Fast and Furious

While fans have mostly been enthusiastic about the expanded role of Jason Statham in The Fate of the Furious, there is one thing that has stuck in their collective craw. While Statham’s character has the movie’s best moments, he never stops to address the elephant in the room: Shaw did kill Sung Kang’s Han, perhaps the most beloved character in the franchise and (we assumed) an unforgivable offense for a movie built on family. Will the filmmakers address this in a future installment of the Fast and the Furious films? Or, perhaps more intriguing, could Sung Kang find his way back into the franchise?

Let’s rank all nine Fast and Furious movies. Ride or die.

You surely know that Paul Walker tragically passed away in 2013. But did you know that in order to finish Furious 7 while giving his character, Brian O’Conner, a fitting sendoff, the creators of Furious 7 had to use a combination of digital effects and body doubles, which included Walker’s brothers, Caleb and Cody? That’s just one of the fast facts featured in the latest episode of You Think You Know Movies!

For years, one of the internet’s dirty little secrets has been that people really enjoy The Fate of the Furious: Tokyo Drift. A healthy flop at the time of its release  —  the film’s $60 million gross is half that of 2 Fast 2 Furious, the second-lowest grossing movie in the Fast and the Furious franchise  —  Tokyo Drift has climbed steadily back into fans’ favor due to the lasting appeal of Sung Kang’s Han Lue and a bit of chronological trickery in a later film that boosted this one’s reputation. It’s amazing how much better a film gets when you stop being mad at it for failing to bring back any of the main characters.

In the beginning, there were illegal street races and high speed heists, and Vin Diesel looked upon that which had created and saw that it was good. But as the franchise continued, the stakes became a little more… let’s say a little more insane. Cars parachuted out of the sky. Characters leapt their vehicles between skyscrapers. Tanks exchanged missiles with a submarine. As each movie has progressively upped the wow-factor of the franchise, there seems to be only one natural outcome for the Fast and the Furious family: they’re definitely going to head into space.

If you, like most of us, live in a capitalist society and are sometimes distracted from an action movie by the thought of how much it must have cost to clean up after that car chase or that oil drum explosion, you’re not alone. A couple folks took it upon themselves to estimate exactly how much damage the Fast & Furious Family has accrued over the last seven movies, and the final tally might make you a little squeamish.

With the eighth on the way and two more planned sequels after that, it seems like the Fast & Furious franchise will never end. And you know what, if Vin Diesel, The Rock, and Jason Statham want to keep making movies where the good guys win by driving quickly and angrily, more power to them! Diesel himself revealed during CinemaCon on Wednesday, after an emotional tribute to the late Paul Walker, that The Fate of the Furious is the first in a new trilogy of films.

Much like Disney has Disney on Ice and James Cameron has all the souls of the acrobats in Cirque du Soleil trapped in a glass jar so they’ll pretend to be blue aliens forever, Fast & Furious is bringing its mindblowing automotive stunts to the stage. Unfortunately, it’s not a musical (fingers still crossed), but a live arena show that’ll tour the world starting January of next year.

More than fast cars or fistfights or crime-committing while crime-fighting, the Fast and Furious movies are about one thing: family. And family, as we all know, means nobody gets left behind or forgotten. Vin Diesel really wants to make sure we don’t forget about the late Paul Walker’s character Brian O’Connor, because apparently he wants to find some way to bring him back.

Veteran actor and beloved curmudgeon Tommy Lee Jones has occasionally raised a few eyebrows over the course of his career with roles that defy his Quite Serious persona (Batman Forever, for example) and prove that he’s no different from any other working actor (he likes paychecks, for example). As it turns out, we were robbed of seeing Jones tackle another surprising role, but what we were given in exchange is so much better.

To honor the 15th anniversary of the movie that started it all, Universal is re-releasing The Fast and the Furious in theaters nationwide. Revisiting your introduction to Dom, Letty, Brian and the magical world of NOS should help make the wait for Fast 8 a little easier, but you’ll only have a limited time to see the original film on the big screen.

The Fast and Furious franchise wouldn’t be where it is now without Vin Diesel. The films didn’t even kick into high gear until Diesel returned for 2009’s Fast and Furious, and the box-office numbers have been climbing astronomically since then. To say Universal owes Vin Diesel a gigantic debt of gratitude is an understatement, but exactly how much do they owe him? Would they actually let Diesel, who has little experience directing a movie let alone directing a movie on the scale of a Fast and Furious film, behind the camera of Fast and Furious 8? According to a new report, this may be what Vin Diesel wants and Universal is terrified.