Mansions is based. Both films involve a ghetto that’s been walled off from the rest of the city. Both involve politicians who excuse creating this lawless, artificial prison as a way to make the rest of the city safer. Both realize that, in historical terms, ghettos are something the politically powerful create only to contain those who most threaten to take away that power.

They’re both Parkour movies. Parkour’s most famous moment occurred when Daniel Craig took over the Bond franchise in Casino Royale. Where his quarry expertly climbed girders and leaped through tiny windows, Bond famously improvised an elevator and smashed through the door. If you’re still not familiar with Parkour, it’s very worth looking it up on YouTube.

Brick Mansions has some rather good Parkour, featuring co-founder of the art, David Belle. Belle plays the felon, Lino, but over-editing makes his Parkour unrecognizable. A single jump might be edited into three or four different shots. We don’t see the full choreography of any leap, and it’s the full picture – the difficulty, the twisting of anatomy, the physics-bending “how did he do that?” of Parkour that’s utterly butchered here.

As for story, I ought to be fair: the original District B13 didn’t have a very functional story either. Brick Mansions is a beat-for-beat remake, so I wouldn’t expect it to fare much better. How Mansions fails, however, is by removing any sense of real threat. There may be a neutron bomb on a rocket aimed straight at downtown Detroit, but…these gangsters are woeful. Auctioning the bomb back off to the police, gang boss Tremaine (rapper RZA) asks for $30 million. I know it’s Detroit and all, but I still felt like he needed to have the same conversation Dr. Evil had with Scott Evil about monetary inflation in Austin Powers.

Moreover, the gangsters have countless numbers of henchmen ready to give chase, but they only ever guard their most valuable assets (prisoners, the rocket itself) with a single lackey. Have the rest of the henchmen unionized? Are they on a mandated lunch break? Is Tremaine trying to save costs – is it a Sunday and he doesn’t want to pay them overtime? Why is the rocket halfway across the city anyway; why not just put it on Tremaine’s own roof, where his hundreds of henchmen are?

Is Brick Mansions good? Not really. Is it watchable? Imagine me shrugging noncommittally in response. It does have Paul Walker, though, and that really does count for something. See it if you’re a fan, but otherwise rent a Fast and Furious movie for Walker or District B13 for the Parkour. And if you’re really looking for a martial arts gangster epic, The Raid 2 might still be playing somewhere.

Brick Mansions is the scavenger’s quest of PG-13 qualifications – gunplay, action, violence, language, and some pretty needless and ham-handed sexual menace.

Watch these. They’ll ease the pain. You do any of this at home, you’re an idiot:

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Parkour, like any movement style or martial art, is for everyone:

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And leave it to the Russians to turn it into a meditation on facing death:

How China Keeps Bruce Willis Alive – The Changing Face of Global Box Office

Analyzing which movies succeed and flop isn’t as easy as it used to be. Take The Mortal Instruments: City of Bones, one of a dozen garden-variety supernatural young adult movies made after the success of Twilight. The film cost $60 million to make (advertising additional), and it only made $31 million back in the United States. After opening weekend, it was singled out as a cautionary tale for other studios. Revisiting the film after a drawn-out international release reveals, however, that it tripled its take when foreign box office was considered. Add in home release sales and rental, and City of Bones made a tidy profit. A sequel is even in development.

Google “Need for Speed flops” and you’ll see publications ranging from major industry analysts like Forbes to popular online magazines like Uproxx declaring the film a major bomb that threatens DreamWorks’ entire yearly financial outlook. True, Need for Speed did thud into U.S. theaters with a lackluster $17 million opening weekend. This caused an industry-wide race to be the loudest voice turning its flop into a cautionary, knew-it-all-along warning about why movies based off of video games will never be profitable.

Then a funny thing happened. A week later, the film’s topped $130 million worldwide, with weeks left in theaters and many major territories yet to open. A huge hit in China, Need for Speed will make its $66 million production budget back in that country alone.

We typically look at the top movies of a week or a year through American eyes only. The relaunch of RoboCop, for instance, had a $100 million production budget. It’s made only $57 million domestic. Considering the advertising involved, it lost at least $100 million in the U.S. It will be remembered by entertainment journalists as a complete flop. And yet…its worldwide haul sits at $237 million and growing fast.

You might ask yourself why they keep making Die Hard sequels when it’s clear that U.S. audiences have passed the point of diminishing returns on the franchise. Because 80% of the last entry’s $300 million haul came from overseas, that’s why.

In fact, Bruce Willis has achieved only modest success in the U.S. the last five years. He is not a sure domestic draw anymore, but he remains at the top of casting lists because he’s so popular in Australia, China, Japan, Russia, South Korea, and Western Europe. It is virtually impossible to make a Bruce Willis film without making money. He guarantees that, even if a movie under-performs at home, it will make a sizable profit.

Films like Need for Speed and 2013’s Hansel and Gretel: Witchhunters are the mid-budget models for post-holiday releases going forward. American audiences don’t flock to the theater January through March, when Winter is at its worst, but many foreign audiences do. After a disappointing January weekend in which Hansel and Gretel opened a weak slew of movies, it was declared a financial failure. It eventually hit $225 million worldwide. For a film that cost $50 million to produce, that meant a huge financial success and, like City of Bones, a sequel in development.

A week ago, Need for Speed was a complete financial disaster of a film. The concept of its challenging Fast and Furious as a franchise was a joke. Now, it’s one of the hottest international properties, and a sequel has to be on the table.

The United States alone does not dictate box office success anymore. It hasn’t been that way for more than a decade, but it’s become especially apparent in recent years as other countries build more theaters and their own film industries. Studios now engineer films with international release strategies, and add extra footage to movies like Looper to tailor them for foreign audiences. The 2010 remake of The Karate Kid was cleverly re-edited for Chinese theaters so that it wasn’t about a transplanted American boy learning kung fu after being beaten up by Chinese bullies, but rather about a displaced American troublemaker who instigated fights himself and – through kung fu – learned to adjust to his new country.

If the industry has changed, why haven’t the journalists, analysts, and bloggers who cover it? It’s time to stop deciding whether a film is successful from a box office standpoint after the first U.S. weekend. Cautionary tales are great to write and all, but people who tell them every week have a bad habit, not a useful perspective. They’re no longer looking at the full picture.

I’d also like to add…RoboCop, After Earth, Hansel and Gretel: Witchhunters, A Good Day to Die Hard…can we please stop saying American audiences have bad taste? If we do, it’s pretty clear we’re not the only ones.

Box office statistics for this article are drawn from the top two websites on the subject – Box Office Mojo and Box Office Guru.