Midweek Update: Vin Diesel Is Trapped in a Car

This weekend will see the release of Fast X, the tenth entry in the Fast & Furious franchise. I don’t have too much to say about the film overall because quite honestly, I have trouble differentiating “good” Fast & Furious movies from “bad” Fast & Furious movies. They all kind of play like dumber versions of other movies. Even the celebrated Fast Five plays out like a dumb version of Ocean’s Eleven with subsequent installments running as the dumb versions of the Mission: Impossible movies. While I can see the upsides of the franchise (diverse cast, working class heroes, goofy set pieces), I also struggle to remember anything noteworthy from these films beyond their goofiest aspects. For example, I can’t tell you the plot of F9, but I know it involves John Cena’s character having a magic zip-line and that Tej (Chris “Ludacris” Bridges) and Roman (Tyrese Gibson) go to space because the fans demanded the movies go to space.

So is Fast X “good” or “bad”? I really can’t say, although I will say that Jason Momoa, who plays the film’s villain, Dante, is legitimately great. He chews every bit of scenery, plays to the rafters, and it’s the kind of loud performance that feels consistent with a series where the heroes drag a bank vault behind them or hijack a submarine. Again, does that make the film good? I don’t know, but he’s certainly fun to watch.

What puzzles me is the series’ star, Vin Diesel. Diesel plays Dominic “Dom” Toretto. He led the original film, The Fast and the Furious, and then stepped away for the sequel, 2 Fast 2 Furious and made a cameo in the third entry, The Fast and the Furious: Tokyo Drift, before returning full-time in 2009’s Fast & Furious. These are now, especially after the death of co-star Paul Walker in 2013, Vin Diesel’s movies. For all the talk of how these movies are about “family” and this is an ensemble cast, Diesel is the lead just as much as Tom Cruise is the lead of the Mission: Impossible movies. The key difference is that Mission: Impossible is a phase in Cruise’s long career; Fast & Furious, at this point, is Vin Diesel’s career.

That’s an odd thing because typically, when an actor has success in a big franchise, they can parlay that into other things. Chris Evans makes a splash as Captain America, so there’s room to do stuff like Snowpiercer and Knives Out. Diesel, by comparison, can’t seem to breakout of anything that isn’t Fast & Furious. Every new franchise he tries to kickstart—The Last Witch Hunter, Bloodshot—seems to sputter out, or he has to move heaven and Earth for a new installment like with xXx or the Riddick series.1 

There seems to be a bleak understanding that audiences want Vin Diesel as Dominic Toretto but aren’t that interested in anything else he does. The problem may also be mutual in that Diesel isn’t interested in playing anything smaller than a Dom-sized role of an action hero who has his own franchise. That’s a problem in today’s Hollywood landscape that isn’t built around stars, but around IP. There are only so many blockbusters that are going to get made, and since they’re based on IP, there has to be a role to fit a bald man with a growling voice. Both the marketplace and Diesel himself have limited the roles he’ll get outside of Fast & Furious despite the success of the franchise.

For Universal Pictures, this is a terrific arrangement. They’re not Diesel or his agent or his management, so as long as the Fast series continues to print money, they’re happy. However, I can’t help but wonder what happens to Diesel after the franchise wraps or Universal decides they want a different actor at the center of it. It’s not even that Diesel is necessarily a “bad” actor (see his performance in Boiler Room). But I think he’s an interesting case study of how franchises can dwarf their performers, and why the actors with longevity are going to be the ones who stretch themselves for a variety of roles rather than looking for projects that fit a limited persona. To put it another way, Diesel would be a much bigger success in the days of Stallone and Schwarzenegger, but those days are over.

What I’m Watching

I’m now caught up on Abbott Elementary, and it remains one of the best shows on television. Pay the writers what they want. I also finally finished Derry Girls, and while I can admit the show is a bit uneven at times, I think it also found a place in my heart. As the lone guy in a friend group comprised of girls in high school, I really related to James (Dylan Llewellyn), but the writing overall was sharp, funny, and surprisingly heartwarming.

We’ve now moved on to a rewatch of The Gilded Age, which I think is an underrated HBO show. I know there’s a lot of enmity towards the wealthy these days, but I pop on The Gilded Age, and I’m rooting for the wealthiest people because Christine Baranski, Carrie Coon, and Morgan Spector because their performances are amazing.

What I’m Reading

I tore through The Wager in less than a week. David Grann delivered again with a compelling tale of 18th century life at sea, shipwreck, and the larger forces driving such mad decision (spoiler: the real culprit was imperialism all along). Now I’ve moved on to finally reading Frank Miller and Bill Sienkiewicz’s Elektra: Assassin.

In other reads:

How The Legend of Zelda Changed the Game by Zachary Small [The New York Times] - If you’re wondering why the new Zelda, Tears of the Kingdom, has captured folks’ attention, this is a good primer on the series. As a longtime fan and someone currently enjoying Tears, I found this to be a fun read.

Three Theories That Explain This Strange Moment by Ezra Klein [The New York Times] - My pal Dave Chen (check out his Substack, Decoding Everything), pointed me to this article in response to my recent Substack about the news media. I think Klein is right that the way the math shakes out, great polarization has led to extremely narrow margins where contests are winnable for candidates. That being said, I’d add the caveat that while Klein is correct about the narrow margins in the 2020 election, we only have those narrow margins because of the Electoral College, which is an artificial and archaic system instead of simply using the popular vote.

Heather Armstrong Was the Original Influencer by Lisa Belkin [The New York Times] - This is a sad story regarding the recent death of Armstrong, who was better known by her website, “Dooce.” I’m still wrestling with this story because there’s the personal aspect of a woman who was dealing with depression and alcoholism, but there’s also a macro-narrative of how quickly a person can make a major splash online only for it to dissipate with the arrival of new technology, new ad models, or simply a turn in one’s personal life.

What I’m Playing

Finally, The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom has arrived, and it was a bit of a shock to the system, not because it’s so different from the previous entry, Breath of the Wild, but because it’s so different from the other games I’ve played in the interim. So many other games, no matter their difficulty, hold your hand in some way to guide you to objectives. Zelda is far more serene to the point wherever I encounter an enemy, I just want them to go away because I’m not looking for trouble. Anyway, I’ve died a bunch of times just going about my business, so Zelda is back, baby.