The Fast & Furious franchise changed forever in 2013 when Paul Walker was tragically killed in a car accident on November 30th that year. While the accident that took his life was not related film, Walker had not yet completed work on Furious 7 at the time of his death and the tragedy caused the film to be delayed so that changes could be made, allowing for not just a proper conclusion to the story but a fitting emotional tribute to Walker as well. The film ultimately came out in 2015 and now, a decade later, its original ending has finally been revealed.
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In Barry Hertz’s new book about the making of the Fast & Furious film franchise, Welcome To the Family, (via Screen Rant) it’s revealed that Furious 7 was meant to end with Dom (Vin Diesel), Brian (Walker) and the rest of the crew successfully destroying the God’s Eye instead of handing it back over to the government, setting up for future films.
“Originally, [Furious 7] ended with the whole crew back at Neptune’s Net, the Malibu seafood joint off Pacific Coast Highway where Brian and Dom had bonded in the first movie, celebrating the successful retrieval of the “God’s Eye” MacGuffin that Jason Statham’s villain, Deckard Shaw, was pursuing,” the book reveals. “But instead of giving the device back to the mysterious government agent Mr. Nobody (Kurt Russell), who had just awarded the team congressional commendations, Dom crushes the God’s Eye under his boot, saying that it was too powerful for any one person to possess. The team then roars off onto the PCH, with the smiling Don crumpling the commendation into a ball and tossing it out the window as the score swells and the end credits roll.” The description goes on to include that there would have been a bit where the team threw a knife at a map to let “fate decide” their next location as well.
Fast & Furious Would Have Been a Much Different Franchise With the Original Ending
The ending of Furious 7 that ended up making it to screen is quite different. The crew does not reconvene at Neptune’s Net and Dom does not crush the God’s Eye with his boot. Brian properly retires and settles down with his wife, Mia, and family, with the final moments of the film being Dom driving away with Brian catching up to drive alongside him for a moment. Dom recalls memories of his time with Brian and the pair bid each other farewell and drive off in different directions. Scenes that Walker had not filmed prior to his death were actually created using Walker’s real-life brothers Caleb and Cody Walker, with Walker’s face superimposed over them as well as repurposed footage of Walker himself from outtakes and older footage.
While the ending of Furious 7 is widely regarded as one of the film’s strong points and a lovely tribute to Walker, both honoring the actor and elegantly letting his character functionally ride off into the sunset, the original ending would have had major impact on the franchise. The God’s Eye device ends up returning in both The Fate of the Furious and Fast X, something that could not have happened had it been destroyed in Furious 7. Additionally, the general trajectory of Dom and the crew would have also likely been different with the original ending. Ultimately, it sounds like Furious 7 would have had a solid ending with its original, planned conclusion, but still managed to create something meaningful in the aftermath of tragedy — a rare instance of what fans actually got being just as meaningful as what might have been.
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image courtesy of Universal Pictures, Columbia Pictures, and Millimeter
