Aradical shift in gears
How does a series rebuild itself when it loses its everyman heart and soul?
No single star owns the Fast & Furious franchise. Thanks to various contract disputes and reboot attempts, there’s not one actor who appears in every entry of the seven-picture series (unless you count a can of Nos as a personifiable thing, which is somewhat understandable). But if Fast & Furious had to elect someone to act as its metaphorical heart and soul, it would be Paul Walker.
Vin Diesel may have become the series’ muscular and increasingly incorrigible spokesman over the years, but it was Walker who grounded the films’ more cartoonish elements in a common-man reality. As Brian O’Conner, an undercover cop easily susceptible to Stockholm Syndrome, Walker’s surfer-boy good looks and earnest delivery provided audiences a safe, relatable avatar into the roughand-ridiculous world of underground street racing/cross-border drug smuggling/international espionage. It’s not easy being the straight man to Diesel’s monosyllabic — yet somehow infinitely charismatic — criminal Dominic Torretto, but that also meant Walker was more reliable: a rock to rest against in the face of ever-outré set pieces and, eventually, The Rock himself.
So it was a profound shock to learn that Walker died in a singlecar accident on Nov. 30, 2013, in the midst of filming Furious 7. Certainly for the obvious, tragic reasons — he was only 40, he left behind a young daughter, it was a senseless death that forced journalists to make awful irony-laced assumptions — but also because it didn’t seem comprehensible for the franchise to continue. Walker balanced the Furious universe out: he made it breathe, when all it wanted to do was huff and puff.
His death left producers with three heavy questions to answer, ones that seem unfair to face when making the seventh instalment of a franchise that prides itself on tongue-in-cheek mindlessness: Should the film be completed without Walker; was such a thing technically even possible; and, if so, how could his character’s arc be closed in a way that didn’t feel cheap?
The first question didn’t give Hollywood much pause. There were a few honest shrugs offered in the accident’s immediate aftermath, but the general consensus was: finish the film, honour the man. Whether this was more motivated by profit than sentiment — the series has earned more than $2.3-billion at the global box office — is an open question, but by the time Walker was laid to rest, there didn’t seem to be any other answer.
As to how to do it, well, that turned out to be easy, too, though perhaps as much should be expected in this moviemaking age of miracles. Actors dying mid-production is nothing new, after all — Brandon Lee, Oliver Reed and Heath Ledger are all famous examples. The solutions, however, haven’t been equally elegant. Whereas director Terry Gilliam used Colin Farrell, Jude Law and Johnny Depp to sub in for Ledger in The Imaginarium of Doctor Parnassus, that was only possible because of the film’s hallucinatory, Gilliam-y tone. Fans would be in an uproar were, say, Taylor Kitsch to suddenly step into O’Conner’s GT-R. That left Furious 7 producers with the digital option, though CGI has advanced several generations since it was used to cobble together simulated versions of Lee in The Crow or Reed in Gladiator.
Universal has declined to detail what specific tricks it used, but sources told The Hollywood Reporter that Peter Jackson’s Weta Digital performed an extensive digital reanimation of Walker for Furious 7, aided by the best body doubles a director could ask for: the star’s own brothers, Caleb and Cody (the former’s resem- blance to his late sibling is especially striking). “I always say I have a big bag of cinematic tricks at my disposal and I dug so deep into this one that I used up every single trick I can think of to make this film work,” director James Wan told Variety.
However Universal, Weta and Wan went about the process, it appears to have worked. Early reviews have been lukewarm toward the film, but enthusiastic about the behind-the-scenes resurrection: “No one would first call the Fast & Furious films elegantly written, but the way the filmmakers have almost seamlessly integrated Walker into the final product ... is nothing less than impressive,” wrote Vulture’s Kyle Buchanan.
Finally, there was the most important matter, at least for those who sincerely appreciated everything Walker put into the films — and he doubtlessly put in everything he had: how to ensure the actor, via O’Conner, received a proper sendoff? Without wading into spoiler territory — though we’re all adults, and can easily find out the truth ourselves online — reports indicate that Furious 7 not only knows how to handle explosions, cars and beads of sweat, but also genuine emotional heft.
It would be trite to say this in almost any other instance — it’s safe to assume Reed was not emotionally invested in Gladiator, nor, say, Philip Seymour Hoffman eager to cement his legacy with The Hunger Games — but Walker really seemed to have lived for the Fast & Furious franchise. He genuinely would have wanted the film to be completed, and for O’Conner’s story to enjoy a proper finale.
We’ll never know what Furious 7 — or its inevitable sequels — would have looked like with Walker still alive. But we do know that the series he was so integral to has paid him in return, as best if could.
Walker’s death left the tongue-in-cheek franchise with three heavy questions