Whether it’s movies like Heat bringing massive stars together to create one of the best ‘90s movies, all-time great romantic comedies allowing America’s sweethearts to show off in front of adoring fans, or legendary sci-fi flicks showcasing the skills of up-and-comers and established stars, there have been a lot of movies that brought two heavyweight actors together.

Below are 32 such movies that brought such an incredible one-two punch, we still can’t believe they actually happened. But luckily, these castings did happen and they were pulled off really, really well.

Heat (Robert De Niro & Al Pacino)

Though they were technically both in The Godfather Part II, Robert De Niro and Al Pacino wouldn’t share a scene until more than 20 years later in Heat. Sure, their shared time on screen was minimal (this was a cat-and-mouse game, you know), but this Michael Mann epic was made all the better with these two heavyweights together at last.

Escape Plan (Sylvester Stallone & Arnold Schwarzenegger)

Sylvester Stallone and Arnold Schwarzenegger had one of the biggest rivalries in Hollywood throughout the ‘80s and ‘90s as they competed for box office supremacy with all kinds of action movies. Well, they finally started working together in the 2010s with a series of movies that includes Escape Plan. Though The Expendables came first, that was more of an ensemble affair and Schwarzenegger was relegated to a brief cameo.

Collateral (Jamie Foxx & Tom Cruise)

When it comes to movies set in Los Angeles, few are as cool or thrilling as Collateral. Michael Mann’s 2004 thriller stars Jamie Foxx (just months before he won an Oscar) and Tom Cruise (one of his most menacing performances) as a cab driver and assassin, respectively, on a night neither will forget.

Fast Five (Vin Diesel & Dwayne Johnson)

Vin Diesel and Dwayne Johnson would go on to have one of the strangest Hollywood feuds in the years that followed, but the two Hollywood heavyweights first came together for Fast Five in 2011. A movie that forever changed the course of the Fast & Furious franchise, this wild heist adventure saw the two beefed-up and bald actors go at it in one of the series’ best fights.

You've Got Mail (Tom Hanks & Meg Ryan)

While it is true that You’ve Got Mail was the pair’s third movie together, Tom Hanks and Meg Ryan weren’t really the massive stars they were when making Joe Versus the Volcano and Sleepless in Seattle. Hanks had earned two Oscars and Ryan had led several more rom-coms between their early films and this 1998 romantic comedy.

Waiting To Exhale (Angela Bassett & Whitney Houston)

Waiting to Exhale has a great cast from top to bottom (as well as a great original song), but it was wild seeing Angela Bassett and Whitney Houston share the screen in this iconic 1995 dramedy about a group of women navigating love, life, and friendship with each other by their sides.

A Few Good Men (Tom Cruise & Jack Nicholson)

Rob Reiner’s A Few Good Men has a cast that includes Demi Moore, Kevin Bacon, Kiefer Sutherland, Cuba Gooding Jr., and so much more. But then you have Tom Cruise and Jack Nicholson at the top of the list. Though they don’t share the screen for all that long, they were both part of the now iconic “You can’t handle the truth” courtroom scene, which has gone on to become one of the most universally known quotes of all time.

True Romance (Dennis Hopper & Christopher Walken)

The “Sicilian Scene” from True Romance will forever be remembered as one of the greatest cinematic moments of the 1990s, and that’s thanks to Dennis Hopper and Christopher Walken (two absolute legends) giving it their all. Yeah, Christian Slater and Patricia Arquette are the core of Tony Scott’s 1993 romantic crime drama, but these two heavyweights stole the show.

Butch Cassidy And The Sundance Kid (Paul Newman & Robert Redford)

Paul Newman and Robert Redford could very well be one of the best on-screen pairings in Hollywood history. While The Sting is great and all, we have to talk about Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid bringing these two legends together. From the start of the flick to that iconic ending (you know what we’re talking about), this movie is in a league of its own.

The Departed (Leonardo DiCaprio & Jack Nicholson)

Martin Scorsese’s The Departed, one of the best 2000s movies, has one of the director’s best group of actors, which is saying something. The two megastars at the top of the list? Well, none other than Leonardo DiCaprio and Jack Nicholson, who are outrageously great together. No wonder this won Best Picture.

Bad Boys (Will Smith & Martin Lawrence)

Bad boys, bad boys, whatcha gonna do when Will Smith and Martin Lawrence come for you? Well, moviegoers found out with the 1995 release of Bad Boys, a landmark buddy cop movie starring two of the biggest names on the planet at the time. Still on the rise, Smith and Lawrence became even bigger stars after his great Michael Bay movie came out.

Thelma & Louise (Susan Sarandon & Geena Davis)

Thelma & Louise is one of those movies that never gets old, no matter how many times you watch it. And while we would love to give Ridley Scott all the credit, or say Brad Pitt’s small part made a difference, let’s be real and acknowledge the work of Susan Sarandon and Geena Davis as two on-the-run women with nothing but the open road (and open sky) ahead of them.

Marriage Story (Scarlet Johansson & Adam Driver)

Marriage Story brought together Scarlet Johansson and Adam Driver together in 2019, the same year they starred in box office juggernauts Avengers: Endgame and Star Wars: Episode IX – The Rise of Skywalker, respectively. And if we’re being honest, this Netflix original was actually the best of those three films.

Lethal Weapon (Mel Gibson & Danny Glover)

Lethal Weapon, the first in a franchise of legendary buddy cop movies, brought together Mel Gibson and Danny Glover for an outrageously funny and action-packed crime story about two cops from different walks of life trying to solve a case (and not kill one another). Riggs and Murtaugh are still one of the best duos, even after all these years.

Life (Eddie Murphy & Martin Lawrence)

Though both appeared in Boomerang earlier in the decade, Martin Lawrence was a star on the same level as Eddie Murphy when they teamed up for Life. This rude, crude, and incredible 1998 comedy about two convicts making the most out of life sentences is full of hilarious and unforgettable moments.

Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade (Harrison Ford & Sean Connery)

There are some out there who think Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade is the best of the franchise, and they wouldn’t be entirely wrong. With Sean Connery coming on to play Harrison Ford’s on-screen dad, this 1989 adventure film was bigger, grander, and more epic than anything that came before it in this beloved franchise.

The Mexican (Julia Roberts & Brad Pitt)

Gore Verbinski’s The Mexican may not be the best movie or even the most successful to feature Julia Roberts and Brad Pitt, but these two were at or near the peak of their fame when this 2001 crime film was released. Coming out nine months before they shared the screen in Ocean’s Eleven, this oft-forgotten romance film brought the pair together.

Bruce Almighty (Jim Carrey & Morgan Freeman)

After both became two of the biggest stars of ‘90s Hollywood, Jim Carrey and Morgan Freeman shared the screen in 2003’s Bruce Almighty, with the latter playing God (can you imagine anyone else playing the divine being?). Though they didn’t have all that much time together, these two legends made the most of it to create some utterly hilarious moments.

Night At The Museum (Ben Stiller & Robin Williams)

The Night at the Museum movies have all kinds of great pairings, but the original did it best with Ben Stiller as a lowly nighttime security guard and the late Robin Williams as a wax figure of a former United States President that comes to life at night. We could watch these two riff until the sun comes up, and luckily that’s what happened in two subsequent sequels.

Men In Black (Will Smith & Tommy Lee Jones)

Here comes the Men in Black! This 1997 comedy, which came out a few years into Will Smith’s unprecedented run at the box office, saw the Fresh Prince share the screen with Oscar winner Tommy Lee Jones. The pair of secret agents tasked with protecting Earth from extraterrestrial threats have since become one of the best onscreen duos and two characters that’ll never get old.

The Fugitive (Harrison Ford & Tommy Lee Jones)

Harrison Ford and Tommy Lee Jones came together for one of the best 1993 movies when they shared the screen in The Fugitive. This great movie based on a classic TV show saw Ford’s Dr. Richard Kimble on the run after being falsely convicted of murdering his wife with Jones Samuel Gerard leading a team of U.S. Marshals to find him.

Mamma Mia! (Meryl Streep & Pierce Brosnan)

Mamma Mia! had great songs, unforgettable moments, and one of the best casts of the 2000s. While we could talk about Stellan Skarsgård, or Amanda Seyfried, or even Colin Firth, we have to point out that this Abba-influenced musical brought Meryl Streep and Pierce Brosnan together on screen, and it was marvelous.

The Nice Guys (Russell Crowe & Ryan Gosling)

Shane Black gave the world one of the great modern buddy crime flicks in 2016 with the release of The Nice Guys. Featuring Russell Crowe and Ryan Gosling as a pair of down-on-their-luck guys tasked with solving a mystery, this throwback was so much fun. It’s a shame we never got a sequel.

Ocean's Eleven (George Clooney & Brad Pitt)

The ensemble cast from Ocean’s Eleven has talent up and down the roster and has some heavyweights from multiple generations of Hollywood. But let’s be real, this movie brought George Clooney and Brad Pitt together, a relationship that has given us nearly a half-dozen other great films in the 24 years since its release.

La La Land (Ryan Gosling & Emma Stone)

The third time’s the charm, right? Well, that was the case for Ryan Gosling and Emma Stone, who were electric in Damien Chazelle’s La La Land. Taking on the roles of two young lovers forced to decide between following their dreams and having a great relationship, these two sing, dance, and shine throughout this beloved musical.

Independence Day (Will Smith & Jeff Goldblum)

Years before Jeff Goldblum became one of social media’s favorite (and strangest) stars, he was something of a Hollywood leading man. Between his first two stints as Dr. Ian Malcolm in the Jurassic Park franchise, Goldblum shared the screen with Will Smith in Independence Day, aka, one of the highest-grossing films of 1996. These two, who were on top of their game, became an unlikely duo.

Batman Returns (Michael Keaton & Danny DeVito)

Michael Keaton, as Batman, and Danny DeVito, as the Penguin, in 1992’s Batman Returns, was one of the oddest pairings of the ‘90s. But don’t let this make you think it didn’t work, as these two Hollywood heavyweights were oddly great together in Tim Burton’s second and final comic book movie set in Gotham.

How To Lose A Guy In 10 Days (Kate Hudson & Matthew McConaughey)

Matthew McConaughey and Kate Hudson were two of the biggest stars on the planet when they teamed up in 2003 for How to Lose a Guy in 10 Days. This wildly funny rom-com, which preceded their Fool’s Gold adventure comedy by five years, further helped both actors rise through the ranks of Hollywood.

Jungle Cruise (Emily Blunt & Dwayne Johnson)

It’s crazy we never got a movie starring Emily Blunt and Dwayne Johnson before 2021’s Jungle Cruise, but we’re glad these two electric stars shared the screen. One of the best movies based on a Disney attraction, this throwback adventure film had action, peril, humor, and some romance before it was all said and done.

Central Intelligence (Dwayne Johnson & Kevin Hart)

Love them or hate them, there’s no denying Dwayne Johnson and Kevin Hart’s on-screen chemistry. Shortly before they starred in Jumanji: Welcome to the Jungle, these two shared the screen in Central Intelligence. A good movie? No, not really, but these two had so much fun together.

Face/Off (John Travolta & Nicolas Cage)

John Travolta and Nicolas Cage are two of the most unforgettable actors (for better or worse) in the history of Hollywood, and they crossed paths and swapped faces in John Woo’s Face/Off. This absurdly awesome action flick about an FBI agent and global terrorist swapping faces is as ridiculous as it sounds.

Righteous Kill (Robert De Niro & Al Pacino)

Those who were mad about Robert De Niro and Al Pacino never having a face-to-face interaction (at least on screen) in Heat were in for some good news when Righteous Kill hit the big screen in 2008. Is it a great movie? No, not really. But hey, it has two of the biggest actors of all time sharing scene after scene.

It is a sign of the clever writer to be able to back yourself into a corner, and find an ingenious way out. However, some scribes have taken some leaps that are both unique and utterly mind-boggling. Keeping that in mind, please enjoy this list of movie retcons so bonkers, we were left confused as a result.

Rey Is A Palpatine? - Star Wars: The RIse of Skywalker

If you listen very carefully when watching Star Wars: The Rise of Skywalker, you can hear the echoes of people becoming frustrated by this very twist. After two movies of uncertainty surrounding the parentage of Rey (Daisy Ridley), the ninth Star Wars movie in order tells us that she’s actually pretty important…and she’s the descendant of a clone from none other than Emperor Palpatine (Ian McDiarmid).

