The Fast and the Furious / YMMV

Entries with their own YMMV pages:

The franchise as a whole

Alternative Character Interpretation: For the matter of the Shaw brothers, Owen mentioned that he got his code of 'Precision' from Deckard. That trait made him into the heartless bastard he is in the sixth movie, but come the seventh, Deckard forgets all about that and just goes all Roaring Rampage of Revenge on Dom's crew because they crippled Owen, alone. Does this mean the Shaw brothers have some Hidden Depths within them, and that deep down they're not really that different from Dom when it comes to the importance of family? Which is ultimately proven right in later films.
Awesome Music:
- Almost every song in the series. Ludacris? Teriyaki Boyz? N.E.R.D? Don Omar? deadmau5? Cypress Hill? Peaches? Huh-uh.
- "See You Again" from the seventh movie, which is a Tear Jerker if ever there was one.
- And, of course, there are the soundtracks composed by BT^note The Fast and the Furious , David Arnold^note 2 Fast 2 Furious , Brian Tyler^note, Lucas Vidal^note Fast and Furious 6 and Tyler Bates^note Hobbs and Shaw .
Base-Breaking Character: From the sixth film onwards, Roman became a controversial character due to a perceived decay on the quality of his comic relief and the fact that he is the most Static Character in the entire franchise.
Broken Base: The franchise's famous tendency to insert the events of every installment into a bigger picture in the next (often in a heavy-handed way or using Retcon in plenty) is considered both a sign of ingenuity on the writers's part and an inevitable source of controversial and unexpected plot twists, if not downright Ass Pull moves. The discussion reached its peak at the eight film, which puts a lot of effort to turn the irredeemable villains of the two previous into heroic unwitting pawns at the expense of their characterization.
Common Knowledge:
- The "Remember when they used to steal DVD players" meme, since it was actually VHS (a cassette tape video format which went on decline by the time the first movie hits theatres) players. Which actually makes the Serial Escalation even worse.
- In a similar vein, the "A todo gas" meme in Latin America, which holds that purportedly the first film was released under that name in Spain, and is usually held as an example of "Blind Idiot" Translation. In reality, the first film was released in Spain as The Fast and the Furious: A todo gas, meaning that if anything it was actually a case of The Foreign Subtitle, and while the second film largely retained the same format (2 Fast 2 Furious: A todo gas 2), it was dropped by the time of The Fast and the Furious: Tokyo Drift (which was titled The Fast and the Furious: Tokyo Race), and since Fast & Furious, it has simply titled the films "Fast & Furious [number of entry]", and ironically, it has retained that format even when the original title strayed away from the franchise's name (such as Furious 7 and The Fate of the Furious being simply titled Fast & Furious 7 and Fast & Furious 8).
Complete Monster: Cipher & Brixton Lore. See those pages for details.
Critical Dissonance: Every film in the franchise, though downplayed with the later entries as reception of the franchise seems to generally become more positive (compare the middling 36% 2 Fast 2 Furious gets compared to the solidly positive 81% of The Fate of the Furious). Each film has a higher audience score on Rotten Tomatoes than the actual critic score. The fifth, sixth, seventh, and eighth films have audience scores in the 70-80%s.
Designated Hero: Dom and his crew frequently use plans that cause massive collateral damage and put innocent people in danger, but the films gloss over any potential casualties. In Fast Five they flat out murder over a dozen police officers when they break into the police station and escape with the vault full of money, and the movie glosses over saying the police are all corrupt. And yet Dom insists that they aren't killers. To be fair, in the sixth film, Dom and the crew (plus Letty, whose on Owen Shaw's team) are shocked when Shaw hijacks a tank and begins running over people, leading them to try to stop him from hurting anyone else by stopping the tank. However, even this just makes things even crazier when they continue to engage in plans that put civilians in needless danger.
Even Better Sequel: Fast Five and Furious 7 have the highest Rotten Tomatoes ratings in the series at 78% and 82%, respectively (compared to 53% for the first installment).
Evil Is Cool: The Shaw brothers are considered the most badass villains in the franchise and are even considered among some of the best action movie villains in a long time.
Germans Love David Hasselhoff: From the beginning, the series has also been known for having a large and very dedicated Latino fanbase.
