The Best Way To Watch The 'Fast And Furious' Movies

​Welcome to Fan Service, a guide to engaging with gargantuan, lore-heavy franchises. Today: the "Fast and Furious" series' family-driven slow road to success.

Family. If you've already seen one of the later "Fast and Furious" movies, you know why I'd start this article with that word instead of "cars," "nitrous," or "Diesel." If there's one thing the "Fast and Furious" films have pegged their reputation on since ascending to big-money franchise heights, it's the importance of family.

You can be glib about that and crack jokes about blood being thicker than gasoline, or you can step back and take it at face value. The "Fast and Furious" movies are the most sentimental and least cynical of any big budget franchise out there today. People are quick to say they've turned into car-centric superhero flicks, but the average Marvel movie will pause to poke and prod at the tropes of the superhero genre — a "Fast" film keeps the foot on the gas from the first frame through to its climactic full-body hug of vehicular mayhem and soap opera schmaltz. To put it another way, the refrain of "family" is a shortcut to "trust," as in "trust us, audience, and you'll have a good time at the movies."

That family, and viewers' trust in said family, is built slowly and carefully over the course of the eight "Fast and Furious" films. From the series' earliest installments it seems downright implausible that the series could ever cohere into something with a confident identity all its own, and yet it does. They're fun, (increasingly) dumb popcorn movies with heart made in a studio system that seems (increasingly) set on stripping any idiosyncrasies from its output. Given the choice between comic book movies, pointless reboots, and the offspring of the silly "Point Break" rehash about California street racers, I'll take the street racers any day of the week.

Ready to go for a ride?

How 2 Watch Them All

First, the elephant in the room: the notoriously screwy timeline of the "Fast" series. Yes, it is kind of amazing that the third and most tangential film in the series, "Tokyo Drift," takes place after "Fast & Furious 6." Still, contrary to other people's suggestions, you shouldn't watch the series in chronological order.

Watching the "Fast" films in the order they were released is the best way to go since it smoothly tracks their evolution from mid-budget action flicks to tentpole blockbusters. If you really want to experience the story in full, you should include Justin Lin's "Better Luck Tomorrow" somewhere in your order. Here, I've put it after the sixth "Fast" film since that's the last one Lin has directed up to this point and it's the last to feature the character who debuted in "Better Luck Tomorrow."

Here's how you should watch the "Fast and Furious" movies:

• The Fast and the Furious
• 2 Fast 2 Furious
• The Fast and the Furious: Tokyo Drift
• Los Bandoleros¹
• Fast & Furious
• Fast Five
• Fast & Furious 6
• Better Luck Tomorrow
• Furious 7
• The Fate of the Furious

The only entry I've left off this list is "The Turbo Charged Prelude for 2 Fast 2 Furious," a short film bridging the first and second movies. It's so cheap and forgettable that it might as well be made to play in the background of a "Law and Order" scene where the script called for a TV playing "something like 'The Fast and the Furious'" on it. There are much, much better ways to spend 6.5 minutes of your life.

A Trilogy About Street Racing? Like That'll Ever Work

Sci-fi and fantasy franchises aside, "Fast and Furious" probably seems like the least likely blockbuster franchise to be based (very, very loosely) on real events. In 1998, Vibe Magazine published Kenneth Li's "Racer X," a profile of NYC drag racer Rafael Estevez. It's a fun story: a guy from Washington Heights obsessively tunes his humble Honda Civic, trouncing rival after rival in legal and illegal drag races before moving on to set a record on a track in New Jersey in front of new- and old-school racers alike.

"The Fast and the Furious" veers off the road laid by the article from its very first frame. When "Racer X" made its way to Neal Moritz, Rob Cohen and Gary Scott Thompson (the film's producer, director and writer), they liked the idea of putting street racing culture on the screen, but the article's story wouldn't cut it. The first "Fast" pretty much rips its plot off from Kathryn Bigelow's "Point Break" wholesale. It starts with a thrilling highway truck robbery², and after the first act introduction to the street racing world comes the "twist" reveal of racer Brian O'Conner's (Paul Walker) undercover investigation. Los Angeles' best racer Dominic Toretto, Vin Diesel's character inspired by Rafael Estevez, is the prime suspect in the joint LAPD/FBI investigation of the truck heists.

At least when it's blatantly copying other movies, the first "Fast" does it well. For starters, "Point Break" is one of the best cheesy action movies ever made³, and if you're going to steal you should steal from the best. There's also a little more to the bromance between Walker and Diesel than in "Point Break's" Keanu Reeves/Patrick Swayze dynamic. "The Fast and the Furious" also takes cues from cinema's great car movies: the final chase scene lifts heavily from 1968's "Bullitt," the Steve McQueen-lead classic.