Sandman Really Killed Uncle Ben - Spider-Man 3

For such a pivotal moment in the history of Peter Parker, Spider-Man 3 does seem to have a loose memory of the past. The infamous three-quel’s version of events saw poor Uncle Ben taken out by Flint Marko (Thomas Haden Church), a tragic villain who accidentally helped inspire Spider-Man. As opposed to a random thug Peter let go in a fit of pettiness, which in turn formed his moral code. Oops.

John Connor Is Dead - Terminator: Dark Fate

The Terminator franchise has tried to innovate the best sci-fi movies into a long-term saga, and not even creator James Cameron has had much luck past T2. Cameron himself helped develop the story for Terminator: Dark Fate, which decided to kill off John Connor (Edward Furlong) in the cold open. For anyone who was wondering whether Terminator: Genisys’ controversial decision to turn the savior of humanity into a killing machine would ever be outdone, you’ve got your answer.

Han Lives - Fast 9

For years the decision to have Deckard Shaw (Jason Statham) kill off Han (Sung Kang) in the Fast and Furious timeline was something that had fans pushing for #JusticeForHan. Apparently that “justice” involved the first huge twist shown off in F9, which retconned Han’s death into a big DSS smoke screen - with Deckard being the “trigger man.” Which, in theory, renders Furious 7 nearly useless.

Wolverine’s Big Timeline Merge - X-Men: Days Of Future Past

There are a lot of questions that arise out of the events of X-Men: Days of Future Past. Quite possibly the largest concern stems from the fact that by the time we see Wolverine (Hugh Jackman) reuniting with Professor X at the end of the time-jumping adventure, a practically utopian future exists. If it wasn’t for most of the original X-Men movie cast being present, we might not be scratching our heads as much as we were in that film’s successors.

Rocky Balboa Is Totally OK To Fight - Rocky Balboa

Rocky V set up Sylvester Stallone’s legendary boxer for retirement, thanks to medical necessity. By the time Rocky Balboa played the same “one last fight” card, the disgraced sequel felt wiped off of the franchise’s record. On the plus side, people seem to really like that sixth entry in the series, and it technically means that those financial troubles never happened.

Wait, The Firefly Family Survived?! - 3 From Hell

If there was a fitting way for the Firefly Family (Sid Haig, Bill Moseley, and Sheri Moon Zombie) to go out, it’s in a hail of gunfire set to “Freebird.” That’s exactly what The Devil’s Rejects convinced us had happened, at least until 13 years after the fact. 3 From Hell resurrected this trio of torment and terror, for one last ride, and depending on who you talk to it was either a welcomed return, or a decision that helped the flick live up to its title.

Jamie Lloyd Isn’t Pure Evil - Halloween V: The Revenge Of Michael Myers

Apologies, as the Halloween movies in order have been anything but easy to reconcile. In fact, that’s part of why the 2018 legacy-quel made the decision to overwrite the entirety of the sequel canon. Halloween 5: The Revenge of Michael Myers is one of those reasons, as it squandered the ending of Halloween 4. Instead of building on the notion that Michael’s niece Jamie (Danielle Harris) was possessed by the evil that turned her uncle evil, that bold choice is discarded with barely a reference.

Harry Hart’s Medical Miracle - Kingsman: The Golden Circle

No one wanted to see Kingsman agent Harry Hart (Colin Firth) die before his time. That being said, the explanation that Kingsman: The Golden Circle gives for his resurrection is just a bit too far. Using some special medical technology that only spies have access to, Harry’s fatal run-in with The Secret Service’s diabolical villain was undone - with a bit of amnesia and a lost eye as a side effect.

Jason Voorhees Becomes A Zombie - Friday the 13th Part VI: Jason Lives

Iif Friday the 13th: The Final Chapter’s big cliffhanger had been honored, young Tommy Jarvis could have been the new hockey-masked slasher. Sadly, that never happened. After an ingenious copycat story in A New Beginning, Part VI: Jason Lives brought the man himself back from the grave - thanks to some conveniently placed lightning.

Greedo Shot First - Star Wars: A New Hope

This one’s straight out of the Greatest Hits collection of confusing retcons and Star Wars lore. Depending on which Special Edition you’re watching, either Greedo shoots Han (Harrison Ford) first, or at the same time as the Corellian smuggler. It’ll never be as cool as the original version, in which George Lucas gave us an anti-hero to root for, who knew to take out his enemies before they got the drop on him.

What Suicide Squad? - The Suicide Squad

Despite Harley Quinn (Margot Robbie) being one of the surviving Suicide Squad members present to play in The Suicide Squad’s sandbox, the continuity of DC’s much-maligned 2016 offering was never really settled. If you need an explanation, it’s probably something similar to how Dame Judi Dench was still M in Casino Royale. But if you don’t need a reason, it’s ok…James Gunn’s DC Films reboot has already zapped this pair off the map.

David’s Creation Of The Xenomorphs - Prometheus

It kind of doesn’t help that Sir Ridley Scott was stopped short in his ambitions to bridge Prometheus to the later portion of the Alien movie timeline. But even with the initial framework of android David (Michael Fassbender) being the actual creator of the Xenomorphs, fans have still been questioning why this twist itself was created.

Wolverine Loses His Memories To An Adamantium Bullet - X-Men Origins: Wolverine

What happens when an Adamantium bullet hits an Adamantium-enhanced skull? Well if you’re going by the scientific expertise of X-Men: Origins - Wolverine, it leads to Hugh Jackman’s titular superhero forgetting a pretty huge chapter of his life. That explains why Sabretooth and Wade Wilson are vastly varied based on appearance.

Robert Neville Never Died - I Am Legend

2007 saw the powers that be thinking that Dr. Robert Neville (Will Smith) would be at his most heroic by sacrificing himself for humanity. Years down the line, a potential legacy-quel came a’callin, reinstating the I Am Legend ending even the studio preferred. While we’re no closer to a cure for the Krippen Virus, it does fit better with Smith’s character and his overall story.

Marcus Brody Is Actually An Idiot - Indiana Jones And The Last Crusade

Whether you’re on board with Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade’s brand of adventure or not, there is a rather upsetting development that sticks out from time to time. The previously sage and wise Marcus Brody (Denholm Elliot) turned into a bit of a klutz in 1989’s attempted franchise closer, which still upsets Raiders of the Lost Ark fans.

Billy And Stu Were Puppets - Scream 3

Soap opera twists go with slasher movies like chocolate goes with peanut butter. Even with that in mind, Scream 3’s twist that Roman Bridger (Scott Foley) was the mastermind behind Billy and Stu’s killer rampage in the original Scream is a bad move. It’s totally understandable if you ignore this chapter’s plot twists, and continue to think of those Woodsboro youths as criminal masterminds.

The Yautja Visited Earth Way Earlier Than Expected - Prey

Throughout the entirety of Predator, the existence of the Yautja species was unknown to humanity, setting up one of the best action movies as quite the harrowing first contact scenario. Decades later, the amazing action of Prey saw that ugly monster fighter visit our planet in 1719 - and somehow without leaving much of a trace in North American history.

Dr. Gordon Was An Apprentice All Along - Saw: The Final Chapter

While Saw: The Final Chapter used the return of Cary Elwes' Dr. Gordon as the ultimate twist, it did kind of come at a cost. And that cost was sanity, as fans were probably pumping their fists right before scratching their heads when realizing that Saw's survivor had been hiding in the shadows for so long. It would also not be the "final chapter," which saw things only get more confusing with Jigsaw's addition to the canon.

Bail Organa Doesn't Erase R2-D2's Memory - Star Wars: Episode III - Revenge Of The Sith

Somehow, Bail Organa (Jimmy Smits) thought merely wiping the memories of C-3PO would be enough protection to hide Luke and Leia after Star Wars: Episode III - Revenge of the Sith. To be fair, it’s not like Darth Vader used his technical know-how much once he turned to the Dark Side. Though if he had, the Galactic Empire might have crushed the Rebel Alliance pretty decisively.

Laurie Strode And Michael Myers Are Related - Halloween II

Admittedly, Halloween II’s major plot twist has been nullified by the 2018 legacy-quel starting a new series of continuity. But even if that hadn’t taken care of things, creator John Carpenter’s anecdote about writing this sequel sees the horror legend siding with his fans. It also has him admitting that the influence of beer and a deadline fueled that choice, so do with that knowledge what you may.

Scott Calvin’s Naughty Telephone Prank Is Deleted - The Santa Clause

Tim Allen’s Scott Calvin had a line cut from all versions past the VHS release. According to Snopes, the story is indeed true, and it’s thanks to a young child calling a very naughty number dropped by the soon-to-be Santa in a very on-brand joke.

Agent Monica Fuentes Returns For A Ghost Story - Fast Five

With just a post-credits teaser appearance in Fast Five that saw Agent Monica Fuentes tease the fact that Letty is still alive, people’s hopes for her full return were given flight…and then dashed through all subsequent films. On the plus side, Mendes did retire on her own terms, so it’s not like she’s been snubbed in any sort of feud.

The Shaws Are Good Actually - The Fate Of The Furious

Fast and Furious 6 opened up a new frontier of big bads known as the Shaw family. As Owen (Luke Evans) and Deckard (Jason Statham) represented a brewing threat to the Toretto crime family, that plot quickly fizzled. What’s more frustrating than Deckard Shaw being forgiven for the death of Han Liu? Try Owen being forgiven for no discernable reason, other than he helped rescue Dom’s kid.

The Highlanders Are An Alien Race - Highlander 2: The Quickening

There can only be one…reaction to the fact that the Highlanders are not merely singular immortals. In a sequel that has gone on to represent some of the worst tendencies of would-be franchises, Highlander II: The Quickening saw Connor Macleod (Christopher Lambert) helping us learn that Highlanders are actually aliens.

A Ton Of Important Mutants Get The Axe - X-Men: Days Of Future Past

X-Men: First Class had an ending so thrilling that you kind of forgot that Professor X would eventually be wheelchair ridden by the end. Days of Future Past wasn’t so lucky when it debuted, as the fan-beloved Marvel midquel saw a ton of characters set up for a battle of mutant good and evil quickly dispatched through a disturbingly convenient file full of mutant autopsy photos. People definitely noticed.

Arthur Fleck Isn’t The Joker - Joker Folie á Deux

2019’s Joker acted as a lo-fi origin story that followed Arthur Fleck (Joaquin Phoenix) on his journey into madness, becoming a variant of DC’s iconic Batman villain. So what did Joker: Folie á Deux do for an encore? It brought Fleck back from the edge of madness, and turned him back into a manipulated sad sack that isn’t the clown prince of crime…through the power of song!

Professor X And Magneto Get Their Powers Back - X-Men: The Last Stand

X-Men: The Last Stand is a baffling movie on so many fronts, with plenty of questionable decisions. None of which will ever beat the decision to kill off Professor X (Patrick Stewart) and to “cure” Magneto (Ian McKellan) of his mutant powers…only to undo both of those choices in a pre-MCU example of endings and post-credits scenes meant to keep the door open past that “last stand.”

Danny Ocean’s Finest Are So Easy To Catch - Ocean’s Twelve

Ocean’s Eleven taught the world a lesson in cool, competent thievery that still shines brightly to this day. Ocean’s Twelve, on the other hand, is a pretty hot or cold entry when it comes to Steven Soderbergh’s heist comedy trilogy. It’s a fair reaction, as the whole picture is built on the crew we saw slickly stealing $165 million (plus interest) being absurdly easy to find and blackmail into a new crime.

A Major League Joke Swaps Movies - Major League

Cutting your original ending doesn’t count as a retcon, unless the studio decides to side with the original finale to create sequel potential. However, there is a joke between Tom Beringer and Charlie Sheen seen in the trailer for 1989’s Major League that was cut from the first installment, only to wind up in 1994’s Major League II. Someone must have really liked that joke.

The Guns And Walkie Talkies Debate - E.T.: The Extra-terrestrial

Stretching the adage of how works of art are never completed but merely released, Steven Spielberg’s attitude towards E.T.: The Extra-terrestrial’s presence of firearms saw an interesting revolving door of changes. For the 2002 anniversary of the classic blockbuster, the director had scenes altered to replace weapons with walkie-talkies. But in the years that followed, Spielberg admitted the swap was a mistake.

