Fast X's High Speed Street Race Was Added To The Script As An Afterthought
This post contains spoilers for "Fast X."
Believe it or not, The Fast Saga didn't start out as a full-blown action blockbuster experience. The first installment, "The Fast and the Furious," was actually a drama with a whole lot of street racing and car culture thrown in. In fact, the 2001 movie was part of a wider car-modding cultural phenomenon, where all me and my friends were interested in for a few years was "Need For Speed Underground," "Midnight Club," and how we could fit our Peugeot 206s with NOS.
But if you take a look at the "Fast & Furious" timeline, you'll see how the franchise made an abrupt turn with "Fast Five" back in 2011, pivoting from street racing to focus on action set pieces and high-octane heists. Or, as Alan Ritchson's Aimes puts it in "Fast X," the "Fast" crew are basically "street racers who became hijackers" and "graduated to high speed smuggling." That turned out to be a shrewd decision on the part of Universal Pictures, which has since seen The Fast Saga become one of the biggest blockbuster franchises around — an impressive feat considering the Marvel Cinematic Universe has, until recently, basically controlled the box office.
In other words, the "Fast" movies have evolved with the times and have remained a box office draw as a result. But just because street racing culture has increasingly become less of a focus, that doesn't mean cars, and vehicles in general, aren't still a big part of the formula. With the latest installment, there's all manner of vehicular action, from motorcycles and hi-tech planes to armored trucks and even a giant rolling bomb that threatens to blow up the Vatican. And between all the outlandish action set pieces, you might be pleasantly surprised to find that director Louis Leterrier returned to the series' roots.
Back to basics
Jason Momoa, who plays the villain Dante in "Fast X," was upset he didn't get to drive more in the movie. Still, at least he got to take part in a classic "Fast & Furious" street race. At one point, Dom (Vin Diesel) takes on Dante in a race designed to bring an end to the evil-doer's grand plan. According to Louis Leterrier, who took over directing duties after Justin Lin's abrupt exit from the project, that race was an important addition to the original script.
When Leterrier took over from Lin, he did an almost total rewrite of the "Fast X" script. He was also intent on adding a street race, telling Entertainment Weekly:
"That was not in the script, it's something I added. I actually wanted a street race — I hadn't seen a street race for a while and I wanted the antagonist to be a driver, I wanted to see our actors behind the wheel, I wanted to create special cameras and rigs to fly through the cars like we've never seen before. I did all that stuff and that was my dream come true."
Of course, with the "Fast" franchise being what it is today, the actual race is much more than a straightforward battle to cross the finish line first. Set in Rio de Janiero, the competition turns out to be one of Dante's meticulously-planned punishments for Dom, who indirectly caused the death of Dante's father (see the aforementioned "Fast Five"). The race itself becomes a sadistic game of death when Dom realizes Dante has planted bombs on the other drivers' cars, forcing him to decide who to save. Hardly the kind of NOS-fueled street action that propelled the first few films, but hugely entertaining nonetheless.
The Fast franchise is unrecognizable
"Fast X" might be the apotheosis of the franchise's move away from street racing culture, but that isn't necessarily a bad thing. In fact, it's pretty much the key to the series' whole success. The "Fast" films are almost unrecognizable from how they started, and that's pretty much the only reason people are still buying tickets to see these movies in the theater.
But for those of us who do recall the first movie and its perfectly-timed release amid the growing popularity of car-modding and street racing culture, it is sort of bittersweet to recognize that the "Fast" films have been forced to become arguably much more generic action blockbusters to remain popular. "The Fast and the Furious" may well have just been an excuse to, as /Film's Witney Seibold put it, "film women in short shorts" and see "beautiful actors driving fast cars." But it also felt like it was exploring an exciting real-world culture and had more emotional depth than the recent installments.
That said, Jason Momoa's outlandish, chaotic villain undeniably makes "Fast X" an unmissable piece of over-the-top Hollywood action, to say nothing of the wild set pieces that, at one point, have Vin Diesel driving down the side of a dam to escape a massive fireball. But it's still nice to see a street race showing up in the movie, even if it is a much more explosive affair than the races from earlier installments.
"Fast X" is currently playing in theaters.