Do the Fast and Furious movies have better races or chases?

The As of Fast XThe Fast and Furious franchise is known for several things. On screen, at least, its big signature elements are the characters’ dedication to found family, the directors’ love for big, explosive action with vehicular stunts, and the ever-expanding cast of movie stars. (Off-screen, they’re known more for personnel clashes with ongoing star Vin Diesel, from his feud with Dwayne Johnson to his reported clash with longtime director Justin Lin.)

The series Tokyo has moved far away from the original premise of a crew racing on the streets. These days, it’s much more about international intrigue, leading to elaborate car chases where the gang pursues or flees a series of international villains. What is more intense and vital to the franchise? The races that gave the franchise its “Fast” label, or the chases that sum up the “Furious” half of the equation?

Our Fast and Furious fanatics are split at Polygon. With that, we have a divided fan base. Fast X arriving in theaters on May 19, that division is important — we need to come together as a faaamily on this issue. So we’re here to present our evidence and decide which is more important to the Fast and Furious franchises: races or chases?

Polygon Court now in session.

Opening remarks

Pete Volk: The story began with racing.

Two decades ago, the world was a very different place. The Fast and the Furious, undercover LAPD officer Brian O’Conner embedded in the world of street racing to investigate a series of truck thefts. In this fateful mission, he would meet new friends, form a family and finally leave the police force. All because of his passion for racing.

Fast and Furious has evolved in terms of scope and budget, but its core remains the same. There’s no beating the straightforward thrill of skilled competitors giving it their all to make it to the finish line first.

To quote the scripture: “Ask any racer — any real racer. It doesn’t matter if you win by an inch or a mile. Winning is winning.” —Dominic Toretto, The Fast and the Furious

Universal Pictures

Zosha Millman: Everyone loves a race on the street. I think several of us can think back to the halcyon days of our youth (or now) and remember how good it feels to take life a quarter-mile at a time, behind the wheel of your most trusty companion, while your best friend/enemy/frenemy/new guy who just showed up with a cool car revs the engine next to you. Fast is much more now and we need to move forward.

Dom, the Fast Family and their friends no longer have to show off on the street; Dom can Tokyo fall asleep and still win Tokyo Drift’s treacherous mountain race by a mile. Dom’s point is that, no matter where Dom comes from, driving style will be the same. Fast and Furious stars drive as if they are maniacs. They need stunts — and storytelling — that can keep up.

Presenting evidence

PV: Three key scenes are used to introduce my case. Each scene captures the drama and excitement of racing.

First, the bridge race from 2003’s Fast and Furious 2. This race has it all: hot cars, hot drivers, neon-soaked lights and vehicles, great close-up face reactions, ample use of NOS, and Brian O’Conner jumping his car over another car in midair.

Photo: Giles Keyte/Universal Pictures

Racing as romance is next. Dom and an amnesiac Letty reuniting and rekindling their lost love while drifting around a double-decker bus in London in 2013’s Fast & Furious 6??? That’s hard to beat! But Dom and Brian’s iconic final race in the first movie, jumping over the train tracks together to cement their bromance, gives that scene (and any other from the franchise) a run for its money.

ZM: Everyone knows that Fast and Furious was built around good racing scenes. It’s a given! That’s how we fell in love with the machismo and high-test thrills of the franchise to begin with. Chases make your adamantium bone, if racing is about making bones. This shit is shredded to shreds, just like Wolverine.

Look no further than 2011’s Fast FiveThis culminated in one of the most impressive stunts ever performed by the franchise: the heist, where the team stole a vault using their vehicles. I’ll repeat: they pulled it off! They pulled! A vault! Dodge Chargers are the best! The “police German shepherd” of cars!

That practical effect is ludicrous, and thus incredible — better than any Tom Cruise action sequence. (You can trust me, I’m under oath.) This is the promise of this franchise: It keeps building on the characters’ skills and stunts, and finding new ways to hit the NOS. This energy is unmatched by any other race.

PV: I will concede on one point — that scene where they steal the vault is extremely cool. However, I maintain that these sequences are nothing compared to the drifting scenes in the unfairly maligned Tokyo DriftThe movie I like best is the one that has the most exciting racing scenes in the entire franchise.

It’s the coolest the cars have looked in the franchise — there’s hypnotic synchronized drifting up a mountain road, and the racing is dynamic and vibrant, especially at night, as the lights shine. Even if the cars aren’t going as fast as in some of the other movies, the tight quarters and repeated failures sell you on the sheer difficulty of what’s being executed, culminating in an absolute banger of a final contest.

I guess this is also where my sports fan comes out — I love action movies, and the big stunts in the chase scenes are very cool. The racing scenes remind me of my childhood, when I watched sports. They have a clear motivation and a high stakes. Good racing scenes have a clearly defined objective. I enjoy action scenes with this kind of clarity.