Jigsaw’s First Apprentice - Jigsaw

Who was the first apprentice to Jigsaw (Tobin Bell), and why? There’s several different answers, and 2017’s Jigsaw had the final say on the matter, revealing potential victim Logan Nelson (Matt Passmore) as the winner. While the Saw series continuity feels like a messy plate of spaghetti, even on a good day, this retcon takes the cake.

What exactly is going on with Vin Diesel and Dwayne Johnson? The fact that the two mega stars had issues is well known, but we had been led to believe that the fight was behind them. Questions were once again raised, however, after a very awkward interaction between the two at the 2025 Golden Globes last weekend. Now Diesel has responded, indicating that everything is just fine, but even that post raises questions.

Vin Diesel recently posted to Instagram an image of himself and The Rock standing together and smiling. If the picture had been taken at the Golden Globes, or anytime recently, it might indicate that the two are friends. But the image is from 2011, when Fast Five was released and Dwayne Johnson originally joined the iconic franchise. Still, Diesel’s brief post accompanying the picture insists everything is good, saying simply…

It was during The Fate of the Furious that we learned of an ongoing beef between the two actors. Johnson implied that Diesel was making the cast and crew wait for him on set. Meanwhile, Diesel said he had to provide some “tough love” for The Rock on set. The two actors shared few scenes in the movie but were reportedly never actually on set at the same time.

The feud between the two was all the more reason that fans were shocked to see Johnson appear in the post-credits scene of Fast X, indicating a return to the main franchise. Exactly what’s going on with that is still unclear, but there are reportedly plans for The Rock’s character to appear in another spinoff movie, before possibly returning for the conclusion of Fast X.

But then the Golden Globes happened. Vin Diesel was on hand to present the award for cinematic and box office achievement, and when he came to the microphone, he recognized Johnson in the audience, and said “Hi, Dwayne.” Both men were smiling, but the moment was noticeably awkward. Even the Golden Globes producers admit they were worried that something unplanned might go down between the two.

Both Johnson and Diesel have said their relationship is fine and that whatever problems there were are behind them. While there’s no reason not to take them at their word, we may need to wait and see what happens when the two end up back on a movie set together again. At this point what we know about Fast X - Part 2, or any of the rest of the franchise is far from clear, so when that will happen is anybody’s guess.

Though I have revisited some of the more iconic scenes over the years, it’s been more than a decade since I watched Fast Five in its entirety. I recently changed that after the 2011 action flick, hands down the best in the Fast & Furious franchise, joined the list of best movies on Netflix. Little did I know before pressing play, but I would soon be reminded that an OG franchise character would be the heart of the movie.

I’m not talking about Vin Diesel’s Dom Toretto or Brian O'Conner played by the late Paul Walker. I’m talking about Vince, Matt Schulze’s character last seen a decade earlier in The Fast and the Furious. And you know what, I came out of this experience with a whole new appreciation for the former member of the Toretto crew and his arc within one of the best action movies ever made.

I Always Felt Like Vince Got A Raw Deal In The Fast And The Furious

Way back in the beginning of the Fast & Furious timeline, Vince was one of the key members of Dom Toretto’s crew. Despite being hot-headed and having no game with Dom’s younger sister, Mia (Jordana Brewster), I always saw Vince as one of the best members of the gang, either when racing or stealing DVD players off of 18-wheelers. On top of that, I’ve always felt like he got a raw deal way back in The Fast and the Furious.

Sure, he did try a little too hard when it came to Mia, but he was the only person in Dom’s orbit who knew that Brian was more than just some crazy good street racer. Vince was right about Brian being an undercover cop, and right about not being able to trust him, and he was pretty much cast aside for it. Then, who got seriously injured in the doomed job at the end of the movie? That’s right, Vince. He nearly got killed by a shotgun blast and almost lost his arm when it got wrapped up in the cable.

Vince Talking About His Son Shows How Much Dom And The Crew Meant To Him, Ever After Everything That Happened

Fast forward 10 years later and here we are in Fast Five with Vince getting back together with his old crew. Though he does try and pull a fast one on them by stealing the chip out of one of the cars they boosted earlier in the movie, he goes out of his way to protect his childhood friends and show how much they still mean to him.

After getting back with the crew to pull off the massive $100-million heist, Vince gets caught in the crossfire and succumbs to his wounds. Before breathing his last breath, he tells Dom that he needs to meet his son, Nico, whom he named after his longtime friend.

No one would hold anything against Vince if he never wanted to think about Dom or that part of his life ever again, but here he was free-falling from the streets of Los Angeles to the favelas of Brazil, and never forgetting his friend or how much he meant to him.

Vince's Redemption Arc Shows The Power Of Family

There is one thing and one thing only that matters in the Fast & Furious franchise and that is the power of family. I’ve made jokes in the past about Dom being a superhero powered by his love of family, but the bond shared by the various outcasts who find a place to call home with each other is no laughing matter (okay, maybe a little). One of the best examples of family coming together for each other is found in Vince’s redemption story.

At the beginning of the movie, he goes against Dom but eventually is brought back into the fold and puts his life on the line for the crew to complete his arc. His return, along with the announcement that Mia and Brian are expecting, led to Dom’s iconic “salute mi familia” speech. I completely forgot about the context of that franchise-defining line.

His Death Gives Us One Of Fast Five's (And The Franchise's) Best Dom Toretto Moments

There have been several characters who’ve died and come back in the Fast & Furious franchise, but Vince’s passing is one of the few that’s permanent (for now, anyway). His emotional final minutes where he told Dom to look after his son are followed by one of my favorite, and most defiant, Dom Toretto moments in the entire franchise.

After praying over Vince’s body and telling his old friend that he’s got eyes on Nico now, Dom tells his crew they need to move because they don’t have much time. But instead of fleeing Rio with their tails between their legs, Dom tells his crew “running ain’t freedom” before saying they’re free to make their own choices. The moment gets even more badass when a wounded Luke Hobbs (Dwayne Johnson) appears out of the shadows and says he wants to help finish the job. Like...what?

Vince Is Also At The Center Of Two Of The Movie's Most Iconic Action Sequences

It isn’t all just great character moments for Vince throughout Fast Five, as the OG franchise character was also part of two of the movie’s most iconic action sequences: the train heist and the attack by Reyes’ men the day the crew was originally supposed to pull off the massive $100-million heist.

The train sequence has become the stuff of legend over the years, and is one of the most furious in the entire franchise. Before revisiting the movie, I completely forgot that it was the opening scene in this action-packed sequel. And, the shootout later, the one where Vince is ultimately killed, is an intense set piece that is a lot of fun to revisit after spending the past few years watching Dom and crew become superheroes and going to space. I was quickly reminded just how much I loved this movie with these two sequences.

All in all, revisiting Fast Five after all these years was a fun and eye-opening trip down memory lane. With Fast and Furious 11 coming out in a couple of years, maybe I should rewatch the rest of the franchise (in small increments, of course).

Sometimes, you see a movie, leave it, and you don’t think it needs a sequel. Or maybe you want a sequel, but it never gets made, and unexpectedly, a legacy sequel comes out decades later. All of this and more have led to some great films, so here are over 30 sequels that no one really asked for but are actually beloved.

Puss In Boots: The Last Wish

One year after the release of the fourth Shrek film in 2010, we got Puss in Boots. At the time, I think it's safe to say many of us weren’t looking for a spinoff of the sequels. However, we got it. Then, in 2022, we got its sequel, Puss in Boots: The Last Wish.

Between its unique animation style, its existential questions about death, a truly horrifying villain and all the humor we know and love from the Shrek films, Puss In Boots: The Last Wish will stay with you for a long time after watching it, and I can’t say that’s typically expected from a film that’s sequel to a spinoff.

Twisters

Back in 1996, after the release of Twister, there was talk about making a sequel. However, nothing came of that, and we all moved on. Then, almost 30 years later, stars Glen Powell and Daisy Edgar-Jones and director Lee Isaac Chung came flying onto the scene to make the legacy sequel Twisters, and boy did it work!

Top Gun: Maverick

Yes, there had been chatter about a Top Gun sequel for years and years and years after its release in 1986. However, we got nothing for literal decades. Then, 36 years later, Tom Cruise and co. came zooming back into theaters with Top Gun: Maverick, and it dominated.

The film raised the bar for aviation action, and it somehow managed to not just live up to Top Gun, but exceed it in a lot of ways. Overall, the film by Joseph Kosinski was an epic and wild ride that came out three decades after the original, proving that the need for speed was still there.

Mission: Impossible - Ghost Protocol (And Everything That Followed)

Let’s be real, they could have stopped at three if they wanted to. However, the Mission: Impossible movies didn’t end there, and thank goodness. After the releases of M:I 1, 2 and 3, they switched up the naming trend and revamped with the release of Mission: Impossible – Ghost Protocol in 2011.

Since then, we’ve gotten so many wild stunts from Tom Cruise and so many seemingly impossible missions, and it’s not stopping there either. That’s because if there’s a mission, we will always choose to accept it.

Toy Story 3

The first two Toy Story movies were all about Buzz, Woody, and co.’s adventures in Andy’s room. These two films came out in 1995 and 1999, and they are beloved by so many. Then, in 2010, eleven years after 2 came out, they returned again with Toy Story 3, which saw the toys donated to a childcare center.

While the film wasn’t exactly asked for, it was made and it blew audiences away. It also left them crying their eyes out.

Jumanji: Welcome To The Jungle

Did we need a legacy sequel to Jumanji that saw the board game turned into a video game? No. But did we get it? Yes. And did it blow audiences away? 100%.

Starring Dwayne Johnson, Kevin Hart, Jack Black and Karen Gillan, this film was a super fresh take on the classic starring Robin Williams as the kids ended up in the jungle rather than the jungle ending up in their homes. And it was so well received, that now there are two more films based on the video game adaptation of the classic board game.

Cobra Kai

There’s always been a demand for more Karate Kid, however, no one asked for or quite frankly deserved the goodness that is Cobra Kai. Rather than following Daniel LaRusso, the show flips the script and follows his original rival Johnny Lawrence as he works to start his own dojo and turn his life around.

After starting out on YouTube, the show found great success, and eventually wound up on Netflix. Now, Cobra Kai is one of Netflix’s most bingeable and beloved shows.

Creed

After six Rocky movies that came out across four decades, you’d think another one or a spinoff wasn’t necessary. However, then Ryan Coogler and Michael B. Jordan came in swinging with the story of Apollo Creed’s son Adonis, and to mix my sports metaphors, they knocked it out of the park.

Blade Runner 2049

Folks were apprehensive about returning to the universe of Blade Runner 35 years after the original’s release. However, Blade Runner 2049 received good reviews and a positive response from audiences in the time since its release in 2017. Although, should we be surprised by that? It was directed by Denis Villeneuve and starred Ryan Gosling and Harrison Ford.

The Incredibles 2

Admittedly, there was always a want for an Incredibles sequel. However, the one we got was not what we expected. After ending the first film on a cliffhanger, there was a 14-year break and then we got The Incredibles 2 which took the story in a new, refreshing and exciting direction.

Mad Max: Fury Road

After making three Mad Max movies between 1979 and 1985, the prospect of the franchise returning with such force in 2015 was unexpected. However, it ended up being incredible, because not only is George Miller’s Mad Max: Fury Road a hit, it’s now widely considered one of the best action movies of all time.

Fast Five

Fast Five is the film that definitively changed the Fast and Furious franchise. While the previous Fast movies were rooted in street racing and did up the ante every time, the fifth installment took things to a whole new level. Following the team’s heist in Brazil, this film proves that sometimes a fifth movie can be the best one, because, to this day, Fast Five is one of if not the best Fast and Furious movie.

Prey

The Predator franchise began in 1987, and each decade since, we’ve gotten a new film. However, in 2022, I don’t think many asked for or expected Prey. The film was widely well-received, and the prequel introduced many to the wildly talented actress Amber Midthunder. It went over so well with audiences, in fact, that it’s now considered one of the best Predator movies.

Toy Story 4

If you thought Toy Story 3 seemingly came out of thin air, then you likely really weren’t ready for Toy Story 4. Released nine years after the third film, this project is quite different from the others as it sees the toys with Bonnie and Woody specifically struggling with his life as a toy. It’s a thoughtful and fun film, and one that I was surprised I loved so much since the bar was sky high for it.

