The Fast & Furious movies include a love of Corona beer, family values, illegal races, and some incredible car stunts. The first film started off with a simple premise of car racing and illegal truck-jacking. The series has since evolved from cops and robbers to international thrillers with high-octane action scenes. Fast and Furious fans can always count on seeing cool cars, but, now, each movie is trying to out-do the last in action.
Over the years, the stunts in the films continue to get bigger and bigger as the plots get more elaborate. The first film dealt with illegal car racing in Los Angeles to stopping a drug dealer in Miami in the second. Fast & Furious even went international as they robbed the richest man in Rio de Janeiro, stopped a terrorist in London, and drifted their way through Tokyo. The car stunts in these films seem too wild to be real, so here are the most unrealistic action stunts that these movies have pulled off throughout the nine films.
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7 London Airstrip — Fast & Furious 6
Universal Pictures
Fast & Furious 6 saw Dom’s crew take on a terrorist who seems to use modified cars to get what they want. This film has multiple stunts that seem to be too good to be true. Fans saw Brian and Roman out-run a tank in the middle of a highway, but this isn’t the stunt that has audiences calling out the filmmakers. Brian, Mia, and the crew chase down a plane on a runway and use their cars to tether the plane to prevent it from taking off. Not only were they on the world’s longest runway, they were using a Dodge Charger SRT8, Alfa Romeo Guilietta, and a Land Rover Defender to take down a Russian military plane. Reportedly, this plane was meant to lift 550,000lbs, so sorry to say this, but the London Airstrip stunt could never happen.
MOVIEWEB VIDEO OF THE DAY
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MOVIEWEB VIDEO OF THE DAY
6 Gas Tanker Heist — Fast & Furious
Fast & Furious, which is the fourth film of the franchise, takes a different approach from the get-go of this movie. In this opening scene, Dom and Letty take on hijacking a gas tank to sell it at a higher price. New York Times calls this stunt an old high school trick as audiences saw something similar in the first film when they were only hijacking DVD players. In this stunt, Dom approaches the back of the tankers, and Letty jumps from the car to the tanker. Letty would then cut loose each individual tanker as their cars would drive in reverse on a mountain road to attach themselves to the tankers before driving off. This stunt is fun to watch, but hard to believe it would actually work.
5 Dragging a Bank Vault Through Rio de Janeiro — Fast Five
Fast Five sees Dom’s crew running away to Brazil after Brian and Mia break him out of jail. While they are in Rio, they come across the man who runs the city. They decide to rob him by taking his entire vault with them. The final stunt scene in this movie is Brian and Dom literally stealing an entire safe full of money from a police station using two Dodge Chargers to drag it. They proceed to tow the vault through the entire city and not caring about all the destruction they left behind. According to Mel Magazine, the stunt coordinators used real hallowed out and motorized vaults to make this stunt possible. Dodge Chargers are typically not used for towing, especially for something that is well over 1,000lbs which the rear end of the car would never be able to support.
4 Racing on a Frozen Lake — The Fate of the Furious
The Fate of the Furious has the team trying to get Dom back after he goes rogue. The climax of the film takes place in Russia, where the crew has to stop a nuclear submarine from reaching open water. There are a dozen of cars, a submarine, torpedoes, and a car jumping in front of a missile, all while on a frozen lake. Game Spot assures audiences that everything in this scene is a 100% real minus the submarine. This Fast film shot this on a real frozen lake in Iceland making the race completely real, even where Roman drives a Lamborghini that sinks. Needless to say, this was shot in a controlled environment with professionals and would be very unlikely to happen in real life.
3 Jumping Out of Two Skyscrapers — Furious 7
Furious 7 has Hobbs enlisting the help of Dom’s crew after he was attacked. Dom’s team heads to Dubai after they rescue a hacker named Ramsey to get a program she safely hid. While in Dubai, audiences see one of the most over-the-top stunt work while also being one of the most destructive sequences. Dom and Brian drive a Lykan HyperSport supercar with no brakes through one Abu Dhabi skyscraper. But it doesn’t stop there: these two soar through a second skyscraper before they can stop the car. No actual skyscrapers were demolished in the making of this sequence, but the final product almost has audiences believing it was.
2 Making Cars Fly — Furious 7
Universal Studios
Furious 7 is probably the most action packed Fast & Furious film to date. Another unbelievable action stunt in this film is making cars fly. The team decides to somehow land in the middle of a mountainside road by parachuting down while inside the cars. It’s hard to believe that this scene has minimal amount of CGI placed in it. Top Gear said that the stunt team was able to drop sport cars from 12,000 feet and using skydivers to film the sequence. However, this wasn’t even perfect. Cars would fall apart midair or end up wildly off course.
1 Going to Space — F9
F9 really seems to take the cake with the most unbelievable action stunts in a Fast and Furious film. Dom takes his family off the grid and tries to live a quiet life. Danger always seems to find Dom, and this time, it’s his brother that forces him back into his old life. The wildest stunt sequence was when they turned an old 80s sports coupe into a rocket. The director of the film went so far as to talk to NASA scientists to see how this would work on a fundamental level. Vulture says that the writers of the film pitched this idea to the director as a joke; however, Justin Lin took this idea and ran with it. He realized the insanity of it all, but after 20 years in the franchise, Lin wanted to defy the laws of physics, and he’s okay with it.
