“The end of the road begins” when Dom Toretto (Vin Diesel) and his (say it with us now) “family” hit cinemas for Fast X, apparently the penultimate entry in the unstoppable Fast & Furious blockbuster franchise. Characters have been killed off and brought back to life in countless tricksy retcons—but could Jason Momoa’s daunting new baddie and Charlize Theron’s returning Cipher actually pick off one our heroes this time around?
Whatever happens, Fast X can be counted on to give fans all the ludicrous stunts, singlets, and globe-trotting intrigue they’ve loved all along. Here’s 12 of the most furiously fascinating facts we’ve found on Fast X: educational fun for the whole family.
1. It’s the seventh most expensive movie ever made!
Unadjusted for inflation, Fast X‘s eye-watering $340-million price-tag sees it nestled right between Avatar: The Way of Water ($350 million) and Avengers: Infinity War ($325 million) on the list of most expensive film productions of all time. That’s $240 million more than the Fast “famiglia” stole in the fifth movie’s awesome heist sequence!!
The cost is pretty bonkers, but Universal seems that confident that franchise fans will show up. To put things in perspective a lil, Prime Video’s new spy series Citadel cost $300 million for six episodes, and it doesn’t even have the built-in, loving international audience of Dom and co.
2. Director Louis Leterrier stepped in to replace franchise fave Justin Lin
Lin first made his stamp on the Fast saga back in underrated stand-alone chapter Tokyo Drift, before helming every consequent film in the franchise save for Fast & Furious 7, The Fate of the Furious, and Hobbs and Shaw. But even the most seasoned blockbuster-maestro has his breaking point, and Lin’s came only days into Fast X‘s production. Apparently upset with last-minute changes to the screenplay and filming locations, an argument between Vin Diesel and Lin escalated to Lin reportedly announcing “this movie is not worth my mental health”. He forewent a massive director paycheck and is instead still credited as producer and writer of the film.
The replacement we’re getting is Now You See Me director Louis Leterrier, already buddied-up with Universal for his work on The Incredible Hulk. The French director is already a big fan of the franchise, calling Fast Five his favourite. Good taste.
3. The whole “family” is back…except for The Rock, thanks to his beef with Vin Diesel
The power hierarchy between Dom Toretto’s Fast family is a bit wacky: he’s practically Jesus, Michelle Rodriguez’s Letty is his Mary Magdalene ride-or-die, and over the course of the series, Roman (Tyrese Gibson) and Tej (Ludacris) have been slowly bumped from prime badasses to second-banana comic relief foot soldiers. Over the years the famiglia has also adopted everyone from hacktivist Ramsey (Nathalie Emmanuel) and resurrected Tokyo-Drift-er Han (Sung Kang) to former foes Jakob Toretto (John Cena) and Deckard Shaw (Jason Statham). Playing Dom’s sister and the love interest of Paul Walker’s Brian, Jordana Brewster will also rejoin the fam in Fast X, after skipping the previous film.
Who’s missing from this unorthodox family reunion? Only Dwayne Johnson, who confirmed he won’t appear in future Fast films after calling one of Diesel’s argumentative Insta posts “manipulation”. Then again, Diesel and Johnson could’ve secretly squashed their beef and set us up to be super surprised by Luke Hobbs’ last-minute cameo, swooping in to save the gang and make audiences lose their minds. #WishfulThinking.
4. This could be the first Fast film in a while to return to the series’ grounded, street-racing origins
Nah. No way. We’ve all seen that trailer, with Dom racing down an exploding dam and Jason Momoa uttering “boom” as he lays waste to an ancient European city block. It seems impossible for the Fast franchise to ever get back to its humble, Point Break-aping roots: of gritty characters stealing DVD players and taking part in playful “race wars” (yes, that’s how the fam obliviously refers to their desert-set rallies).
There are no movie franchises that successfully manage to jump the shark multiple times and always find new ways to jump even more sharks than Fast & Furious.
