The trailer for the newest iteration of the Fast & Furious franchise has just been released, and in an attempt to not yet run out of variations on the name The Fast and The Furious, is aptly called F9. Technically this is the tenth Fast & Furious film, counting the 2019 spin-off, Fast & Furious Presents: Hobbs and Shaw (or even the 11th if counting the 2009 short), but it is the ninth film in The Fast Saga, which is the collective name for the main films. In the new trailer, Han Lue, portrayed by Sung Kang, is resurrected from the grave, and the talents of Helen Mirren and Charlize Theron reprise their roles as Magdalene and Cipher.

In the trailer members of the crew do a variety of absurdist things, which have been rumored to culminate in Dom traveling to space. Justin Lin has returned to direct this film, having left the franchise for the seventh and eighth films. He said that he felt that there was nowhere else to take the story, but apparently, the appeal of space travel was enough to get him back on board. Now, as the team approaches the final frontier, it is clear that the recent Fast & Furious movies are virtually unrecognizable from the early ones.

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This film follows a group of street racers lead by Dominic Toretto (Vin Diesel). Brian O’Conner (Paul Walker) seeks to gain the trust of the street racers, seemingly because of his feelings for Dom’s sister, Mia (Jordana Brewster).

It turns out that Brian is actually an undercover cop trying to infiltrate the group, but by the end of the film he helps Dom escape from the police. This film focuses primarily on the juxtaposition between the perceived criminals as well as the perceived good guys.

Vin Diesel is not actually even in this film, having stated that he felt a sequel might feel tacked on and unnecessary, and would ultimately just hurt the original film’s chance of becoming a classic. This film subsequently follows Paul Walker’s character Brian, who is now on the run after helping Dom escape in the previous film.

The FBI reaches out to Brian and says that they can clear his name if he helps them bring down a drug lord. Roman Pearce (Tyrese Gibson) and Tej Parker (Ludacris) are two important characters who are both introduced in this film. This film features a number of car stunts, such as a series of cars driving off a lifted drawbridge, amongst many others.

This was intended to be the final film of the ‘trilogy’, but at the time that it came out, it certainly felt even more ‘tacked on’ than the previous film. This film takes place in Tokyo and doesn’t feature Brian or Dom, except for a brief cameo. It instead focuses on Sean Boswell (Lucas Black), an American living in Tokyo, and Han Lue (Sung Kang), who dies in this film but would become a fan-favorite character.

Subsequently, this film becomes much more important in establishing the Fast & Furious universe, as the chronological order was rearranged to allow Han to appear in other films. Now, the events of this film technically only occur during the events of Furious 7. The first three films are all in the same general vein, gradually getting more and more action-packed, but focus primarily on street racers.

This is actually a short film, only 20 minutes long, that functions as exposition for the following film, Fast and Furious. It explains that Dom has been running various crimes in Latin America for the last 5 years, and features Han, explaining that these events precede the events of Tokyo Drift.

In this film, Dom and his girlfriend Letty (Michelle Rodriguez) from the original film meet up again for the first time in five years, rekindle their relationship and get married, using a cross as their ring.

This film is where the franchise first starts to go in the heist direction. In this film, Brian is now an FBI agent, and Dom fears for Letty’s safety as a result of being involved with him. He abandons her, and she ends up getting murdered. Brian informs Dom of this, and the two are forced to work together to track down the drug lord who was responsible.

Brian and Dom are successful, but Dom is still sentenced to twenty-five years in prison. Brian resigns from the FBI, and the film ends with the team trying to intercept the prison bus that Dom is being transported on.

In this film, the main characters who are still alive have become some of the most wanted fugitives in the world, quite a jump from their statuses in the first film. The team go to Rio after having broken Dom out of prison, and it is revealed that Mia is pregnant. The team plans one more heist so that they can all live well now that there’s a baby on the way.

It is in this film that Luke Hobbs (Dwayne Johnson) is introduced. He is a DEA agent who is supposed to arrest the team, but ends up working with them, and at the end of the film, even allows them a 24-hour head start on their getaway. This is generally considered the best film in the series by fans and certainly led the franchise to blockbuster status.

In this film, it is revealed by Hobbs that Letty is actually still alive. Where the team thought she was dead, she was actually in a coma and now has amnesia. She is working for Owen Shaw (Luke Evans), a mercenary with military training. Hobbs knows that he needs the team to help track Shaw down. He tells them they can have immunity if they help him. The team is again successful, also rescuing Letty, and at a point, stop a plane from taking off with their cars. By the end of the film, Shaw is in a coma. However, Han’s girlfriend dies in the process, and heartbroken, he goes to Tokyo at the end of this film.

It is revealed that Shaw had an older brother, Deckard Shaw (Jason Statham), who is now seeking revenge on those who left his little brother in critical condition. Shaw finds information on the team from Hobbs’ computer, and he goes to Tokyo and it is revealed that he was responsible for the seemingly accidental death of Han in Tokyo Drift. Dom goes to Tokyo to get the body, and the team mourns him. In this film, cars drive off a plane and land on the ground. A car attempts to drive into an airborne helicopter, and a car drives through Abu Dhabi skyscrapers.

In this film, the team has to work together to find a computer program (and the person who created it) called God’s Eye, which is capable of finding any person anywhere. This film is also the last that Brian appears in, as Paul Walker died while the film was being shot. Originally the film was going to end by setting up the next heist, but instead it shows Brian and Mia playing on the beach with their children and deciding to retire from the life of crime to be with their children.

This film starts to go into the spy genre more than the previous ones and comes off more as a James Bond type of story than that of a car racing gang. To be fair, at this point there was hardly any street racing in the films anymore either way.

Cipher (Charlize Theron), a hacker who is revealed to have been behind a lot of the crime the team had to help stop in the previous movies, tricks Dom into working with her. She reveals that Dom has an illegitimate son who she is holding captive. Hobbs then has to get the rest of the team to help him stop Dom and Cipher. The stakes are clearly very different that they were in the first film, or even the first three.

This is technically only a spin-off film, but it features Luke Hobbs and Deckard Shaw being forced to work together. This is perhaps the most removed from the original Fast & Furious film, as it does not star any of the original cast and focuses primarily on the international spy aspects of the franchise.

It is clear that what the Fast & Furious movies have become is very different from their humble origins. It is also interesting that as the films go on, the stakes get higher and higher. In the first film the team was just trying to save themselves from prison time, and in the most recent, trying to save the world. But as the stakes get higher, it seems that the films become much more lighthearted, allowing for more absurd stunts and greater audience enjoyment overall.

The 11th film at the moment is rumored to be the final one in the series, and the 10th is already in pre-production. However, there are a number of Fast & Furious spin-offs in development, and after the success of Hobbs and Shaw, it seems unlikely that end of the series is anywhere in sight, especially as the franchise continually adds new characters with every film.

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