The Fast and the Furious: Tokyo Drift

• Monitors inside Aimes’ hi-tech HQ play clips from the Fast family’s biggest stunts.
• When Aimes talks about “humble roots” in Fast X, therefore, he’s also referring to the franchise as a whole.
• It began with 2001’s The Fast and the Furious, a mid-budget crime film about street racing which featured a cast of relative unknowns.
• The Fast Saga is one of the top-ten highest grossing film franchises of all time, and Fast X cost an estimated US$340 million (£275 million) to produce.

Retcons and resurrections

• This is something the Fast films do with an alarming disregard for narrative coherence.
• In this sense, Fast X feels like an attempt to rationalise the messy timeline that emerged out of the unusual choices of earlier films.
• In Fast X, he finally reunites with Shaw, giving Han a chance to get revenge against the man who appeared to kill him four films ago.

An outlaw franchise

• But there’s method in the madness, a consistent inconsistency which has allowed the saga to carve out its own niche.
• The seemingly chaotic nature of the Fast Saga’s development is central to its appeal.
• Reflecting on its unlikely trajectory, critics often observe that the franchise has an off-the-cuff feel.