April 6, 2009Nine Years Later, The Fast and Furious Cast Returns to the Open Arms of a Recession-Plagued Audience
photo via: The Wall Street Journal
The most dramatic economic contraction since WWII…that is the only thing to which I can logically attribute the success of this weekend’s release of the fourth installment of the Fast and Furious.
Sure, I saw the original Fast and Furious when I was in High School. I even liked it. A lot (if we’re being truthful here). But when second and third installments of the film series that depicts, glorifies, and romaticizes an urban street-racing subculture came out, I (and I have to imagine that I am somewhat representative of the masses given my affinity for “The Hills” and other such junk) was not particularly interested and - without a quick google search - would not be even able to tell you the titles of the subsequent movies that came out after the original. So, a fourth film? I didn’t even know that one was coming down the pipe!
And then I heard something on the news this morning that shocked me: the Fast and the Furious (Part IV) arrived to theaters on Friday April 3rd and ticket sales over the weekend broke several major box office records.
I’ve heard it’s true that during a time of sweeping economic hardship - when households are hunkering down and reigning in expenses - viewing feauture films in a movie theater becomes an attractive form of entertainment, a function of the activitiy’s relative affordability (I stress the “relative” part here - try to score some Yankees tickets, for instance, and you’ll discover prices, per ticket, that you’d likely have a psychologically (we’re talking, even if you had the funds) hard time paying for a 2-night stay in a 5-star hotel).
Moreover, I’ve also heard that times of economic strife tend to boost interest in visual media that offers an escape to alternate reality, especially to a violent world dominated by thugs. This explains the popularity of films like Scarface and Little Caesar during the Great Depression.
These phenomena help to explain the record-breaking $72.5 million that Fast & Furious raked in this past weekend, a revenue level that was 80% more than what was anticipated. Fast & Furious’ debut weekend was the biggest opening weekend of any film so far in 2009 and was unprecedented for an April opening.
Given my guilty enjoyment of the last on-screen rendez-vous of Vin Diesel, Paul Walker, Michelle Rodriguez and Jordana Brewster, I may have to ante up the $10 to go see the latest flick in the tuned cars extravaganza series.
