Fast & Furious 6 got its first teaser for the audience during the Super Bowl event last weekend. The trailer is available on Youtube now. I have placed it at the bottom of the post. Seeing the trailer gives the feeling that the movie will surely not disappoint. It's got Justin Lin in the Director's chair who has directed the previous three movies of this franchise. It's got the old gang back again, it's got Dwayne Johnson and probably Eva Mendes back as well, if the post-credit scene at the end of the fifth movie was not just a tease. And it has the return of a 'ghost' to tie it all up. It's got the fast cars, the partying girls, loads of action and a plot revolving around the Vin Diesel gang taking out a rival car-thief gang in exchange for full pardon of their previous crimes. Full Pardon? Could this be the end of the action packed movie series after all? The signs are such...
The poster released by the studio does resonate with this eventuality. "All roads lead to this". Now there can hardly be a better line to state the closing of a franchise. Or am I reading too much into this? But then aren't they bringing almost anyone associated with this movie franchise together again? For one last hurrah? It is after all a six-movie franchise so far. That's a lot! But the tricky part here is... it's still rolling! It's in top gear. The producers would have no reason to bring an end to a movie franchise where the last one was the biggest hit of the series yet.
The Fast & Furious franchise has been a real strange one. You have these set protocols on how franchises usually work. The movies either keep deteriorating till the returns do not justify the investment or they are highly successful but reach an eventual conclusion of the main storyline such that they either bow out gracefully or give way to spin-offs till the former part of this sentence holds true again. Now even the die-hard lovers of this movie franchise would admit, The Fast & Furious was never about the movie plots. It kicked off in 2001 bringing forth Vin Diesel to the common household (this one was sandwiched between Pitch Black and XXX) and mixing fast cars with an undercover cop plus car thief kinda tale worked pretty well. Step 2, when it should have gotten bigger, Vin Diesel stepped out of the sequel leaving it for Paul Walker to carry the burden. Step 3, the franchise seemed to have reached an unheroic conclusion when the third movie collected the weakest earnings, though it interestingly did end with a neat cameo of Diesel right at the end. Who was to know that that would be the beginning of it all once again?
For the fourth movie, Vin Diesel and Paul Walker took off from where they had left, and the movie was aptly titled Fast & Furious with no '4' attached anywhere. This was more of a sequel to the second movie, leaving the third movie to be nothing more than a casual fun ride (told me about 'drifting' though). The fifth movie, Fast Five (they really keep messing with the names in this franchise; enjoyable for a geek!), got bigger, got Dwayne Johnson, and got all the stars and co-stars of the first two movies. Or most of them. The loose ends would, it seems, be tied up in the sixth instalment, Fast & Furious 6 (and now we get a numeral back!). Last one? Or will its position in this chart decide its fate? Check out how the franchise got a resuscitation, literally pumped back to life for greater glory!
The fate of the series will uncover soon enough. Maybe another instalement or maybe a spin-off or maybe this is it... all the roads have indeed led to here. But for now, stop thinking, relax, push back and watch the Superbowl teaser. Come May 2013, step in the theatre for another wonderful fast ride. Vrooooommmmm!
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