‘Fast X’ Begins Its Grand Finale Era Playing All The Greatest Hits

Fast X kickstarted the final act of its 22-year-long saga last week, with the concluding story reportedly spanning two more films before the big curtain call. But will it really be over? Probably not. The Fast & Furious franchise— that all began in 2001 as a well-received ‘Point Break but with fast cars’ —cemented itself as a pop culture staple that spawned a cult following and a few money-making action blockbusters throughout the 2010s. With each film historically outdoing the last, it’s always expected the franchise will go bigger with the car chases and action antics, and following F9’s insane space travel plot, many wondered where the series could go— if anywhere. Despite all that, the early cast announcements of Jason Momoa, Daniela Melchior, and Brie Larson, and the rumored return of Dwayne Johnson’s Hobbs, kept fans interested in seeing what Fast X had to offer.

The film jumps into establishing Dante Reyes’ (Momoa) villain origin story with the opening scenes retconning him into the franchise via flashback as the orphaned son of the villain from Fast 5. Fast forward to the present, and we have BBQs with Dom & Co. now including Rita Moreno as Abuelita dressed in an Elvis Presley aesthetic, providing the inevitable speech about the importance of family— the franchise’s main theme. Dante’s long-winded but simple revenge plot to cause as much suffering to everyone involved in his father’s demise by hitting them where it hurts most is explained (a few times) and begins with a ploy to kidnap Dom’s son Little B (Leo Abelo Perry) and to separate and keep apart Dom & Co. by framing them for bombing Rome. This sets up the many side plots of Jakob (John Cena) and Little B attempting to reach the safe house, Letty (Michelle Rodriguez) and Cipher (Charlize Theron) escaping Antarctica, and Roman (Tyrese Gibson), Tej (Ludacris), and Ramsey (Nathalie Emmanuel) avoiding capture. A typical game of cat and mouse with Dante and Dom ensues, and the return of every legacy character from the previous films all culminates into a cliffhanger in what I could only describe as ending mid-scene with everyone’s fate unknown until the next film.

Fast X did plenty of things right by delivering a more grounded Hollywood classic action and revenge story and leaving the space travel from F9 at the garage. It stuck to basics, gave impressive visual effects in the action scenes, and provided plenty of touching tributes to Paul Walker’s character, including a cameo of his real-life daughter. It’s guilty of packing one-too-many characters and relying heavily on previous film stories making it look more like a Cher farewell tour playing the greatest hits than the first act of an epic conclusion. The film’s plot was a lot of familiar rehashed chain of events consisting of foes turned allies, allies turned foes, dramatic sacrifices in the name of family, previously dead members mysteriously returning, and cars defying the laws of physics— as are all expected from this film’s universe. The reveal of Gal Gadot’s Gisele being alive after dying a few movies ago was set up to be a big reveal— but if Letty can come back and beat amnesia, why not? Same with Han (Saun Kang), who was thought to have died in Furious 6. Since the film’s lore has already established death not being final and these characters being as invincible as Marvel-like superheroes, it’s believable to see Gisele return. When the film does kill characters off, the impact is less powerful, knowing the character’s return is very possible.  

The film’s biggest highlight was Mamoa’s campy queer-coded performance as a villainous pastel-scrunchy-wearing psycho. It’s the perfect touch of ridiculousness that was needed for the F&F franchise, which has struggled with how seriously it has taken itself in the past instead of fully leaning into the hyper-reality it has created. The villain character going the queer-coded route was an interesting creative choice for Mamoa. Portraying a queer-coded villain can be tricky due to the industry’s history of the trope, but Mamoa’s flamboyant parts of Dante are played up as more of a way to poke fun at the general toxic masculine culture associated with the franchise. The scene with the nail polish and the dead guards is Joker-level insane, and it works. The joke is funny and lands well because Mamoa also seems in on it. Dante’s fierceness dominated every scene and served as a nice palette cleanser to Dom’s more brooding monotone masculinity.

Understandably, the tenth film had a lot of expectations to live up to, not just as the final act for the franchise but following the behind-the-scenes setbacks surrounding its production left many wondering what kind of movie would be delivered exactly. A week into filming, director Justin Lin, who previously directed four other F&F films, left the project citing “creative differences” and was replaced shortly after by Louis Leterrier. The incident cost Universal Pictures $1 million daily until they found Leterrier to step in as the new director, and reports were quick to allege that on-set tension between some of the cast and crew resulted in Lin’s decision to leave. Dwayne Johnson also publicly stepped away from the franchise in 2016 after filming Fast 8 in a since-deleted post calling out an unnamed male co-worker for unprofessionalism, whom many theorized was Diesel. That speculation was all but confirmed with Diesel’s olive branch post publicly requesting Johnson to return in Fast X, and all seemed bleak for Hobbs enthusiasts until the post-credits scene revealed the character’s return to the franchise. To hardcore fans of the saga, Fast X will hit all the nostalgic sweet spots with all the callbacks from previous films, but to the casual viewer, it will all be story fluff around the very entertaining Mamoa scenes. Considering its rocky head start Fast X delivered a solid beginning for its finale era that will more than likely last for a few more years.

Being in theatres now for over a week, the action-packed film debuted at number one on its opening weekend at the box office, grossing $67 million. For comparisons, F9 brought in $70 million in 2021 and grossed $719 million worldwide. As of May 28, it has earned over $107.9 million domestically (US and Canada) and $399.3 million internationally. The film has the highest budget for an F&F film at $340 million and reportedly will have to gross $800–850 million worldwide to turn a profit.