Don't Stop At A 'Fast And Furious'/'Jurassic Park' Crossover
There was once a time when the Fast and Furious franchise was grounded in a thin layer of reality with the first four movies exploring the humble street racer on his or her quest to drive real fast and vroom real loud. Then Fast Five came along, and so began a series of movies that took that layer of reality, chopped it up, and jettisoned it into space.
The Fast and Furious movies are now superhero movies outfitted in chrome rims, and we wouldn't have it any other way. But the question is, how far is too far to stretch the boundaries of absurdity? Universal Pictures could be asking that same question after a recent interview with Justin Lin and Michelle Rodriguez on the prospect of combining Universal's two most profitable entities, The Fast Franchise and the Jurassic Park franchise, into one money churning behemoth.
Said Rodriguez:
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"I'm all in! Once you reach a certain pinnacle, there's nowhere to go but to cross-brand and merge. It's what big corporations do with each other when they get too big. You just have to brand and merge with each other. The only thing standing in the way is lawyers and studios. Usually, the brands that you're trying to merge belong to different studios. But if it's under the same umbrella, I don't know. I'm just saying, it works."
And Lin seemed at least open to the idea saying, "I never say never to anything. Part of our philosophy is not to ever be boxed in or labeled. That's all I will say." Granted, these responses are clearly tongue in cheek, and you can practically hear the finger guns in Justin Lin's answer, but that didn't stop the internet from funneling hype straight into the furnace of this hype train.
We, too, are all for the crossover., but we'd like to up the ante and say why stop with Dom and the dinos? Let's crossover every studios' biggest properties. You want to revitalize the DC Universe, Warner Bros.? Throw some Harry Potter at that shit. Superman might not be able to bleed, but we're betting he'll have a hard time stopping Voldemort from turning him into a chinchilla.
Paramount hasn't had a truly major hit since 2014's Transformers: Age of Extinction, but what would happen if you threw Ethan Hunt into the mix? Forget stealing from the CIA; there isn't a more impossible mission than trying to infiltrate an army of sentient fighter jets. Even better, take Paramount's highest-grossing movie of all time and watch in awe as the Titanic transforms into a massive fighting robot and nukes that iceberg to smithereens.
Of all the major studios, Sony might be in the direst need of a boost, so what's stopping them from trading James Bond's Walther PPK for a web shooter? Sure, Spider-Man might feel more like a Marvel property now, but Sony still holds the film rights meaning it's totally within the realm of possibility for an older, gruffer Peter Parker to join MI6 and start banging Russian operatives.
And again, we're all for it, but even if we weren't, doesn't this feel like the natural progression of Hollywood? First, we got movie franchises, then we got shared universes, and now we brace for impact as those universes collide into one another. Sooner or later, we'll have every single property in existence mashed together in one giant ball of a movie, like one of those gross eating challenges on YouTube, and then the sun will explode, bringing us all towards salvation.
But until that time, we're down to watch some dinosaurs drive some cars or whatever.
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Top Image: Universal Pictures
