Explanation of the chronology of the Fast & Furious universe

Trailer of the penultimate film “Fast and Furious”. Quick X, which debuted last month, revived interest in the street racing franchise. But new viewers, whose interest in the new film has reached its peak, have a difficult path to go if they want to watch the previous films. The franchise (which is larger than you probably think) is infamous for its complex timeline, in which later films actually take place before their predecessors, and characters’ stories are altered by frequent retcons. Here are the important details for new and returning fans to keep in mind.

Early “Fast and Furious” films

Fast and Furiousreleased in 2001, follows LAPD Officer Brian O’Conner (Paul Walker) as he infiltrates the world of underground street racing to find a criminal team that has been robbing trucks in daring car thefts. Brian goes undercover with Dominic “Don” Toretto (VIN diesel) a team of street racers, befriended Dom and started dating his sister Mia (Jordana Brewster). But when it becomes clear that Dom and his crew are actually robbers. Brian reveals his identity to Mia, and the pair save Dom and company after their last trucker target opens fire on them with a shotgun. Although Dom is outraged to learn that Brian is a cop, the pair work together again to avenge their friend Jesse (Chad Lindberg) after being killed by a rival team. Dom and Brian then enter another street race, in which Dom is nearly killed in a collision with an oncoming truck. Brian then gives him the keys to his car so Dom can avoid law enforcement harassment.

Diesel and other members of the main cast did not return for filming the first sequel. Instead of, 2 Fast 2 Furious, released in 2003, is a quasi spin-off of Walker. As events in Los Angeles cost him his career as a police officer, Brian adopted an outlaw lifestyle, spending time street racing in Miami until he was arrested by US Customs. Brian is given the opportunity to avoid jail time by helping a joint mission by Customs and the FBI to apprehend drug dealer Carter Verone (Cole Hauser), while working undercover as a driver for his organization. Brian agrees on the condition that he can bring childhood friend and former prisoner Roman Pierce (Tyrese Gibson) as his partner. After Verone is captured, Brian and Roman discreetly steal some of his money before it can be presented as evidence, planning to use it to open a garage together. However, at some point, Brian returned to law enforcement instead, narrowly missing out on a position as an FBI agent. The film continued with a short film, Turbocharged prelude for 2 Fast 2 Furiouson which Brian leaves L.A. and played until 2 Fast in selected theatres.

Time Jump “Tokyo Drift”

Third film, 2006 The Fast and the Furious: Tokyo Drift this is where the chronology gets really complicated. Although the film is mainly about American teenager Sean Boswell (Lucas Black), who is forced to move to Tokyo, is his friend and street racing mentor Han Seoul-Oh (Sun Kang), which have become a larger part of the wider franchise. A version of Han named Han Liu was previously featured in another film directed by Justin Lin. Good luck to you tomorrow (Lin considers them the same character) and was clearly the director’s favorite, as Fast the franchise continued to include him in four subsequent films directed by Lin, although the character was believed to have died in a car accident near the end. tokyo drift. To continue using the character, Lin directed the next three films prior to the events tokyo drift. This shift in timeline was established by Diesel’s cameo at the end of tokyo driftin which Dom meets Sean and hints at an old friendship with Khan.

Second short film Los Bandolerossets the events of the fourth feature film of 2009 with a confusing title. fast and furiousand depicts Dom creating a team, which includes Khan, to rob fuel trucks in the Dominican Republic. fast and furious reunited Diesel, Walker, Brewster and another star of the original movie Michelle Rodriguezwho plays Dom’s girlfriend, Letty Ortiz. When Letty is apparently killed while working as an FBI confidential informant, Brian and Dom work to bring her target and killer, cartel leader Arturo Braga, to justice, and Dom and Mia come to forgive Brian for his deception in the first film with the passage time. . Although they successfully capture Braga, Dom is also arrested and sentenced to life in prison for his past crimes. Believing this injustice, Brian once again gives up his career in law enforcement, and he and Mia stage a roadside escape, which immediately leads to the next movie.

In 2011 fast five the trio, now all wanted fugitives, flee to Rio de Janeiro, where they come into conflict with local drug lord Hernan Reyes (Joaquim de Almeida) while being pursued by Diplomatic Security Service agent Luke Hobbs (Dwayne “The Rock” Johnson). They decide to steal $100 million from Reyes and use it to escape the reach of the law by hiring a team of former allies to do so, which included Khan, Roman, and others. In the film’s post-credits scene, Hobbs learns that Letty is still alive.

2013 furious 6 tied together some disparate timelines and storylines. The team works with Hobbs to bring Letty home and take down her new crime boss, Owen Shaw (Luke Evans). Brian discovers that Braga was working for Shaw, explaining how the latter made contact with Letty, who had amnesia after Braga’s first attempt to kill her. Shaw decided to use this as an opportunity to recruit her rather than kill her as Braga wanted. The team manages to convince Letty to join them and defeat Shaw, who is ejected from the plane while fighting Dom. However, during the final action scene, Gisele Yashar (Gal Gadot), Hana’s girlfriend is killed. This prompts Han to move to Tokyo, which is something he and Giselle have always talked about. The mid-credits scene of the film depicts his death by tokyo drift from a different point of view, showing that it was not an accidental collision and that Deckard Shaw was driving the other car (Jason Statham), Owen’s older brother who hunts the House’s crew for revenge. This scene and the appearance of Dom from tokyo drift were shown again during furious 7which also expands Dom’s interaction with Sean by putting most of the events tokyo drift between the sixth and seventh films, although the beginning furious 7 also flashes back a bit to show how Shaw found out Khan’s whereabouts.

Incredibly intricate plot twists

Subsequent films developed in a simpler chronology, one after the other in sequence. Perhaps a future release might show that 2021 F9: Fast Saga set before the 2019 spin-off Fast and Furious Presents: Hobbs and Shaw, but at the moment there is no textual evidence that this is the case. However, the most recent entries have continued to add more retcons to the franchise’s story that complicate the chronology, sometimes to the point where it’s logically impossible for all the various events to happen as said. For example, in 2017 The fate of the furious it turns out that Elena Neves (Elsa Pataky), a former Brazilian police officer, became pregnant with Dom’s son Brian while she and Dom were dating before he knew Letty was still alive. Brian is still shown as an infant in his first appearance, meaning that the events furious 6 And 7 can only happen within a year. But this is contrary to those films like furious 6 showed the birth of Brian O’Conner and Mia’s son, Jack, who then attends school in furious 7which suggests a time jump between films of at least two years.

Khan’s fate also changed, leading to large discrepancies in time between parts. F9 showed that the character not only became a spy working for the CIA agent Mr. Nobody (Kurt Russell) during his stay in Tokyo, he actually survived Shaw’s attack. Mr. Nobody knew Shaw was coming and alerted Khan and the couple came up with a plan to fake Khan’s death so he could protect Elle (Anna Savai), a young girl whose biometric data was the key to the doomsday weapon. This addition to Han’s story suggests that he was in Tokyo for an extended period of time prior to Shaw’s attack, making the short time frame suggested The fate of the furious even more incredible.

Obviously, the history of the franchise is complex and looks set to get even more complicated with the release of the trailer. Quick X adding additional characters and events to the narrative of fast five. But this should not deprive viewers of the pleasure of watching movies. The Fast & Furious movies are old-fashioned entertainment, and character relationships and outrageously hilarious action scenes mean much more than a few confusing chronological questions.