Why The Fast and the Furi­ous is the most impor­tant fran­chise around

It’s easy to mock The Fast and the Furi­ous fran­chise. On the sur­face it looks to be no more than a col­lec­tion of films about large men in small tank tops using fast cars to com­mit ridicu­lous crimes. The girls are hot, the cars are hot­ter and the cheesy lines melt on both to cre­ate a fon­due of B‑movie badness.

Yet there’s method in the bad­ness. Not only is the fran­chise incred­i­bly ambi­tious, it is also a won­der­ful­ly human. For 16 years and count­ing the series has exper­i­ment­ed with form and con­tent, shift­ing the focus away from fast cars to the peo­ple inside them, and exhibit­ing an uncan­ny abil­i­ty to turn seem­ing­ly irre­deemable flaws into core strengths.

This is no more evi­dent than in the franchise’s approach to diver­si­ty. While the first three films fol­low the tra­di­tion­al white male hero nar­ra­tive, the next four set about com­plete­ly dis­man­tling it. Bri­an (Paul Walk­er) is still the all-Amer­i­can white male hero through­out, but from 2009’s Fast & Furi­ous to 2015’s Fast & Furi­ous 7 he’s the only white male hero in a large, increas­ing­ly diverse crew com­pris­ing Kore­an, African-Amer­i­can, Israeli and Brazil­ian actors.

The minori­ties that were play­ing sec­ond fid­dle in the ear­li­er films get come to the fore in Fast Five, and receive even more promi­nent roles in the sub­se­quent sequels. In these lat­er films, Tyrese Gibson’s Roman and Ludacris’ Tej are no longer the African-Amer­i­can side­kicks they were in 2 Fast 2 Furi­ous; Sung Kang’s Han is no longer the wise Asian teacher he was in Tokyo Drift. They are now Brian’s equals, both hier­ar­chi­cal­ly and, more impor­tant­ly, narratively.

This diver­si­ty is not lim­it­ed to the cast. Fast and Furi­ous 8 is direct­ed by Straight Out­ta Comp­ton​’s F Gary Gray; Boyz n the Hood​’s John Sin­gle­ton direct­ed 2 Fast 2 Furi­ous; Furi­ous 7 was helmed by James Wan, a Malaysian-born Aus­tralian direc­tor; while fran­chise instal­ments three to six were direct­ed by Tai­wanese Amer­i­can Justin Lin, who gave John Cho and Sung Kang their first major roles.

In recent years Star Wars: The Force Awak­ens and Rogue One have been praised for fea­tur­ing women, peo­ple of colour and minori­ties in lead roles, there­by shat­ter­ing the notion that only white men can car­ry block­busters. How­ev­er, 2011’s Fast Five went one step fur­ther by prov­ing that it’s pos­si­ble to cre­ate a huge block­buster fran­chise while active­ly pro­mot­ing diver­si­ty among the cast and crew.

It also showed that you can make mul­ti-bil­lion dol­lar fran­chis­es while tak­ing cre­ative risks – some­thing that can­not be said for the Mar­vel Cin­e­mat­ic Uni­verse, which is safe­ly the biggest fran­chise around today. The Fast and the Furi­ous films start­ed out by telling sto­ries about street rac­ing in Los Ange­les before trans­form­ing into a glo­be­trot­ting heist movie fran­chise star­ring The Rock. Who’d have thought 16 years ago that Vin Diesel, an actor with the emo­tion­al depth of dry­ing cement, would one day be lin­ing up along­side Char­l­ize Theron and Helen Mir­ren in a film whose pre­de­ces­sor earned $1.5 bil­lion at the glob­al box office?

How many fran­chis­es can claim to be so ambi­tious, so eager to evolve? How many fran­chis­es would be will­ing to exper­i­ment with time and bend their whole chronol­o­gy to allow a sec­ondary char­ac­ter, Han, who dies in the third film, to appear in the sub­se­quent three as a core mem­ber? It is tes­ta­ment to the inge­nu­ity of the Fast and the Furi­ous that his unex­pect­ed return in the fourth film forces us to reap­praise, even redeem, Tokyo Drift – a film whose obvi­ous flaws are obscured behind the now much big­ger picture.

But just what is the big­ger pic­ture? The ridicu­lous action sequences and nar­ra­tive switch ups are core com­po­nents of the Fast and the Furi­ous fran­chise, but they are not the foun­da­tion of its suc­cess. A sin­gu­lar idea cours­es through the entire series, inform­ing every deci­sion the films and char­ac­ters make. As Diesel’s Dominic Toret­to fre­quent­ly grunts, it’s fam­i­ly. Yes, the fran­chise in which cars fall out of planes and smash through build­ings, in which Jason Statham and Vin Diesel club each oth­er with metre-long wrench­es, and a con­stant­ly per­spir­ing Dwayne John­son breaks open his arm cast just by flex­ing his mus­cles, is real­ly about family.

Just as the action is amped up in each new sequel, so too is the impor­tance of fam­i­ly stressed again and again. In the lat­er films, Brian’s bro-cop becomes a man strug­gling to rec­on­cile his need for speed with his oblig­a­tions as a young father. Since Tokyo Drift, every film in the fran­chise has been pre­cip­i­tat­ed by some­one hurt­ing some­one else’s loved one. Before and after every punch or crash, a char­ac­ter will talk about the impor­tance of fam­i­ly. Diesel usu­al­ly talks about it dur­ing both activities.

Over the course of eight films’ worth of big men throw­ing big punch­es and talk­ing about famil­ial bonds, some­thing mirac­u­lous has hap­pened. The dia­logue has stopped seem­ing corny, the love now feels gen­uine. So much so, in fact, that even though no one has ever gone to see a Fast and Furi­ous film in search of cathar­tic release, at the end of Furi­ous 7 that is pre­cise­ly what we experience.

Despite its aggres­sive title and promise of high-octane pyrotech­nics, the film is ulti­mate­ly a beau­ti­ful, sin­cere eulo­gy for Paul Walk­er. It says a lot about how far the fran­chise has come when Vin Diesel can deliv­er a speech about fam­i­ly and make eyes well with tears instead of roll.