Summary
The Fast and the Furiousco-writer David Ayer expressed his feelings about his involvement with the franchise he helped create, which has since become one of the biggest things in entertainment history.
TheFast and the Furiousfranchise is one of the biggest and most successful in the world, with the films consistently smashing the box office and amassing one of the most impressive ensemble cast lists of any franchise. While the films have made a conscious shift towards spy action and heist plots, the franchisekicked off withThe Fast and the Furiousin2001,a film that is now a modest time capsule of the early 2000s era.
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Ayer was one of the writers involved in the originalFast and Furiousfilm, arguably the most important entry in the series and the one that birthed the rest of the franchise. However, despite his contributions to the franchise that has become a juggernaut, Ayer has revealed that it has done little for him. On theReal Onespodcast, the director, who has since gone on todirectSuicide Squadand Jason Statham’sThe Beekeeperand more,commented on his displeasure with the state of affairs. “Biggest franchise in Hollywood, and I don’t have any of it,” Ayer said. “I got nothing to show for it, nothing, because of the way the business works.”
“When I got that script, that s— was set in New York, it was all Italian kids, right?” Ayer revealed. “I’m like, ‘Bro, I’m not gonna take it unless I can set it in L.A. and make it look like the people I know in L.A., right?’ So then I started, like, writing in people of color, and writing in the street stuff, and writing in the culture, and no one knew s— about street racing at the time.” Ayer’s comments seem to check out based on those elements falling squarely into his M.O. with many other projects, and they help answer the question ofhowThe Fast and Furiousfranchise ended up changingso much. While the new direction has proven profitable in the long run and retains elements of the franchise’s origins, the shift in focus from Ayer’s stated vision is obvious.
Ayer’s comments echo the sentiments expressed whenArrowverse creator Marc Guggenheimrevealed that his time on the DC shows felt wasted. While Guggenheim had a clear place to lay the blame, in that case at the feet of David Zaslav and James Gunn, Ayer took a more general view on the slight. “It’s like people hijack narratives, control narratives, create narratives to empower themselves, right? And because I was always an outsider…The people [who] did were able to control and manage narratives because they [were] socialized in that part of the problem. I was never socialized in that part of the problem, so I was always like the dark, creative dude, beware.”
While Ayer might be too late to cash in on the success of the franchise he helped build, it marches on to greater success without him. DespiteAvengers: Endgametuning the two-part movie finale for franchises, theFast and the Furiousfranchise has kept to it, with a second project followingFast Xserving as the finale to the mainline films.
The Fast and the Furiousfranchise is available on Amazon Prime Video.
