The Fast & Furious franchise is probably every moviegoers’ guilty pleasure; the only caveat is if you’re willing to come clean about it or not. News of another installment in the franchise is guaranteed a reception of ridicule and rejection from self-proclaimed cinephiles.
They’re the ones that denounce referencing certain films as “movies,” instead bestowing the term “motion picture” or “feature film.” Ask them their favourites and be prepared for a list that almost certainly contains the likes of Citizen Kane, Casablanca, Gone with the Wind and The Godfather (but only Godfather II as the rest aren’t up to par, they’ll say).
For obvious reasons, these very people will hate on the Fast & Furious franchise... until now that it. Renowned filmmaker Christopher Nolan has come out as a fan of the loud-and-proud franchise that blends fast cars and even faster sequences of action that defies physics. His has a particular fondness for the third installment; the Justin Lin-directed Tokyo Drift (maybe that’s why they brought Han back).
Yes, let us repeat that again for the self-proclaimed, snobbish cinephiles. That Christopher Nolan, director of The Dark Knight trilogy, Inception, Interstellar, Dunkirk and his latest mind-bender, Tenet, is fan of the Fast & Furious franchise. He’s human like us too.
The acclaimed filmmaker came clean about his guilty pleasure on the Happy Sad Confused podcast, admitting to the host, “I’m sort of original recipe but I’ve got a very soft spot for Tokyo Drift actually. And with Justin Lin’s iterations, as they got crazier and bigger and crazier and bigger, they became something else, but something else kind of fun.”
“The fun thing about those movies is even as they got bigger and bigger and bigger; as sequels have to do, everyone always complains that the sequels get bigger but we are the people that are making sequels get bigger. We do want them bigger. You don’t want them smaller. See Alien 3? You can do it but it's not gonna make anybody happy even though personally I love that film,” he added.
So, if the franchise is good enough for Nolan, it’s good enough for the rest of us bumpkins. No need to act like you hate the movies and then risk being in caught in line at the cinema when the next installment comes out in April 2021. It’s called a guilty pleasure for a reason after all.
Therefore, don’t pretend to cringe when you hear the phrase “I live my life a quarter mile at a time” the next time. Smile, and remember you’re no Christopher Nolan.