Scream (2022)

While each Scream movie features a new ensemble of side characters, Neve Campbell, Courteney Cox and David Arquette were always leading the films. However, 2022’s Scream – which is notably the first project in the franchise not directed by Wes Craven – acted as a changing of the guard. While Sidney, Gale and Dewey were there, the film was led by Melissa Barrera’s Sam, Jenna Ortega’s Tara and their set of friends, giving us a fresh yet fitting addition to this beloved horror franchise.

Mamma Mia! Here We Go Again

Yes, there was a want for Mamma Mia! 2, however, I don’t think anyone asked for them to go this hard! The film flashes back and forth between the present and the past, adding new ABBA songs and bringing back fan favorites, meaning the vibes were so high in this sequel and it's a worthy successor of its beloved predecessor.

T2: Trainspotting

In 1996, Danny Boyle’s Trainspotting was met with a lot of love. Then, 21 years later, in 2017, Ewan McGregor and co. got back together for the sequel T2: Trainspotting.

Shrek 2

Shrek was a cultural phenomenon, and honestly, it still is. However, Shrek 2 came onto the scene swinging, and the story that included the antagonistic Prince Charming and Fairy Godmother is widely considered the best Shrek movie.

Paddington 2

I’m not being dramatic, Paddington 2 is a masterpiece. As you will note if you look at its many five-star reviews, Paddington 2 is a wonderful, wholesome and deeply beloved film that is also a sequel that no one expected to love this much.

Before Sunset

Ethan Hawke and Julie Delpy put a wonderful love story to screen in Richard Linklater’s Before Sunrise. Typically, romances don’t get sequels. However, in 2004, the crew got back together again to make Before Sunset, which is also a deeply loved film.

Sister Act 2: Back In The Habit

Sister Act 2: Back In The Habit – which is a wonderful title – was the surprise sequel to Whoopi Goldberg’s beloved Sister Act. While it’s not as beloved as the original, it is heaps of fun and filled with magical musical moments.

John Wick: Chapter 2

John Wick was an action-packed new film that blew people away. Then, after its success Chad Stahelski got to make more of these movies with Keanu Reeves, spawning one of the great action franchises.

The Suicide Squad (2021)

After the first Suicide Squad film, I don’t think anyone needed or really wanted another one. However, then James Gunn got his hands on the property and saved it with ease as he brought back characters like Margot Robbie’s Harley Quinn, and introduced new ones, like John Cena’s Peacemaker.

Gremlins 2: The New Batch

Six years after the release of Gremlins, we got another story about these little monsters. And like its predecessor, it’s a spooky and fun film that audiences really love.

Halloween (2018)

In 1978 we saw Jamie Lee Curtis lead the iconic slasher Halloween, and we were introduced to the legendary horror villain Michael Meyers. After that, we got movies in 1981, 1982, 1988, 1989, 1995, 1998, 2002, 2007 and 2009. In fact, 2018’s Halloween is the third movie to just go by the singular name. So, it’s safe to say there were questions about if we needed an eleventh film in the franchise. However, this entry from David Gordon Green was a welcome one that breathed new life into the franchise.

Magic Mike XXL

Magic Mike XXL is one of those movies that has no right to be as good as it is. I don’t think many thought Channing Tatum’s movie about strippers would get a sequel, however, Magic Mike ended up being quite the success. A few years later we got its great sequel that takes the beloved strippers on the road so they can go to a stripper convention.

Thor: Ragnarok

If you’ve watched the Marvel movies in order, you know that Thor: The Dark World is a dark spot in the franchise. So, going into the threequel about the God of Thunder, apprehension is the word I’d use to describe many viewers' thoughts about it. However, under the direction of Taika Waititi, the third Thor movie took a hard turn into comedy, leaned into Chris Hemsworth’s comedic sensibilities and brought this franchise based on the Norse hero back to life.

Terminator 2: Judgement Day

You know, The Terminator did say “I’ll be back,” and he was right. In 1991, Arnold Schwarzenegger returned as the titular character, and he did so with a bang. To this day it's considered one of the great sequels, and The Terminator came back a few more times after that.

Psycho II

It might not be as critically acclaimed as its predecessor but Psycho II has quite the cult following. The film follows Norman Bates 20 years after the events of the first film, and offers an interesting look into what happened two decades after those infamous events at the Bates Motel.

Predator 2

Predator 2 is a cult classic. While it’s not as acclaimed as its predecessor, the 1990 sequel led by Danny Glover has many fans who adore it.

Home Alone 2: Lost In New York

The first Home Alone became a fast favorite and one of the best Christmas movies. Then, two years later, Kevin McCallister didn’t get left home alone, he got lost in New York, and the shenanigans that ensued made this sequel just as classic as the original.

Aliens

After Ridley Scott’s 1979 classic Alien, James Cameron took over to helm the sequel, Aliens, in 1986. Not only is it a great sequel, it’s one of the best sequels ever. And, not only is it a fantastic sequel, it’s also just flat-out one of the best movies of the ‘80s.

From cult classics to critically acclaimed flicks, there’s a whole swath of sequels we didn’t really ask for. However, I’m oh so happy they happened, and I think a bunch of viewers are too.

By mid-August, the busy summer movie season has usually run its course. However, for the best streaming services, there is never really a slow season. There’s always something new on Netflix (which has my top movie this week) or something coming up on Hulu that you can watch. What’s difficult is finding the best content among everything that’s available. Luckily, we have a few of the best choices from what’s new this week within the streaming realm.

Almost all the major streaming platforms have at least one major original series or movie on offer. We have a Star Wars animated series for kids that's being added to Disney+ and a Hulu animated series not for kids. There’s also a pair of interesting original movies with unlikely duos that look to combine action and comedy just perfectly. Here’s what’s worth looking at this week.

New Movies

The Union (Netflix) 

In The Union, Mark Wahlberg and Halle Berry play former high school sweethearts who reunite 25 years later. Little does he know that she’s a super spy, and she’s about to recruit him to work on a secret mission. Is the premise nuts? Sure but, if the action is solid and the chemistry between the two leads is there, nobody is going to care. One gets the sense that, at the very least, the cast had fun making the movie, and that can go a long way. Needless, this is my top movie, and I'm looking forward to checking it out!

The Union Premieres August 16 on Netflix.

The Woman King (Hulu)

2022’s The Woman King was one of the best-reviewed films of the year by both professional critics and general audiences, and yet it made less than $100 million worldwide at the box office and was ignored by the Oscars. That means there's a solid chance you may have missed one of the best movies of 2022, and you should fix that. The film stars Viola Davis as the leader of an all-female warrior unit in West Africa in the early 1800s. Director Gina Prince-Bythewood's historical epic features some impressive performances as well as excellent action. Don’t miss this one again.

The Woman King arrives on August 13 on Hulu.

The Fast & Furious Franchise (Peacock) 

The Fast & Furious movies are collectively the biggest current franchise that Universal has, and yet being able to watch the films with a Peacock subscription has been hit or miss due to agreements Universal signed before launching its own platform. This week the first eight Fast & Furious films join the ninth, which was added earlier this month, meaning you can watch almost the entire franchise in one place. Fast X is currently available with a Prime Video subscription if you need to watch all the Fast & Furious movies in order.

The Fast & Furious movies arrive August 12 on Peacock.

 Jackpot! (Prime Video) 

Most of us would do just about anything to win a lottery jackpot. The movie Jackpot!, from Bridesmaids director Paul Feig, suggests a hilarious future in which the way to win the lottery is to stay alive while everybody else tries to kill you and take your money. Awkwafina stars as the winner in fear for her life, and John Cena plays a guy trying to help her survive. The movie looks to combine Awkwafina's natural comedic timing with Cena's own comic abilities, while also giving the former WWE star plenty to do physically.

Jackpot! premieres August 15 on Prime Video.

New TV

Star Wars: Young Jedi Adventures Season 2 (Disney+)

So many Star Wars fans became enthralled with the franchise as young kids but, now, even younger children have an easy entry into the galaxy far, far, away. Star Wars: Young Jedi Adventures Season 2 (which consists of 11 episodes) arrives for those with a Disney+ subscription this week. The show is set during the High Republic era, the same time frame as the recent live-action series The Acolyte. Of course, these stories are more geared toward children and focus on a group of young Jedi learning lessons and trying to make good choices.

Star Wars: Young Jedi Adventures Season 2 premieres August 14 on Disney+.

Solar Opposites: Complete Season 5 (Hulu) 

In an era where a streaming series can be canceled seemingly without warning, the fact that Solar Opposites has made it to Season 5 is an accomplishment unto itself. Despite a high-profile voice actor change prior to Season 4, the show has remained popular among those with a Hulu subscription. The latest season promises fresh hijinks and new characters and looks to be exactly what fans are expecting.

Solar Opposites Season 5 premies August 12 on Hulu.

Bel-Air Season 3 (Peacock) 

When it was first announced that The Fresh Prince of Bel-Air, the sitcom that made Will Smith a star, was going to be remade as a dramatic series, there were a lot of questions. What’s clear now is that the show is working for a lot of people, as Bel-Air premieres its third season this week.

Bel-Air Season 3 arrives August 15 on Peacock.

Bad Monkey (Apple TV+) 

I’m sure once I watch Bad Monkey with my Apple TV+ subscription, I’ll understand what the title means. All I know is that a good detective story with more than a little humor, courtesy of lead actor Vince Vaughn, looks like exactly the sort of thing I’d enjoy. Vaughn stars as a suspected police detective, who gets a bit too close to a murder case and then has to figure his way out of it.

Bad Monkey premieres August 15 on Apple TV+.

RuPaul's Drag Race Global All Stars Season 1 (Paramount+)  

It’s difficult to undersell just how popular RuPaul’s Drag Race has become. The series has multiple iterations domestically, but it is now also produced in multiple countries around the world. Now, it's time for the Drag Race World Championship. RuPaul's Drag Race Global All-Stars brings together 12 former contestants from the various international versions of the show to compete against each other. Until a Paramount+ subscription gets you access to the international versions of the show, this will give fans a way to see how the game is played around the world.

RuPaul's Drag Race Global All Stars Season 1 on Paramount+.

Plenty more good stuff is planned for August and beyond. We’ll be keeping our eyes open to find the best streaming content so you don’t miss it.

The Marvel Cinematic Universe has changed the way people watch movies in many ways, but possibly the most important is the way it has convinced audiences to sit through the credits. Rare is there an MCU movie without an exciting post-credits tease for an upcoming Marvel movie, or at the very least a funny joke.

However, Marvel Studios didn't invent the post-credits scene. Many movies added scenes after the credits began that made it worth continuing to watch. And since the MCU made them popular, a lot more movies have added their own. Here are some of the best post-credits scenes that aren't from Marvel movies. 

Ferris Bueller's Day Off 

Ferris Bueller's Day Off gets the audience to hang around by having an entire extra scene play out throughout the credits. This means there's a pretty good chance most of the audience is still watching when Matthew Broderick's Ferris returns, in his bathrobe, to ask why the audience why they're all still here because the movie is over. 

The Pirates of the Caribbean: The Curse of the Black Pearl 

The curse, in Pirates of the Caribbean: The Curse of the Black Pearl is all about pirates who have been cursed with a state of living death after stealing Aztec gold. By the end of the film, the curse has been lifted as all the gold is returned. However, in a post-credits scene, we see Captain Barbossa's pet monkey, Jack, steal one of the pieces of gold back, cursing the little monkey once again.

 Frozen II 

One of the most popular scenes in Frozen II is where Olaf relates the story of the original movie to the people of the Enchanted Forest. It was so popular Olaf got an entire Disney+ show dedicated to him telling different Disney stories. But there is one final Olaf story you missed as if you haven't sat through the credits as Olaf relates the movie we just watched to Marshmellow and the Snowgies at Elsa's Ice Castle. 

Black Adam 

Black Adam was one of the last DC movies released before the decision was made to reboot the DCU under James Gunn. It was especially unfortunate timing since the Black Adam post-credits scene saw the return of Henry Cavill as Superman for the first time since Justice League, and teased a superhero battle with Black Adam we'll now never see. 

 The Muppet Movie 

The Muppet Movie is a movie within a movie, so when the credits roll, the audiences of both films are wrapping up their theater experience. We watch a scene over the credit of the Muppets getting up to various shenanigans. If you got so involved that you stayed through the credits, Animal shouts at you to "Go Home."