There's also a handful of more unique elements to "The Fast and the Furious" that help bolster the movie's appeal. First, the movie does get some genuine street racing culture on-screen. The pre-race party scenes in LA and at the regrettably-named Race Wars are unforgivably gratuitous, but most of the extras present are real California street racers. On top of that, most of the cars in those scenes actually belong to those racers (a nice bonus from moving the action from New York to the tuner mecca of southern California).

The movie also had a fairly diverse cast of fresh faces. In 2001, most of the movie's cast was fairly unknown. Diesel and Walker only had a few leading roles between them, as did Jordana Brewster (Mia Toretto, Dom's sister/Brian's love interest) and Michelle Rodriguez (racer Letty Ortiz). The line-up of rising stars set it comfortably apart from the previous summer's remake of "Gone In 60 Seconds" starring Nic Cage and Angelina Jolie, giving "The Fast and the Furious" the right amount of newness.⁴

In its first weekend at the box office, the first "Fast" dethroned the original "Tomb Raider" and made back its modest budget. At that time, Universal Pictures' only other viable actions franchises were "The Mummy" and "Jurassic Park," and after the third film of the latter series got a tepid response later that same summer, forging ahead with another "Fast" film had to have been an easy decision for the studio.

Unfortunately, 2003's "2 Fast 2 Furious" is a real sophomore slump of a sequel. Vin Diesel refused to star and the reworked script that resulted only kept Paul Walker's Brian O'Conner as a returning main character. Tyrese, Ludacris and Eva Mendes round out the rest of the sequel's main cast while John Singleton — best known for writing and directing "Boyz n the Hood" — took over directing duties. "2 Fast" makes the first movie look positively subtle and restrained by comparison. Between the flying car jumps, electric harpoons and ejector seats it layers on too many bullshit elements in one go. Walker and Tyrese do an alright job with the absurd material, but without Diesel, Brewster or Rodriguez in the picture "2 Fast" also feels lacking for charming characters. At least it's fun counting how many times they say "bro" in the movie.

"2 Fast" put the series on shaky ground leading up to its third installment, "Tokyo Drift." With no returning cast, director or writer, producer Neal Moritz had to put together a "Fast" movie from scratch. The absence of familiar stars is probably why "Tokyo Drift" ranks low in so many fans' appraising of the series, but it's the film that introduced the person responsible for breathing life back into the franchise: director Justin Lin.

Lin, a Taiwanese-American director then known best for his indie hit⁵ "Better Luck Tomorrow," turned out to be a great pick for "Tokyo Drift" and the franchise as a whole. First, "Tokyo Drift" is arguably the best "Fast" film in terms of honoring the racing culture it depicts. Keiichi Tsuchiya, Japan's real-life "Drift King," makes a cameo and serves as a stunt driver. Second, Lin takes care to avoid antiquated, orientalizing tropes in the narrative (working from a script by Chris Morgan) and imagery of the film — "Drift's" depiction of Japanese culture is more in line with anime like "Initial D" than with something like "Memoirs of a Geisha."

Yes, the main character of "Tokyo Drift" is an American guy named Sean with a southern drawl so thick it puts McConaughey to shame, but it's not just about a white dude getting better at drifting than everyone else. At its core, "Tokyo Drift" is a movie about the expatriate experience. Sean Boswell (Lucas Black), Twinkie (Bow Wow), Neela (Nathalie Kelley) and Han (Sung Kang) are all transplants in Tokyo's underground racing scene. They find their community in each other, making "Drift" the first "Fast" movie to really hit the theme of family hard.⁶

There are plenty of cringey things in "Drift" (the opening race with a girl as the "prize," for one) and a handful of guilty pleasures (the needle-drops are all on point, and Sonny Chiba as a Yakuza boss is glorious), but it has real heart that the antics of "2 Fast" sorely lacked. That difference must've made an impression on Diesel, who makes a cameo as Toretto at the end of the picture. According to Lin, Diesel only agreed to come back after the two of them had a long discussion at Diesel's house about the movie's themes and a possible future for the franchise that would establish the bond between Toretto and Han.

Without "Tokyo Drift," Vin Diesel wouldn't have returned to the franchise. Diesel only asked for the rights to the "Riddick" series in exchange for his cameo — presumably, he thought the "Riddick" series stood a better chance of becoming his signature role. Soon enough, however, Lin and Diesel had the opportunity to start putting the plans they hatched poolside at Diesel's into motion.

Family Reunion

A brief aside: here's where the film naming conventions get really silly. Up until this point, it's been fairly easy to track: "The Fast and the Furious" is clearly the first movie, "2 Fast 2 Furious" is the irresistibly/stupidly titled second installment, and "The Fast and the Furious: Tokyo Drift" does well to imply it's a side story thanks to the colon. The fourth movie, 2009's "Fast & Furious," is… what? A total reboot? A sequel? Who can tell? Things only get stranger from here: "Fast Five," "Fast & Furious 6," "Furious 7," "The Fate of the Furious"… no two installments in the series follow the same naming conventions and I hope it never stops.

