Coming this Friday, and every other Friday for the next few months, will be a new podcast covering one of the most important topics of our time: The Fast and the Furious film franchise. To make this extra fun, my co-host, Leslie Hanna, has never seen any of the films.
How is that possible? I have two theories about why people don’t watch the franchise, which I sincerely love. The first is that car people who haven’t seen the films are so overwhelmed by the memes and short clips that they just immediately assume they don’t need to ever toss one on the screen. The second belief I have is that, because the films were subject to so many creative changes and so much bizarre retconning, some of the narratives and characters get lost.
Our new podcast, The Fate of the Curious: The Autopian Fast & Furious Rewatch Podcast, is an attempt to either prove or disprove these theories. I cannot go back in time, wipe my brain, and forget what I’ve seen. Leslie, though, has a mostly clean slate when it comes to these films and can therefore judge them fairly.
We will also be watching them in the mostly correct chronological order, with all the little short films that go in between. This means that we’ll be going from the original The Fast and the Furious straight into The Turbocharged Prelude to 2 Fast 2 Furious and then into Fast and Furious (the fourth one). Part of this game is that Leslie doesn’t know which film is coming next, though we’re far enough into filming that she’s figured out Tokyo Drift might not be for a while (and there’s one more surprise film coming in between).
In an effort to watch everything relevant, we will include the key short films in between. Does this include the Spy Racers spin-off animated series? I don’t think so, though it might include the cut scenes from the Fast & Furious: Crossroads video games.
The series has been designed to be enjoyable if you’ve seen all of the films or seen none of them. The goal is to use this influential series as a way to talk both about the franchise and about how car culture in general has changed in the last 20 years. If we have an episode every other week, we should be able to get to the last episode just in time for the last film in the franchise to debut. Of course, then there’s the TV shows, but we’ll have a little time before those debut.
Here’s a teaser trailer to give you an idea of what’s coming:
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Enough people reached out to me saying they haven’t seen the films that I think we’ll have enough guests to come along for various episodes, and one of the fun games we’re going to play is that Leslie will have to describe everything that’s happened up to the point of whatever film they’re watching without having a good idea of the plot of the next film, meaning it’ll be either helpful or extremely not helpful.
This is also an experiment in producing a longer, more produced podcast, with Griffin doing a lot of work to make it look wonderful. Come back Friday for the first installment, as well as an article from Leslie on the whole experience through the first film.
Top graphic: The Autopian
Thats all well and good, but….
Don’t let this distract you from the fact that Hector is going to be running three Honda Civics with Spoon engines, and on top of that, he just went into Harry’s and bought three t66 turbos with NOS, and a MoTec exhaust system.
I have a deep disdain for Vin Diesel. I don’t know why. But I have other unresolved mental hangups that I am working on. F&F is pretty low on the list. But you two have fun.
Man, I don’t want to yuck anyone’s yum, but after the 3rd installment, it sure seemed like a lot of yuck to me.
7th for me. The franchise died with Paul because he was always the character I, in the lightest most casual way possible, could relate to.
I wasn’t a huge fan once the movies became increasingly cartoonish heist movies. I liked how small stakes the 1st 2 were
I think I have the entire F&F series on my home TV/movie server (which is *kind of like hijacking a truck of DVD players) but I have only watched 2 of them entirely. This story has made me think that someday, I need to do an endurance race where I get through all of the Fast movies in a marathon. Maybe subject the grandkids to videos that are even more mind numbing than YouTube.
Ed Wood made better movies.
I’ve never been able to get on board with The Fast and the Furious. I saw the first one as a teenager before I was old enough to drive and couldn’t stand how fake and wrong everything was. Only saw one more and then swore off the rest.
I later became a mechanical engineer so maybe my total lack of personality was the reason I didn’t like the dog and pony show. It reminded me very much of my friend saying “feel the VTEC?” in his Civic.
Life is supposed to be fun and silly you know, why do engineers always forget this.
Our fun just looks different. For David it’s completely rusted out Jeeps, for some it’s building or tinkering, for others it’s complex math, for me it’s being alone in the wilderness.
What about the very first one? Point Break
I always thought that as well. Swap the surfing for import car scene.
Point Break is ep. 2, No Man’s Land is ep. 1
Hazing is cruel. I never felt sorry for Vince. The second movie had the best cars.
The Jensen Interceptor and Ford Escort from the 6th are in the running for my favorites but they seem to sprinkle good cars throughout the franchise.
How often can you say my favorite 2 movies that (insert actor’s name here) was in were “Silence of the Lambs” and “The Fast and the Furious”? Thank you Ted Levine (AKA Buffalo Bill).
Am I the only one who remembers “Justice for Han!” Will this turn into “Justice for Hanna!”?
2fast 2 furious is my favorite
Maybe it’s because they’re not that great.
Sorry, I should have alerted people to that spoiler.
My condolences on your planned torture
At least the first few are fun-bad.
The Rock kicking a torpedo off-course was pretty fun. The torpedo was of course skidding across frozen water after a submarine breached the ice and fired it at our heroes.
Yeah but you could just watch the evil dead series or Hudson Hawk
Yeah.. pretty much my thoughts. I didn’t mind the first 3.. things started going off the rails, or cliffs, or submarines, or planet earth quickly after that.
