Fast and Furious

Each new development in the Fast and Furious feud is somehow more delightful and absurd than the last. First there was the highly-publicized beef between Dwayne Johnson and Vin “Candyass” Diesel. Then Tyrese Gibson got involved when it was announced that Johnson is headlining a spinoff. That quickly escalated when Universal pushed back the release of Furious 9 to make room for the spinoff, and now, a few irate Instagram posts later, here we are: Tyrese Gibson is threatening to quit the Fast fam if Dwayne Johnson returns for the ninth movie.

Tyrese shared a video of The Rock brutally bashing his 2015 album, and the ‘Fast and Furious’ feud continues.

This Fast and Furious family feud has become so wacky and convoluted that it could easily serve as the plot for the next Fast and Furious movie. If you haven’t been paying attention, here’s a quick recap: After some highly-publicized beef with Vin Diesel on the set of The Fate of the Furious, Dwayne Johnson struck a deal with Universal for his very own spinoff with Jason Statham. Last week, the studio pushed the release of Fast 9 back from 2019 to 2020, and subsequently scheduled Johnson’s spinoff for…2019. Tyrese Gibson dragged Johnson on Instagram. Then Diesel chimed in with a post about staying positive. Grab your popcorn, fam, because Johnson just responded.

Tyrese Gibson has taken to posting (and the deleting) pleas on social media for Dwayne Johnson not to leave the Fast and Furious franchise like a lovestruck ex. At least, that’s what everyone figures is going on, because there is clearly something going on between the two. Tyrese Gibson has been commenting and the deleting messages to The Rock on his Instagram posts, and today posted an Instagram himself, along with a plea for Johnson to call him back.

Michelle Rodriguez, who has starred in five ‘Fast & Furious’ entries and is also a woman, isn't going to leave this alone: The franchise needs to do better by its women.

Fast and Furious franchise star Michelle Rodriguez made waves this week with her comment that the film series needs to “give more love” to its female characters, driving her point home with the faint threat of exiting the franchise. And while her diplomatically-phrased initial statement was hardly furious, the response to it has arrived in a manner I can describe only as… fast.

The Fast and Furious franchise has earned some praise from socially-inclined critics for its utopian vision of a world where people of all races — white, black, Latino, Asian, Vin Diesel — can join hands and drive cars out of buildings in multicultural harmony. But these films have not done well by women to anything close to the same extent. In the recent Fate of the Furious, Dom’s baby mama gets murdered, hacker-babe Ramsey spends the run time getting eye-banged by Tyrese and Ludacris (neither of whom know her last name), and Cipher... well, Cipher was Cipher.

In The Fate of the Furious, the eighth installment in the car-jacking, street racing franchise, Vin Diesel’s Dom Toretto does the worst thing a man of his values can do: He turns his back on family. That six letter, three syllable mantra is the sentimental thread that holds the Fast and Furious crew together, and what adds heart to an action series suffused with cars and criminals. One would assume there must be good reason to plot an entire film around something so antithetical to the spirit of the series. But that reveal winds up being the silliest and most left-field twist since the time the movies explained Letty’s (Michelle Rodriguez) return with amnesia.

You surely know that Paul Walker tragically passed away in 2013. But did you know that in order to finish Furious 7 while giving his character, Brian O’Conner, a fitting sendoff, the creators of Furious 7 had to use a combination of digital effects and body doubles, which included Walker’s brothers, Caleb and Cody? That’s just one of the fast facts featured in the latest episode of You Think You Know Movies!

In the beginning, there were illegal street races and high speed heists, and Vin Diesel looked upon that which had created and saw that it was good. But as the franchise continued, the stakes became a little more… let’s say a little more insane. Cars parachuted out of the sky. Characters leapt their vehicles between skyscrapers. Tanks exchanged missiles with a submarine. As each movie has progressively upped the wow-factor of the franchise, there seems to be only one natural outcome for the Fast and the Furious family: they’re definitely going to head into space.