Tomb Raider 

Alicia Vikander starred as video game heroine Lara Croft in a 2018 film that failed to relaunch a franchise. The first film was clearly hoping there would be more, as a post-credits scene shows Lara returning to a weapons dealer she dealt with earlier in the film, to buy two identical handguns, a reference to the video game character's classic dual-wielding style. 

Daredevil 

The MCU may have made post-credits scenes cool, but some pre-MCU Marvel movies had them first. The original Daredevil movie starring Ben Affleck in the title role included Colin Farrell as comic book villain Bullseye. The character appears to die in the film, being tossed out a window by the man without fear. However, a post-credits scene reveals a heavily bandaged Bullseye is still alive, teasing a sequel that would never come.

Fast & Furious 6 

Many post-credits scenes are used to tease the villains for future installments, but few have gone as big as Fast & Furious 6. The final scene in that movie reveals that the death of fan-favorite character Han wasn't an accident as believed, but rather caused by a new antagonist, played by none other than Jason Statham, and he was coming for the rest of the team.

Masters of the Universe 

The first attempt at a big-screen live-action He-Man movie did not go well, but that didn't mean Masters of the Universe wasn't ready for sequels. Despite Skelator appearing to die in the movie, a post-credit scene reveals that the villain is still very much alive. He promised, "I'll be back." He was not.

Space Jam 

Space Jam starred Michael Jordan and the Looney Tunes, and there's really only way to end a Looney Tunes movie. Bugs Bunny appears in a post-credits scene to say the classic "That's All Folks" before Porky Pig arrives to claim the line as his own. Even Daffy Duck gets in on the action leading to a scuffle over who gets to end the movie. 

The Super Mario Bros. Movie

The box office success of The Super Mario Bros. Movie made a sequel all but guaranteed. Considering the decades of Mario games there are plenty of directions for a second film to go, but a post-credits scene seemed to make at least one thing clear, as it revealed the existence of a Yoshi egg in New York, and it was hatching. 

Ralph Breaks the Internet 

Ralph Breaks the Internet wasn't the best Disney movie but it had some pretty good jokes about the modern internet age. One of the best came after the credits of the film where Ralph teased the audience with scenes from the then-upcoming Frozen II only to Rickroll the audience with a clip of Rick Astley's "Never Gonna Give You Up."

Venom: Let There Be Carnage 

The Venom movies are not technically part of the MCU, but the post-credits scene of Venom: Let There Be Carnage teased that possibility when Eddie Brock and his alien symbiote found themselves transported to a world where Tom Holland played Spider-Man. 

Cloverfield 

What we got at the end of Cloverfield wasn't technically a scene, as it had no visual element. Instead, staying through to the end audiences heard a sound which, when played in reverse, revealed a voice saying "It's still alive." It seems the monster maybe isn't dead after all.

X-Men: The Last Stand 

X-Men: The Last Stand kills off several members of the classic team, but not all of them stay dead. In a post-credits scene, Dr. Moira MacTaggert discovers that Professor X is still alive. After having his body destroyed by Phoenix, his mind has seemingly taken over a comatose patient. 

Pacific Rim 

Guillermo del Toro's Pacific Rim certainly left a door open to potential sequels, but its post-credits scene is just a hilarious joke that reveals that Ron Perlman's character, who had been consumed by a baby kaiju, is actually still alive. He cuts himself free while wondering what happened to his shoe, which had fallen off while he was being devoured. 

Deadpool 

In a post-credits scene that references another post-credits scene, the final shots of Deadpool are dedicated to a shot-for-shot recreation of the Ferris Bueller's Day Off scene where the Merc with a Mouth informs audiences waiting for a post-credits scene to go home because the movie is over. 

Pirates of the Caribbean: At World’s End 

Pirates of the Caribbean: At World's End has a somewhat sad ending as it confirms that Will's new responsibilities as Captain of the Flying Dutchman will keep away from his love Elizabeth. But the post-credits scene makes things a bit happier Set years later,  Elizabeth and her child, conceived during their last time together, are seen arriving at the shore for Will's return. Love has won out.

Suicide Squad 

Suicide Squad was a movie that, despite a solid box office, never got the follow-up many fans were expecting. This is even though its post-credits scene included an appearance by Ben Affleck as Bruce Wayne, getting information on the Squad for reasons that we would never learn about. 

Lightyear 

Lightyear was Pixar's attempt to take the popular Toy Story character Buzz Lightyear in a new direction, making a more traditional science fiction action movie. While the movie's box office guaranteed no sequel would be forthcoming, the movie has multiple post-credit sequences teasing a future for the character, including a final confirmation that Zurg still lives.

Kong: Skull Island 

Modern post-credits scenes are frequently used to build cinematic universes, to add scenes that are not necessary to the main film but can add flavor or context. Such was the final scene of Kong: Skull Island which officially revealed that Kong lived in the same world as Godzilla and other kaiju, confirming the MonsterVerse that was to come. 

Ghostbusters (2016) 

The 2016 reboot of Ghostbusters featuring an all-female cast was largely its own thing, with a story and characters quite unlike the original, However, if there had been a sequel, it might have dealt with elements from the original franchise as the post-credits scene includes Leslie Jones listening to a tape recording and asking "What's Zuul?"

Airplane! 

It's worth reading the credits for 1980's Airplane!, as many of them are quite funny. If you do stay through, you'll be treated to one final joke. The cab that Ted Striker left at the curb at the airport at the beginning of the movie, is still there, and surprisingly, so is the guy who was planning to take the cab before Ted ran off. He figures he's going to give the guy another 20 minutes, and then he'll leave. 

Wonder Woman 1984 

It's not uncommon for franchise movies that have been on TV or the big screen before to include cameo appearances by the stars who played the roles previously. Wonder Woman 1984 takes that to a new level when a post-credits scene reveals that Asteria, the Amazonian warrior whose armor Diana wore in the main film, is still alive, and is played by the original TV Wonder Woman Lynda Carter.

Big Hero 6 

Until Stan Lee passed away the Marvel Comics creator had a cameo in virtually every movie ever made based on Marvel properties. While Big Hero 6 was the creation of Walt Disney Animation Studios, it's based on a Marvel Comic, and is about superheroes, so of course Stan Lee appears. Lee plays Fred's dad, and in the post-credits scene, Fred discovers his dad is also a superhero.

Jumanji: The Next Level 

After two Jumanji movies brought kids into the game as video game avatars, the post-credits sequence of Jumanji: The Next Level potentially teased something different. After the game is activated once again our human main characters find themselves in the middle of a stampede of ostriches, indicating that Jumanji has now come to the real world. 

Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse 

Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse was so popular that fans instantly wanted a sequel, and the movie itself seemed to know that. Its post-credits scene introduced a new version of Spidey we hadn't met in the main movie, Spider-Man 2099, who would go on to become a key character in the sequel Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse.

Finding Dory 

Finding Dory has little direct connection to its predecessor Finding Nemo beyond the main characters. However, the sequel does reveal the fate of some characters from the first film in a post-credits scene. We learn that Gill and the other fish who escaped from the aquarium are alive, though they're still stuck in the bags they escaped in.

Fast Five 

Staying dead in the Fast & Furious franchise is a difficult thing. Nearly everybody who has died has come back to life. The first of those was Michelle Rodriquez's Letty. Believed dead early in the fourth Fast & Furious movie, in the post-credits scene of Fast Five we learn that she is, in fact, still alive. 

Suicide Squad 

Considering the name of the team is Suicide Squad, a surprising number of them don't die in the James Gunn-directed sequel. Two scenes pop in after the credits start. The first reveals that Weasel, despite apparently drowning in the first few minutes of the film, is still alive. The second scene reveals that Peacemaker, who had been shot in the neck and had a building fall on him, was somehow not dead, setting up his HBO Max series. 

Moana 

Moana goes through so much on her journey across the sea that it would be easy to forget about Tamatoa, the crab obsessed with shiny objects that Maui needs to face to get back his magic fishhook. He ends up flat on his back in the altercation, and as a post-credits scene reveals, he's still like that when the movie is over. 

Deadpool 2 

Deadpool 2 deals with time travel, and unsurprisingly Deadpool decides to use the power for his own ends once the future has been saved. In a series of sequences Deadpool saves the love of his life, undoes the events of X-Men: Origins Wolverine, and even prevents Ryan Reynolds from making a really bad superhero movie. 

This year is almost over, and Fast X is among the biggest 2023 movie releases many are looking back on in these final weeks. The blockbuster feature depicting the battle between Jason Momoa’s Dante Reyes and Dominic Toretto’s crew stands as the fifth highest-grossing 2023 movie worldwide with its $714.4 million haul, and we’re next expected to see Vin Diesel and the gang back in action for Fast 11 in 2025. However, majors news has surfaced concerning Diesel’s personal life, as the actor has been hit with a sexual battery lawsuit that dates back to Fast Five.

This lawsuit that was filed in Los Angeles comes plaintiff Asta Jonasson, a former assistant of Diesel’s who’s accused him of sexually battering her during the filming of Fast Five in fall 2010, when she was working at at his One Race production company. You can read Vanity Fair’s writeup to read the specific details about what allegedly happened when Diesel and Jonasson were in Atlanta back then, but after the incident laid out in the lawsuit occurred, it’s stated Samantha Vincent, Diesel’s sister and One Race’s president, fired Jonasson after she’d been on the job for less than two weeks. According to the suit:

The suit also claims that this wasn’t the only “inappropriate incident” that happened when Jonasson was working for Diesel. A few days beforehand, another One Race employee was purportedly called to the actor’s room at the St. Regis while Jonasson was present, and she left the room when Diesel took off his shirt and told this other employee to join him in bed after he got in it. 

Furthermore, this suit includes allegations of “discrimination on the bases of sex/gender, intentional infliction of emotional distress, hostile work environment, wrongful termination, and retaliation,” and accuses Diesel and other people at One Race of an attempted cover-up. As a result, Asta Jonasson “has suffered and continues to suffer humiliation, emotional distress, and mental and physical pain and anguish.” 

As for why this information is coming to light more than a decade after Fast Five’s release, it’s said that Jonasson signed a nondisclosure agreement when she was hired onto One Race, and she kept silent in the following years. It’s only because of the Speak Out Act, which prevents enforcement of such agreements when it comes to sexual assault and harassment, and California’s AB3777, which temporarily sets aside statute of limitations for sexual abuse allegations concerning incidents from 2099 or later. The suit also mentions that Jonasson felt “empowered” by the #MeToo and Time’s Up movements and she’s now ready to “reclaim her agency and justice for the suffering she endured at the hands of Vin Diesel and One Race.”

We’ll keep you apprised on what ends up happening with this sexual battery lawsuit that’s been filed against Vin Diesel. For now, Fast X can now be streamed with a Peacock subscription, and in addition to Fast 11 being slated for April 4, 2025, the spinoff Hobbs & Reyes starring Dwayne Johnson and Jason Momoa is in the works. Be sure to also look through the 2024 movies schedule to see what’s on the docket for next year.

Car chases in films are almost as old as the medium itself, though it’s really in the last 50 years that they’ve become a way to market an entire movie. There are a lot of amazing chase sequences out there, so here are fifteen of our favorite movie car chase scenes, and something wild about each one. 

The Blues Brothers Final Chase Had To Be Reshot

There are two great car chases in 1980’s The Blues Brothers. The first is the one in the mall, but the second is one of the most legendary of all time. Estimates vary as to how many cars were destroyed in that final chase, but it’s safe to say it was at or near a hundred vehicles, which was a record at the time. The most amazing fact, though, is that one particular sequence in that scene had to be re-shot because the cars were traveling so fast through the streets of downtown Chicago that it looked fake. According to the Chicago Sun-Times, director John Landis decided to film the scene again, but with pedestrians walking on the street to show the audience just how fast the cars were moving. 

The Italian Job Minis Were All Electric

Electric vehicles are all the rage these days, but 20 years ago, when Mark Wahlberg and co. remade The Italian Job, they were almost unheard of. The car chase, an homage to the original Italian Job from 1969, features three Mini Coopers racing through the Los Angeles subway system. Because the city of LA was worried about fumes from combustion engines, the filmmakers asked BMW, which owns Mini, for a few electric cars. 

