25 Years Later, The Fast And The Furious Surpassed Expectations To Become A Worldwide Phenomenon

It has been 25 years since Vin Diesel and Paul Walker's action movie The Fast and the Furious hit theaters, and it ended up becoming a bigger worldwide phenomenon than anyone could have believed, although it had to hurdle several obstacles along the way. Directed by Rob Cohen, the movie seemed like a rip-off of several 1990s action movies in which an undercover cop ended up becoming friends with the same criminals he was sent to stop.

The first movie was shot on a low budget and ended up successful enough to spawn a sequel, but that is where things started dropping off. Thanks to major stars leaving the franchise after the first movie, and then a second sequel arriving, with neither of the two leads from The Fast and the Furious, it seemed that the franchise was headed straight to video like many other films in the genre. What happened next was unexpected, as it ended up resurrected in the fourth movie and then exploded with the fifth to become one of Hollywood's biggest original franchises.

However, none of this would have been possible if not for the original movie in the series, which had a much smaller cast than newer fans might have believed. With two smaller movie stars taking the lead role, they helped catapult The Fast and the Furious into the worldwide phenomenon that will finally end its long and successful run with Fast Forever, which is scheduled to hit theaters in 2028.

The Fast And The Furious Started Its Franchise 25 Years Ago

While Vin Diesel is seen as the mastermind behind The Fast and the Furious franchise, it was Paul Walker who came up with the idea. Walker had just acted in a movie with director Rob Cohen called The Skulls. That movie was about the conspiracy theories surrounding the Skull and Bones student society at Yale University. In an interview with the Los Angeles Times, Walker said he pitched an idea for Days of Thunder meets Donnie Brasco, where he could be an undercover cop and a racecar driver.

Because Walker was only 24 and getting started in his career, the movie cast a very strong actor to play across from him in Vin Diesel, an actor who had just come off the critically acclaimed sci-fi horror movie Pitch Black. The idea was a similar one to many movies in the 1990s, with a cop going undercover in a criminal organization and trying to bring them down from the inside, only to finds himself integrated into the group. It was much warmer than Donnie Brasco and became more of a buddy movie.

That helped make it a monster success. On a $38 million budget, The Fast and the Furious went on to make $207.5 million worldwide, which was enough to start a franchise. However, it wasn't just Walker and Diesel that made the movie a success, but also the design and tropes the movie utilized. There were incredible street racing scenes, with both new cars and Dom Toretto's beloved classic 1970 Dodge Charger R/T. Add in the sex appeal of 2000s-era Los Angeles, and this was a movie that was as much about style as substance.

Fast And Furious Surpassed Its Point Break Comparisons

What helped The Fast and the Furious succeed was that it surpassed the 1990s undercover cop movies. There were several movies of this type. While Walker pitched Donnie Brasco as a comparison, this movie had more to do with films like Point Break and Stone Cold. In Stone Cold, Brian Bosworth plays a cop who goes undercover in a biker gang, with Lance Henriksen as the leader. While that is a cult classic, the bigger comparison came with Point Break, where Keanu Reeves' cop goes undercover in a gang of criminal surfers, with its leader played by Patrick Swayze.

The comparisons between Point Break and The Fast and the Furious were undeniable. Both had young California cool actors in the role of undercover cops, with Paul Walker and Keanu Reeves sharing a lot in common. At the same time, Patrick Swayze and Vin Diesel had more of the older, controlled menace, yet both come across as loyal and honorable, despite playing thieves in the movies. It was a perfect contrast.

Street racing made things different as well. While Point Break still focused on extreme sports, such as surfing, skydiving, and more, the cars brought in an entirely different fanbase. With new cars and the classics, there was a lot here for gearheads to love on top of the action scenes and buddy dynamic. It also helped that Diesel and Walker had a chemistry that even Reeves and Swayze didn't share. It was why the first movie was so popular and why the first two sequels, even with the fast cars, started to falter.

The Fast And The Furious Franchise Almost Died Before It Got Started

The Fast and the Furious has 10 movies in the original series, plus one spin-off release, and the next film, Fast Forever, will end the main franchise. However, it almost didn't reach this point and could have died if not for the fourth movie turning the tide. After the first movie, Vin Diesel left the franchise, and it seems almost hard to believe that he is the man who shepherded the series to this point, since he only wanted to appear in it for the first movie.

Paul Walker was still on board for the second film, 2 Fast 2 Furious, but Diesel was replaced by Tyrese Gibson and Ludacris. While that seemed like a step down, it was actually the start of the structure that would build the future of the franchise, with Gibson and Ludacris becoming two of the most important stars of the later movies. The Fast and the Furious: Tokyo Drift seemed like the nail in the coffin, as Walker also left the franchise, and neither Gibson nor Ludacris returned. However, it did bring in Han (Sung Kang).

It seemed the franchise was headed for the straight-to-DVD route. However, things changed when Tokyo Drift director Justin Lin brought back both Paul Walker and Vin Diesel for Fast & Furious in 2009, and the movie franchise skyrocketed from there. When Dwayne Johnson joined the franchise for Fast Five, it went from a successful movie series to the biggest original franchise in Hollywood. But it all started 25 years ago when The Fast and the Furious exceeded all expectations.