The sequel/reboot confusion stemming from the title "Fast & Furious" is appropriate though, as the film sort of fulfills both roles. Justin Lin and Chris Morgan of "Tokyo Drift" return as director and screenwriter, along with the main cast of the first movie: Diesel, Walker, Brewster and Rodriguez. The rest of Dom Toretto's LA street racing crew from the first movie is absent. We see a snippet of Toretto's outlaw life in the Dominican Republic with Letty, Han and a bickering duo played by Puerto Rican rappers Don Omar and Tego Calderon — but once the action reaches LA, the film narrows its focus down to the trio of Brian, Mia and Dom, whose history from the first film is quickly summed-up for the uninitiated.

At the same time, the action is turned up a notch or twenty: the aforementioned Dominican Republic scene kicks off the movie and features one of the series' most implausible action sequences to-date. Brian's now an FBI agent chasing after international criminals, giving an excuse for a "Bourne"-esque on-foot chase through LA. Instead of a 10-second drag race down an empty stretch of road, the marquee street race in "Fast & Furious" weaves through thick LA traffic. With all these elements combined, the fourth film marks where the aspirations of the "Fast" movies change. They're no longer not just about racing anymore… they're not really about racing at all.

Moving away from street racing was a plainly intentional move with "Fast & Furious," but it's not clear whether Lin, Moritz or Diesel saw the fourth film as the full execution of that plan or as the set-up. "Fast & Furious" makes good on reuniting the original cast, but everyone plays their roles a little too straight-faced. Some of it feels necessary — it makes sense that things would be icy between Dom, Brian and Mia after the first film — but where the first movie was embarrassingly cheesy, "Fast & Furious" feels like it's straining to be dark and edgy. It's a break in tone that suggested Lin and company weren't sure exactly what to do with the weird little trilogy they had on their hands. Thankfully, they figured it out with the next film.

2011's "Fast Five," directed by Lin and written by Morgan, is where the series' identity finally gels. It trades the color-corrected blues of the previous movie's LA for the sun-soaked locales of Rio de Janeiro. "Five" honors the series' history up to that point by expanding the "Fast" family to include members from each of the past installments, including Han ("Tokyo Drift"), Tej and Roman (Tyrese and Ludacris in "2 Fast") and Gisele (Gal Gadot in "Fast & Furious"). The film acknowledges the series' sidelining of street racing by skipping over an entire race in a single cut for a laugh. Why waste time on that when the gang's all reunited in Rio for a $100 million dollar heist?

The cherry on top of "Fast Five" is the addition of Dwayne "The Rock" Johnson as DSS agent Luke Hobbs, a man hellbent on capturing Dom Toretto. Were it not for a comment left on Vin Diesel's absurdly devotional Facebook fan page, the role might've gone to Tommy Lee Jones.⁷ While the beating heart of "Fast Five" is on display in Dom's toast to family, the series finds its full-throttle commitment to audience-pleasing cheese when Dom and Hobbs put aside their differences by clasping each other's beefy forearms.

Having finally nailed the tone of its characters and execution of the action, "Fast Five" became of first of the series to crack the top 10 highest grossing movies of its year. It took them five movies to get there, but the "Fast and Furious" series was finally putting up numbers to rival Hollywood's biggest franchises. Plans were hatched for two sequels to be filmed back to back — initially, Lin was set to direct both parts, respectively named "Fast" (yup) and the second "Furious" (really).

Plans for a two-parter were scuttled for something a little more straightforward: Lin stayed on to direct "Fast & Furious 6," while James Wan ("Saw") signed on to direct the seventh installment. Universal still wanted them to come out a year apart, so production on the seventh started during post-production on the sixth.

"Fast & Furious 6" (2013) caps off the franchise's second trilogy and the Justin Lin era with fitting flair and character finesse. It builds on everything great about "Fast Five," including the ensemble antics and ridiculously destructive (IRL) action, while also sowing the seeds for the series' next arc. Not content to leave a good idea untouched, Lin combines the planned endings for the scrapped "Fast"/"Furious" two-parter into a third act double-play with a tank and a massive airplane (The latter scene necessitates some extreme suspension of disbelief while the family chases the plane across 28 miles of continuous runway). In his last act as the series' steward, Lin ties the end of "6" into the events of "Tokyo Drift", allowing the timeline to catch up with his first contribution.

Lin's last installment went on to break more records for the "Fast" series, setting expectations high for the planned summer 2014 release of Wan's "Furious 7."

