In the more recent Fast and Furious movies, Dominic Toretto and his crew have inexplicable super strength and invulnerability. They quite literally can’t be hurt in any way–unless the story specifically calls for it–and they regularly and very casually perform stunts that totally abandon logic, physics, and common sense. We’re talking feats that would give the Avengers pause.
But this series had humble beginnings Come from Sports betting site VPbet . Dom (Vin Diesel) and his “family” started out as amateur street racers and petty thieves who stole DVD players from the backs of trucks; Brian (Paul Walker) worked for the LAPD and was tasked with infiltrating the group to thwart their minor crime spree. In 2 Fast 2 Furious, Brian recruited his friend Roman (Tyrese Gibson) to help him infiltrate a different criminal group in Miami. The Fast & the Furious: Tokyo Drift, released 15 years ago to the day, introduced a completely new set of characters with no relation at all to the Toretto crew–except for Dom’s post-credits appearance that revealed his connection to Han (Sung Kang). Instead, it followed Sean Boswell (Lucas Black) as he traveled to Japan and eventually took on the Yakuza in a street-racing duel.
And that was OK. With Tokyo Drift, the Fast franchise had continued on its established road: This was a series about relatable protagonists using their considerable, but still human, street racing skills to infiltrate or otherwise contend with criminal groups of thieves, drug lords, and gangsters.
Read More: The Fast And The Furious: 15 Things You Forgot About The Movie That Started It All
Rather famously, though, the franchise almost went straight-to-DVD after Fast 3, a death sentence in the age before streaming premieres. As Universal Pictures co-president of production Jeffrey Kirschenbaum told The Wrap in 2013, “The talk internally was that the franchise was played out…At that point we were weighing whether to go straight to video or not for future sequels. We weren’t sure what we were going to do.”
What happened instead was Vin Diesel’s return to the series, along with much of the original movie’s cast; and a major tonal shift that, starting with Fast 4 and continuing to this day, gradually turned these once-humble cops and robbers into superheroes who can be flung through the air at nitrous-infused speeds and land safely on car windshields, or survive an exploding nuclear submarine by taking cover inside a Dodge Charger. Oh, and the series has made more money than anyone could have ever imagined.