May 19, 2023 | Total Issue 3240
On May 17, "Fast and Furious 10" arrived as scheduled, two days ahead of North America.
Sequel movies dominate the Hollywood commercial film field, and even so, it is rare to be able to make the tenth series of movies.
9 main stories and 1 external biography, the global box office has exceeded 6.6 billion US dollars, which is not included in the box office results of the tenth part. The "Quick" series has such a dazzling box office performance, which is comparable to top series IP such as "Star Wars", "007" and "Harry Potter".
At the beginning of this series, it was just a medium-cost crime action movie. After the success of the first work, it was gradually upgraded to an A-grade production, and the box office soared like an open hanging. Such a movie upgrade is rare in Hollywood history.
Who would have thought that in addition to the big scenes of drag racing, there is a crazy villain worth remembering. However, this movie without an end also makes the audience fall directly into an emptiness, and the expectations of a cool end are disappointed.
Stimulate! Iron ball bombs haunt Rome
Physics is becoming less and less present in the Furious series. The film's various unimaginable flying car stunt scenes do not take gravity seriously at all, as long as the scene is good, the main creator dares to get rid of the shackles of all real environments.
Looking at the level of works in the "Furious Series" series in recent years, I give this order: "Furious 7"> "Furious 8"> "Furious 10" > "Furious 9".
The ninth part was criticized by the audience for its exaggerated action scenes, as well as the extremely suspended story and thin characters. The tenth part has been revised in terms of plot and characters, and the performance method of the speeding action scene has been adjusted, and the overall look and feel is better than that of the ninth.
The plot of "Fast and Furious 10" is not closely related to the previous work, and the audience will not have difficulty understanding it if they have not seen the previous work. The villain Dante (Jason Momoa) has a special plot retrospective, the relationship setting of decent characters is simple and clear, and the audience can build a character relationship network through brain supplements.
The theme of the plot of "Fast 10" is revenge, and the battle between good and evil enters a white heat shortly after the opening. The film drama only plays a role in cutscenes and connections, and occasionally adds the bickering and beating of characters such as Roman (played by Tyrese Gibson), Tergi (played by Ludacris) and so on.
The plot of "Furious 10" is like a sports car on the move, and the audience gets a sense of refreshment in the endless action scenes.
In the first few parts of "Quick", hardcore equipment such as tanks, planes, and submarines appeared, and the tenth part no longer focused on large weapons and equipment, but hollowed out in action design.
In "Fast 10", the two speeding action scenes are quite eye-catching. In the first paragraph, the iron ball bomb haunts Rome. This large iron ball bomb is like a wild horse, rampaging through the streets of the ancient city.
This scene is a multi-perspective narrative. The villain Dante is a god's point of view, and he hides high in the city to control attacks. Dominic Toretto (Vin Diesel) is a rescue perspective, and he drives a sports car to chase and block the iron ball. Terji and Ramsay (Natalie Emmanuel) are trapped beast perspectives, they are trapped in a truck, and their lives are controlled by Dante. Letty (Michelle Rodriguez) is the tracking perspective, and she chases Dante on a motorcycle. The perspective is constantly switching, speeding up the narrative rhythm and increasing the tension of the plot.
The whole scene hardly gives the audience a chance to breathe, and the thrilling shots are dizzying. The crew created a real giant iron ball sliding on the street, and the buildings and gas stations that were crashed during the period were mostly real scenes. Therefore, although the whole scene is full of sci-fi imagination, it also has a real shocking effect.
In the second stage, the speeding car falls into the dam to avoid the flames. The decisive battle scene at the end of this film is roughly divided into three levels, allowing the scene to gradually enter a climax.
On the first floor, Jacob Toreto (John Cena) drives his nephew to avoid the mercenaries. Jacob's antique car with cannon shows its might, and the mountain racing scene plays a role in warming up the decisive battle.
The second level is a war between good and evil on the highway, and Dominica drives a rope to destroy two helicopters. This chase scene emphasizes the battle between ground and air.
The third layer is the flying car falling into the dam to avoid the flames. This scene can be called the highlight of the entire series, and the shock effect is not inferior to the drag safe battle on the streets of Rio in the fifth part. This time, Dominic drove down the High Gorge Dam, and the roaring flames behind the body rushed straight to chase, and the audience may have the illusion of watching "The Avengers".
