After stepping away from the franchise for its seventh and eight films, Lin is back in the driver’s seat in F9, which is why Han is also back. However, Han has always been riding with Lin, even predating his involvement in Fast and Furious lore…
High School Han
In 2002, Lin directed the critically-acclaimed Better Luck Tomorrow. That film also starred Sung Kang in the role of Han. It was a story about four overachieving Asian teenagers who start selling cheat sheets and subsequently fall into the gangster lifestyle of drugs and crime. It was loosely based on the murder of Stuart Tay. Tay was an Asian teenager who was killed by his fellow high schoolers when they thought he would betray a computer heist they were planning. The murderers were college-bound with Ivy League potential, and the story was branded as “the honor roll murder” by the Orange County register. In Lin’s interpretation, Han is one of the murderers.
Widely hailed as a benchmark film for Asian-American representation, Better Luck Tomorrow won the Grand Jury Prize at Sundance where it was rigorously celebrated by Roger Ebert, which led to MTV acquiring it.
When Lin took on Tokyo Drift, he wanted to add a cool Asian character into the mix. He tapped Kang to reprise the role of Han, albeit an incarnation of Han that was tailored to the franchise. The Better Luck Tomorrow Han is young and brash. Han is a teenager, although Kang was 30 he first played him. In Tokyo Drift, Han is older and wiser, a mentor to the film’s protagonist Sean (Lucas Black). Nevertheless, there are connections that make the character whole. The Better Luck Tomorrow Han is a chain smoker. In Fast Five, Han’s girlfriend Gisele (Gal Gadot in her first feature film). She attributes Han’s constant need to occupy his hand to being a former smoker. Tokyo Drift was only four years after Better Luck Tomorrow but the character of Han aged considerably.
Why Han Matters
The Fast Saga currently ranks as the seventh highest grossing film franchise in the world. And unlike the other top-earners, these movies were arguably the most diverse and inclusive from the onset. While the MCU has Black Panther and the upcoming Shang-Chi and the Legend of the Ten Rings, and Star Wars introduced Finn (John Boyega) in its third trilogy, those casts remain predominantly white. In fact, the top 25 top grossing global franchises are all led by white casts. Fast and Furious is the exception. This makes Han the most prominent Asian character in a Hollywood franchise in the world.
What’s more, Han is cool. Until very recently, most Asian Hollywood roles were stereotypical or tokens. Han a richly developed character, even if Better Luck Tomorrow is disregarded. In Tokyo Drift, he’s a wealthy elite street racer with his own garage packed with awesome cars, attached to a club where he’s surrounded by gorgeous women. That was an unprecedented role for how Asian characters were presented in mainstream Hollywood entertainment in the 2000s.
Discover more from Today Headline
Subscribe to get the latest posts to your email.