By now, we’ve talked plenty about Baz Luhrmann’s The Great Gatsby — we’ve discussed the soundtrack, Leo’s entrance, the terrible ADR — but there’s one more topic that Vulture would like to bring up: the cars. Did you notice the driving scenes in that movie? They were unexpectedly exciting, all strange angles and loud music as the yellow car hurtled around another foreshadow-y turn. The movie’s frantic energy suddenly made sense; Luhrmann’s hurtle-cam seemed genius. It was almost (give or take an “old sport”) like watching a scene from another well-known American Dream franchise: the Fast & Furious movies. Which got us thinking: What if Baz Luhrmann actually directed a Fast & Furious installment?
No, you are probably screaming, do not defile my glorious car-chase movies with glitter bombs and pop-song medleys sung from rooftops! But hear us out: The aforementioned car-chase scenes did not involve any glitter, and Luhrmann can do highly stylized grit if he needs to. (Compare the opening Mexico City sequence from Romeo + Juliet with the establishing Rio shots from Fast & Furious 5; it’s the same idea, except Luhrmann’s is more threatening.) He has an eye for spectacle, which is certainly what the Fast & Furious movies have become (see: driving a safe through a city; exploding a cargo plane.) And maybe a little tinkering — a drag queen here, a random street performer there — might actually be welcome by the time we get to Fast & Furious 12. Variety is not always bad, and street performers can drive illegally, too.
As for Luhrmann, well, he might appreciate a formula that allows him to focus on purely aesthetic concerns. The Great Gatsby is a tricky adaptation, as nearly every review mentioned, but Luhrmann’s version had a particularly clunky feel: words flying around the screen, never-ending voice-overs, symbols floating in the sky. Traditionally, his movies have been a little slow-going when it comes to plot. No such problem in a Fast & Furious movie! It’s just fast cars and jail-breaks and beautiful people — pure Luhrmann delights, without a single concern about believability. Excess is encouraged, and few do excess better than Luhrmann. We know he can film the driving scenes; now we just have to let him dream up a ridiculous final explosion — say, a really fancy yacht. On which Jay-Z is the resident performer. (Don’t worry, Jay gets airlifted from the flaming wreckage just as his new, Fast & Furious–sponsored single starts blaring through the theater.) Consider it, Baz! We would watch.
