I discovered it in 2001 when the first movie was available in DVD. I enjoyed the cars, the characters, the friendship, Toretto’s bad ass band and the soundtrack (I listened it in loop while doing those datavisualizations). It was really cool and quite new compared to other cars movies. Year after year, I discovered new episodes while my life evolved. That’s why I decided to create a datavisualization about the Fast & Furious movies.
But how do they handle to make more than 10 movies about cars addict friends ? Movies evolved of course. But how ? Concretely, what is the difference between Fast 10 in 2023 and The Fast And The Furious in 2001 ?
The answer is MORE and here is how data art brighten it up.
I skipped Fast & Furious Hobbs & Shaw episode to keep only the Fast & Furious original series. I hope that Luke Hobbs (Dwayne Johnson) won’t be mad at me.
Regarding the colours, I spent some time to choose the perfect combination. Even I think find the 7 last episodes darker in term of colour, I prefer to use a more colourful palette inspired from the first episodes. A mix of blue and green to remind the ocean from California, The Caribbean and Latin America AND a mix of orange and pink to match the first cars (not only the Toyota Supra from the first episode) and Los Angeles sunset.
More budget and more international gross
5 directors worked on the Fast & Furious franchise.
A clear trend appears on the budget which is in constant growth. The most expensive Fast & Furious is Fast 10 directed by Louis Leterrier.
The budget does not fit this trend and the Furious 7 has the best ROI of the franchise. Then it decreases.
Another interesting KPI to track is the international revenue. At first, the franchise was mostly popular in the US. But from Fast & Furious Tokyo Drift, a majority of the gross is made out of the USA.
Longer movies
From a duration point of view, we can observe a switch from Fast & Furious 5 and it increased to reach 145 minutes instead of 106 minutes for the first 4 episodes.
More travelling for the Toretto’s team
At first, it was a pure American movie. After Tokyo Drift between USA and Japan, the Team travelled all around the world to drive their powerful cars (and even other weird vehicles but it’s another topic).
Furious 7 is the most exploratory with USA, Europe, Latin America, The Caribbean, Caucasus, Russia, Middle East and Japan. Furious 6 and F9 were also diverse in term of countries : USA, Europe, Russia, Japan and Hong Kong for the first one and USA, Europe, Latin America, Caucasus and Japan.
2 fictive locations were created. In The F8 of The Furious, Vladovin is a fictional Russian city similar to Mourmansk. The filming took place in Iceland at Mývatn, not in Russia. In Fast 9, a fictional country was made : Montequinto that supposed to be in Central America. It was filmed in Thailand.
More people and more women
This graph is very interesting because it shows that more and more people joined the team with the time : 10 characters for The Fast & The Furious and 23 for Fast 10. It takes into account only the major characters (primary, secondary and opponents).
Even if things are changing, cars’ tuning and illegal street races is mainly masculine. From a gender parity point of view, Fast & Furious increased the part of women concerned in the series. From 20% of women among the major characters at the first episode, it ended almost at 50% with Fast 10!
Dom (Vin Diesel) appeared in each episode, even for few seconds in Tokyo Drift. Letty (Michelle Rodriguez) appeared in almost all, except in Tokyo Drift. Bryan (Paul Walker) appeared in each episode – except in Tokyo Drift – until Furious 7. He disappeared before the end of the episode production. His loss let me very sad.
More chases, damages and deaths
Fast & Furious without chase wouldn’t be Fast & Furious. The first episode gave us a 4 chases. The number decreased slightly until Fast 9 where it go back to the first episode level.
About damages and more precisely car crashes, it shows a constant increase of cars – major or not – destroyed. Even if in Fast X, this KPI is lower. Episodes 6, 8 and 9 have around 350 vehicles destroyed each.
Concerning deaths, even if some characters luckily came back in the game, the trend is the same than the crash : a constant increase until a drop for Fast X. Starting at 3 for The Fast & The Furious to 134 for The F8 of the Furious.
Cars deserve a special treatment while Fast & Furious series is based on cars ! Prices are important but I tried to look at different angles. But let’s use the funnel approach.
More expensive cars
Let’s focus on the main cars used by the major, secondary and opponent characters. Globally, it increased constantly. Starting below 1 million $ for The Fast & The Furious, it rose to 7 millions $ for Furious 7 ! Tokyo Drift cars budget is below 500 K$ and Fast & Furious approached the million $. From Fast 5, it started to become disproportionate.
Some cars are not really active during the movie but clearly link to a character. That’s the case for example in Furious 6 with Tej’s Ferrari FXX. The most expensive car in the series appeared in the excessive Furious 7 : the Lykan Hypersport produced by the Lebanese W Motors now based in UAE.
It’s interesting because Fast & Furious doesn’t show only mainstream expensive cars. We can discover very specific and small brands but compared to the first 3 episodes, Toretto’s band left the Japanese brands. Bryan’s fetish car is the Nissan Skyline while for Dom, it’s clearly the Dodge Charger.
More American muscles
Speaking about Dom’s favourite car, the Fast & Furious franchise evolved on the car type distribution. While the first episodes were dedicated to street cars – mainly Japanese brands – After Tokyo Drift, the part of American muscles cars increased. In the 4th episode, the major cars contains 80% of American car brands which is the maximum. Then it’s stable but close to 50% while American cars are clearly praised.
More Oldies
More American muscles cars displayed but also older. The part of major cars over 20 years old increase since Fast & Furious in 2009. This 4th episode has the highest part of American muscle but also the highest part of old cars.
I hope you enjoyed those visualizations and learnt something about the Fast & Furious series. I can’t wait for the last episode planned in 2026 but in the meantime, don’t hesitate to send me your impression or share it in comment.
Sources
I scrolled a lot of websites, forum and, of course, rewatched the series to get the numbers which was the longest part of this work.
Thank you to those sources that confirm my researches :
wikipedia : https://en.wikipedia.org
IMDB : https://www.imdb.com
allocine : https://www.allocine.fr/
movie-locations : https://movie-locations.com/
atlas of wonders : https://www.atlasofwonders.com/
vulture : https://www.vulture.com/
list of deaths fandom : https://listofdeaths.fandom.com/wiki/Fast_and_the_Furious
r/fastandfurious : https://www.reddit.com/r/fastandfurious
top gear : https://www.topgear-magazine.fr
fast and furious fandom : https://fastandfurious.fandom.com/fr/wiki/Wiki_Fast_And_Furious
hot cars : https://www.hotcars.com
CBR : https://www.cbr.com