It went from street racing and stolen DVDs to superhumans and secret AI organization hell-bent on destroying humanity. pic.twitter.com/cNY9H6KOZx
— ミー (@PearlteaRizzy) May 26, 2020
Happily, though, the Fast X trailers show at least some of the street-racing moments we fondly remember from earlier franchise entries. Leterrier has boasted that he’ll bring the franchise “back to earth”, favouring practical stunts enhanced with visual effects rather than completely computer-generated setpieces. That said, the racing sequence he’s hailing for its authenticity is apparently a “vertical quarter-mile race”, so the laws of physics should still be delightfully irrelevant.
5. Jason Momoa plays Dante: yet another supervillain coming out of the woodwork
From John Cena’s redeemed Toretto brother to Charlize Theron’s returning supervillain Cipher, the Fast franchise is addicted to drawing bad guys from the main characters’ pasts. Jason Momoa’s flamboyant new antagonist for Fast X is no exception, being the son of Fast Five‘s slain drug lord Hernan Reyes. With peacocky suits and accessories violently clashing against Dom’s typical singlet-and-jeans fit, he’s the perfect contrast to the wholesome Toretto family, and seems desperate to pick at least one of them off with his eerie surveillance of them all in the trailers.
6. Brie Larson and Alan Ritchson join the franchise as Mr Nobody’s underlings
Kurt Russell was a welcome addition to the Fast-iverse in the seventh film, but in the last entry his fate was left ambiguous after Jakob Toretto took down his plane. Whether Russell’s shadowy government operative Mr Nobody shows up alive or not is still a mystery—but with Reacher star Alan Ritchson introduced as the grouchy new head of Nobody’s agency, things aren’t looking too good for the old man.
Little Nobody (Scott Eastwood) will also return for Fast X, but the most exciting bit of Nobody-centric casting we’ve got is Brie Larson’s inclusion as Pauline, the daughter of Russell’s character.
excited doesn’t even begin to explain how I feel about joining the Fast family 🤝🚘 thank you for welcoming me in with so much kindness and excitement, @vindiesel.
can’t wait to share more (when I can 😉) pic.twitter.com/miJlbiwV9d
— Brie Larson (@brielarson) April 10, 2022
“I’ve been begging to be in this for years”, the Marvel superstar said of her new role as a roguish lone wolf who admires Dom’s mission: “being part of something you’ve watched your whole life and that you love is an amazing feeling”.
7. EGOT legend Rita Moreno will keep the Toretto kids in line as their Abuela
Dom, Jakob, and Mia Toretto look nothing alike, and they certainly haven’t always been on the same side—perhaps adding Rita Moreno to the cast, as their loving grandma, will help the siblings bind together in time for whatever action shenanigans they’re about to face.
One of few screen icons to receive an Emmy, Grammy, Oscar and a Tony, Moreno will likely only appear at a few family barbecues in Fast X. The Suicide Squad standout Daniela Melchior is another exciting new face in the film’s ensemble, playing a Brazilian street racer with ties to Dom. As the Fast family keeps growing, it can be easy to overlook just how refreshingly diverse its characters are. It’s a big dumb blockbuster franchise, sure, but it’s also quietly powerful in how it centres performers of colour whilst Disney and Marvel mega-productions comparatively struggle with lame “anti-woke” backlash.
8. Sooo…is Gal Gadot’s character alive and well or not?
In the newest trailer for Fast X, Letty worries that “one of us might not come back from this”, teasing a big sad character death. But after miraculously coming back from the dead in Fast Five, she can’t be too serious, can she? Wonder Woman Gal Gadot’s character Gisele also sacrificed herself in the sixth film’s awesome airplane runway sequence, and now there are rumours that her character somehow returns in one of two different versions of Fast X shown in preview screenings. It’s a tantalising bit of gossip that fans aren’t quite sure about, so we’ll have to wait and see whether Gadot is indeed given the ol’ Fast Lazarus treatment, even if only in a bamboozling post-credits teaser or something.