The problem was that BMW hadn’t yet designed or built any electric ones, so the stunt team, including transportation coordinator John Carpenter, actually designed and built their own electric engines and installed them in the Minis so that they could shoot the now-iconic scene. 

The Chase In Bullitt Wasn’t In The Script 

Many film historians point to 1968’s Bullitt as the first modern car chase. You can argue about how true that is, but what is definitely true is that the chase wasn’t even in the original script. Bullitt was based on a novel by Robert L. Fish called Mute Witness and in the book there is no car chase. The film’s star, Steve McQueen, who was a famous thrill-seeker and race car driver in his spare time, came up with the idea, telling Motor Trend in 1969 (via Hagerty):

Audiences sure are lucky for McQueen’s inspired addition to the scene. Today, the film is pretty much only remembered for the car chase, which is still one of the best of all time, and won the film its lone Oscar for Best Editing. 

The French Connection Didn’t Have Permits

The famous chase scene in The French Connection has some people in common with Bullitt, including one of the stunt drivers, Bill Hickman. The difference, or course, is that Gene Hackman’s character, Popeye Doyle, is chasing a subway train, instead of a Dodge Charger. One other major difference is that the film shot it all on open streets, not closed to traffic. According to the DVD commentary, (via Hagerty): 

It’s frankly a miracle that no bystanders were injured or killed in the shoot, but there is no question it adds to the authentic vibe that the movie creates around New York City in the 1970s. 

The Italian Job (1969) Aston Martin Wasn’t An Aston Martin

Another of the early pioneers in car chases was the original Italian Job from 1969. The British production set the standard for European sports cars tearing up the streets of the continent, including one of the most iconic British cars of all time, the Aston Martin DB4. According to what stunt driver David Salamone told Top Gear, due to a production mishap, the DB4 audiences see blowing up as it plummets down a cliff at the end was actually a Lancia Flaminia 3C. 

Mad Max: Fury Road Custom Built 150 Cars

There is a whole lot that can be said about the car chases in Mad Max: Fury Road, but maybe the most insane would be that, unlike most car chases where the stunt coordinators and producers only need to customize a few things on standard cars, that clearly wasn’t going to work for the stylish post-apocalyptic word. So, what did they do? They designed 88 custom cars, and with duplicates, according to production designer Colin Gibson, in an interview with Motor Trend, they had a total of 150 or so cars built just for the movie. In the end, only one survived. 

Ronin Used 100 Stunt Drivers In One Scene

The two car chases in Ronin are so good that the movie was immediately vaulted into the pantheon of great action sequences on film. In one chase, the production used 100 stunt drivers to film the insane action. In the second chase scene, Robert De Niro’s character pursues Natascha McElhone’s character through the streets of Paris, including a white-knuckle drive against traffic on a three-lane road. 100 drivers were used for the cars coming straight at the protagonists. There is good reason the scene is so iconic today. 

Fast Five Had Only One CGI Shot In The Most Famous Chase

The Fast And The Furious franchise is both praised and lambasted for its car stunts, especially the use of CGI when so many epic chase scenes in cinema history have been shot without it. One of the franchise’s most iconic chases, though, when Brian and Dom drag a bank vault through Rio, was shot mostly without the use of special effects, only requiring one shot with a CG vault.

Death Proof Used No CGI At All

Quentin Tarantino fans usually don’t hold Death Proof up as his best work, but that doesn’t mean the movie isn’t worth watching. The car chase scenes alone are amazing. In true Tarantino fashion, the director didn’t use any CGI at all for any of the shots. He wanted them to look authentic and since the whole movie was an ode to the old car movies of the ‘70s, he had to shoot it the way he did and it meant stuntwoman Zoë Bell was really on the hood of that car the whole time. 

The Man With The Golden Gun Used A Computer To Calculate A Jump For The First Time

The James Bond franchise is filled with amazing action and incredible car chases, but one stunt stands above the rest, despite the cheesy slide whistle effect added to it. In The Man With The Golden Gun, the franchise became the first to use computer modeling to design a jump. According to Jaleponik, it was computer scientists at the Calspan Corporation who first modeled the physics involved in the famous “corkscrew” jump Bond makes over a river in an AMC. Now if they would just get rid of the stupid slide whistle in future edits… 

Vanishing Point Cars Were Unmodified

The now-cult classic, Vanishing Point, was shot on a shoestring budget and that meant using basically factory cars for its chases. There were multiple Dodge Chargers in the film and none were modified except to add some racing shocks. In fact, the stunt coordinator chose the Charger specifically because it didn’t need to be modified and could handle whatever stunts they wanted to put it through. 

Smokey And The Bandit Made The Trans Am So Popular, You Couldn’t Get One

There are few more iconic cars in film history than Burt Reynolds' Pontiac Trans Am in Smokey In The Bandit. The film was a huge hit in 1977 and even though the cast includes Reynolds, Sally Field, Jerry Reed, and Jackie Gleason, the star of the movie became that car. It was so popular that, according to director Hal Needham, there was a six-month waiting list to buy the car. 

Duel’s Final Stunt Almost Ended In Tragedy

It’s hard to believe Steven Spielberg got his start in television. His first full-length film was the made-for-TV Duel, about a man pursued and harassed by a crazy truck (whose driver remains unseen for most of the film). That truck almost killed a stunt driver when a mechanical problem while filming the movie's climactic scene forced the driver to stay inside until just before it tumbles off a cliff and explodes. The driver bailed at the very last second and any longer would have meant he would’ve gone down with it. 

The Roads Weren’t Closed For Baby Driver Production

One of the most unbelievable stories on this list is that the famous highway chase in Baby Driver was shot on a road that the city of Atlanta didn’t allow the production to shut down. If you’ve ever been stuck in Atlanta traffic, you understand why, but how they shot it is incredible. Instead of closing the highway completely, the production had the police performing a “rolling barricade” around the cars while they filmed. You can take shots at the soundtrack for Baby Driver, but you can’t criticize the action. 

Mission Impossible: Fallout Had To Find Used M5s

The Mission Impossible franchise is yet another that film fans can always count on to bring great car chases, and the latest installment, Mission Impossible: Dead Reckoning Part One is no different. In Mission Impossible: Fallout, production ran into a problem. For the BMW M5s used in one of the chases, BMW couldn’t provide any of the retro cars, which, according to stunt coordinator Wade Eastwood, meant they had to go out and find used ones on the open market. Eastwood had to tell a little fib to many of the sellers that their beloved cars weren’t going to get trashed in the filming of the movie, which, of course, they were. 

There is little doubt that car chases will continue to drive action movies forever. You can check out our 2023 movie release schedule to find out when you can scratch that itch for more heart-pounding driving stunts with movies like the latest Mission Impossible film and Gran Tourismo set to come out this year. 

We here at CinemaBlend regularly rank the individual installments of a wide variety of film series, but this feature is a bit different than all of those. Instead of going from worst to best with pop culture staples, I've opted to go straight at naming all of the #1 titles in 35 different franchises. Tackling them in alphabetical order and jumping around genres, let's start with...

Alien/Predator: Aliens

Ridley Scott made a claustrophobic classic in Alien that remains one of the best sci-fi horror movies of all time, and Predator is one of the greatest Arnold Schwarzenegger films, but James Cameron gets the credit for making the top title in this particular franchise with Aliens – the epic battle between the Alien Queen and Ripley in the Power Loader sealing the deal.

Back To The Future: Back To The Future

All three films in the Back To The Future trilogy are wonderful in their own way – with Part II providing a glimpse at a fun future and Part III being a blast in the Old West – but nothing beats the classic in this case. Robert Zemeckis’ Back To The Future is one of the quintessential time travel movies, introducing and instantly endearing us to one of cinema’s most beloved duos: Michael J. Fox’s Marty McFly and Christopher Lloyd’s Doc Brown.

Batman: The Dark Knight

Explaining this is simple: Christopher Nolan’s Dark Knight trilogy is the best standalone big screen iteration of Batman, and The Dark Knight is the best film in that series. The brilliant and effective grounded approach to Christopher Nolan’s Batman and the world of Gotham is carried over from the excellent Batman Begins, but the X-factor is Heath Ledger’s Joker – a legendary interpretation of a legendary character.

Bill And Ted: Bill & Ted’s Excellent Adventure

The fun antics are non-stop in the Bill & Ted trilogy, but neither of the sequels can hit the heights of the original: a totally unserious trip around time in a special phone booth visiting famous historical figures along with a pair of righteous dudes. “Party on, dudes,” indeed!

Chucky: Child's Play 2

The original Child’s Play made us legitimately fear a possessed doll, and the most recent sequels – The Curse Of Chucky and The Cult Of Chucky – revived the series in horrific fashion prior to the 2021 pivot to television, but Child’s Play 2 remains the big screen high point for the Chucky franchise. Of all the movies, it’s the one that finds the best blend of terror and comedy, from the violent lab accident that kicks off the plot, to the final showdown in the toy factory.

The Conjuring Universe: The Conjuring 2

The Conjuring Universe has proven to be one of the most ambitious horror franchises of the 21st century, with multiple successful spin-offs branching from the core series, but to date the best title of the lot is The Conjuring 2. It deepens the terrific bond between leads Ed and Lorraine Warren (Patrick Wilson and Vera Farmiga) and delivers a terrifying based-on-a-true-story tale of demonic possession.

Evil Dead: Evil Dead II

Evil Dead II has what can be called a confused legacy in the Evil Dead franchise – being part remake and part sequel – but what’s most important is that it’s a phenomenal cinematic experience. No title in the series so perfectly blends comedy and horror, and it’s the performance that has made Bruce Campbell a genre legend.

Fast & Furious: Fast Five

The Fast & Furious franchise didn’t have much of an identity in its early years, but everything changed with the arrival of Dwayne Johnson’s Luke Hobbs and the action insanity of Fast Five. The movies pivoted from being about street racing to high stakes heists/globe-trotting crime, and director Justin Lin assured us it was the right choice by executing what remains the high point of the run.

Final Destination: Final Destination 2

Final Destination 2 starts with what is the greatest opening sequence in the entire run thus far of the Final Destination franchise, and then in proceeds to deliver the most satisfying story in the run. It’s a sequel that avoids the trap of repeating the previous movie, features many of the series’ best Rube Goldberg-esque kills, and employs an exciting twist on the rules of death.

Friday The 13th: Jason X

The biggest problem with most of the Friday The 13th movies is that they all tend to blend together: a bunch of random characters get cut up by Jason Voorhees – the murders more often than not being executed in and around the notorious Camp Crystal Lake. Jason X is the major exception, as taking the slasher action to space allows the film to both have personality and exhibit some real creativity.

DCEU: The Suicide Squad

One sign that Warner Bros. Discovery made the right choice appointing James Gunn as the co-CEO of DC Studios is the fact that he wrote and directed what will be remembered as the best chapter of the DC Extended Universe. Borrowing fun details from the canon, putting together an outstanding ensemble of misfit characters, and executing a bonkers plot that crescendos with the reveal of Starro, it’s a delight that repeatedly rewards on rewatch.

Die Hard: Die Hard

In a conversation about the Die Hard franchise, the question isn’t “What’s the best Die Hard movie?” The question is “What’s the best Die Hard sequel, because obviously the first is forever #1?” Bruce Willis became a cinematic icon with his seminal turn as John McClane, and the character’s fly-in-the-ointment tactics against the villainous Hans Gruber has basically become its own action subgenre (“Die Hard in a…”)

Ghostbusters: Ghostbusters

Every Ghostbusters sequel has made strenuous efforts to recapture the magic of the original, and all of them have come up short. The 1984 classic is a weird and wild ride with a collection of memorable characters and a script full of endlessly quotable lines.

The Godfather: The Godfather Part II

The Godfather and The Godfather: Part II are equally perfect pinnacles of cinema so great that they should defy comparison to one another, and it’s really just for the sake of this list that I’ll pick The Godfather: Part II. The thrilling and tragic saga of Michael Corleone is beautifully balanced with the origins of Vito Corleone, sewn together as a treasured gangster epic.

Halloween: Halloween (1977)

Halloween got a terrific modern rejuvenation thanks to director David Gordon Green, and I’ll forever stand up for Halloween III: Season Of The Witch, but the reality is that nothing touches John Carpenter’s franchise-starter. It’s a movie that has an important role in cinematic history as one of the key titles that kick-started the slasher movement in horror, and the impact of Michael Myers and Jamie Lee Curtis’ Laurie Strode on pop culture is incalculable.

