It’s all about family. And Racing. And international crime heists? The Fast & Furious film series, which spans nine movies and one spin-off, is one of Hollywood’s most exciting and interesting long-lasting franchises as of 2023. With the latest chapter Fast X coming to theaters on May 19th, we decided to look back at the franchise and realized something. That being the bizarre and outrageous escalation of stakes. This is no surprise for fans; they all know already know this. However, buckle up for anyone trying to get into the franchise for the first time before Fast X because it’s a wild and crazy ride. 

Let’s start with the beginning, where it all began, with a small film from 2001 directed by Rob Cohen, The Fast and The Furious. This film introduces the franchise protagonist Dominic Toretto, played perfectly by Vin Diesel, an infamous street racer and thief who LAPD officer Brian O’Conner is pursuing, played by the late Paul Walker, who has gone undercover to infiltrate Dom’s gang. The plot is a point break, but with street racing instead of surfing, but instead of robbing banks, these criminals steal…DVD players from cargo trucks. Eventually, O’Conner reveals his identity, they stop the final heist, and O’Conner lets Dom escape due to mutual respect. Simple stuff, nothing too crazy aside from some street racing scenes involving some Nitrous Oxide Systems or simply NOS for us cool kids. 

This plot and stake structure would be repeated in 2003 with the hilariously named sequel, 2 Fast 2 Furious, directed by John Singleton. With Dom in hiding after the first movie, we follow the adventures of O’Conner, who the FBI recruits again to investigate a drug lord in Miami named Carter Verone. This leads to him recruiting an old friend and ex-convict, Roman Pierce, played by Tyrese Gibson, and his mechanic buddy Tej Paker, played by Ludacris to help him bring down Verone. Again nothing too outrageous here, aside from launching a car off a dock into a boat and Roman equipping ejector seats into his car. 

This trend of crime boss meets street racing continues with The Fast and the Furious: Tokyo Drift, where the producers decided that this franchise would be an anthology, with the lead character having no relation to the previous movies aside from being a street racer. The third movie follows a young American car guy, Lucas Black, who is forced to move to Tokyo and becomes a part of the street racing scene, which is also connected with the local Yakuza. Now this is the first and only movie where the plot does not revolve around stopping the criminals, more so avoiding being killed by them. This film may not have the strongest plot, but it does feature some of the best-looking racing scenes, with real cars doing insane drifts through parking garages and down mountainside roads. This would be the beginning of the franchise’s soon-to-be outrageous evolution.

At the end of the trilogy, the Fast Franchise found this comfortable niche of being this crime and racing combo genre, but all of this would change with 4th movie Fast & Furious. This would be the first time one of the movies would have a returning director, Justin Lin, and the return of Tokyo Drift writer Chris Morgan. These two would be instrumental in the series’ evolution by bringing a sense of a continued story and, more importantly, escalating the stakes with each film. The plot of Fast & Furious follows the return of Dom Toretto to the US to avenge the death of his partner Letty, played by Michelle Rodriguez, who was killed by the drug lord Arturo Braga. This leads to him reuniting with O’Conner, and the two team up again like in the first film. However, unlike the first film, this features an exciting chase sequence through mining tunnels, which isn’t our favorite set piece, but more exciting than the straight-line drag races of the previous flicks. So while the crime plot has not escalated too far from the earlier films, the action, and set pieces certainly have. Fast & Furious is arguably the worst-named and least entertaining this far. Still, it does feature Dom Torretto and crew using their cars in ways that can only be described as “Car-fu” in which they can accomplish near-impossible feats through driving alone. Dom uses his immense knowledge of cars to recreate a car accident in his head like he’s Sherlock Holmes. 

