Read

The Fast & Furious formed its evolved identity as a big-time action movie franchise under the direction of Justin Lin, who helmed its 3rd-6th installments. His attention and style became synonymous with the films, but after the sixth picture, he decided it was time to seek other projects.

Lin’s departure was credited to the shooting timetable for Furious 7 (2015), which he would have had to start working on before finishing post-production on the previous installment. But he also said that it was simply time for a change: “I feel like I’ve done everything that I wanted to do. And I understand. I mean, to walk away from everybody is a tough thing, but I think it’s the right thing to do. You know, as a filmmaker I’ve been developing a lot of other things in the last eight years and it’s time for me to keep growing and try new things, you know? So, it’s just time.”

Director James Wan was then hired as the director for Furious 7. A seemingly odd choice, Wan’s filmography is loaded with prominent indie horror pictures - The iconic Saw in 2004, followed by titles like Dead Silence (2007), Insidious (2010), and The Conjuring (2013). Only one other action film appears on his resume, 2007’s Death Sentence, a relative flop starring Kevin Bacon. But as he told Bryan Bishop of The Verge, what excited him most about getting Furious 7 was the opportunity to create a big, exciting action flick:

Just the chance to go out there and do a big movie. A big action movie. That’s what I’ve always sort of harbored a desire for, but because I became so synonymous with horror, it was hard for people to see me as a guy who could do other stuff outside of just low-budget horror films. So I felt very fortunate that Universal, and [producer] Neal Moritz, and everyone else felt that I was more than capable of doing it… What I realized is that it doesn’t matter how big or small your film is. The actual filmmaking process, the actual storytelling; it’s still the same thing. It’s still all about creating characters that you like, and creating moments that get you excited, or get you tense. So that applies to all kinds of genres.

Along those same lines, he told The Daily Beast it’s important for directors to remind people they’re more than a single genre. “If you do great comedy, that’s all they expect you to do, so it’s no different. But you have to make the conscious decision to go, ‘Okay, my career is more than this,’ and you want to pursue other things. I’m a student of cinema in general, not just of one particular genre. So it was very important to me and to my soul to go out and do something different.”

The result was phenomenal. Furious 7 has become one of the top-grossing movies of all time, and the film is the highest-rated entry in the franchise on Rotten Tomatoes and Metacritic. A big credit to that is Wan’s unique ability to create balance in his films. His horror titles are impeccably crafted, with rises and falls and moments of tension and release that keep the audience engaged and sustained in genuine suspense. That same balance of content, characters, drama, and action translated into Furious 7.

Again from Wan’s interview with The Verge: “Even when I did Death Sentence; that was a pretty hardcore, bloody, violent action thriller, but it also has this sort of strong emotional core. And I felt that way with Furious 7. I felt I could balance out all the crazy, outlandish action stunt sequences, but with much more humor and emotion. And that’s why I really wanted to focus on a bit of the love relationship between Vin’s character and Michelle’s character. I’m a big fan of romantic movies, so this movie allows me to sneak a bit of that romance in there.”

Wan is also acutely aware of his camera work. Under his direction, the camera isn’t just a tool to capture what the actors are doing. It’s an observational angle - a set of eyes. He puts time into calculating the weight of each scene, and decides how to employ the cinematography to best capture each bit of the action. “When The Rock bottoms out Statham with that spinning hit onto the glass coffee table, I wanted the camera to go with him. I wanted the audience to experience that.”

One of the reasons Wan has been so entrenched in the horror genre is because of his close relationship with actor/screenwriter Leigh Whannell, who penned the majority of Wan’s films and also starred in many. Until 2014’s The Mule, Whannell had almost exclusively written horror, and his writing style meshed brilliantly with Wan’s direction to craft some amazing films.

But genre is secondary to story. A good filmmaker wants to tell great tales, and do so in interesting ways. Though he’ll definitely be a mainstay in the horror genre, now that Wan has proven he’s capable of applying his directorial skills to big-budget action success, he may be exploring more genres in the coming years.

As far as whether or not Wan will return for the already-announced eighth Fast & Furious film, it’s still up in the air. In his interview with The Daily Beast, he said “I think it’s a great idea for Justin [Lin] to come back. Justin had such a big part to do with where this series has gone, it would be amazing if he closed it out.”

We’ll also have to wait and see if his ‘close it out’ comment comes to fruition. Whether or not the eighth will be the last in the series hasn’t been officially stated. Fast & Furious 25 could be based in Space…