9. Fast X is the series’ first film to feature electric cars
Apparently vehicles that show up in the Fast films quickly see a massive growth in demand: the Datsun 240Z in Tokyo Drift saw a price rise in 2006 from $5,000 to $30,000 (USD), so perhaps the Dodge and Lambo models of Fast X will enjoy the same effect. Vehicle co-ordinator Dennis McCarthy says that each car in the film requires around seven duplicates, with an estimated total of 200 cars built for Fast X to meet race-car and stunt-work standards. Among those are the fan favourite orange-and-black Mazda RX-7 FD Fortune returning from Tokyo Drift, and six bikes that Jason Momoa personally secured from the CEO of Harley-Davidson.
The new inclusion of electrically-powered Dodge Charger and DeLorean cars might be the most modern move by the Fast filmmakers: showing that even while Dom and co. absolutely obliterate the environment around them with guns and explosions, they know that fossil fuels ain’t always the way.
10. A huge setpiece in Italy required five months of planning
One explosive, Turin-set sequence in Fast X was filmed across Italy’s Piazza Crimea and Corso Fiume, Murazzi del Po, Via Roma, and the Piazza IV Marzo, with filmmakers working with the city council from September 2021 to January 2022 to make the magic happen.
Drones, rediverted traffic and local events, public security and local workforce employment ultimately generated €3.8 million for Turin’s local economy, all for what ended up being a two-week shoot. The council seems pleased as punch to see their city desecrated by the Fast family, praising the troupes of almost 400 workers brought in to collaborate with local professionals on the monster setpiece.
11. The film might run into trouble if it resurrects Paul Walker’s character Brian
Fast & Furious 7 pulled off the perfect ending in its untimely goodbye to franchise lead Paul Walker: after Walker’s death in a car crash mid-filming, his brothers helped out as stand-ins to complete production, and Weta Digital effects gave us a tear-jerking farewell with the late actor’s digitally-superimposed face.
Still, Vin Diesel recently told GamesRadar that he “couldn’t imagine this saga ending without truly saying goodbye to Brian O’Conner”—which is odd, as in the canon of the franchise, Brian is still alive and merely retired. The initial Fast X trailer uses footage from the early films to show Walker’s character in flashback, and we’re not sure if we need or even want to see Brian in further Fast films in any more obtrusive way than that. With deepfake technology only growing more sophisticated, though, a somewhat tacky and unnecessary second farewell sequence might not be out of the question.
12. It’s the beginning of the end, with the saga’s 12th and final film arriving in 2025
Setting aside the spin-off Hobbs and Shaw (which is also apparently getting a sequel of its own sometime), the Fast franchise is now at film no. 11, and 12 will be the final chapter. Leterrier, who is signed on to direct this conclusion to the saga too, has said that Fast X‘s ending will be the perfect cliffhanger to send us off for one final ride. Michelle Rodriguez tried to anticipate fan reactions to whatever we’re getting: “you’re going to feel so cheated in a way…it’s really tough at this stage to shock me, and they got me good”.
It’s tradition now for the Fast films to end with a cute Toretto family barbeque, but what comes after this penultimate grilling? For one thing, Vin Diesel has already said he wants everyone from Robert Downey Jr to Matt Damon to join the fam…because what we really need here is more characters.
But for now, we’re happy to merely speculate on what the final film’s title will be. Here’s a few of our best ideas, just for fun.
The Last of the Fast / The Last and the Furious. Seems most likely.
Fast & Furious Forever. Alliterative, wistful, could even fit the most important F-word in there somewhere (family, duh).
The Furious & The Fast. Nice lil subversion of the very first movie’s title.
The Fast Vs The Furious. Our Fast family versus Charlize and whichever other Furious villains remain?
Fast & Furious: The Last Ride/Ride or Die. Ehhh, unlikely. The franchise hasn’t gone with a colon and second title apart from Fast & Furious: Tokyo Drift and Fast & Furious: Hobbs and Shaw.
11 Fast 11 Furious. For sure. Pls.