With And Without Walker

On November 30th, 2013, Paul Walker and his friend Roger Rodas left a charity event in Walker's Porsche Carrera GT. Both men had professional racing experience — outside the "Fast" films, Walker was enamored with cars. The Porsche was traveling over the speed limit when Rodas lost control, ultimately colliding with a pole. When witnesses arrived on the scene, the car was aflame. Walker and Rodas both died in the accident.

Universal suspended production of "Furious 7," giving the cast and crew time to mourn Walker and assess the movie's fate. Walker had filmed about half his scenes in the movie prior to the accident, including several key dialogue scenes. Given the choice between scrapping the picture and completing it with Walker's scenes, Universal opted for the latter.

"Furious 7" hit theaters on April 3rd, 2015. The only major rewrites concerned Brian and Mia's storyline. I'm going to go ahead and spoil the movie here by telling you that Brian isn't killed off. Walker's scenes were completed with his brothers Cody and Caleb as stand-ins and the film ends with a touching tribute to Walker.

James Wan faced an extraordinarily tough balancing act: even with cars flying through the air, Michelle Rodriguez sparring against Ronda Rousey and Kurt Russell stealing scenes as the leader of a shadowy US intelligence agency, "Furious 7" manages to tell fuller arcs for the original four (Dom, Brian, Mia and Letty) than most of the previous films. The only clear concession to the seemingly unmanageable number of characters and plot points is the sidelining of Luke Hobbs, who spends most of "Furious 7" recovering from an assault by the film's main villain Deckard (Jason Statham).

Though it was eclipsed by "Jurassic World" and "The Force Awakens" later that same year, "Furious 7" was a massive financial success for Universal. In early 2016, Diesel announced release dates for three more "Fast and Furious" films, adding that the series would end with the 10th.

While the buzz surrounding the seventh film veered between the morbid and melancholic, the lead-up to "The Fate of the Furious" got gossipy. All seemed well at the start: F. Gary Gray of "The Italian Job" (2003) and "Straight Outta Compton" signed on to direct and everybody took a crack at "Fast and Furiosa" jokes when Charlize Theron was announced as the film's lead villain. Then came August 8th, 2016: the day of the "candy ass" Instagram.

Dwayne Johnson declined to name who he accused of unprofessional behavior in his now-deleted post, but two days later the news came out: Johnson was upset with Diesel. Vanity Fair made a detailed timeline of the duo's feud in the lead-up to "Fate's" release. While Diesel was quick to assert his brotherly love for Johnson on the red carpet, Johnson kept his comments pretty business-like.

WIthout spoiling too much of "The Fate of the Furious," the on-set tension between Diesel and Johnson is pretty clear in the film itself. The men share only a tiny amount of screentime, with entire scenes staged in such a way that they're not seen interacting in the same location — and who is to say the others weren't green screened? The eighth film has its highs (the opening race in Cuba, Dom racing a missile) and its lows (Theron's villain Cipher is about as far from Furiosa as you can get), but the thing that hurts the film most is the evident maneuvering around Diesel and Johnson's egos. It's ironic that "Fate" concerns an engineered family feud when it's the real-life dispute that drags things down. The tension does distract from Walker's absence, but not in the way you'd hope.

The Future

So, is it all doom-and-gloom for the "Fast" family? Well, not entirely.

The Hobbs/Deckard scenes in "Fate" made more than a few people raise an eyebrow, as Universal was pretty clearly testing the waters for a potential spin-off. The Dwayne Johnson and Jason Statham spin-off was confirmed in October 2017 with a catch: it's slated for 2019, which pushes the ninth "Fast" back another year. The same day the spin-off was announced, Diesel made a not-so-subtle Instagram post indicating his feelings:

Brotherhood…

A post shared by Vin Diesel (@vindiesel) on Oct 5, 2017 at 6:57pm PDT

If Diesel's post was a lit match, Tyrese went ahead and poured gasoline on the fire (ahem, #CandyAssBitchMade). The Dwayne versus Tyrese drama continued for about a month before Tyrese announced he and Johnson had buried the hatchet.

Meanwhile, Vin made an announcement of his own: Justin Lin and Jordana Brewster will return for the ninth and tenth installments of the series.

Am I happy to see the last year of "Fast" buzz defined by some rich dudes feuding on Instagram? No. Do I hope the ninth and tenth movies give better material to the women of the franchise, as Michelle Rodriguez does? Yes! Am I excited for the Hobbs/Deckard spin-off? Eh. Do I think it's good news that Justin Lin is setting aside "Space Jam 2" to finish off the "Fast" series? Yes. Finally, will I ever apologize for loving these big, dumb, glorious movies? No.⁸

You don't turn your back on family. Even when they do.​