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The Fast and Furious Saga has transformed before our eyes. What began as a scrappy action series about street racers is now a globe-trotting visual effects extravaganza involving nuclear missiles, immortality, and of course, the power of family. With the 10th installment of the series out now and the fresh threat of two more movies to look forward to, now’s the best time to revisit some of the more outlandish plot developments that we’ve seen in the saga.
Not only has the series provided some truly unhinged spectacle on the big screen, the behind-the-scenes drama that has unfolded over the years is almost as entertaining. Who can forget Vin Diesel and Dwayne Johnson’s ‘feud’ on Fast and Furious 8. For that matter, who can ignore the completely arbitrary manner in which the franchises decides to name individual movies? While the fifth film was called Fast Five, the seventh one was titled Furious 7. All of this is even more confusing when you consider the fact that the third film isn’t actually the third film at all, it’s the sixth film, chronologically speaking.
With the budgets increasing with each new installment, the cast of these movies has ballooned to the point that it’s basically the American equivalent of the Harry Potter series; every actor with a SAG card is on the roster, and guess what, they’re being paid top-dollar for their services. Did you know, for instance, that the cast of Fast X includes three Oscar-winning actresses and one EGOT winner? But we’re getting ahead of ourselves, here’s a timeline of everything that has happened in the franchise so far.
We're introduced to the outlaw street racer Dominic Toretto and the undercover cop Brian O'Conner. The most outrageous thing that happens, famously, is that the racers have a side hustle where they sell stolen DVD players. Romance blossoms over tuna sandwiches, the concept of NOS fascinates an entire generation of teenage boys, and the film becomes a surprise summer hit.
Diesel chose not to return for the sequel, and would years later claim that this was because the producers 'didn't take a Francis Ford Coppola' approach to it. He was reportedly offered $25 million to return, but decided to do The Chronicles of Riddick instead, citing displeasure with the script. The spinoff took the action out of Los Angeles and into Miami, and it focussed on Paul Walker's Brian. More notably, however, it introduced Tyrese Gibson and Ludacris to the franchise. It's worth noting that at this point, neither of them is the comic relief, and Ludacris is just a dude who arranges street races (he will later become a hacker, and develop Jackie Chan-level fighting skills).
The lowest-grossing film in the franchise, the third film is a proper spinoff that doesn't feature any of the characters from the first two installments. Instead, fans were expected to suddenly chuckle at Bow Wow and admire the drifting sequences.
Tokyo Drift marked the series debut of director Justin Lin, who'd go on to helm some of the best entries in the series, before having a reported showdown with Diesel that ended with him dropping out of the franchise for good. This is the movie that introduced us to the character Han (Sung Kang), who unambiguously dies on screen, only to be resurrected some years later. Hold tight.
Essentially a reboot of the franchise that brought back the original cast members after the disappointing reception to films two and three, the fourth film is an important touchtone in the series' evolution. This is when things started to go off the rails. For instance, the crew appeared to have leveled-up; the film opened with them attempting to rob a fuel truck on the highway, for the sole purpose of using that fuel for street races. Dom nearly dies doing this.
But later, they also get involved in a cross-border drug smuggling operation; the Mexican cartel is introduced, as is a then-unknown Gal Gadot. Dom's wife Letty, played by Michelle Rodriguez, is killed in a road accident, and Dom briefly develops superpowers. Not the physical kind, that comes later. In Fast & Furious 4, he has the ability to visualise the past, and manipulate it with the power of his mind.
Widely regarded as the best film in the series, Fast Five found the characters fugitives from the law, hiding in Brazil. Dom at one point behaves like he's lived there his entire life. This movie is an important link in the chain because it introduces The Rock to the franchise. The former wrestler was still getting a foothold in the movies, but his star would rise significantly in the next couple of years, prompting him to stage a campaign to get his own spinoff franchise within the Fast universe.
The fifth movie was also the first time that the franchise truly went from being moderately rooted in reality to becoming a full cartoon. The final chase sequence famously had the crew hauling an entire bank vault through the streets of Rio de Janeiro. You might want to remember this, because it plays a key role in the 10th film.
The one with the endless runway. The sixth film is set mostly in London, with the crew being chased around by The Rock. We're introduced to a new villain called Owen Shaw, played by Luke Evans, and The Rock enlists Dom and his crew's help to track him down. Dom has personal skin in the game, because, wait for it, he is told that Letty is alive and she's working for Owen.
