Among some of my guiltiest of guilty pleasures is my general love for The Fast and the Furious film franchise. I mean, when I was a wannabe car tuner who thought everything JDM was god-like, and wanted to do a laundry list of things to the cars that I’ve driven, I watched the first film with that “it’s going to suck, but I’m going to watch it, so I can criticize everything wrong with it,” oblivious to the irony that I was forking over my money to feed the machine regardless.
Eventually, the arrogance and false sense of superiority dissipated AKA I began to grow up, and it turned out that I actually enjoyed these terrible films. Yes, I enjoy them, but there’s little denying the fact that they’re really campy, over-the-top films. My mom would watch it and call it an “엉터리 movie,” which translated literally means “nonsense.” Whatever though, I still enjoy them, and I can admit that I have seen every single one.
Needless to say, I was amused by the announcement by Vin Diesel who used social media to drop the news that not only is the FF franchise continuing for an eighth installment, but there are plans to have a ninth, and a tenth installment of the story, so that the franchise can literally boast ten films in twenty years. Also amusing are their tentative April release dates, so I can probably pull out the birthday card and force mythical girlfriend to go see them with me. hue hue.
I’m excited to see just how much more over-the-top the series can possibly get, and considering the series has destroyed Los Angeles three times over, Miami once, Brazil, various places near the Middle East and a tiny part of Tokyo, I’m curious to see what’s going to happen next, or how they plan on raising the bar while it’s already precariously high, for three more films. Supposedly #8 is going to take place in New York, (which is to say like 5, 6 and 7, will be filmed primarily in Atlanta), so there will probably be some taxi chases or driving through subway rail lines.
But ultimately, more than the campy ridiculous action sequences they will inevitably contain, I’m more excited than anything else, to find out just what they’re going to call these next three films. Part of the fun for me as the series has progressed, is analyzing their names and subsequent logos, and finding amusement in the gradual stretching they’re doing in trying to integrate numbers into names, while maintaining the “integrity,” and I use that term loosely, of the franchise.
Needless to say, because I am who I am, I took the time to dick around with some graphics, and come up with some doofy ideas of theoretical names that could be used, while also taking a trip down memory lane, mostly to ensure that I myself was doing the font and treatment correctly.
Before I start though, it’s funny that the “official” font for the franchise is Antiqua Olive; for a series that’s so manly and bro-ey, it’s amusing that a font that sounds like a grandmother from 1942 is the typographic face of the franchise.
The first, the original, where it all began. Paul Walker, meet Vin Diesel. Too soon, junior. Rick Yune, a Korean actor who acts out of boredom because he’s also a Guess model, tae kwon do champion and graduate of the Wharton school of business, plays a Vietnamese domestic terrorist. A race with Ja Rule in a souped up Integra, losing to a slammed Honda Civic with a Playstation being played in it. Both of which somehow managed to hang with Dom Torreto’s RX-7 until he unleashed the mother of product placements for a product that your average motorist wouldn’t even bother considering: NOSSSSSS.
God, I hated this name so much, I ended up loving it. Both the title, and the film. Where Vin Diesel takes a break from the series, and where Ludacris* and Tyrese Gibson make their introductions into the series. The film where Miami becomes the grounds for a glorified Mitsubishi commercial, as the unreleased Evo VII and an Eclipse, manage to outdrive cars with vastly more power and capabilities.
*Interestingly, Ludacris wasn’t the original pick for his role of tech guy Tej Parker; it was supposed to be Ja Rule, who apparently turned down the role because he thought he was too good for it. Whoops
The one that barely counts in the series canon, and had to basically be shoehorn-retconned much later in the series just to piece it into the timeline. For the most part it sucked, except for the fact that it introduced Sung Kang playing Han, the Korean guy living in Japan inexplicably being the coolest person in the country, as well as having Sonny Chiba in it. More or less, it was to acknowledge the growing popularity of drifting in motorsports, and had a pretty cool cameo of the godfather of drift, Keiichi Tsuchiya. And brought Vin Diesel back into the storyline, in the last 2 seconds of the film.
I love how removing the articles “the” and “ands” from the title, and replacing with an ampersand is sufficient justification at making a title 100% unique all over again. It’s like they went the route of basically using a title all over again, instead of doing some dumb hacker lexicon and swapping out As with 4s, and having F4ST 4ND FURIOUS or something like that. That being said, I would say this is the second laziest attempt at a title, and honestly, one of the weaker installments of the series, if not for the existence of Tokyo Drift, would probably be the weakest. But a necessary installment to say the least, because it kind of went a little grassroots with primarily being all the guys from the first movie, bringing back Jordana Brewster and Michelle Rodriguez into the fold.
Honestly, I think Fast Five is where I really began to be able to admit to myself that I really enjoyed this franchise. Aside from clever title where they dropped “Furious” for “Five,” while still keeping the alteration of Fs, they went ahead and merged the cast of all the primary movies into this heist-scheme ensemble, as well as introduced a few characters such as Gal Gadot playing Gisele, and more importantly the most electrifying man in the galaxy, The Rock, and then proceeding to more or less destroy Brazil, by using stolen Dodge Chargers to drag an entire safe around the city of Rio, breaking absolutely everything in sight.
In terms of film, this was another successful heist film, and pretty much justification that the series had grown out of just street racing and fast cars, and actually having some sort of formula of taking an ensemble cast, and doing some Ocean’s Eleven-like Robin Hood heist schemes. More Rock, casting of Gina Carano, and the world’s longest jet runway made this film entertaining, in a traditional sense.
But in terms of logo, this is the de facto laziest, least creative of the titles. “Fast & Furious 6” with just a sequential number added to the end, showed that there was no effort or creativity in trying to come up with something remotely different. But I guess after five installments, even this series deserves a mulligan or a lazy card to cash in, but such does not go ignored by creative snobs like me.
Where Five dropped the Furious, Furious7 drops the Fast, even if when I look at the word mark, I keep wanting to pronounce it “Furiousest,” because 7s are so often superimposed as Ts. Whatever though, the most recent installment was a melancholy installment, because it’s also Paul Walker’s final appearance, since he, the actor and person, died. In a car accident. The only way for a Fast & Furious star to really go, honestly. But hearing See You Again, always gives me the feels, man.
And now we enter the world of theoretical, in a post-Paul Walker world. What’s the next three films going to be called? Well, an 8 looks kind of like an ampersand, so why not replace the ampersand in the logo with an 8? Sure, people will call it “Fast Ate Furious” but who cares. Maybe by this film, Dom Toretto will get a flying car, and be able to team up with basically, S.H.I.E.L.D. with Kurt Russell playing the blatant ripoff of Nick Fury.
And since we’re really at the point where name ideas are at a premium, why not flip the title around? It would probably be the third-laziest idea for a title, but there’s not a whole lot of F-words that have the alliteration or association with the number nine, so why not just flip the title around and have Furious & Fast?
Once you get to 10, you can ditch the numbers outright, and go Roman. People dig Xs in general, and Xs kind of work as a connector for words, like the Japanese love to do with their weird slash fan fiction writing or something. Also, going Roman can also be a reference to Tyrese’s character, Roman Pierce, and perhaps he can get some elevation in the pecking order of the Family? Likely not, but at this point, I’m running out of steam and creativity, and can’t bullshit my way to explain further why Fast X Furious works aside from the fact that one character X is easier than two characters of “1-0.”
Whatever though. It’s going to be awesome for the next six years, to be able to be able to constantly looking forward to more installments of what could very well become, financially, the biggest franchise in the history of film. Hard to believe, I can imagine sure, but the dolla dolla bills they’re bringing in, sure aren’t lying.
