The Fast & Furious franchise has come a long way since its days as a simple street racing movie series about cars, vendettas, cars, family, and, yes, even more cars. However, by the timeThe Fate of the Furiousrolled out in 2017, there had been some big changes to the type of story being told byVin Dieseland his ever-growing crew, with the focus changing to almost James Bond-level antics for the tough guys and girls of the saga. This led to one of the franchise’s most audacious sequences – at least until they went into space, but that is one for another day – involving a submarine chase across a frozen tundra. This is something that screenwriter Chris Morgan has recently explained the story behind.
TheFast & Furiousmovies have always needed a little bit of suspended disbelief when it comes to some of the stunts and more spectacular moments of the franchise. In the eighth installment, though, limits were pushed further than ever before with the climactic submarine chase sequence, which left many wondering exactly how anyone could come up with a scene like it. As Morgan explained toTHR:
“On Fast 8 [The Fate of the Furious], a scene appeared in my head where you hear two guys’ voices, and they’re like, ‘Man, you’ve got to go faster. You better go faster.’ You’re then on a blue sky, and you pan down to see this endless vista of just ice. And then there’s a little car that’s racing along with nobody chasing it. There’s nothing. But the voices are still panicked, ‘Man, you’ve got to go faster. You’ve got to go faster.’ And then, from under the ice, boom, a submarine comes up and starts chasing it. I was like, ‘Oh, that’s awesome.’ So once I had that, I went to Universal and said, ‘Here’s your moment.’ And they were like, ‘Let’s do it.’”
The ‘Fast & Furious’ Franchise Has Become Too Over-the-Top for Vin Diesel
Every action movie lives or dies by its ability to deliver thrilling sequences of gunfights, explosions, and death-defying stunts. Tom Cruise has proven that sometimes bigger is better in theMission: Impossiblefranchise, but the difference is that his thrill-seeking time as Ethan Hunt has always been built on over-the-top, almost unbelievable stunts and set-pieces, so it comes with the territory. Compared to some of its later entries, theFast & Furiousfranchise began life as a relatively low budget affair, with storylines that were grounded and not built around elaborate spectacle.
In a recent post on Instagram,Diesel shared an update that suggested he is getting frustratedwith the constant back and forth pull of what others want the upcomingFast 11to look like. As filming got underway on the movie, Diesel revealed that he is stuck in the middle of Universal wanting the new movie to be delivered quickly, while Comcast are pushing to have two more movies, and he is also being asked to try and resolve old storylines. However,Diesel just wants “to get back to making a movie about street racing.”
The Disastrous Vin Diesel Movie That Tanked a Great Director
When director Mathieu Kassovitz started making Babylon A.D., with Vin Diesel in the lead role, he couldn’t have known the difficulties he’d face.
How all of this will be resolved is something that fans will only discover when everyone has agreed on the way forward for one of the biggest action franchises of the last decade. In the meantime, the existing movies in the franchise can be found across various streaming platforms, including the first five films which are available now on Netflix.
Fast and Furious 8