ZM: It’s true, the racing scenes of the Fast franchise do benefit from a clear, identifiable objective. But too often, races limit all these moments — there’s a reason so many of the races in the Fast franchise have to introduce outside influences or complications, like The Fast and the Furious’ cop chase that interrupts Brian and Dom’s first race. The family is more than just a race to win the first place. (This isn’t Succession.The chase scenes in the film are often as exciting and have clear goals, but they also raise the stakes.

Universal Pictures

You’ve got Furious 7,Shaw arrives at just the wrong time to take revenge on the crew. Dom and Brian must cross the border in the fourth movie by smuggling through an underground tunnel, weaving around load-bearing post and dodging bullets. It’s like a Mario Kart level, but with more sniping. We know Dom, Brian Tyrese Letty and anyone else who rides in the family is a good rider. How could we expect that drag races would measure the abilities of these people in a new and exciting manner?

We can do the most extreme stunts. For every drag-race scene with Letty, Dom and Helen Mirren in London we will have a Helen Mirren.Helen! Mirren!While Dom is working her e brake, she’s being chased by London police. It’s not a metaphor, but it is a way to describe the situation. You can learn more about it here.There is a lot of sexual tension in the relationship between them. This is driving as mech suits. Driving as mechsuits.

Final arguments

PV:I’ll ask this question to the members of the jury. What good is it living your life one quarter mile at a moment without an end?

I’m not against the incredible stunts and explosive finales we’ve been treated to over the last few installments in the series, but what I’d like to say is this: Wouldn’t it be great if we The following are some of the reasons why you should consider hiring someone else Han and Shaw had taken their fight to the track. If the attention to detail for the crew’s personalized cars and racing styles from the first few movies continued through for the rest of the franchise, rather than abandoning many of them for blocky tanks in disguise?

While I appreciate the Fast and Furious franchise’s turn to massive-budget excess, the humble origins of this racing franchise will always finish first in the race to my heart.

ZM:It has been a long time since the franchise abandoned the bro-character work which defined its first entry. Diesel has abandoned the balance of pent-up rage and zen tranquility of Dom’s early scenes in favor of a cool composure. Dominic Toretto’s racing ability is no longer questioned. I bet that he can even move it in heels, backwards and with his feet like Fred Astaire. Now he has to channel that fast energy, furious as it is, into new heights and new leaps of faith — sometimes (often) literally.

Universal Pictures

The chases are the franchise’s evolution, the Charizard to the races’ Charmander. These scenes, which are larger and ferocious in nature and hack all vehicles within a distance and toss cars from space with greater logical logic than that of The Fast and the Furious’ final act. They may not all be winners, but they’re all ambitious, and they all provide Dom another chance to shout “Letty!” which is really all we can ask from cinema anymore.

If we’re not going to let Dom well and truly defy law enforcement in service of petty theft (shout out to those CRTs he nabbed), then we might as well let him do big crimes in the weirdest, car-wrecking-est Robin Hood way possible. The MCU doesn’t care about the collateral damage caused by its super-hero battles. Fast and Furious makes sure it is a part of the story. Dom’s car is dead, and he finds a new one. It’s time to continue the thrill.

Austen Goslin, amicus curiae: In the spirit of the Fast franchise, I’m here, out of nowhere, to play the “Jason Statham in Furious 7,” role and tell you that you’re both wrong, but also that you’re both right in a pedantic, retcon-y way that leaves open the possibility of vague reconciliation and future spinoffs. Neither races nor chases are the best part of this franchise, because it’s best when it combines the two, and that usually happens during heists — the Real EstateThe stars of Fast and Furious.

Universal Pictures

To better clear up what we’re talking about, and why you’re both right and wrong, let’s talk about what a heist is when it’s planned by the Fast Family.

A heist always involves a race against time. Whether that’s because there’s only a tight window where everything lines up perfectly, or because there’s an imminent threat looming over the world, Dom and his crew are (at least in the post-Tokyo DriftThe crew (of movies) is always in a race against the clock. This crew is always planning its work. like they’re races. They don’t have any other choice: It’s the spirit that the Fast movies are built on, but it isn’t where they stop. It never was. In fact, the end of the movie was a mixture between a racing and a chasing scene.

The second part is a pursuit. Races may be Fast’s DNA, but chases are its most critical evolution. Heists for this crew aren’t stealth jobs: They’re big, they’re loud, and every single one draws the attention of every driver in the area. In other words, these jobs are built to go wrong, and they’re built for the crew to get chased, but they also always have a finish line in mind… and Dom’s crew always races past it first.