It's a cry that unites bigwig Hollywood producers, casual movie-going audiences, and Vin Diesel alike:
"Why won't the Oscars nominate movies people actually see?"
The complaint resurfaces every year. In 2015, those who weren't sure what a Whiplash was wondered why the $259 million-grossing Captain America: The Winter Soldier didn't crack the Best Picture category. Diesel is a gladiator for this faction. During his press tour for Furious 7, the guttural actor reminded the world that his vehicular action movie was, technically, an Oscar contender. Not that it would be, because the Academy's voting body has a elitism problem. "Universal is going to have the biggest movie in history with this movie," Diesel told Variety earlier this month. "It will probably win Best Picture at the Oscars, unless the Oscars don't want to be relevant ever."
Diesel, one of the greatest hype men that there ever will be, isn't off-base. Furious 7 is a classically-tailored behemoth that scraps CG clusterfucks to channel the spirits of old Academy Award nominees. Director James Wan extrapolates the vehicular mayhem from The French Connection (Best Picture winner, 1971) and Raiders of the Lost Ark (Best Picture nominee, 1981) for the modern era, evokes Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid (Best Picture nominee, 1969) with a melded mix of comedy and thrills, and decides the Fast series should stop half-assing its romance by turning Diesel and Michelle Rodriguez into Humphrey Bogart and Ingrid Bergman from Casablanca (Best Picture winner, 1943). Make no mistake: Furious 6 was "dumb fun" to a breaking point. Furious 7 revives the franchise with cohesion and elegance. Not what one expects from a movie with wrench fights atop an imploding car park.
Is an elevated mode enough to stake a claim at the Academy Awards? Despite Diesel's caustic claims, Oscar voters aren't entirely blind to artful popcorn movies. The Adventures of Robin Hood (1938), The Treasure of the Sierra Madre (1948), Airport (1970), The Towering Inferno (1970), Raiders, The Right Stuff (1983), The Fugitive (1993), and Apollo 13 (1995) are all action vehicles deemed worthy of Best Picture nominations in their given years. That Furious 7 exists in a tangible reality actually gives it an advantage. Before Lord of the Rings: Return of the King took Best Picture in 2004 and District 9 managed a surprise nomination in 2010, The Exorcist (1973), Star Wars (1977), E.T. (1982), and The Wizard of Oz (1939) were among the few sci-fi/fantasy films to cross over into Oscar territory.
In 2012, Christopher Nolan's The Dark Knight mounted an Oscar campaign that urged voters to look past Batman for a film contemplating radical war and chaos. Heath Ledger wasn't hamming it up as The Joker, he was fear incarnate. Nolan's explosive stunts mimicked acts of terrorism. Gothamites was lucky enough to have a hero. Or were they? The Dark Knight bothered to ask.
While Nolan's Bat-sequel missed out on a Best Picture award, it did nab a posthumous Oscar for Ledger as a consolation prize. That was enough. Superhero movies were legit—or could be, when given the opportunity.
Unfortunately for Diesel, his 14-year series doesn't have that opportunity. Comparisons between Furious 7 and classic films sound like exaggerations because each Fast and Furious movie starts handicapped by dumb-as-a-fender blueprints. Diesel, Paul Walker, and the graduating acting ensemble are the equivalent of iStock photos. They deliver without being challenged. Rodriguez remains the best of the bunch, a sensitive performer who can still land a punch. In Furious 7, she's reintegrating into the world after a spat of amnesia (yikes). Her casual tenderness is offset by Tyrese Gibson, who became the grating comic relief at some point in the series' exponential blockbuster evolution. He's poison. Furious 7 has management problems, sacrificing Dwayne Johnson and Kurt Russell's charisma for plot-driven action. The end fizzles out with a strange in-picture memoriam to the late Walker, a touching gesture that turns destructively saccharine. There's a lot of stuff in Furious 7.
Best Picture nominees find balance, deliver the full package. That audiences flocked to the grim Dark Knight is a testament to Nolan's spectacle. The people that carried that movie to $534 million didn't fork over hard earned cash to dissect post-9/11 surveillance through mythological stand-ins. They wanted to see Batman flip over a big rig. Nolan found a way to do both. It's not the Academy's limited scope keeping Vin Diesel from his Oscar, but how far he'll go as a producer to rise above the fluff. "Riding or Dying" requires a "MacGuffin," the coveted whatever that Dominic Toretto, Brian, Letty and the rest can chase down in their turbo-charged sports cars. Fast Five nuzzled its way into a heist movie, which resulted in 20 minutes of pure safe-hauling ecstasy. Furious 6 had an evil driver that held Letty captive. Furious 7 has a flash drive, the nadir of hunt-worthy objects that's gratingly obsolete in the age of the cloud. If Jason Statham wasn't pursuing the gang like a cheesed off Terminator, there'd barely be a movie. Worth noting: Alfred Htichcock popularized and embraced the "MacGuffin" in his many thrillers. He never won an Oscar.
Ol' Vin nails one point: The Oscars don't care about relevancy. The ceremony producers do—see: the recruitment of selfie-ready Ellen DeGeneres, the Twitter juggernaut Neil Patrick Harris, and Family Guy mastermind Seth MacFarlane as evidence—but when it comes to Hollywood's biggest night, voters prioritize the little quality Hollywood let escape into pop culture that year. They don't want to turn the culminating ceremony into the MTV Movie Awards. See: This year's Birdman, the anti-superhero movie screed that went all the way. Alejandro González Iñárritu's played right to Academy voters' hearts, pairing rising stars (Emma Stone!) with comeback veterans (Michael Keaton!) and glossing it with jazzy artistry. Birdman is as superfluous as Furious 7. The difference: Ambition runs through its veins.
Furious 7 is the best-case-scenario Fast movie, maximizing the chemistry of its crew with tactile thrills. In Wan's film, there are actual cars performing actual stunts in the throes of actual locations. Beats computer generated models chasing trains in a desert vacuum every time (looking at you Furious 6). But Furious 7 is not Best Picture material. That would take whittling down the bloat to a singular idea: An iconic chase, an iconic performance, an iconic idea. Instead, Furious 7 is a fleeting high that won't survive the 10 months until Oscar voting. Come February 2016, Diesel will shake his head in shame, watching as period dramas, existential dramedies, and tightly-spun epics walk off with his statues. C'mon voters, Dominic Toretto already discovered the theory of everything! It's family!
Furious 7 is on course to make $115 million in its opening weekend. People love these movies. So to Vin, we plead: Don't complain about Oscar snubs and keep doing what you do. Satisfaction can be better than greatness.
