Justin Lin Explains Using The 'Furious 6' Title Card In 'Fast And Furious 6'

Long before Fast and Furious 6 was in production, fans were curious about its title. Would the film be called Fast Six? Furious Six? Maybe just Fast and Furious 6, or some other combination of the title elements. Eventually the producers settled on the simple title Fast and Furious 6, and the movie hits theaters on May 24.

When you sit down to see the movie, though, you'll find a title card that reads "Furious 6" rather than "Fast and Furious 6." Um, what? (Somewhat like the "Iron Man Three" title card on the movie otherwise called Iron Man 3.) We spoke to director Justin Lin about the film and he discussed why he made that potentially confusing decision. Read his quote below.

Here's the segment of our conversation where Lin discussed the alternative title.

/Film: One of my favorite parts of this film was how you really go back and use the previous five movies as a skeleton for your story and characters.Why did you decide to do that now in Six as opposed to Five, or leaving it open for Seven?

Justin Lin: That's the idea of mythology. I felt like when I came on the franchise it was successful, but it kind of lacked exploration into these relationships. I think some of these characters are kind of loosely connected, especially for me. The female characters have so much potential and I never really saw that. I remember talking to the studio and saying "If we have the opportunity to build, that's the direction we should go." In fact, one of the turning points was talking to Vin about coming back. I know how close he was with Dom Toretto and I heard rumors from people of "There's no way he would do it." I heard all of these things, but I felt it was important, because he's the patriarch of this franchise and if I could get him to come back and do it, they'd know we were going in the right direction.

When he signed on, I was like "Okay, great" and then we were able to earn another. I think with these sequels, they're not just a given. These people earn another chance to do something and the fact that we were able to build this whole mythology and really acknowledge the growth of characters, it naturally evolved into other genres. If you watch the film, it doesn't say "Fast And Furious Six," it was always designed to be Fast Five and Furious Six as kind of the "A and B," so Six was always designed to be the one that ties all up all of the questions that fans have.

Check back Wednesday for our review and next week for the rest of the interview.