I think the problem is the first four movies are impenetrable to most people. They’re not good car culture movies – most of the car stuff is either factually wrong and/or celebrating the shittiest parts of the culture (street racing), and the stories are not particularly compelling if you’re not into cars.
I’ve said before that Five and on are big, dumb superhero movies in disguise, so whether you’re into those will depend on how you feel about superhero movies. Either way, they’re such a departure from the first four that it’s quite jarring. I actually think it can almost be treated as two separate franchises, 1-4 and 5-10 (or 11 if they ever actually finish it). You can watch both sides of that without having seen the other and largely be fine. The events of 1-4 are so inconsequential in 5+ (oh, that popular character died in an early movie? Bring ’em back anyway) that you really don’t need to have seen them first. You’ll be just as confused when a dead character shows up as the people who knew the character was dead, just for different reasons. 🙂
Anyway, looking forward to the podcast. Regardless of your feelings about the franchise, there’s plenty to talk about.
I’m ostensibly a car person, and the Fast/Furious franchise has never had any appeal to me. Not sure why, because I’ve watched Vin Diesel movies. But the street racer and ricer culture thing just doesn’t do anything for me.
That might explain why I disliked 5+. I do not like the silly superhero movies and actually found the first 2 movies charming in a weird way.
Apropos of nothing, but my backpacking nickname is “Fast and Furious” because I’m living my life a quarter-mile at a time.
I’ve never seen any of the FF movies all the way through.
I think I’d like to keep it that way.
Helluva title, excited to listen!
Matt, as the expert will you be explaining why they take forty gearchanges to go from 0-60?
And why does DANGER TO MANIFOLD cause the floor to fall off?
Did you forget about the 22 mile long runway?
Sigh. Fiero in space.
That Fiero bit is oh so THIS
You’re being kind.
Explaining is a strong word…
If anyone can do it, you can.
We have faith in you.
If you can cover why/how Dom wasn’t Fred-Flintstoning it after the buster picked him up, I’d be happy with that
It’s what happens when you have whatever law enforcement agency to source a car that he can go undercover as but someone screwed up the wiring and didn’t check that someone welded a floorpan poorly to the rust bucket. Or maybe it’s danger to the exhaust manifold and apparently it’s right under the floor and blew it up? Like those crazy turbo setups where they hide the turbo under the car near the exhaust lol.
Haven’t seen yet but I feel like I got it covered with with 20 minute low budget version
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VU5RU2bhF_Y
I sincerely hope the Always Sunny in Philadelphia crew are reading this and have the gang do their own remake of Fast and Furious like they did with Lethal Weapon.
I watched maybe half of the original when it first came out on video. I hated it and left the room. Never watched another one.
Same. I had high expectations because I enjoyed Vin Diesel in Pitch Black.
“I live my life a quarter movie at a time.”
That’s about where I am – although in my case I made it through the whole movie when it showed up on one of the cable TV movie channels. My “review” at the time was “well, that’s 2 hours of my life I’ll never get back.” I never bothered with any of the others, either.
I’ve never seen any of these movies. Unlike others who have some kind of principled stance against silly action movies, I have no reason for not having seen them. I just never got around to it. It is particularly surprising since, when the original Fast & Furious movie was released in 2001, I was an 18 year old douchebro that drove a lowered, fart-cannoned Civic. I feel like this movie was practically made with me in mind.
I’m going to change this. I will watch the original tonight.
I saw it at a friend’s house, paired as a double feature with “C’était un rendez-vous“, and I’d recommend it to anyone as a good pallet cleanser.
Pallet cleanser: I would probably recommend a simple high-pressure hose attachment
Palette cleanser: Turpentine works well for oil-based art paints
Palate cleanser: Simple crackers and some sparkling water work well
Sorry, couldn’t resist – the confusion between pallet / palette / palate always amuses me.
On a more serious note – for any of us who have ever actually driven in Paris “C’était un rendez-vous“ is an astonishing feat.
Gah, I knew I’d spelled it wrong, but let the spell check pick the wrong one for me. English is a bloody terrible language 🙁
There’s a slur that comes out of nowhere that transports you to 2001 so fast it’ll give you whiplash, but other than that it holds up.
It’s so quaint that it feels like a joke in hindsight, compared to what the series became by like the 5th film. No infinite funds from a shadowy government organization, or jet-setting around the world. Just good ol’ fashion highway robbery, literally, from a semi carrying electronics.
Please note that the upcoming Fast Forever is expected to cost more, as Vin Diesel’s price has gone up 64.6% since late February 2026
Wow the ELITISM by the people who intentionally never watched any of the movies is, to be expected, ridiculously annoying and cringe.
I’ve run against small high revving engines by upshifting almost immediately, which means I won’t need to shift again for some distance, and it stops wheelspin.
They’re instantly ahead, then the higher revving they are the sooner they have to shift.
When they do, it’s like they hit the brakes with both feet.
Closing speeds are heart stopping, but it’s over then.
Poor Leslie.
Be careful, Hardibro! I enjoy Leslie’s posts, don’t break her brain with garbage movies.