[dropcap size=small]W[/dropcap]eren’t we all mesmerized by the pretty guy which appeared as Brian O’ Conner in The Fast and The Furious? He did star in several TV shows such as The Young and The Restless and Touched by an Angel. Paul Walker gained prominence with breakout roles in She’s All That, Varsity Blues and Coming-of-age. But his eminent reprisal in the Fast and Furious franchise is one of the reasons of the audience being hooked to it and it also gained him an international notoriety. He also founded the charity Reach Out Worldwide (ROWW), an organization providing relief efforts for areas affected by natural disasters.
But we were all taken aback when he died in car crash along with his racer buddy Roger Rodas on November 30, 2013, that was so uncalled for. The Porsche carrying “Fast & Furious” star Paul Walker was traveling at approximately 90 mph when it lost control on a street and crashed. He wasn’t behind the wheels but yet he had to face the wrath of speed and reckless driving. A lot of social media commotion happened along with his fans and his co-stars making statements about his uncertain demise and their remorse, a lot of Walker’s celebrity friends and co-stars visited his funeral. The autopsy reports severe injuries, which can’t be mentioned.
Soon after all this hassle, the Universal Studios and the film makers of Fast and Furious 7 came into act. People were both relieved and anxious as of what was going to happen to the character Brian O’ Conner. Everyone predicted that the film makers will straight away kill the character Brian. But according to some rumors, Universal had something else in store for us. The rumors suggested that the character Brian will live on retired from the life living on the edge. Isn’t that an appropriate epilogue to both the character’s and Paul Walker’s legacy ?
Another question arose that how did the film makers completed the movie when Paul died during the mid way shoot of the movie in November. They approached Paul Walker’s lookalike brothers Cody and Caleb Walker to act as Paul’s body double. They revived the character in the most appropriate way possible, supposedly director James Wan extracted footage of Walker from his earlier films and Peter Jackson’s Weta Digital was approached with almost an impossible task of creating the computer graphics version of the actor, in-order to let the character appear alive for the last time on the screen.
This approach has been in the making for decades and also quite successful in previous attempts for movies like Gladiator, footage from outtakes was used to create a digital mask that was added to the scenes of a body double. Isn’t it amazing how every efforts are being made to bring justice to the role and Paul Walker?
[highlight color=#32c932 ]Another attempt to remember Paul Walker has been made by his co-star friend Vin Diesel, he named his daughter Pauline as a tribute to Paul.[/highlight] He told a magazine,“He [Walker] was in the room. There’s no other person that I’m thinking about as I’m cutting this umbilical cord, I knew he was there and I felt like, you know, a way to keep his memory a part of my memory, a part of my world.” This sweet and gracious act won over the hearts of Paul’s fans and a massive contribution to his legacy.
Vin Diesel claims that Fast and Furious 7 might win an Oscar and why wouldn’t it? The film makers made a character breathe which otherwise would have been dead. Both the real and digitally rendered version of Paul Walker is the final goodbye from the actor to the franchise and the world. He will be remembered.
