Vin Diesel’s Fast and the Furious saga was in jeopardy following Paul Walker’s tragic demise. His unexpected passing on November 30th of 2013 sent shockwaves around the world, leaving his fans and colleagues in a state of shock.
The actor had died in a car accident along with his friend Roger Rodas at around 3:30 p.m. on a Saturday in Valencia, Calif. Since the actor was shooting the seventh installment of the Fast and the Furious saga at that point in time, his death meant the production had to be put on hold indefinitely.
James Wan, the director, and Vin Diesel, the star and producer of the film were presented with the difficult task of filling the irreplaceable void that was created in the movie in order to release the million-dollar film. Thus, it led them to spiral into thinking the only doable solution was to chuck the movie altogether. Also Read: What Happened Between Vin Diesel and Dwayne Johnson – Fast & Furious Feud Explained as WWE Star Returns Back to Franchise
How did Paul Walker’s death affect the Furious 7?
The death of Paul Walker although tragic in itself, also proved nearly fatal for the seven billion dollar Fast and the Furious franchise. The technology back in 2013 wasn’t as nearly as advanced as it is right now. Since there were a lot of important scenes left to be filmed,
“It definitely was the hardest movie of my career. I’ve done technically challenging movies since then, but Furious 7 just hit on so many different levels, especially an emotional one.” The director then continued his thought and explained what challenges the difficult time threw at them. He said,
“When the passing of Paul Walker happened, we were like, ‘Do we just shut the movie down for good?’ But we collectively felt like this movie needed to be Paul’s legacy. So we wiped our tears away and sat around in editorial, going, ‘All right, how do we do this?'” Thus, when no way seemed viable, the Walker brothers stepped in to save their late brother’s legacy. He said,
“Thankfully, I had shot certain stuff with Paul, like his ending action stuff, but there were still many bits missing in the film that needed Paul. —- But we did not have that kind of technology at our disposal. So we had to really dig deep into our bag of tricks to make it work, and one of them was having Paul’s brothers [Caleb and Cody Walker] step in and shoot the other half of the movie. We then pulled different words that Paul had spoken all through the franchise to create sentences for us.”
Therefore, although it had an emotional and tragic ending and was on the verge of collapse when finally released it went on to gather $1.7 billion worldwide and won everybody’s heart in the process. The movie is still hailed as one of the greats because of its sentimental value.
How did they bring Paul Walker back to life on the silver screen for the last time?
VFX supervisor Joe Letteri, from Peter Jackson’s Weta Digital, was involved in the process of bringing Paul Walker back to life for the Vin Diesel film. He revealed to the Hollywood Reporter,
“we didn’t have everything you would have wanted from a reference and research perspective, when Universal and the filmmakers regrouped and decided they did want to finish the film and the Paul Walker story, we thought at most we could get one scene of a digital Paul that maybe had some dialogue in it, and we’d have to find other ways to finish the story,”
“ We didn’t do CG costumes and bodies because the brothers were close enough,–Then we used Paul’s footage for the final touch up to his model” to capture details like skin textures,– we used a lot of Paul’s footage as reference, because as close as the brothers were in style and mannerisms, they just weren’t Paul when Paul played his character. —Most of the CG shots had some kind of dialogue—The sound editors had to craft the vocal performance out of [existing] dialog from Paul, and we had to animate to that.”
All in all, it took roughly 260 shots of the two Walker brothers and a lot of CGI to bring the actor back to life one last time to bid him a proper farewell. The film is now available on Peacock TV to stream.
Also Read: The Rock Abandons Close Friend Jason Statham’s $760M Franchise for All New Fast and Furious Spinoff after Statham Left Him for Fast X
With the PlayStation Showcase been and gone, we’re now in full swing for the gaming showcases of 2023. Next up is the Geoff Keighley’s Summer Game Fest, which for many is replacing the now-dead E3, which spectacularly imploded over the last few months with each of the big three pulling out, as well as most big publishers as well. However, the big three and those very same publishers have pledged to be showing their wares at Summer Game Fest, but what can we expect to see?
We haven’t had much confirmed as to what we’ll see at the upcoming showcase, but what has been confirmed is exciting. Many were disappointed when the recently announced Mortal Kombat 1 wasn’t to be seen at the PlayStation Showcase, and that was by design, as the game has been confirmed to appear at the Summer Game Fest with a first-look gameplay trailer.