Growing the Beard: The first four movies had their fans, but it was generally a niche audience and they received mixed-to-negative reviews. With Fast Five, however, reception rose dramatically, both from critics and the public, a trend that continued to the next movies.
Harsher in Hindsight: Paul Walker (who played Brian O'Conner) being killed in a car crash becomes one considering that speeding cars is the bread-and-butter of the franchise, even after the street racing aspect was phased out. It becomes worse when you consider how many times Walker's character managed to escape or at the very least come away uninjured from serious accidents and explosions in the movies. Even worse, in fact, considering that Walker died on a Porsche when Brian and gang usually drive similar luxury cars.
Hilarious in Hindsight:
- CinemaSins poked at the apparent overlap with The Expendables franchise with the introduction of Jason Statham. Now Furious 7 one-upped them by adding Ronda Rousey!
- All these jokes about the franchise going to outer space due to how over-the-top it’s become lately finally pays off as the ninth movie has Roman and Tej go to outer space for the climax.
It's Popular, Now It Sucks!: As the franchise became more critically and commercially successful, it moved away from car culture and street-racing to heist-movies and spy thrillers, leaving a very vocal portion of the fanbase unhappy, believing that the cars and street-racing were the initial draw.
Just Here for Godzilla: Or rather "just here for the cars, the hot women and the nonstop action".
Magnificent Bastard:
- Dominic "Dom" Toretto would become the most brilliant and skilled street racer after beating his brother, Jakob, in a race and exiling him for his role in their father's death. Perpetrating many high-speed semi hijackings, Dom persuades Brian O’Connor to give him his car to escape from the police. Returning to Los Angeles to attend Letty Ortiz’s funeral, Dom tracks down her supposed murderer and kills him while bringing his boss to justice. Escaping prison and traveling to Rio De Janeiro, Dom plots to steal 100 million dollars from Hernan Reyes letting Luke Hobbs kill Reyes while they steal his money. Learning that Letty is still alive, Dom is able to get Letty to turn against Owen Shaw and gets Hobbs to clear their names for helping him stop Owen. When Owen’s brother Deckard hunts Dom and his crew, Dom works with Mr. Nobody to defeat Deckard and his partner, Mose Jakande. Blackmailed by Cipher into betraying his team and help her obtain nuclear codes, Dom schemes behind her back, having Owen and Deckard recuse Dom’s son from Cipher before foiling her plans. Facing Jakob, the two would join forces to stop Otto and Cipher before Dom reconciles with his brother, giving him his car to escape from authorities.
- Han Seoul-Oh started off as a petty criminal during his teenage years before becoming one of the series' most charismatic and well-known figures upon reaching adulthood. Joining Dominic Toretto’s driving crew Han would collaborates in Dom’s many heists and plans may it be stealing fuel tanks from a truck and 100 million dollars from Hernan Reyes in the fourth and fifth films respectively to bring Letty Ortiz back and stop Owen Shaw from stealing the CPU in the sixth film while developing a romantic relationship with Gisele Yashar throughout the movies. Traveling to Tokyo after Gisele’s death, Han opens his own garage, becoming Sean Boswell’s Driving Mentor and forms business relations with Takashi and the Yakuza while stealing money behind their backs. Though seemingly killed by Deckard Shaw, its revealed in F9 that he collaborated with Mr. Nobody to fake his death to keep Elle safe from rogue agents pursuing her before resurfacing to reunite with his team and rescue Elle.
Memetic Badass: Dom. He doesn't need anything but family to kick someone's ass.
Memetic Mutation:
- I'M IN YOUR FACE.
- Every time Vin Diesel uses the word "Family" or educating other characters about The Bro Code. This really took off in 2021 when rumors circulated that Universal were considering a Fast and Furious crossover with Jurassic World of all things, leading to people inserting Dom into various events in other films and having him reassure everyone that nothing was stronger than family.
  - "I don't need X. I got Family. Nothing stronger than Family."
- In Fast And Furious, you don't have a 5-Gear Manual, you have a 26-Gear Manual. ^Explanation
- Fans comparing the earlier films to the later ones often comment something along the lines of, "Remember when this series was about stealing DVD players?" Though the actual target was VHS players.
- A todo gas. ^Explanation
- Before the title was revealed as Fast X, the fandom had pretty universally decided that the tenth movie needed to be titled Fas10 Your Seatbelts.
My Real Daddy: While the original movie was directed by Rob Cohen and the early films were written by Gary Scott Thompson, most people credit director Justin Lin (with James Wan also receiving some credit as of the seventh film) and writer Chris Morgan for really bringing the franchise to the heights it's known for today.