Indiana Jones: Raiders Of The Lost Ark

The rolling boulder. The Staff of Ra casting a beam of light. The chamber filled with snakes. The opening of the Ark of the Covenant. These are just four memorable scenes from Raiders Of The Lost Ark, and it barely scratches the full list. Indiana Jones is one of blockbuster cinema’s greatest creations, and his greatest story is still his first.

Jackass: Jackass 3D

All of the Jackass movies are filled with stunts and gags that are uproariously funny, but Jackass 3D stands out not only for featuring some incredible invention, but also because of its phenomenal use of 3D. Because not every “bit” is in 3D, the ones that are end up being made more special, and it’s an extremely gross but unique cinematic experience.

James Bond: Goldfinger

Everyone has their favorite James Bond, and with mine still being Sean Connery, that narrows selection down to the best of that era: Goldfinger. Great as Dr. No and From Russia With Love are, Goldfinger is the film that in many ways became the model for the sequels that followed it – from the exploration of gadgets to memorable henchmen.

Jason Bourne: The Bourne Ultimatum

The original Jason Bourne trilogy is the rare series that gets better and better with each installment… and it’s a shame that the movies didn’t stop once they hit their peak. The Bourne Legacy and Jason Bourne are both forgettable, ancillary chapters, but thankfully The Bourne Ultimatum still stands up as the perfect climax for the trilogy. Big answers are delivered, the action is crazy, and supporting cast opposite Matt Damon including Julia Stiles, David Strathairn, Joan Allen, Paddy Considine, Albert Finney, and Édgar Ramirez is brilliant.

John Wick: John Wick

John Wick: Chapter 4 serves as an epic conclusion to the John Wick series and features some of the most spellbinding action anyone will ever put on a big screen… but it’s still only the best of the sequels. Made with no big ambitions to launch a franchise, the original John Wick is genius in its simplicity, and Keanu Reeves’ turn as the titular hero has proven to be game-changing in the industry.

Jurassic Park: Jurassic Park

What is it like to see a dinosaur? Steven Spielberg answered that question for movie-goers worldwide in magnificent fashion in 1993 with his adaptation of Jurassic Park, and the vision on screen remains unparalleled decades later. The introduction of the Tyrannosaurus Rex is inarguably one of the greatest creature feature moments of all time, and few straight horror movies inspire the terror of the velociraptors.

Mad Max: Mad Max: Fury Road

The Road Warrior is a great film, but nothing in the Mad Max franchise to date touches the experience that is Mad Max: Fury Road. It’s a movie-long chase sequence that features both compelling characters (special shout-out to Charlize Theron’s Furiosa) and set pieces that melt your brain and are unlike anything else we’ve seen from this action series… or any other.

The Man With No Name: The Good, The Bad, And The Ugly

Director Sergio Leone and Clint Eastwood made one hell of a team, and the peak of their collaboration is The Good, The Bad, And The Ugly – starring Eastwood opposite Lee Van Cleef and Eli Wallach. It’s properly remembered as one of the best westerns of all time, from its universally recognized score by Ennio Morricone to the stunning third act showdown.

Marvel Cinematic Universe: Avengers: Endgame

The Marvel Cinematic Universe was born with an ambitious vision of seeing a diverse array of heroes go toe-to-toe with the Infinity Gauntlet-powered Thanos, and while dreams don’t always work out properly in reality, that is not the case with Avengers: Endgame. The big screen crossover event balances high stakes and a wild plot with a balanced character roster and spectacular action, and it’s everything a Marvel fan could want.

Middle-earth: The Lord Of The Rings: The Fellowship Of The Ring

Return Of The King may have won all of the Oscars, but one could argue those awards were really given to the grand achievement that is the Lord of the Rings trilogy as a whole – and that includes the phenomenal opening chapter that began the epic, The Fellowship of the Ring, which is the best movie in the whole of the big screen franchise. The introduction to Middle-earth is an unforgettable experience that perfectly sets up the peril and stakes of the incredible journey that unfolds in the sequels.

Mission: Impossible: Mission: Impossible – Ghost Protocol

Everything changed for the Mission: Impossible franchise the day that Tom Cruise agreed to personally scale the world’s tallest building as part of a stunt for Mission: Impossible – Ghost Protocol. Death defying stunts have now become the norm for these movies, but still the fourth installment of the series remains the high point – with the Burj Khalifa sequence just one of many eye-popping parts of the hit blockbuster.

Of The Dead: Dawn Of The Dead (1978)

George A. Romero saw tremendous potential in the symbolism of zombies, and nowhere is his commentary better than in the second chapter of his undead series: 1978’s Dawn Of The Dead. Even after nearly half a century, the struggle for a group of survivors trapped inside a shopping mall is as scary as ever thanks to Romero’s genius, and its influence can be seen in pretty much every zombie movie released since.

Planet Of The Apes: Conquest Of The Planet Of The Apes

The original Planet Of The Apes hits us with the twist that the titular world is actually a futuristic Earth, but Conquest Of The Planet Of The Apes is the movie where we actually get to see them take over, and it’s remarkable. It’s thrilling and shockingly dark, and the best of both eras of the brilliant sci-fi franchise.

Saw: Saw

The Saw franchise is overloaded with horrifyingly clever traps for audiences to have nightmares about, but as far as individual chapters of the series is concerned, director James Wan’s Saw remains at the top of the top tier. The claustrophobic and simple terror of the test between two men chained up in a bathroom is a genuine nightmare, and the twist ending is one of the most memorable of ’00 horror.

Scream: Scream (1994)

Any movie is going to get special consideration if it successfully manages to save a genre, and that certainly includes Scream. Horror was in a bad place in the early 1990s as burnout on slasher sequels was pervasive, but the introduction of Ghostface was a brand new flavor of scary for movie fans to sink their teeth into, and it was an instant hit with audiences. Its satire is wicked sharp, but never undercuts the savage terror of the killer’s rampage.

Spider-Man: Spider-Man 2

“With great power comes great responsibility” is recognized worldwide as the credo of Spider-Man, and Spider-Man 2 is, to date, the most fascinating dive into the immense complications of the idea – with Peter Parker’s desire for a normal life causing his powers to fade. Combined with the awesome presence of Alfred Molina as Dr. Octopus, it’s easily the best of the non-MCU Spider-Man movies.

Star Trek: Star Trek II: The Wrath Of Khan

Not including Star Trek: Insurrection or Star Trek Into Darkness, all of the even-number Star Trek movies are quality, but never have we seen a big screen adventure on the U.S.S. Enterprise better than Star Trek II: The Wrath Of Khan. Ricardo Montalbán’s Khan is the best antagonist in the franchise’s history, and after a thrilling back and forth battle between the heroes and villains, the end delivers a powerful emotional blow with the sacrifice of Leonard Nimoy’s Spock.

Star Wars: Star Wars: The Empire Strikes Back

People ding The Empire Strikes Back for being narratively dependent on both Star Wars and Return Of The Jedi, but those dings are far from enough to strip it of its position as the best Star Wars movie ever made. It’s the movie where all of the main characters really become full formed – from Luke’s Jedi training on Dagobah to the development of Han and Leia’s romance – and while it doesn’t offer conclusions, it has one of cinema’s best cliffhangers.

Terminator: Terminator 2: Judgment Day

The choice between The Terminator and Terminator 2: Judgment Day is a tough one (the rest of the Terminator movies are… fine), but if I’m going to make a final pick, it’s going to be the latter. The liquid metal design of the T-1000 can still be recognized as an extraordinary feat of filmmaking for its time, and the dynamic between the reprogrammed T-800, the enthusiastic John Connor, and the paranoid Sarah Connor alone makes for a compelling and fascinating story.

Three Colors Cornetto: Hot Fuzz

It’s hard to judge the individual chapters of the Three Colors Cornetto trilogy against each other given that Shaun of the Dead, Hot Fuzz and The World’s End were all specifically designed to be wholly different, but if we’re talking about the best movie of the three, the edge goes to Hot Fuzz. It’s the title that best utilizes the tropes of its genre to humorous and loving effect, and it delivers a wild mystery that succeeds in being thrilling and funny in equal measure.

Stay tuned for our coverage of all these franchises and many more here on CinemaBlend.

I’ve determined that all the things the Fast and Furious movies are best known for stem from Fast Five. I’m talking about global adventures, family monologues, out-of-this-world stunts and an incredibly famous ensemble cast. I finally feel like I’ve hit the point in the series where things really start to ramp up, and the saga becomes what we know it for today. And let me tell you, it did not disappoint, I get why this movie is ranked No. 1 in our ranking of the Fast and Furious movies. So, with that said, let’s get into all the thoughts I had while watching the fan fave that is Fast Five. 

This Is A Heist Movie, And That’s Why I Loved It So Much

While the first four movies are about racing, Fast Five is first and foremost a heist movie, and cars are used as a means to pull off said heist. It’s worth noting that my favorite genre of film is heists. Ocean’s Eleven is one of my favorite movies, and seeing an epic ensemble assemble to pull off a clever, action-packed and mind-bending plan brings me immense joy. 

Seeing a crew that included Mia, Vince and Dom from The Fast and the Furious, Roman and Tej from 2 Fast 2 Furious, Han from Tokyo Drift (because our F&F timeline is still ultra convoluted) and Gisele from Fast and Furious 4 was epic. By putting them together we got an ensemble that was perfect for a heist movie where they worked to pull off an impossible plan that involved safe stealing, train heisting, car chases, roof chases, and some great banter.

Can We Take A Minute To Talk About That Wild Train Heist?

As mentioned above I love a heist, and if you’ve read my thoughts on The Fast and the Furious as well as my opinions on 2 Fast 2 Furious, you’ll know that I love a big campy stunt. The train heist was both those things, and I was living for it! Not only was it an epic sequence that featured the crew stealing cars off a train via a truck that looked like it should have been in Mad Max, but it also had epic fights and a grand finale that included Brian and Dom jumping their car off a cliff, talk about epic. 

On top of that, a crucial part of the scene was apparently done by accident, which makes this even better. It turns out, the car wasn’t supposed to crash into the train in the movie, as Brian Volk-Weiss, the director of Icons Unearthed: Fast & Furious told ScreenRant. However, rather than spending more money to fix it, they moved the fight inside the train and made the car part of the sequence. Considering these movies are all about cars doing wild things, I love that this snafu added an even cooler element to an already rad action sequence. 

The Rock Has Entered The Chat And He Has The Best One-Liners

We can’t talk about a movie that Dwayne Johnson is in, and not bring him up. This was The Rock’s introduction to the Fast franchise, and he came into the Fast Five cast swinging as Hobbs, the agent who was determined to catch our favorite crew, and he was armed with guns and one-liners. 

When we meet Hobbs he’s walking off a plane telling his crew to get ready. However, he doesn't just say, “let’s go” or “are you ready,” oh no, he says: 

He also has another legendary one-liner where instead of simply asking for the information he says: 

Considering The Rock is your ultimate cool guy, hearing him say lines like this was quite funny, and one of my favorite elements of Fast Five. With that said, I really hope Hobbs keeps up the fun dialogue in the movies to come. 

Mia Announced She Was Pregnant At Maybe The Worst Possible Time 

We learn early on in Fast Five that Mia is pregnant, Brian is the father. Then she decided to break the news to her beau and her brother right after they all almost died during a roof chase. My first thought was not about how happy I was, it was more like: MIA THIS IS LITERALLY THE WORST TIME TO BREAK THIS LIFE ALTERING NEWS!*

She was standing with Brian and Dom in a sewer-type thing and her brother insisted they split up. Mia did not want to do that, so her solution was to break the news that she was pregnant. If I were Brian or Dom and I learned that news then I think I would have freaked out. Luckily, the boys were thrilled about the news, and while I didn’t like this moment, it was the reason we got Vin Diesel saying:

So, I can’t hate on this scene too much, because it’s what got Dom on this family kick that is quite endearing. 

*Also, I’d like to clarify that I’m thrilled for Brian and Mia, I just think she should have waited a bit to share the news. 

