Vin Diesel And Paul Walker's Fast & Furious Prep Landed The Stars In A Very Illegal Situation
The "Fast & Furious" movies just haven't been the same since Paul Walker died. Oh sure, it's been entertaining watching the series relentlessly try to top itself (even sending its heroes to space for real) and later additions John Cena and Jason Momoa have helped inject some fresh energy into the Fast Saga's increasingly strained machinery. But Walker was always the heart and soul of these films. Without him, they just ring hollow.
Vin Diesel, whose offscreen conduct (including his — squashed? — beef with co-star Dwayne Johnson, his reported diva-like behavior, and now allegations that he committed sexual battery against his ex-assistant) has overshadowed his contributions to these movies of late, needed Walker to play off of. The brotherhood that formed between their characters — law-breaking street racer Dominic Toretto and undercover police officer Brian O'Conner — in the original "The Fast and the Furious" extended to the actors' relationship in real life. As much as The Fast Saga has desperately tried to sell audiences on the "epic" romance between Dom and Letty Ortiz (Michelle Rodriguez), their listless love affair doesn't have an ounce of the passion of Dom and Brian's bromance.
Appropriately, it turns out Diesel and Walker forged their personal bond under less-than-legal circumstances that weren't entirely dissimilar from how Dom and Brian connect in "The Fast and the Furious."
The Diesel and Walker brotherhood begins
Funny as it might sound (considering what these movies have become), the original "The Fast and the Furious" was striving for verisimilitude beneath its slick surface. Screenwriter David Ayer even sought to ground the film's "Point Break"-esque plot about a group of thieving gearheads and the cop determined to bring them down in Los Angeles' actual underground racing subculture. That being the case, Diesel and Walker decided to familiarize themselves with this world as part of their preparation process.
Diesel recounted how this nearly landed the pair in handcuffs for Entertainment Weekly's 20th anniversary oral history of the film in 2021. In his own words:
"I remember going to this illegal street race, my first on the West Coast, and helicopters coming in and everyone dispersing. I'm from New York City and cops don't usually come by helicopter. So Paul and I are running down the highway together. It was the beginning of a brotherhood."
The research paid off. There's an authenticity in the way Brian is seduced by Dom's philosophy of living life "a quarter mile at a time" in the film and his gradual slide into becoming an outlaw himself. Walker's homoeroticism with his male co-stars would scale greater heights without Diesel in the sequel, "2 Fast 2 Furious," yet it's Dom and Brian's brotherly love that would come to form the emotional backbone of the franchise in subsequent installments. Without that, The Fast Saga doesn't hit the same, and its attempts to honor the late Walker by keeping Brian alive offscreen just feel weird and confusing.