Fast X director talks re-grounding the series, “What could I do? Time travel?”

Last Updated on June 2, 2023

Part of the fun of the Fast and Furious franchise is to see how far they can take the ridiculousness with their action sequences. We’ve been given a heist with two cars literally dragging a vault through a city, mid-air catches after getting launched from speeding cars, a sports car driving from skyscraper to skyscraper, as well as an army of zombie cars being controlled remotely. It became a running joke that they would eventually go into space. And then they did.

After F9: The Fast Saga saw Tyrese and Ludacris’ characters actually travel to space in a car, the director of Fast X felt the need to ground the next film back onto Earth. Louis Leterrier tells Entertainment Weekly, “What could I do? Time travel? There’s nothing I could have done that’s bigger than that. There’s no way. They went to space, so I was like, ‘Let’s bring it back to Earth.'” Although it’s usually the goal for sequels to top its predecessor, Leterrier wanted to stick with what worked best when the series graduated into a billion-dollar franchise.

He continues, “I love the Fast & Furious movies with international espionage and going to space and everything, but that’s not why I watch these movies. If I get to do a Fast & Furious movie, it’s the one that brought back racing to the forefront. That’s my legacy as a director, I wanted to bring cars back to the forefront of Fast & Furious.” Ever since Fast Five, the franchise veered into more of a Mission: Impossible-with-cars style of action rather than just the street racing. However, each sequel has featured at least one street racing sequence to maintain a connection with its roots.

The mechanical mayhem would still continue as Fast X features sequences like a chase for a runaway bomb in the streets of Rome and showdowns with a car that is fitted with cannons. Diesel, who is a producer on these films, has teased in the past that the creative team has brainstormed a number of thrilling sequences, which include a chase on the Great Wall of China, so even though the series is seemingly coming to an end, there will be no shortage of ideas of where to take the cars next.