Could the Fast & Furious movies really be set in a comic book universe? With the release of the franchise’s latest installment, F9, the series’ increasingly flagrant disregard for things like gravity, physics, and the general way the world operates has gone through the stratosphere – literally so, in fact, when Tej and Roman pilot a hastily-made space car into orbit as part of the plan for Dominic Toretto and his crew to save the day. The Fast Saga has drifted more and more in unapologetic absurdity, right into F9 unhooking the few remaining tethers it has to reality, but could there actually be a way that the series makes sense in its own context?
Nearly any other action movie franchise moving into the territory that the Fast & Furious series has would be a clear indicator that it’s on life support, and yet, the adventures of Dom and his family have simply leaned more into the territory of invincibility, superpowers, and battles to save the entire world. If that sounds more like what one would expect from 2021’s slate of superhero movies, that might not be accidental. It could be that, rather than being more standard action movies that have outlived their shelf life, the Fast & Furious series might actually be a comic book universe with cars instead of capes.
As it is currently, the Fast Saga is unlike any other action movies series in the world in how much it embraces, rather than avoids, a gleeful lack of resemblance to real-world logic and physics. The notion of uncostumed superheroes populating the Fast & Furious universe might be the only way to truly make sense of how casually insane the series now is, the kinds of illogically superhuman feats Dominic Toretto and co. can all pull off, and above all, the fact that they can all seemingly survive almost anything. Here’s why the Fast & Furious movies might actually be a comic book universe in disguise.
Roman Thinks They’re Invincible (And They Are)
The Fast Saga has notoriously gotten more and more outlandish with each installment from Fast Five onward, but F9 is the first movie in the series to actually offer some in-story commentary on that trajectory. This happens in a scene where Roman proposes to Tej and Ramsey that they and the rest of Dom’s crew are invincible and that this is how they’ve managed to survive their crazy adventures over the years. Tej and Ramsey initially humor him before dismissing his theory outright, but the analysis made by Roman Pearce is a lot more spot-on than they give him credit for.
From Fast Five to F9, Dom and co. have consistently cheated death with almost casual ease. Just going by the law of averages, the fact that they continually survive with minor cuts and bruises at worst is a string of good fortune that’s far too cosmically improbable to simply be the heroes of Fast & Furious just lucking out over and over. It’s also not just the fact that they regularly survive situations that should’ve killed them, but the kinds of feats Dom and his family are capable of pulling off while doing so.
Fast & Furious Movies Don’t Obey The Laws Of Physics
Action movies have skirted realism for the sake of compelling storytelling and exciting set pieces since time immemorial. However, despite its early focus on street-racing, the Fast & Furious movies today take it to a level that’s so beyond belief, it’s impossible to not take note of how little concern the franchise now has for even slightly obeying the laws of physics. Fast Five began the series’ move into the outrageous with action scenes like the train heist, and especially with Dom and Brian towing a 10-ton safe at high-speed through the streets of Rio de Janeiro. Considering where the series is now with F9, it’s enough to make Fast Five now look like The Bourne Identity in terms of action movie realism.
Dom crashing his car into a guardrail to propel himself into the air and catch the then-recently returning Letty Ortiz in Fast & Furious 6 may be one of his crowning moments of action heroism, but the notion that he could pull that off without obliterating his and Letty’s bones and organs is the height of absurdity. Now, even that looks tame compared to the crazy action scenes in F9. Dom himself is hardly alone in pulling off such feats, with no modern Fast & Furious movie lacking for moments such as Hobbs keeping a steel chain from being pulled away by a helicopter through sheer strength alone in Hobbs & Shaw, or multiple characters falling from heights that should’ve killed them upon impact. Tej and Roman’s trek into space in F9 might also make for a fun new element in the movie’s ending act, but it’s also operating almost entirely on pseudo-science. If this is starting to sound more and more like superhero territory, Hobbs & Shaw also brought in another comic book genre staple.
Hobbs & Shaw Fought A Literal Superhuman
The Fate of the Furious brought the Fast Saga‘s current running villainess Cipher, played by Charlize Theron, into play, but it was Hobbs & Shaw that first brought an explicitly superhuman character into the series with Idris Elba’s Brixton Lore. A former MI6 colleague of Shaw’s, Brixton is now a player in the shadowy Eteon terrorist organization, with cybernetic upgrades that enhance his human capabilities to superhuman levels. The Fast & Furious movies may have begun to feel like superhero films, but it was Hobbs & Shaw that brought an out-and-out superhuman into the franchise, with Brixton now being the quintessential villain for the series.
