A lot of people are whining about "Fast and Furious" making 30 million on Friday. They claim that it will just inspire Hollywood to make more lousy films. While that might be true, they are missing the bigger element of ths film's success: it was a truly multicultural event. This film appealed to whites, blacks, latinos, and Asians. It may be, as I noted before, little more than car porn but it appealed to a wide demographic and it offered an escape or a diversion.

Compare that to the critical darling "Adventureland", a lily-white film that featured two leads who were basically upper-middle class and who looked down at their menial job, They acted like they were above it  all even though they didn't do a good job and got stoned/drunk while at work.

Again, this is not to defend the quality of Fast and Furious but it's really all that is out there for fans of action films.  Also, look at the films that have come out so far this year; it's almost a complete white wash. The only films that have really featured "minority" actors are the Madea and Notorious.

As for the complaints about the mainstream, it reminds me of a great exchange from Aaron Sorkin's script "The American President". An edited version is:

Lewis: They're so thirsty for it they'll crawl through the desert toward a mirage, and when they discover there's no water, they'll drink the sand.

President Shepherd: People don't drink the sand because they're thirsty. They drink the sand because they don't know the difference. 

Most critics would agree with The President; the people don't really know what makes a great movie. I would argue that most people aren't looking for what critics consider "great". And they never have. If you look at some of the now classic screwball comedies of yesteryear, they were not appreciated by the critics. "Bringing Up Baby" was an unmitigated disaster when it came out while "It's a Wonderful Life" was met with mixed reviews. Now I'm not saying that anyone is going to look back at any of the F&F movies like they do those two but critics have always been harsher on mainstream fare than they should be. "The Rock" is one of the better action films out there and even it got mixed reviews.

To me, dismissing the mainstream for not appreciating artistic films is as ignorant as the mainstream dismissing art house films as just boring. People are just looking for different things out of their movie-going experience and to dismiss a film out of hand because it didn't meet your criteria is the sign of a closed mind.

Unfortunately, the divide between art house and mainstream is growing and there are very few top level directors who seem at all interested in trying to challenge themselves to work within the desires of the mainstream (let alone broaden it). Even worse, producers have realized that they have a captive audience and that they simply don't need to employ these better directors to elevate their genre. Since nobody else seems to be trying it, it's better to just roll out the latest young director and have him make a competent enough flick. In this risk adverse Hollywood that is focused simply on marketing, it just makes more sense to take the easy money and not risk trying to make a great film that could miss its mark and flop.

Fast and Furious was a perfect storm. It was a multi-cultural action film that arrived in a sort of white vacuum. It should be interesting to see if it doesn't plummet in its second week ala Watchmen but to just blame the mainstream for seeing a dumb movie is to miss the boat on what really made this movie a huge success.