Tent-poles in Hollywood has gone down the road of dropping a sneak-peak into successive sequels especially during the post-credits clip (Marvel Studios) and the Fast & Furious franchise has been following the trend too since Fast & Furious Tokyo Drift (2006). Grossing nearly $788 million world-wide, Fast & Furious 6 (2013) teased Jason Statham’s entry as the badass villain in Furious 7. Taking the reins from Justin Lin, James Wan, famed for helming creepy-horror flicks, The Conjuring, Insidious and Saw, had a mammoth task of delivering an action-packed feature to the fans’ heart’s content. Wan’s Furious 7 features the late Paul Walker’s last big-screen feature and is successfully breaking all records grossing $507 million world-wide already.
Speaking to Collider, Wan revealed that unfortunately Paul Walker’s untimely death in a car-crash in 2013 had far-reaching effects on the latest tent-pole. At that time Paul had completed filming nearly 80 per cent of his sequences. Disturbed over the tragedy, the cast were initially reluctant to continue filming but then Furious 7 was transformed from being just another instalment to a final worthy tribute to Paul Walker. Pushing the budget, Weta Digital stepped up to complete Paul’s remaining sequences using its latest motion-capture CGI technology along with Paul’s brothers, Caleb and Cody as body doubles.
Hinting towards the details, Wan stated, “The original ending of ‘Furious 7’ was setting up, you know, the bigger world of where the ‘Fast and Furious’ franchise could go into. And that’s obviously very smart of them to think so. But when the tragedy happened, all of that became irrelevant. So it did not matter anymore, all of that stuff. And to the studio’s credit, they did not push for that. They realized how important it was to make a movie that finishes and that just outright is a tribute to Paul Walker. So I give them a lot of credit for being bigger than that and going along with this ending that is the right ending to go with.”
The Fast and Furious franchise that hit the road first 14 years ago in 2001 didn’t go down well initially with the studios’ and was decided to scrap off the big-screen release of the fourth instalment. However Vin Diesel spat life into the engines of the franchise and with Dwayne ‘The Rock’ Johnson beefing up the franchise (Fast Five), Fast and Furious became one of the highest grossing franchises in Hollywood ($2.9 billion) with Paul Walker, Vin Diesel, Michelle Rodriguez, Jordana Brewster and Dwayne Johnson in the lead roles.
For those who have watched Furious 7 running in the theatres know that (Spoilers Alert) the ending of Furious 7 pays a wonderful tribute to Paul Walker with James Wan using a mix of Weta Digital’s CGI version of Paul Walker , Wiz Khalifa’s emotional track, ‘See You Again’ playing with a montage of Paul’s scenes from the earlier instalments. And to top the heart-felt sequence there’s Vin Diesel’s monologue, “I used to say I live my life a quarter-mile at a time and I think that’s why we were brothers, because you did, too. No matter where you are, whether it’s a quarter-mile away or halfway across the world. The most important thing in life will always be the people in this room. Salute mi familia. You’ll always be with me … And you’ll always be my brother.”
Furious 7 ends with Brian O’Conner (Paul Walker) and Dominic Toretto (Vin Diesel) taking their last ride together until they both take separate roads underlining the metaphor of retiring Paul’s character from the franchise. RIP Paul!