Cars, reggaeton, and family. They are the three pillars on which the Fast & Furious saga has raised one of the most particular mythologies of modern great show cinema. What began in the distant 2001 with the reformulation of Full throttle They call him Bodhi through car racing has ended up becoming one of the most powerful bulldozers in the blockbuster machinery of Hollywood. A franchise with eight installments (and rising) and a spin-off that, led by Vin Diesel, has carved out a niche in pop culture skid after skid, integrating the stellar pull of Dwayne Johnson into his growing family and reaching the imaginary collective with non-fiction tragedies such as the death of Paul Walker in 2013.
This has made more and more people and casual viewers interested in a saga where the interrelation between each installment has never prevented them from enjoying them as independent stories. Of course, although it may not raise as many doubts as in what order to watch the Star Wars saga or in what order to watch the X-Men movies, the Fast & Furious chronology has also had its complications over the years. So, to help you familiarize yourself with the vicissitudes of Dominic Toretto and his family before seeing his new adventure, we have mapped out the following routes for you. Depending on the level of depth at which you decide to explore, choose the path that best suits your interests. And, whichever one you choose, always remember the most important commandment: ignore the absolute absurdity of the titles in Spanish that fell with each installment.
The Fast and the Furious: Full throttle (2001) + 2 Fast 2 Furious – Full throttle 2 (2003) + Full throttle: Tokyo Race (2006) + Fast & Furious: Even faster (2009) + Fast & Furious 5 (2011) + Fast & Furious 6 (2013) + Fast & Furious 7 (2015) + Fast & Furious 8 (2017) + Fast & Furious: Hobbs & Shaw (2019)
Pros: You can see the charisma of the franchise grow before your eyes. After uneven starts, the arrival of director Justin Lin with the swerve of the third installment ushers in the most profitable reformulation of recent cinema. The conversion of what were nothing more than stories of a pimp on wheels, rich in tuning and testosterone, into a kind of action and espionage saga so close to the world of the automotive-like superheroes and cartoons. Not only will you get to know the basic pillars of the family (Vin Diesel, Paul Walker, Michelle Rodriguez, and Jordana Brewster), but you will also attend to their growth in an organic way, getting to feel so part of it that you will even wield a bottle of Corona in each barbecue. It happened between the first and second films of the saga; and, just before the fourth, the 20-minute short directed by Vin Diesel himself: Los Bandoleros. Finally, we must also incorporate the three seasons of the animated series Fast & Furious Spy Racers, which you will find on Netflix.
Disadvantages: Although Los Bandoleros, in particular, is good, and serves to fill plot gaps for purists who wonder how Dom brought his band members together before the events
Disadvantages: The incorporation of such indisputable presences as Dwayne Johnson or Jason Statham, who have ended up practically becoming the MVP (most valuable players) of the last films, is waiting. Not to mention that many viewers may be completely discouraged after undergoing the first two installments. But don’t worry, the second is the most unbearable test of all; If you can finish it scratch-free, the unevenness of the next two will taste like ambrosia in comparison, and you’ll be ready to dive into unbraked fun from the fifth onwards.
The Fast and the Furious: Full throttle (2001) + 2 Fast 2 Furious – Full throttle 2 (2003) + Fast & Furious: Even faster (2009) + Fast & Furious 5 (2011) + Fast & Furious 6 ( 2013) + Full throttle: Tokyo Race (2006) + Fast & Furious 7 (2015) + Fast & Furious 8 (2017) + Fast & Furious: Hobbs & Shaw (2019)
Advantages: You follow the history of the family in chronological order, as the characters supposedly lived it. For many years, a curious detail of Fast & Furious was that, although Tokyo Race was the third film in the saga (the result of an aborted attempt to turn F&F into a kind of unitary brand for productions around the engine but unrelated to each other ) their events took place long after the subsequent sequels. All because of a Vin Diesel cameo at the end (as if in Halloween III: The Witch’s Day Michael Myers had appeared in a post-credit scene) and the good reception that the character of Sung Kang had recovered by Justin Lin -who I’d also worked with him on Better Luck Tomorrow (2002) – the later Fast & Furious, creating a time dilation that the movies conveniently recognized with jokes about the character’s future in Tokyo. Fast & Furious 6 came to undo the knot.
Disadvantages: Like the other great film saga about families, that of the Corleones, taught us, the chronological order is not always the most appropriate to know the emotional truth of a story. Besides, when you see a movie so clearly shot in 2006, with its technology of the time, and try to make it pass as a story set eight years later, many sparks will come more from your brain than from the screen.
The Fast and the Furious: Full throttle (2001) + Turbo Charged Prelude to 2 Fast 2 Furious (2003) + 2 Fast 2 Furious – Full throttle 2 (2003) + Full throttle: Tokyo Race (2006) + Los Bandoleros (2009) + Fast & Furious: Even Faster (2009) + Fast & Furious 5 (2011) + Fast & Furious 6 (2013) + Fast & Furious 7 (2015) + Fast & Furious 8 (2017) + Fast & Furious : Hobbs & Shaw (2019) + Fast & Furious Spy Racers (2019-20)
Pros: The completeness in Fast & Furious doesn’t take much time. We just have to add the 9-minute short Turbo Charged Prelude to 2 Fast 2 Furious, which, as its descriptive title indicates, tells what from Fast & Furious, nothing happens if you skip these two supplemental materials. The narrative exhibition of the films themselves already ensures that no one is left with the doubt of these trifles
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Fast & Furious: Even Faster (2009) + Fast & Furious 5 (2011) + Fast & Furious 6 (2013) + Fast & Furious 7 (2015) + Fast & Furious 8 (2017)
Advantages: You have concentrated the history of the Toretto family as the screenwriter Chris Morgan defined it from Fast & Furious: Even faster. Morgan already wrote Tokyo Race, which if you want you can include between the sixth and seventh installments [see proposal below], but it is not strictly necessary. It is in this cycle of films where the best juice of that great opus is the Fast & Furious saga.
Disadvantages: By excising the first three films of the saga, you miss the presentation of their main characters. But you also gain more than 5 hours of life. You will see what it makes up for you.
Fast & Furious: Even faster (2009) + Fast & Furious 5 (2011) + Fast & Furious 6 (2013) + Full throttle: Tokyo Race (2006) + Fast & Furious 7 (2015) + Fast & Furious 8 ( 2017)
Advantages: Taking as a model the homonymous order of Star Wars that is restricted to the best films of the saga, we have formed that this that, essentially, ignores everything that happened before director Justin Lin took the reins of the matter. We started with Fast & Furious: Even faster for being an interesting presentation of the family and we put Tokyo Race in the chronological place that corresponds to it in the story because, in addition to being Lin’s entry into the franchise and a very Estimated, its central position in the motivations of Jason Statham’s character does not allow us to completely sideline it.
Disadvantages: You miss the beginning of Dom and Brian’s relationship, the emergence of that spark in the first movie. Also the presentation of characters that became fixed, such as Tyrese Gibson and Ludacris (both in 2 Fast 2 Furious), or the sense of the appearance of Eva Mendes in a certain post-credits scene. But, the truth is, it doesn’t matter too much either.
Fast & Furious 5 (2011) + Fast & Furious 6 (2013) + Fast & Furious 7 (2015) + Fast & Furious 8 (2017) + Fast & Furious: Hobbs & Shaw (2019)
Advantages: You have come here to see Dwayne Johnson and try to count how many liters of sweat he is capable of releasing in each of his interventions in the saga. This made sense with the arrival of Hobbs, that is what interests you and that is what you have come to see.
Disadvantages: How are we going to think of putting one on you?
