Fast Month - Fast Five

We're through the preliminary stages here, this is where this franchise began to make the big bucks. The budget was increased to $125m but the sweet reward was earning over $600m at the box office, and this wouldn’t be the heights of this franchise’s success. And it’s the first to gain a more positive critical buzz with a 77% rating on Rotten Tomatoes (average 6.4/10) and a 7.3 rating on IMDb. What caused this sudden turnaround, let’s take a closer look.

Fast Month - The Fast and the Furious: Tokyo Drift

The Fast and the Furious franchise nearly died here. This movie failed critically and at the box office. It made $158.5m on an $85m budget, would’ve needed to have made about $200m to be profitable. I guess the success of the other 2 was enough to convince Universal to try again with 4, but it could well have died here.

So, what the hell happened here? Let’s take a look.

Fast Month - The Fast and the Furious

It’s time to go full Throttle: It’s Fast Month

A Franchise that grew from humble beginnings to a multi-million-dollar behemoth, the Fast and Furious certainly managed to hit the right balance to remain profitable, despite reception of the movies themselves not always being great. Throughout the month of June, I’ll be looking at the 8 current instalments of the franchise and giving my brief thoughts on all of them.

Just a heads up (sponsored by Coca Cola, though not really), Paul Walker may be mentioned in these reviews, not always in a positive light, if that makes you uncomfortable, check out my Iron Fist retrospectives or something, he plays a lead character, I can’t exactly shy away from it. (This was sponsored by Coca Cola, though not really - if you don't get the joke, watch the stupid as f*ck safety warning at the beginning)

With that said, let’s start at the beginning with The Fast and the Furious. Made on a modest budget of $37m, it made $207m at the box office. Not bad for a film about street racing, but modest compared to what this franchise would later earn. It had a mixed reception critically, with a 53% rating on Rotten Tomatoes with an average score of 5.4/10 and a 6.7/10 IMDb rating. But here are my thoughts.