"Furious 10" has done everything in the design of the big scene, because it shoulders the heavy responsibility of boosting the box office of the series. The film's first-day box office in the mainland was 103 million yuan, and the Maoyan Professional APP predicted a final box office of 830 million yuan on May 18.
From this point of view, the mainland box office of "Furious 10" may be far inferior to the previous ones.
There are three reasons for the film's box office malaise: one is that it premieres on Wednesday on weekdays, and the box office space is limited; the second is the mediocre performance of the ninth part, which overdraws the audience's enthusiasm for the series; The third is that "Fast and Furious" has always created a fantastic flying car scene based on imagination, and the audience will inevitably produce "drug resistance" after watching too much.
Aquaman is like a clown, and enemies become family
Dante, the villain of "Furious 10", became the brightest character in the whole film.
The personality traits and words and deeds of the members of the speeding car family are well known to the audience, and their performance can only be decent. Dante's state of madness as a new character is impressive.
Dante has more character charm than the villains in the previous parts of "Fast Furious". This character has a growth arc and an obsession with revenge. He never forgot his father's teachings and firmly believed that revenge was to torture the other party until life was better than death. His obsession became the driving force behind the attack in the film, which fully explained why he did not want to kill Dominica with one shot, but chose to escalate the scale of the attack, making Dominic unhappy.
Jason Momoa's performance is clearly influenced by the Joker (Heath Ledger) in Batman: The Dark Knight. Dante is a crazy but well-planned villain who is carefully laid out for every crime. He understands all the weaknesses of his opponent and gives the opponent a double blow of mind and body with each shot.
The Joker in Batman: The Dark Knight
Jason Momoa was previously known to the audience for starring in the movie "Aquaman". This time, he played Dante, and the character image turned 180 degrees, showing the actor's strong plasticity.
The character shaping level of the "Quick" series presents two major characteristics.
First, enemies can become family. For example, O'Connor (Paul Walker) was originally an undercover detective who was ordered to infiltrate Dominica's speeding gang. As a result, O'Connor fell in love with Mia Toreto (Jordana Brewster) and became Dominic's brother-in-law. O'Connor was impressed by Dominic's personality and gradually became the backbone of the speeding family.
Dominic has encountered strong opponents since then, such as police officer Hobbs (played by Dwayne Johnson), killer Shaw (played by Jason Statham), and the technology madman Seifer (played by Charlize Theron) and so on. They are all acquainted with Dominic, and some have formed a deep hatred with him. However, because of the change in the situation, the two sides had to face a stronger enemy together, so they shook hands and made peace.
Killer Shaw (Jason Statham)
Second, family members can come back from the dead. The members of the speeding car family always have to go through the ghost gate, such as Letty (Michelle Rodriguez) and Han (Kang Sung-ho) have all "died and lived". Giselle, played by Gal Gadot, fell to his death from a high-speed car and did not really die.
Han (played by Kang Sung-ho)
The "family" dies and lives for a while, which does create a lot of surprises and frightes, and makes people more and more careless about the realism of this film. However, this latest film hit to the end, Dominic was in a desperate situation, but the film came to an abrupt end, and the protagonist did not know whether he was alive or dead, which was indeed very unpleasant.
A series of movies needs to tell a complete story, and it cannot be like a serial series that cannot press the table at key moments. Whatever the reason (space constraints, sequel...) ), this is all something that breaks through the psychological agreement between the film and the audience. Breaking through gravity is not a thing, and staging a half-truncated story is missing two pounds and strong behavior to solicit sequels. Some viewers directly commented: too rogue.
Hollywood's rare "promotion horse"
The "Fast and Furious" series is one of the few films in Hollywood that has made the leap from a B-grade production to an A-grade production. The "Transformers" series, "Spy" series, and "Mission Impossible" series that we are familiar with are the first part of the big production as the starting point.
"Fast 1" directed by Rob Cohen was released in 2001. The production cost of the first film was $38 million, and Vin Diesel and Paul Walker were newcomers to the film industry at the time. This film combines trendy elements such as thrilling cars, handsome men and beautiful women, and the target audience is teenagers. After the film's release, it earned $144 million in North America, and the distributor Universal Pictures has since had an extra money-absorbing weapon.
"Furious 1"
When "Furious 2" was being prepared, the director of the first part, Rob Cohen, was developing a new project "Extreme Agent" with starring Vin Diesel, so the two main creators failed to appear in the second part. Although the cost of the second part doubled, the plot setting and speeding stunts were mediocre. The film's North American box office reported $127 million, barely passing.
