All Good Rides Come To An End

I've been a good sport for a while now when it comes to going to movies that are both Fast and Furious. I was even coaxed into buying tickets for my family to see the off-brand "Need For Speed" because of its vague association with the series of films starring Vin Diesel and his poly-ethnic family of fast cars and their furious drivers. That my son, a fan of video games, brought us to the theater on most of those occasions, comes as little or no surprise. Their connection to the virtual driving games he has enjoyed all these years is concealing the true inspiration: Sonic The Hedgehog. Sonic is that most precocious of rodents, whose motivations are essentially to move from left to right as quickly as possible, gathering rings that are far too large and cumbersome for him to carry safely, along with his family of furry friends who share his furious need to get from the left side of the screen to the right.
And those character motivations are about as deep as I have ever mined the franchise that has just released their seventh installment. That's two more than the Apes managed, originally. One more than we have currently imagined for the Star Wars saga. Only three Godfathers. The adventures of Indiana Jones have only generated four films. My son, would argue that there are only six furiously fast films, since that third page turned out to have little or nothing to do with the characters of the first two. Tokyo Drift? Okay, they did move from left to right as fast as they could, so the underlying theme was the same. But for the sake of the canon, and the cameo appearance of Lucas Black in Seven, it is part of the whole. The whole deal. We've seen them all. We have even held a Furious-A-Thon in our living room, screening them all in order, skipping over that Tokyo episode.
I found myself wandering the streets of San Luis Obispo with my family this past week, having just installed my son in the next episode of his real life. I suggested we find the closest theater that was showing "Furious 7." There are lots of ways that we might have celebrated this rite of passage, but this felt right. There is probably something about the departure of Paul Walker, star of six of these, who left this level to go race James Dean. We sat in the dark, watching the roughly Roadrunner/Coyote antics of the characters we have come to know, escaping even bigger explosions and beating one another senseless but still getting up to throw one more punch before jumping behind the wheel of an even faster, more furious car. It was ridiculous, and then suddenly, tremendously sad. It was a farewell. It was a celebration of life and family. We all cried, a little. My son was as emotional as I've seen him in quite some time.
I hear they're planning an eighth Fast and Furious movie. I don't know if I will feel the same need to go and see that one.