But Dom is living with another woman, Elena, who eventually concedes defeat when she realises that Letty is the love of Dom's life. Meanwhile, Han, who died in Tokyo Drift, is dating Gal Gadot's character Gisele from the fourth movie. Gisele dies in the climactic action scene of this film, which prompts a grieving Han to move to Tokyo, hence setting up the events of Tokyo Drift. In a mid-credits scene, we're told that Owen's brother Deckard Shaw (played by Jason Statham) is the one who killed Han in that film. For those keeping score at home, we've had one resurrection so far.
Marred by a behind-the-scenes tragedy, the seventh film is also the most emotional and the highest-grossing of the franchise. The main villain is Deckard Shaw, the brother of Owen, who wants revenge for what Dom and his crew did in the sixth movie. This is a franchise about family, after all.
It is in the seventh film that Paul Walker's Brian is given an emotional send-off at the end; Walker died in a car crash while shooting was still incomplete. His brothers stepped into his character's shoes to complete the remaining portions of the movie. By this time, the characters that we met more than a decade ago are nothing at all like their former selves. Ludacris is a computer hacker, Tyrese is a bumbling fool, and Dom has the ability to stomp on concrete and bring a multi-level car park crumbling down.
This is also the movie in which, in case you'd forgotten, The Rock says the unforgettable words, 'Daddy's gotta go to work', and then breaks the plaster on his arm by flexing his muscles.
Maybe the most forgettable entry in the franchise, but filled with the most insane plot twists. Jason Statham is a good guy now; he even rescues a baby with The Rock. A new villain, a cyberterrorist played by Charlize Theron, is introduced. She blackmails Dom into retrieving a nuclear football for her, by kidnapping Elena, the woman he was involved with when Letty was dead, and revealing to him that Elena has since given birth to a baby -- Dom's child.
As we know, Dom never turns his back on family, and so, off he goes to secure the nuclear device for a crazy cyberterrorist. Along the way, Deckard Shaw fakes his own death, The Rock nudges a missile with the sheer power of his biceps, and the crew is involved in a showdown with submarines. Helen Mirren makes a cameo as the mother of Owen and Deckard Shaw, and in the end, Elena is killed, but Dom's child lives. Letty agrees to accept the baby as her own. This is not a soap opera by the way, in case you were wondering.
Despite all of this, however, the most entertaining thing about the eighth film was no doubt the feud between The Rock and Diesel. It was rumoured that they weren't even on set together to shoot their scenes, a conspiracy theory that has resulted in at least one widely-shared clip from the movie, in which the two characters appear to change size from one shot to the next.
Han lives! In yet another shocking turn of events, we're told that Han's death was staged. He wasn't even in the car when Deckard Shaw rammed into him in Tokyo. Who cares if we saw his crumpled body in the aftermath of the wreckage? In the Fast and Furious saga, nothing is written in stone. Han being alive also gives the franchise an opportunity to reframe Deckard as a good guy. We're told that it wasn't even his idea to kill Han in the first place, but that he was forced to by Mr Nobody, a shady government operative played by Kurt Russell.
F9 also served as the comeback of director Justin Lin, who'd dropped out of the franchise after the sixth movie, and will once again after this one. This is also the movie in which Dom makes his car swing between two mountains like it's Spider-Man, and Ludacris and Tyrese drive a car into space. That's not all, the ninth movie also introduces Dom's long-lost brother Jakob, a master thief and assassin. His existence had never come up even once in the EIGHT previous movies.
It's time to alter the past once again. Jakob, a Terminator-like character in the ninth film, is shown as comic relief in the trailer for this one. Everyone's back, including Jason Statham, Charlize Theron, Kurt Russell and Helen Mirren. Rita Moreno is introduced as Dom and Jakob's mother. Nobody bothered to mention her even once before.
But most hilariously, the villain in this movie is played by Jason Momoa, whom we're told is the nephew of the gangster the crew killed in the fifth movie. Remember when they were hauling a bank vault across Rio? Jason Momoa was there, and now, he wants revenge. With at least one more movie remaining, it's only a matter of time before the franchise introduces body swapping and robots. Oh wait, we've had nanobots already.
Click for more updates and latest Hollywood News along with Bollywood and Entertainment updates. Also get latest news and top headlines from India and around the World at The Indian Express.
