Fast & Furious 9: ‘We’re not just doing the same thing’
(BBC) Actor Vin Diesel can remember what his life was like before the first Fast & Furious film was released two decades ago.
“I’ll never forget being at an airport in Mexico, the movie hadn’t come out yet, it was maybe April of 2001,” he recalls.
“Paul [Walker, his co-star] and I were sitting on the floor, with our bags to the side, about to board a commercial flight back home. We had just flown down there for the MTV Spring Break thing.
“And I remember him leaning over to me and saying, ‘Take all of this in, take in the fact that people are walking over our legs, almost kicking our bags and not paying any attention to us’. I said, ‘Why?’ And he said, ‘Because after this film comes out, there too will go our anonymity’.”
Walker, who tragically died in a car accident in 2013, was right. The release of The Fast and the Furious would not only accelerate the careers of its stars, it would also launch one of the most profitable franchises in Hollywood history.
Set in Los Angeles, the original movie centred on the world of illegal street racing. It introduced the world to Dominic Toretto (Diesel), the leader of a criminal heist group that LAPD officer Brian O’Conner (Walker) tries to infiltrate.