With the opening of Fast and Furious 8 - The Fate Of The Furious, Paula Fleri Soler takes a look behind the scenes to find out what is all the fuss about the franchise.

Since the release of the The Fast and the Furious back in 2001, the franchise of the same name has spawned seven films and has become Universal Pictures’ biggest franchise of all time, with global box office takings to date of almost €4 billion.

The high-octane action franchise, based on plotlines that include increasingly preposterous – yet, it must be said, ever enjoyable – elaborate heists, seems to be growing in popularity with each instalment. Furious 7, released in 2015, became one of the fastest movies to hit the €1 billion mark.

Apart from its critical and financial achievements, Furious 7 proved to be an emotional experience, given it was the last film to star the late Paul Walker, who was inarguably the heart of the films. Once production was completed, the question arose as to whether this would bring the franchise to the end.

Faced with the decision of whether to continue the saga, and still in mourning over Walker’s tragic death, the filmmakers agreed that if they were to continue, any new story would have to ensure they remain true to their roots.

“I only wanted to continue the saga if we were going to collectively make the best final trilogy for ourselves, for the legacy of our brother Paul, and for Universal, who’s been so supportive over the years,” says star Vin Diesel, who has served as a producer on the series since 2009’s Fast & Furious (part 4).

“With Furious 7, our focus was to not only make the best film in the saga but to honour what it has represented for almost two decades. The key to this next chapter is to challenge those core themes that have endured, and to do it in a way that is compelling but still entertaining.”

Showing no signs of running out of gas any time soon

Says screenwriter Chris Morgan: “Fast and the Furious 8 – The Fate of the Furious (or F8 to make things simpler) is really about the after-effects of a profound mo­ment that threatens to shatter everything you believe in. What happens when the central figure of your family, the one who preached the lesson of never turning your back on each other, breaks those rules? What happens if he goes dark and his fa­mily has to take him on and stand against him? It’s unique and, at times, a little scary. It’s great drama for the franchise, and it gave us a reason to move forward in a compelling way.”

In F8, protagonist Dom Toretto, a former criminal and professional street racer (Diesel) and fellow racer Letty (Michelle Rodriguez) are now married. The rest of the crew have settled down into a semblance of normal life. But, when a mysterious woman (Charlize Theron) seduces Dom back into the world of crime he can’t seem to escape, and the team will face trials that will test them as never before, relying on their extraordinary skills to stop an anarchist from unleashing chaos.

As before, the film takes the protagonists on an adrenaline-fuelled globe-trotting journey, from the shores of Cuba and the streets of New York City to the icy plains off the arctic Barents Sea; with stunts aplenty providing more vehicular mayhem.

Most of the team is back; the ensemble including franchise vete­rans Dwayne Johnson, Tyrese Gibson, Chris ‘Ludacris’ Bridges, Jason Statham, Kurt Russell, Nathalie Emmanuel, Elsa Pataky and Scott Eastwood.

It is a sign of the franchise’s popularity that F8 has attracted two of Hollywood’s biggest female stars… Joining Theron, who displayed remarkable ac­tion chops in 2015’s Mad Max Fury Road, is fellow Oscar-winner Dame Helen Mirren.

Mirren was cast in the film after she met Diesel at a party, where they spoke about her love of dri­ving fast cars and her nephew’s fondness for the Fast franchise. She then got ac­quainted with the series, thinking “Work with Vin, drive a car? That sounds like the perfect job for me!” Diesel got the ball rolling, saying “what Dame Mirren wants, Dame Mirren gets!” He then got to work with Morgan and the film’s director F Gary Gray and they created a character for her, much to Mirren’s delight.

“I put my little yearnings out there in the universe and was of­fered a role,” Mirren says with a smile. “To be my age in a huge ac­tion film with these guys, you’ve got to up your game if you want to go toe-to-toe with them. That’s what I wanted to communicate.”

Her presence will no doubt add a new demographic to the series’ ever-growing fan base, adding more fuel to the fire that is the Fast and Furious franchise, which is showing no signs of running out of gas any time soon.

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