From 100 to 0 in one paragraph ...

There are two errors in the final paragraph of this article from Macon, Georgia's The Telegraph, my hometown newspaper, that a spell-check tool probably wouldn't have caught—"movies stars" should be "movie stars," "in the box office" should be "at the box office"—but "movies star" Vin Diesel might argue that a third error trumps the others: he's given third billing for the latest sequel of a franchise he's headlined since 2001 (minus the first and second sequels, for the sake of accuracy).

The future is now. Seriously, right this minute.

In addition to forecasting that the Chicago Cubs would win the World Series this October, Back to the Future Part II, released in 1989, predicted a "Jaws 19" in 2015. That one seemed like a much more obvious joke 26 years ago, especially after the fourth Jaws bombed in '87, but Universal, the studio that distributed the three Back to the Future and four Jaws movies, had one of the biggest hits of this year with Furious 7, the latest installment in a franchise that appeared to be running on empty after its third film, The Fast and the Furious: Tokyo Drift, performed poorly at the box office in 2006.

(Much like the fictional "Jaws 19," the Fast and/or Furious series has been refreshingly honest about its age in recent years, especially since other series tend to drop the numbers from their movies' titles after the third installment. For example, compare Fast Five, Fast & Furious 6, and Furious 7 to the fourth and fifth entries in the Mission: Impossible series, Mission: Impossible—Ghost Protocol and last summer's Mission: Impossible—Rogue Nation.)

Now Universal's planning to make three more (and a fourth Riddick movie, presumably to keep Vin Diesel, the star of both franchises, happy). I predict that the inevitable series "reboot" will go into development the day after "Fast + Furious X" leaves theaters.

Now where my food hydrator at, Bob Gale and Robert Zemeckis?

To be morally deep, or not to be?

In Last Action Hero, which debuted to disappointing box-office numbers 22 years ago this week, Arnold Schwarzenegger's teenage sidekick, Danny Madigan (Austin O'Brien), points a gun at the movie-within-a-movie's bad guys in at least two scenes.

Because school shootings were rare in 1993, that wasn't as big a deal as it would've been just a few years later, even after the ultraviolent preteen villainy on display in RoboCop 2 (1990)—Danny was at least taking up arms against villainy—but as Anthony Linehan points out on his blog Movie Tie-In Toys, the hand accessory for Mattel's Danny Madigan action figure was a grappling hook, which "hasn't any basis in the movie itself!"

Hook Launchin' Danny was presumably created to placate parents who wouldn't have been thrilled with Heat Packin' Danny, but it was also a form of wishful thinking: audiences never got hooked on Last Action Hero, especially when compared to Jurassic Park, considered its main competition for the summer movie season before anyone had seen either movie. By the end of the year, Jurassic's $357 million gross in North American theaters had cast a T. Rex-sized shadow over Hero's $50 million gross.

(Even two decades removed from its overhyped debut, Last Action Hero doesn't work as an action movie, a fantasy, or a comedy, but it did have potential. Its best line, in my opinion, is spoken by Schwarzenegger's character when he meets the "real" Arnold at the premiere of "Jack Slater IV," their franchise's latest sequel: "You've brought me nothing but pain." Now, there's a starting point for a great meta-movie.)

Incidentally, in an essay on morality in fiction in the winter 2015 edition of Pleiades, Phong Nguyen, the literary journal's editor, states:

I ask my writing students, "What's the difference between Hamlet the Prince of Denmark and an action hero?" Like any good revenge story, the hero gets his man in the last act, at the cost of his own life. But in the meantime, rather than battling the king's goons (though he does accidentally kill poor Polonius), the Great Dane is waging an internal struggle with his conscience. What does it mean to kill a man? What does it mean to die? When the ghost of your dead father comes to you in the night and says, "avenge me," your mission should be obvious. No further thought is required. Vin Diesel or Dwayne "the Rock" Johnson would simply ride in on a motorcycle armed with two pistols or a medieval axe and stylishly polish off Claudius with a cinematic flourish. They may even be right to do so. But they are not afflicted with doubt, or thought, so what we've witnessed is actually mere moral catharsis, the opposite of moral depth.

True, but could moral depth ever produce as memorable a twist on Hamlet's famous "To be, or not to be" soliloquy as the one that's followed by a huge, Elsinore-demolishing explosion in Last Action Hero? Doubtful.

If you go too fast and furious, Roger Ebert will get lost.

In his April 29 review of Fast Five for the Chicago Sun-Times, Roger Ebert wrote:

The "F&F" titles got confusing with the unrelated "Fast and Furious: Tokyo Drift" and John Singleton's "2 Fast 2 Furious," which is why, I suppose, "Fast Five" drops the "furious." But it isn't technically the fifth "F&F" unless you count the outliers. So I don't know what "Five" refers to. That doesn't bother me.