The recent announcement of the game didn’t give much away gameplay-wise, but it did show a multitude of playable characters including Liu Kang, Sub Zero, and Scorpion, amongst others. It also highlighted the universe’s total reset from the previous game Mortal Kombat 11 as being canon, and a new universe created by Liu Kang with no trials and tribulations awaits players.
Related: Mortal Kombat 1 Finally Gets Revealed With a Trailer and Release Date
The other confirmed-to-appear video game is Remedy’s Alan Wake 2, with Sam Lake due to present more of the sequel to the hit survival horror from 2010. We hope to see some gameplay, and it’d be a safe bet to be fair, but at the very least we’d like to find out what has happened to Alan Wake in the time between the two games, as well as what awaits him in the sequel.
Alan Wake 2 was shown off at PlayStation Showcase, with the game getting a cinematic trailer that revealed some of what we have in store for us. Wake seems to still be trapped in the nightmare universe of his creation and seems to be enlisting the help of an unwilling FBI agent that arrives in Bright Falls to investigate a murder. We don’t know much else at this point, but consider us curious.
Geoff Keighley and Summer Game Fest… the new E3?
summer game fest
Geoff Keighley has previously been at the center of some pretty big gaming announcements, most recently would have been Death Stranding, and he’s good friends with Hideo Kojima, the creator of that, and the Metal Gear Solid series. Death Stranding 2 was expected at the PlayStation showcase, but along with a few other expected titles, was sadly not in attendance. If Death Stranding 2 is to be announced this year, it’ll be at the Summer Game Fest.
Keighley has also come out in recent days and announced that the Summer Game Fest will feature three of four ‘pretty big announcements’.
Whilst that can be interpreted in several ways, it’d be fair to assume these won’t just be gameplay reveals or announcements of games we’ve long been expecting, but instead actual game changers for the industry. Maybe we’ll finally see the long-rumoured Grand Theft Auto 6? Unlikely. Maybe we’ll see a new Splinter Cell? Even more unlikely.
A nearly confirmed rumour at this point is the first showcasing of CD Projekt Red’s upcoming expansion to Cyberpunk 2077, Phantom Liberty, which according to leaks is ‘pretty much complete’. Considering the disaster of a release fiasco the main game had, we’ll all be hoping the DLC has a smoother time of it, both for us and for the studio.
For the sports fans among us, EA will almost certainly be showing more of their upcoming football sim EA Sports FC, which marks the first time the developer will be releasing a football game without the official FIFA license involved. They’ve promised that not having the license will be a benefit to gamers, as it’ll allow the studio to do more with the game than was previously possible. How or why the FIFA license held them back is anyone’s guess, but with the studio being famous for being cookie-cutter-like with their sports franchises, there’s no better time for them to show they are still innovative when it’s needed.
Xbox and PlayStation are both in attendance, but Nintendo has decided to skip it, surprisingly. With the PlayStation Showcase being considered largely a failure compared to the expectations that fans had, it’ll be interesting to see if PlayStation does announce some first-party games as was expected previously, or if they double down on just Marvel’s Spider-Man 2 again.
With the current public perception of Microsoft and Xbox in the gaming industry right now, it cannot be understated how huge of a showing Xbox needs. Whether it’ll be damage limitation regarding their reputation,
which has taken a hammering due to the incredibly poorly handled merger, or the very obvious chasm of AAA games on their latest console – even worse with the release of Redfall -, we can expect something big to come from Xbox during their panel.
Hopefully, the Summer Game Fest will be as good as Keighley and co. are promising, but either way it’s an exciting time to be a gamer with announcements, gameplay trailers and more coming thick and fast all month.
Summer Game Fest streams live on Thursday, June 8, from the YouTube Theater in Los Angeles, at 12 p.m. PDT/3 p.m. EDT/9 p.m. CEST. The show will be streamed live on SGF’s YouTube, Twitch, Twitter, TikTok, Instagram, and via Steam.
Luke Addison is the lead video game critic and gaming content co-ordinator. An avid lover of all things entertainment, you're as likely to find him watching the latest blockbuster release as you are to see him listening to metal/rock or reading the latest comic book.
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