AdapNation: Furious 8 - More than Meets the Eye

In which I make the case for film and TV adaptations, sequels and remakes.

I'll be the first to admit being taken by surprise by the Fast and the Furious franchise.  They somehow went from "Point Break with cars" to being the must-watch high-octane franchise of the summer.  I never really gave the series more than a passing thought before the seventh one hit theaters a few weeks ago.  And being the stickler for continuity that I am, I wasn't about to see the latest movie without seeing the six previous movies.

Having now caught up with the series' weirdly complex canon, it strikes me just how perfect a crossover between The Fast and the Furious and Transformers really is.  In fact, I'm surprised that this isn't officially on the books by now, given the film industry's Avengers-fueled obsession with shared universes.

Think about it.  Marvel changed everything when they proved that not only was shared continuity a viable strategy, but absolutely raked in money hands over fist.  Some prefer Iron Man to Hulk, others prefer Captain America to Thor, but everybody's happy enough to see The Avengers if it means getting another chance to see their favorite characters in action.

After The Avengers, DC quickly followed suit with Man of Steel and Dawn of Justice.  Fox redoubled their efforts for X-Men spinoffs (like Deadpool, Wolverine and Gambit) and a Fantastic Four reboot that would implicitly tie into it.  Before they gave up and merged Spider-Man with the MCU, Sony was planning an all Spider-Man shared universe (which included The Amazing Spider-Man movies, Venom, The Sinister Six and a female-lead spinoff).

Ghostbusters is getting a shared universe, presumably based around the film's original premise of multiple ghostbusting teams.  There's even a shared universe in the works between 21 Jump Street and Men in Black (although I don't even want to try to make sense out of that one).

Not only is there obvious congruity between a franchise about fast cars and a franchise about alien robots that transform into cars, but it fits in weirdly well with the plan that already exists for Transformers.  That's right, Transformers is already getting the shared universe treatment, why not cross it over with another property (especially one that makes more sense that 21 Jump Street)?

There's even a pre-existing storyline that could easily be reworked to put the Furious team into the driver's seats of the Autobots: The Rebirth.  For those of you who aren't familiar with 80's cartoon, this multi-episode arc brought the Autobots and Decepticons to an alien planet ruled by the corrupt Lord Zarek.  In order to combat both this new enemy and the Decepticons, the Autobots invented Headmasters: human partners that would help operate their Autobot while in vehicle mode.

And really, who's more qualified to operate an alien robot car than guys who made being able to drive especially well into a virtual superpower?  It would be an already canon way to merge the two franchises together that would be absurdly fun to watch.  You could even put Deckard Shaw behind the wheel of the recently revamped Galvatron for some stakes-raising villainy.

What's more is that the merger would perfectly shore up either franchise's most crippling weaknesses.  While I was weirdly impressed with just how good Age of Extinction turned out to be, there's no denying that the human half of Transformers has always been the weak link in its blockbuster makeup.  Sam & Co. couldn't have been any less interesting if they'd tried.  While the Yaegers were a massive upgrade from them, they still fell short of being "good."

The Furious movies have characters enough for two franchises to share.  Say what you will about their quality, but the best parts of those movies was how distinctly rendered and unique all of the characters actually were.  Its problem was always finding interesting things for those characters to do (ie, plot), which an intergalactic war between giant, shapeshifting, techno-organic aliens would certainly take care of.

This is the kind of crossover that just makes sense.  It's not trying to force anything that wasn't there already (I'm looking at you, 21 Jump Street / Men in Black).  Not only are both franchise's essentially about the same thing, but any potential crossover would inherently make for a far more robust and entertaining movie than either franchise could produce on its own.  And with Paul Walker decidedly out of the picture, the Furious movies will be hurting to make up for his absence in one way or another.

So what other movie crossovers would you be excited to see happen?  Share your thoughts in the comment section below.

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