The joining of Asian director Justin Lin has transformed the "Fast Furious" series. The story stage of the third part was moved to Tokyo, Japan, starring all newcomers. The narrative rhythm of the film is bright, and the racing scenes have both a sense of martial arts and science fiction.
"Furious 3" is more like a test version of the movie that Universal Pictures asked Justin Lin to shoot, testing Justin Lin's directing skills and the market's acceptance of this IP. In the end, the film grossed $158 million worldwide. This is a great achievement for the new creative team.
"Furious 3"
Justin Lin thus got the opportunity to direct "Fast 4", the film was fully upgraded according to his vision, while recalling starring actors such as Vin Diesel, and the cost soared directly to $85 million. Justin Lin continues the creative ideas he started in the third part, bringing the entire series into the realm of surreal, quasi-sci-fi creation.
On April 15, 2009, "Furious 4" was released in the mainland, which was the first time that mainland audiences had close contact with the "Furious movie" on the big screen. When the film was introduced, it was called "Racing Storm", leaving the original name familiar to fans, which will bring losses to the box office, and the box office of 27.47 million yuan is tepid.
"Furious 4"
Fortunately, with the rapid development of the mainland film market, the introduction of the subsequent parts of the "Fast Furious" series has enjoyed the box office dividends of the mainland market.
The fifth part, originally called the introduction, director Justin Lin pulled the excitement of the series up a level. "Furious 5" earned 251 million yuan in the mainland, with dazzling results. This also marks that the series has entered the ranks of top-selling IPs in the mainland.
"Furious 5"
"Fast 7" was directed by Asian director Wen Ziren, and near the end of filming, one of the leading actors, Paul Walker, died unexpectedly in a car accident. The film invited Paul Walker's brother as a stand-in to complete the remaining shooting, and arranged for O'Connor to bid farewell to the speeding family in the film.
The seventh part continues to superimpose highlights and selling points at the production level, in addition to the regular members of the speeding family, the villain camp joins Jason Statham, Tony Jia, and Kurt Russell's Agent Bureau Anonymous to build an unprecedentedly powerful cast. The crew traveled to Abu Dhabi in the Middle East to shoot the classic shot of a sports car flying over a luxury hotel building.
"Furious 7"
"Fast 7" not only has a surprise quality that surpasses its predecessor, but also has the emotional factor of Paul Walker's posthumous work. After its release, the film grossed $1.515 billion at the global box office, which is still the highest in the series. 2015 is the rapid growth stage of the Chinese mainland market, the total number of screens in this year passed the 30,000 mark, and the box office of a single film has more room for improvement.
"Fast 7" took advantage of the market in the mainland and the strong appeal accumulated by the series itself, which suddenly ignited the enthusiasm of consumers. China Film Group has become a co-producer since the seventh part, and the joining of Chinese companies has helped the film's influence in the mainland market. "Fast 7" finally earned 2.423 billion yuan at the mainland box office, and once became the overall box office champion in mainland film history.
After the peak, it is often the downhill. "Furious 7" shows the star lineup and speeding action in the series to the extreme. Subsequent works can only do limited play in its mode, stars are constantly pulling new, scenes are constantly escalating, but lack dazzling highlights.
"Fast 8" can also take advantage of the aftermath of the seventh part, taking advantage of the audience's favorability of the series to remain at a high level, thus creating a global box office result of $1.236 billion.
"Furious 9" was released in the epidemic era, and the box office was inevitably affected. In addition, the film has not achieved innovation and breakthroughs in content, and still builds a new story in the framework of the previous work, which cannot arouse the desire of more audiences to watch movies. The film's global revenue was US$726 million, and the mainland's revenue was RMB1.392 billion, which was lower than the previous work.
"Furious 9"
"Furious 10" has a score of 6.8 on Douban, much higher than the 5.2 score of the ninth part. The film may be able to have a long-term selling trend. However, the mainland market is in the post-epidemic recovery stage, and this year's imported films have not yet exceeded 1 billion yuan per piece. Therefore, if "Fast 10" can cross the threshold of 1 billion yuan box office, it is already a good performance.
The film's producer and starring Vin Diesel recently revealed to foreign media that "Fast 11" is the original finale, but he hopes to end the series in the form of a trilogy. So the two sequels of "Furious 12" and "Furious 13" are in the making.
【Text/Cui Ting】