As any die-hard movie buff is happy to tell you, The Marvel Cinematic Universe (or MCU for you geeks out there) has recently become one of the most profitable franchises known to man. With every Marvel superhero movie that has come out, it has been made very clear that this genre of cinema is the peoples’ choice for heart-stopping entertainment that’s full of action.
As superhero movies have become more and more popular, other movie franchises have began to work harder to try and achieve that coveted amount of attention that Marvel has achieved for itself. Some franchises have even made some pretty huge chances to switch things up for their demographic, the one making the biggest changes being the “Fast and Furious” franchise.
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As the tenth movie in the “Fast and Furious” franchise is set to release in the year 2023, many fans can agree that the movies aren’t quite what they’ve always been. What had started as a simple story about devil-may-care men driving fast cars has become so much more.
The franchise, produced by the main star Vin Diesel and directed by Justin Lin, has recently taken to examining the way that the Marvel universe has shaped their own method of story-telling to try and make their movies more appealable to fans, new and old.
This includes certain aspects, such as team-ups among iconic characters in the universe to drive the plot forward, and building said universe using plot points and world-building to make the story more amazing. Marvel has perfected these tactics to a T, but the thing to remember is that one formula isn’t going to work for every single idea, and the same reasoning can go for this. So, the question is: is the Marvel method a good idea for the “Fast and Furious” franchise?
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The answer: Not exactly. While the new developments are really interesting plot points that drive the overall narrative of the movies along, the tactics have changed the energy of the franchise, and made it into something completely new. What had started as something exciting has become campy and super unrealistic. Fans are complaining that some plot points don’t really have a lot of logic behind them, and they didn’t have the gritty realism that the old movies used to have.
The new changes to the movie were very apparent in the ninth movie of the franchise, and while the reviews were more than mixed, it doesn’t seem to be the end of this new formula. With the new movie due to air in about two years, there’s plenty of time to perfect the story formula to make it more appealing again, but at the end of the day, most industries care less about the needs of their fans and more about the payday.
Superhero movies have become the latest trend, and with the quarantine, more and more movies are being produced. However, time will only tell if superhero movies will still be up to snuff in the coming years.