With every Summer comes a host of newly released and highly anticipated movies. Some of these are blockbusters, some of them flop. In this modern age of cinema, it seems Hollywood has to turn nearly every movie into a blockbuster franchise or cinematic universe, with one underrated success: Fast and Furious. This series has evolved from being about drag racing criminals to criminals who drive nice cars to criminals who work for the government to a full-blown government operation that brings down international terrorists that no other governing agency can stop.
Look, we all know just how crazed this series has become. It was initially a B-movie that talked about cars waaaaay too much. Now it’s become a pop-cultural phenomenon that tries to one-up the previous installment (Seriously, go back and watch The Fast and the Furious, it’s packed with car talk). While these movies don’t have Oscar or BAFTA-winning scripts, they rank in profits at the box office and have a large following. The first official trailer for the newly released F9 (2021) has received 53 million views on YouTube and counting.
So if the story is consistently average at best, but it still has a large fanbase, how did these movies succeed?
The short answer: they are flat-out fun.
Some movies try to be fun but fail because they try too hard, while others end up being turned into a cult classic, even if that’s not what the filmmakers intended. The Fast and Furious franchise feels like it started as the latter but has naturally evolved to be the former. The meme of Dominic Toretto being able to do anything because his family has developed, this sentiment is a beautiful one. Along with Dom, there are Brian, Letty, Mia, Roman, Tej, Han, Ramsey, and everyone else who has helped them on whatever their missions are for the film. Even though the structure makes each movie highly predictable, it is always a beautiful final moment to see everyone sitting around drinking Corona, relaxing after saving the city, country, or world. Sure, some twists might occur in the third act, but the formula for Fast and Furious is far from broken. Because of this, there is no reason to change it.
Then there are the iconic stunts. The first example is in Fast Five (2011). In this climactic scene, Dom and his crew steal a vault filled with an evil drug lord’s money. This scene literally has them rip a vault out from a police station in the Dominican Republic and drive it through the island’s streets. So much of this scene is so mind-boggling and insane that it logically should not work. However, this high-action, low-logistics has become a staple for the Fast and Furious franchise.
Since Fast Five, the DR vault scene has looked tame compared to some scenes in more recent movies. These outlandish stunts include using sports cars to fight an actual tank, fighting on a never-ending runway, airdropping cars out of a military plane, driving a car between the three Etihad Towers, and fighting a Russian nuclear submarine on a tundra. Now, in the latest film, the Fast Family’s battleground has moved to outer space (no, really) with limited gravity, oxygen, and so on, you know how it goes. As mentioned above, none of these stunts or scenes should work since the films take place in a modern world with (supposedly) normal physics and a lack of fantastical elements. Since the stunts keep getting bigger and the filmmakers never take themselves too seriously, the result is nothing shy of some good, average movie magic with a big budget.
B-movies have become a lost art in recent years, likely because studios have to capitalize on anything that can turn a profit. However, through a strong family bond and crazy vehicle stunts, the Fast and Furious movies have created a style that lives up to a popcorn movie reputation while having a blockbuster movie budget.