The full scope of Eteon still remains a mystery, but Brixton’s arrival marked another transition for the series, in that the villains now have true comic book and sci-fi DNA in a way that they never have before. Brixton’s origin even involves Shaw shooting him in their early days before his upgrade into a hybrid of man and machine by Eteon. That also illustrates a trend in the Fast Saga that’s now become more obvious than ever in F9.
No One Ever Really Dies In The Fast & Furious Franchise
Not only do the heroes of the series regularly escape life-threatening situations unharmed, but the Fast & Furious series has also had a surprisingly low number of deaths of its major characters, and fewer still that were permanent. Back before the series transitioned away from street-racing, The Fast and the Furious saw the death of Chad Lindberg’s Jesse, while Matt Schulze’s Vince would later be killed in Fast Five. After the franchise’s 20-year run, they are among the only dead characters to actually stay dead.
Letty was seemingly killed in a car explosion in Fast & Furious, only to simply be left with amnesia (and not even so much as first-degree burns) before she fully rejoined Dom’s crew in Fast & Furious 6. What appeared to be a pretty definitive death scene in Tokyo Drift/Furious 7 for Sung Kang’s Han has also been retconned to him and Mr. Nobody faking his demise. At this point, Brixton Lore’s returning after his ostensible death in Hobbs & Shaw wouldn’t be off the cards, and the death of Gal Gadot’s Gisele Yashar in Fast & Furious 6 isn’t of the sort that the series couldn’t retcon either (as Kang himself has hinted at.) No one’s death in the Fast & Furious franchise can really be taken at face value anymore, just like the death of any superhero is just their next comic book story before their inevitable resurrection. So, with the series now involving superhuman feats, technology beyond the scope of modern science, full-blown supervillains, and almost any on-screen death undone two or three movies later, what exactly does that make the Fast & Furious movies now?
Theory: The Fast & Furious Movies Are Set In A Comic Book Universe
While it’s become less of a stretch to liken the Fast & Furious movies to comic book films, the best possible interpretation now might be that Dom and his crew are outright superheroes. Just based on the kinds of maneuvers he pulls off in F9, calling Dom “Car-Man” wouldn’t just be understandable, but perhaps even place the film in a more believable context with what he and his family can do with motor vehicles. During Luke Hobbs’ days of pursuing Dom’s crew, his famous line in Fast Five “We don’t ever, ever let them get into cars” might’ve referenced their strong driving skills and street-racing backgrounds before. Now, with Dom slingshotting he and Letty across a ravine with a loose steel cable and Sean Boswell’s rocket car being converted into an actual spacecraft, that warning now carries more weight than ever.
This could also recontextualize the street-racing basis the series began with into the franchise’s equivalent of the X-Men’s Danger Room. Dom’s family may not simply be blowing off steam in street races (which the series still features in a more compartmentalized capacity), but using it as a training ground for their automotive adventures. Additionally, there are direct parallels to actual comic book characters in what the heroes of the Fast Saga now embody.
Hobbs exhibits levels of superhuman strength that’s closer than it should be to The Rock’s coming role as the Superman-like Black Adam, while the tech support Tej and Ramsey provide is similar to Barbara Gordon’s role as Oracle. Mr. Nobody is also a very Nick Fury-esque behind-the-scenes operative who brings the team together whenever the need arises, and just about everybody can recover from injuries big and small with a speed not that far off from Wolverine. The Fast & Furious series also now has adversarial elements that include an antagonist clearly meant to now be the franchise’s arch-villainess in Cipher, an organization out for world domination in Eteon, a technologically-enhanced super-soldier similar to John Walker could easily make a return in Brixton Lore, and threats of world-destabilizing proportions being the basis for every installment. The films of the series might not bear the DC or Marvel logo in their opening credits, but they’re comic book movies in every sense of the term, and it might now be time to finally declare the Fast Saga as a genuine, superhuman-populated comic book universe.
There’s no reason at this point to expect the Fast & Furious series to dial back its cheerful disregard for how reality operates. While that’s gradually become a feature rather than a bug for the franchise, it might also be telling that its twenty-year metamorphosis may have more in common with comic book storytelling than anything else. For audiences leaving F9 feeling as though they’ve just watched a superhero movie, the best way to read the series now could be that that’s exactly what it is.
