The Fast & Furious film series’ path to success is as wild as any of the adventures that Dominic Torreto and his crew find themselves in. Released in 2001, The Fast and the Furious was a surprise hit for Universal Studios in a summer where they had reliable franchise entries like The Mummy Returns, Jurassic Park III, and American Pie 2. Over twenty years later, Fast & Furious is still going, with nine main film entries, a spin-off, and an animated series on Netflix, and has financially overtaken all those other franchises. It isn’t slowing down anytime soon, with two more films in the Fast Saga set for release in 2023 and 2024, but also more spin-off film series.
MOVIEWEB VIDEO OF THE DAY
It’s been a long road to get here, and one arguably nobody saw coming. In 2006, The Fast and the Furious: Toyko Drift opened at number three at the box office behind Cars in its second weekend and newcomer Nacho Libre. It would have seemed like the franchise was dead, yet just three years later Fast & Furious would at the time set the record for the biggest opening weekend for the month of April. The film series has now grown into the eighth highest-grossing film series in the world. It is the most successful franchise Universal Pictures owns, outgrossing the Jurassic Park/Jurassic World and Despicable Me/Minions series. The ten films have grossed over $6 billion worldwide, outgrossing franchises like the Middle Earth films, the DCEU, and the X-Men films. Yet how did this franchise, which started off being based on a Vibe article titled ‘Racer X’ by Ken Li about illegal street racing in New York, grow into such a worldwide phenomenon?
Justin Lin And Chris Morgan Define The Series
Universal Pictures
Rob Cohen was the director of The Fast and the Furious, and for the sequel, the studio hired legendary filmmaker John Singleton. For the third entry, 2006’s The Fast and the Furious: Toyko Drift, the studio hired Justin Lin, who had directed three films: 1997’s Shopping For Fangs, 2002’s Better Luck Tomorrow, and Annapolis which was released five months before Toyko Drift. Lin begins peppering in major elements that will define the franchise, like moving the series outside of America and bringing in actor Sung Kang as Han, reprising his role from his 2002 film Better Luck Tomorrow, establishing a shared universe that would be carried over in the sequels to unite the various characters. Lin begins to redefine some key characters in later films, particularly Tej (Ludacris) and Roman (Tyrese Gibson), from their characterization in 2 Fast 2 Furious.
While Lin departed the franchise due to not having enough time to shoot Furious 6 and prep Furious 7 and would not return for two more entries, Chirs Morgan stayed on board to write Furious 7, The Fate of the Furious, and Hobbs & Shaw. This is somewhat similar to the Harry Potter film series, where the directors would change but every installment except for Order of the Phoenix was written by Steve Kloves, giving the series a sense of continuity behind the scenes. Morgan did leave the franchise in 2019, but when Lin returned to direct F9 he became one of the screenwriters and also contributed work on the script for Fast X.
James Wan, F. Gary Gray, and David Leitch have all directed films in the series, and while Lin did return for F9 and was set to direct the final two films in the series, he left due to creative differences and was replaced with Louis Letterier. All these directors have been able to bring their own voice to the series, but it is hard to argue that if not for Justin Lin and Chris Morgan the series never would have shifted gears into what it has now become.
The Fast and Furious Franchise Evolved Gradually
The Fast and the Furious might be over 20 years old now, but it is arguably still one of the most famous entries in the franchise, and shaped the cultural perception of the series for over a decade, as it was a film about illegal street racing and the sequels stick with this approach. However, ten years later with the release of Fast Five, the franchise pivots into a heist film. It also unites original stars Vin Diesel, Paul Walker, and Jordana Brewster who had, returned for the previous film with supporting characters from the other sequels. Tyrese Gibson and Ludacris from 2 Fast 2 Furious, Sung Kang from The Fast and the Furious: Toyko Drift, and Gal Gadot, Tego Calderón, and Don Omar from Fast & Furious combined to create the ultimate team: essentially beating The Avengers to uniting a shared cinematic universe by one year. The film series also introduced a great Dwayne Johnson to the cast as Hobbs, a character who would return for three sequels and would eventually get his own spin-off film series.
This refocusing of the series to a heist film made changed the type of action the films could tell. Then Fast & Furious 6, the film series shifts the main characters into the spy genre, and over-the-top action-filled a void in spy films that had been left untapped as the Bourne series and the recent James Bond entries had gone for a more grounded serious approach. Combine this with the fact that each film adds a new dramatic reveal with a long-lost sibling or an unknown child, and the film series is in many ways become a big-budget soap opera, but in the format of a sincere testosterone-filled action series. For audiences who have been there since the beginning, this felt like a gradual evolution, and for those coming on later it felt like the series finally living up to its potential.
Diverse Cast for a Diverse World
While the first two films in the series are American-centric, using Los Angeles and Miami, with Toyko Drift the series moves into a more global scale and the following films would take them to Mexico, Brazil, London, Dubai, and many more locations, making it a globe-trotting franchise bringing interest from audiences all over the world. Domestically, the film series has risen at the box office partially due to the series’ rather forward-looking approach to casting, as for a majority of the film series Paul Walker was the only traditional Caucasian leading man.
As one of the biggest franchises that features a diverse cast of characters with actors of different skin colors and gender in various roles, the film series has connected in a way that other franchises may not have. A study found that 75% of the audience for Furious 7 was non-white audience members. In 2018, a study by the Motion Picture Association of America found that Latino audience members had the highest rate of going to the movies, while African Americans and Asian audience attendance was rising.
This multicultural casting approach was well ahead of the game of many film franchises, and it paid off with a massive increase in the film’s domestic and international grosses. Starting with 2009’s Fast & Furious, the franchise’s domestic and international box office increased with each successive film, where finally the release of 2015’s Furious 7 the film grossed $1 billion internationally alone, with a final worldwide total of $1.5 billion. While the direct sequel, The Fate of the Furious, grossed less than the previous two films domestically, it still grossed $1 billion worldwide. The spin-off film Hobbs and Shaw was the lowest grossing film of the series since 2009 domestically, yet it did still perform exceptional well internationally, and F9 even released during the first phase of theaters reopening during the COVID-19 pandemic managed to draw in $726 million worldwide.
The Focus on Family Helps Fast and Furious Transcend its Subject
The Fast & Furious origins might be in street racing, and the action sequences of the films are defined by cars and vehicular stunts. Yet the franchise has been able to endure and speak to many, even those who are not into cars or came on to the franchise later, because they have found a connection to the film series because of its core theme: family.
While one would lose count of how many times they say family in the film series, it is an important part of the series’ success. This is planted in the first film back in 2001, and uniting the various characters from across the franchise enforces that theme. The Toretto family is of course blood and marriage, but it is also defined by friendship and that central importance of the found family, where people from different backgrounds and different parts of the world can come together. The happy ending the characters are fighting for is the proverbial BBQ at the end where everyone comes together and enjoys a nice meal and a cold beer. In the 21st century, the importance of found family has become a major defining point for Gen X, Millenials, and Gen Z and makes Fast & Furious a film that reflects both its time and place but also the desires of the audience.
The tragic loss of Paul Walker during the filming of Furious 7 really demonstrated this theme for the franchise. In a beautifully fitting end, the two characters that started the film series at opposite ends of the law who became friends and eventually brothers now must part ways. While they go their separate ways, and while Walker might be gone, the audience is assured one important thing: no matter what family is forever and the love of family transcends all. A film series that started out about street racing and seems extremely machismo, become an incredibly sincere reminder that family isn’t just defined by blood, but by love.