While Fast & Furious is technically the beginning of the transition, Fast 5, again directed by Lin and written by Morgan, is the moment the franchise jumps the shark. This plot follows Dom assembling a team of characters from the previous movies, including O’Conner, Roman, Tej, and many others, to pull off a $100 million heist. They plan to steal from Hernan Reyes, a drug lord in Rio de Janeiro. They are being pursued by Diplomatic Security Serice Agents led by Luke Hobbs, the best character in the franchise, played by Dwayne Johnson. This film features the team developing an insanely complicated heist plan in the vein of Ocean’s 11. It ends with the two leads dragging a large safe with Dodge Charges through the streets of Brazil, using the safe as a wrecking ball to stop the pursuing police cars. The final act is outrageous, and it only goes up from here.

Fast & Furious 6 continues to up the stakes with the crew teaming up with Hobbs to take on down a skilled mercenary organization led by Owen Shaw, played by Luke Evans, that has somehow recruited Letty, who has been presumed dead since the 4th movie. It’s like the team is taking the evil versions of themselves, with more over-the-top action that features more focus on hand-to-hand combat and ludicrous car-fu scenes. In 6, we have one location where the team has to battle a tank with their muscle cars and another where they have to bring down a cargo plane, again only using their cars. We have officially entered the bonkers realm, and let me tell you, we still have a ways to go. 

Furious 7, that’s right, the film is just called Furious 7, follows the crew pulling even more heists which feature them parachuting cars out of a plane and driving cars off SKYSCRAPERS, all the while being hunted down by Deckard Shaw, the brother of the Owen Shaw from the last movie played by Jason Statham. This is then followed by the 8th film titled, The Fate of the Furious (get it, fate…eight), where now Dom has been convinced to betray his family and go rogue, which leads to our heroes teaming up with Hobbs and the previous villain Shaw, to apprehend Dom and stop the cyberterrorist he’s working for, Cipher played by Charlize Theron. The one features the team going on a spy mission to steal an EMP device in Berlin and the infamously outrageous cars vs. submarine in the Arctic set piece. Finally, we get to the latest film F9, which explains that Dom has a long-lost brother, Jakob, played by John Cena, who is working with the previous villain Cipher and a new threat, Otto, played by Thue Ersted Rasmussen. This new league of villains attempts to find a device that can hack into any computer-controlled system in the world named Project Aries, and it’s up to Dom and the crew to stop them and find out the mystery behind Dom’s brother. Here the plot has evolved to such a bonkers and chaotic point that it’s beginning to rival 90’s comic books with the long-lost brother story arc, characters revealing their deaths were faked for them to protect the weapon in this movie, and TEJ AND ROMAN USING A ROCKET CAR TO GO INTO SPACE AND DESTROY A SATELLITE. Mind you, 20 years ago, these guys were stealing DVD players out of trucks. Now they’re stopping international terrorists and destroying satellites with their cars. 

Now with Fast X on the horizon, the trailer features Jason Momoa playing Dante Reyes, the villain’s son from the 5th movie, seeking revenge for his father’s death by tearing apart Dom’s family. The trailer also shows John Cena driving what can only be described as a bazooka car, a sonic canon being fired at a bunch of vehicles, and Dom driving his car out of a plane onto a highway and then using grappling hooks and NOS to pull two helicopters into each other. Let’s just say this might be the most insane one yet.

So what’s the deal with this? Why did the movies take on such a bizarre and outrageous evolution? Well, with the success of the originals beginning to lose its spark, and the introduction of Justin Lin and Chris Morgan to the franchise, it honestly seemed like the natural conclusion was going to be Fast 5, with its reuniting of most of the cast, above average spectacle, and happy ending for the whole crew. But after that made $626 million at the box office, the studio probably demanded more of these. We are glad they did because it’s just allowed Lin and the future directors, F. Gary Gray and James Wan, to go crazy with spectacle aspect and create one of the only original action franchises left in current cinema landscape. Look, these might have grown to a ridiculous and obscured state of action schlock, but they are genuinely some of the most entertaining movies out right now, and we will gladly take more of these. Until next time, Salute mi Familia and enjoy a nice Corona.