Narm:
- Vin Diesel's constant turning around in a badass way can get silly after a while.
- The deaths tend to be pretty over the top that they often cross into this, but the death of Jack Toretto in the opening of F9, via flashback, is such an over-the-top crash that it ruins the genuine feeling of trauma it's supposed to have.
Narm Charm: At times, the series can be so utterly ridiculous that it's hard not to enjoy it.
- Special mention goes to Dom's repeated gushing about "family"; it's pointless glurge that early on was intended to add some sympathetic traits to him but mostly just created a tonal contrast to the otherwise hypermasculine tough-guy feel of the character. At this point, however, it's became such a Memetic Mutation (largely because of how narmy it is) that it's became part of the series' charm.
No Problem with Licensed Games: The 2006 PS2 and PSP game, made by Eutechnyx, though a bit cookie cutter, is an above-average open-world racing game set in Japanese expressways that basically combines Tokyo Xtreme Racer with Need for Speed: Underground (or Midnight Club).
Padding: Most of the scenes in between car chases/races, especially in the early films, do nothing to advance the plot and could easily be removed without affecting the story.
The Problem with Licensed Games: Fast & Furious Crossroads, despite being developed by acclaimed racing game developer Slightly Mad Studios and having of some the franchise's main actors among the cast, has been criticized for its weak and short story, heavy-handed linearity, low difficulty, bored voice acting, dated graphics, bad controls, poor audio design, glitchy animations, Game Breaking Bugs, and lack of features such as car customization, manual transmission, different camera angles or even a speedometer, all while being priced as a $60 AAA title. It drew comparison with Eutechnyx's 2013 Ride to Hell: Retribution, especially how both Eutechnyx and Slightly Mad Studios were acclaimed racing game developers.
Signature Song: Wiz Khalifa's "See You Again" is far and away the most popular and most successful song to have ever been featured in the series. For the Gaiden Movie Tokyo Drift, the titular song by the Teriyaki Boyz is arguably a close second.
Shocking Moments: The first trailer for The Fate of the Furious. Notably Dom's (apparent) Face–Heel Turn, the team's Enemy Mine with Shaw, the submarine, and the finale of Cipher kissing Dom in front of Letty.
- The trailer for Hobbs & Shaw takes the franchise's continuous disengagement from reality to unforeseen levels by featuring an actual supervillain as the antagonist. As in, one with actual superpowers, and not just implicit ones.
- And then the trailer for F9: The Fast Saga pops up with a new bombshell: HAN IS ALIVE.
Spiritual Adaptation:
- The later films have been compared as a throwback to over the top action movies of The '80s to the point that it could be considered as a better Expendables movie than the actual The Expendables movies (and sharing a star in Jason Statham doesn't hurt).
- The car stunts and chases have also been compared to the Grand Theft Auto video game series.
- Some have compared it to G.I. Joe, given it started out realistic before amping up into over-the-top insanity — with the most recent installments bringing in legitimate global-scale threats and actual supervillains.
- It began as grounded in reality gangster films before ramping up the weirdness with each installment, and features a group of protagonists who started out as anti-villain criminals before transitioning to outright heroic characters. This has made some call it the perfect Saints Row movie.
Special Effect Failure: It's pretty obvious in the first four films when CGI is used for the cars. The fifth and sixth films are much less obvious about it. The best (worst?) examples of this are the race at the beginning of 2 Fast 2 Furious and the tanker heist in Fast & Furious.
Unintentional Period Piece: The early films were a loving revue of extreme sports culture at the Turn of the Millennium, especially tuner/car racing culture. Later films in the series (starting with the fourth) tend to be less obvious about it beyond the characters' choice of Cool Cars, and seem to be more of an homage to the era. It may seem a bit bizarre that the original film's main conflict is over the theft of VHS players, which not only went completely out of style, but are so old that most people misremember this detail and think it was DVD players (which themselves have mostly (but not completely) gone out of style a decade later in the face of emerging next-gen media formats like Blu-Ray, 4K and streaming).

YMMV / The Fast and the Furious

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The franchise as a whole