Maybe the titles did get confusing since only two in the decade-old series employ numbers—it doesn't help that the first and fourth entries essentially have the same title—but if Ebert had checked his facts he wouldn't be so confused. (Perhaps he should have visited Mulberry Panda 96 for a refresher course on the highly profitable street-racing saga.)

The series' second entry, 2 Fast 2 Furious (2003), stars Paul Walker, who was also in the first film, The Fast and the Furious (2001); his costar in the sequel was Tyrese Gibson, who returns in Fast Five. Vin Diesel skipped 2 Fast 2 Furious but showed up in a cameo at the end of 2006's The Fast and the Furious: Tokyo Drift—which didn't feature any other characters from the first two films—then returned to the series full-time, along with Walker, for Fast & Furious in '09.

See, Roger? They're all connected, and Fast Five really is the series' fifth installment, even if it sounds more like the name of a lotto game than a movie. And since it had an $86 million opening weekend, it's a safe bet that "Grandmaster Fast and the Furious Six" will be crashing into a theater near you sometime in 2013.

Faster! Furiouser!

I just saw a TV ad for Fast & Furious, the fourth movie in the car-fetish franchise that includes the words "Fast" and "Furious" somewhere in each film's title. The lineage of this series gets confusing, so buckle up. (Driving clichés are so hard to resist.)

The Fast and the Furious was directed by Rob Cohen and was something of a surprise hit in the summer of 2001. It also turned Vin Diesel into an action star. Neither Cohen nor Diesel returned for 2 Fast 2 Furious, which was released in '03. Instead they made XXX (2002), which was also a huge hit, though neither one returned for its sequel, either—Diesel's character was declared dead at the beginning of XXX: State of the Union (2005), which starred Ice Cube as the series' new "extreme" hero.

Paul Walker, Diesel's Fast and the Furious costar, did return for 2 Fast 2 Furious, and was teamed up with Tyrese Gibson. It was the latter's second collaboration with director John Singleton, who debuted with 1991's gang drama Boyz N the Hood and at the age of 24 became the youngest recipient of a Best Director nomination in Oscar history, though films like 2 Fast 2 Furious and his 2000 remake of Shaft are more indicative of where his career has gone in this decade.

Without Diesel's star power, it seemed as if 2 Fast 2 Furious might fade quickly at the box office (I hope you appreciate how much effort it's taking to avoid phrases like "sputter out" and "crash and burn" here), but it earned $127 million in the summer of '03, only $17 million less than its predecessor. XXX: State of the Union, however, made only $26 million compared to the original's $142 million take.

In 2006 came The Fast and the Furious: Tokyo Drift, directed by Justin Lin and starring Lucas Black from Sling Blade but none of the stars from the first two films in the series—until Vin Diesel showed up at the end in a cameo. Tokyo Drift earned $62 million.

Three years later we have Fast & Furious, which was originally going to be released in June but is now set to open April 3, according to an ad I saw on TV. I wonder if Universal got a peek at the final cut and decided the movie would be better off going up against weaker competition in the spring than in the crowded summer season. Fast & Furious reunites Diesel and Walker and female costars Michelle Rodriguez and Jordana Brewster from the first film, but the director is Tokyo Drift's Lin.

I've heard Fast & Furious referred to as an "interquel," a goofy, made-up word I'm praying doesn't catch on with the public, which would mean that the film's narrative takes place between those of 2 Fast 2 Furious and Tokyo Drift. To make matters more confusing, Diesel has reportedly directed a 20-minute prequel (which itself was a goofy made-up word at one point, I suppose—but now it's the law!) to Fast & Furious starring himself, Rodriguez, and Sung Kang.

As ComingSoon.net put it last August, "The fourth movie is a sequel to the first installment, and though Diesel didn't elaborate, we assume this 20-minute prequel will tie-in some of the events from the second and third movies. Rodriguez appeared in the first movie, Sung Kang in the third, and Diesel in the first with a brief cameo in the third."

I told you it was confusing, and I read that Diesel may also be returning to the XXX franchise soon for "XXX: The Return of Xander Cage." I guess his character didn't die after all. Coincidentally, John Singleton's next film, according to IMDB, is "Luke Cage," based on the Marvel Comics character who inspired Nicolas Cage's stage name. It's set to star Tyrese Gibson as Cage (Luke, not Nicolas).

All this film-franchise zigzagging is making me drowsy, and I'd hate to fall asleep at the wheel. (See how hard it is to resist these clichés?) I'll leave you with a picture of Diesel that I found last summer around the time Babylon A.D. came out. The sci-fi action film bombed, thanks in part to its director, Matthieu Kassovitz, telling the press how bad it was before it hit theaters. In my opinion, Diesel should've cut his losses as an action star at that point and pitched himself to studios as the star of "Mr. Potato Head: The Movie." I'd buy a ticket.