However, It’s What Led Us To The Epic Family Speech From Vin Diesel 

We’ve seen the classic family barbeque with the Coronas, and we’ve heard the talk about the importance of your crew, but we haven’t gotten a full-blown family monologue from Vin Diesel until Fast Five, and it was glorious. After Vince asks Dom if he can come back, and the crew makes it back from a dangerous mission, Vin rallies and troops and says this: 

Is it all that poetic, no, but is it hella heartfelt and said with love, yes, and that’s all that matters. Hopefully, this means there are more family monologues to come, and they all also involve the whole crew, a cold Corona or two, and Vin Diesel explaining the importance of family. 

How Did Nobody Get Injured In This Movie?

Tell me, how on Earth did none of the characters break an arm, get a concussion or, you know, die? Injury-inducing moments in this movie, include but are not limited to: Dom and Brian driving a car off a cliff, Brian falling through a roof, and Dom stopping, dropping and rolling out of his car moving at a high speed while a safe whips around the highway. It just feels impossible that they all made it out of this unscathed, yet somehow they were all in tip-top shape by the end of the movie. 

I know these movies aren't supposed to follow the laws of physics or be grounded in reality. However, there were one too many injury-prone moments in this action-packed film that I couldn't help but think that at least one person should have been wearing a sling at bare minimum. 

Other Thoughts 

• Gal Gadot and Han is not a pairing I expected. 
• Give Ludacris more screen time! 
• After those end credits, is Letty a super soldier type of person now? I gotta say, I was just as surprised as Michelle Rodriguez was to see Letty alive. 
• Getting the safe by putting it in the garage truck was genius. 
• Dom letting Brian win a race was so cute. 

I feel like we’ve reached a major milestone in this journey. I’ve been told Fast Five is one of the best in the franchise, and where the game changes, and I totally see why. 

As we race closer to Fast X’s release on the 2023 movie schedule, I can’t wait to see how the saga evolves, and how the events of Fast Five play into the big bad’s story in the tenth installment. However, we’ll have to wait until May to find that out, so in the meantime stay tuned to CinemaBlend for my next installment in this wild Fast and Furious series. 

You can rent/buy Fast Five on Amazon. 

Long before Sung Kang’s Han Lue was revealed to be alive after his presumed death was witnessed in The Fast and the Furious: Tokyo Drift, Fast & Furious 6 and Furious 7, it was Michelle Rodriguez’s Letty Ortiz who got the Fast & Furious franchise’s first taste of coming back from the dead. While the opening of 2009’s Fast & Furious saw the character seemingly meeting her demise offscreen, it was teased at the end of Fast Five that wasn’t the case, and she was was fully brought back into play in Fast & Furious 6. Now Rodriguez has shared the wild way she learned that Letty was still among the living.

Ahead of the Fast X trailer’s online debut, Michelle Rodriguez attended a special event for the first batch of footage from the penultimate entry in the main Fast & Furious film series. While there (via Insider), the actress shared that she learned she would be returning to the car-centric franchise more than a decade ago while watching Fast Five, as opposed to being given a heads up. As Rodriguez recalled:

So rather than Vin Diesel cluing Michelle Rodriguez in that Letty Ortiz’s time in the Fast & Furious world wasn’t done, she learned this news in a regular screening with the rest of the general public. For those in need of a refresher, while Fast & Furious, the 2009 movie that brought Vin Diesel’s Dominic Toretto and Paul Walker’s Brian O’Conner back together for the first time since The Fast and the Furious in 2001, originally had Letty Ortiz dying at the hands of Fenix Calderon, the righthand man of lead antagonist Arturo Braga (a.k.a. Ramon Campos), Fast Five’s post-credits scenes had Eva Mendes’ Monic Campos, who was first seen in 2 Fast 2 Furious, visiting Dwayne Johnson’s Luke Hobbs to share that Letty had been photographed at a recent military convoy attack in Berlin, thus teasing her involvement in Fast & Furious 6.

While this makes for an amusing story for Michelle Rodriguez to tell, I can’t help but wonder what would have happened if she’d decided that despite that tease, she wasn’t interested in returning to the Fast & Furious franchise (she has had complaints, after all). Would Letty Ortiz simply have been killed offscreen again, or would Vin Diesel and the franchise’s other producers have simply come up with a reason for Letty’s continued absence until they could convince Rodriguez to come back aboard for Furious 7? Fortunately for fans, this didn’t happen, and Letty’s been a mainstay in the Fast & Furious world ever since her grand return in Fast & Furious 6.

However, it took a little longer for Letty Ortiz to go back to being a good guy, as her near-death experience resulted in her being an amnesiac for years and joining up with Owen Shaw’s crew. Dominic Toretto was able to persuade Letty to come back to his side, but it wasn’t until the end of Furious 7 that all of her memories returned, as she finally recalled that she and Dom and married prior to the events of Fast & Furious. Since then, she and Dom have been through thick and thin together, and they’ll be called back into action once more for Fast X. This movie sees Jason Momoa’s Dante Reyes, who also has a special connection to Fast Five, causing all kinds of trouble, including kidnapping Dom and Letty’s son Brian Marcos, who’s now being played by Leo Abelo Perry.

Fast X arrives in theaters on May 19, but make sure you’ve streamed F9 with an HBO Max subscription beforehand so you’re properly caught up. You’re also welcome to look through the lineup of other 2023 new movie releases to see what else catches your eye.

The first trailer for Fast X has finally arrived, and with it came some welcome information about Jason Momoa’s villainous character, Dante. In the preview, it was revealed that Dante was present for the events of Fast Five, as he had some kind of relationship with that movie’s main antagonist, Joaquim de Almeida’s Hernan Reyes. Now Louis Leterrier, who took over as Fast X’s director after Justin Lin left the production, has shared why Momoa’s character is connected to the 2011 Fast & Furious entry.

While breaking down the first Fast X trailer with Total Film, Louis Leterrier shared that Fast Five is his favorite Fast & Furious movie, which resulted him thinking ‘What if, what if, what if?' when he started working on this latest installment. From there, Leterrier talked about how there’s “price to justice” and a “price to Dom’s life choices, in order to take that darkness from the world,” resulting in a “domino effect.” He continued:

Louis Leterrier then said that this “felt like a very strong thematic direction to start the movie,” indicating that Fast X will begin with revisiting the Fast Five climax, but this time see it from Dante’s perspective. As the Fast X trailer showed, Dante was on hand to witness Dominic Toretto and his crew stealing the vault containing Hernan Reyes’ money, and he was the one driving the car carrying Reyes when the drug lord chased after the protagonists to get his loot back. The car chase ended with Dante, Reyes and the car’s other occupants being knocked off that bridge, and while Dante made it out alive, Reyes was soon after executed by Dwayne Johnson’s Luke Hobbs as retribution for killing his fellow DEA agents.

When asked about Dante’s connection to Hernan Reyes, Louis Leterrier confirmed that they were indeed “family,” clarifying that the former is the latter’s son. As for what Jason Momoa brings to the table for Fast X, Leterrier first summarized it as “chaos,” then elaborated:

Dante clearly has an axe to grind with Dominic Toretto and will go to any lengths to exact revenge, including kidnapping his son, Brian Marcos, who’s now being played by Leo Abelo Perry. But Dante isn’t the only villain in Fast X, as Charlize Theron’s Cipher is also back in play. It remains to be seen if Dante and Cipher are allied somehow or will separately antagonize the movie’s protagonists. Assuming Dante sticks around for Fast 11, the final entry in the main Fast & Furious film series, it’ll also be interested how he’s tied to the mysterious adversary who’s promoting AI and driverless cars, a character Vin Diesel would like Robert Downey Jr. to play.

We’ll learn more about what Dante’s deal is when Fast X premieres in theaters on May 19. Use your HBO Max subscription to stream F9 so you’re caught up to speed before the next movie’s arrival.

When you love action movies, it does not matter how many loud gunfights, bare knuckle brawls, sword-wielding duels, or high-speed car chases you have been subjected to because, with each new high adrenaline experience at the cinema, you are always going to crave more. 

Luckily, action junkies with a Peacock subscription can find plenty to satisfy their appetites at home right at their fingertips and for free…well, some of them, at least. Whether it comes at no extra cost or with a premium subscription, the following are our picks for the best action movies that are currently streaming on Peacock, starting with four beloved installments from one of the genre’s most beloved franchises.

The Fast And The Furious, 2 Fast 2 Furious, Fast And Furious, Fast Five (2001-2011)

A young FBI agent (Paul Walker) infiltrates a street racing ring in Los Angeles that is headlined by an expert racer (Vin Diesel) suspected to be involved in a series of truck robberies, whom he later teams up with to lead a special crew of thrill-seeking heroes like them.

Why they are some of the best action movies on Peacock: Witness the evolution of the Fast and Furious movies from an undercover cop story with some cool cars in director Rob Cohen’s original, to the series of high-octane heist dramas with some cool cars that it became under Justin Lin’s direction with The Fast and the Furious, 2003’s 2 Fast 2 Furious, Fast and Furious from 2009, and Fast Five - the only four movies in the franchise currently available on Peacock Premium.

Stream these Fast and Furious movies on Peacock Premium. 

Pitch Black (2000)

A prison transport ship crew is marooned on a deserted planet with a dangerous convict with unique abilities (Vin Diesel), whom they are soon forced to team with in order to battle a hoard of vicious, nocturnal creatures as a lengthy solar eclipse looms.

Why it is one of the best action movies on Peacock: Before the Fast and Furious movies skyrocketed Diesel to the A-list, one of his first leading roles (and his first time playing the character Richard B. Riddick) was in Pitch Black - an intense and fun hybrid of action, sci-fi, and horror from director David Twohy.

Stream Pitch Black on Peacock Premium. 

The Rundown (2003)

A bounty hunter (Dwayne Johnson) who really wants to be chef is convinced by his boss to travel to Brazil and return with his fortune hunter son (Seann William Scott), whom he reluctantly teams up with on a search for a priceless artifact in the Amazon jungle before a ruthless tyrant (Christopher Walken) and his army can get ahold of it.

Why it is one of the best action movies on Peacock: Before The Rock, arguably, helped skyrocket the Fast and Furious movies to new heights of popularity, one of the first roles that proved his potential as a leading man was Beck in The Rundown - a loose, stylish action-comedy with wall-to-wall thrills from director Peter Berg.

Stream The Rundown on Peacock Premium. 

The Transporter (2002)

A former Special Forces operator (Jason Statham) who has been working as a shipper of unknown goods discovers that he has been tasked with delivering a beautiful living woman (Shu Qi), whom he then opts to protect against the people who hired him.

Why it is one of the best action movies on Peacock: Before Statham later became part of the Fast and Furious movies cast (and starred in a spin-off with Dwayne Johnson), one of the the first roles that proved his potential as a leading man was another gun-toting, fast-driving badass named Frank Martin in The Transporter - a thriller with some of Statham’s most wonderfully over-the-top moments from co-directors Louis Lettier and Corey Yeun.

Stream The Transporter on Peacock Premium. 

The Bourne Ultimatum (2007)

A government assassin (Matt Damon) who is still struggling to avoid detection from his former employers begins to uncover even more secrets from his past.

Why it is one of the best action movies on Peacock: One of Universal’s most popular and acclaimed action franchises is the Jason Bourne movies, inspired by the series of espionage novels from author Robert Ludlum, and many fans agree that the strongest and most enthralling of the current five installments is The Bourne Ultimatum, which is also the second from director Paul Greengrass.

Stream The Bourne Ultimatum on Peacock Premium. 

Speed (1994)

A young, hotshot cop (Keanu Reeves) is forced to commandeer a public San Francisco bus and put a passenger (Sandra Bullock) behind the wheel after a madman (Dennis Hopper) places a bomb onboard that will detonate if the vehicle slows down below 50 miles per hour.

Why it is one of the best action movies on Peacock: One of the most essential leading roles of Reeves’ career is the daredevil Jack Traven in Speed - one of the most inventive, ingenious, and heartstopping action movies of the '90s.

Stream Speed on Peacock Premium.

Ambulance (2022)

A desperate family man (Yahya Adbul Mateen II) and his adoptive brother (Jake Gyllenhaal) are forced to commandeer a Los Angeles medical transport vehicle and collaborate with an innocent EMT (Eiza Gonzalez) when their record-breaking bank heist does not go as planned.

Why it is one of the best action movies on Peacock: Many action junkies would see what they considered to be one of the best Michael Bay movies yet in 2022 with Ambulance - a death-defying, non-stop chase flick based on a Danish film from 2005.

Stream Ambulance on Peacock Premium. 

Highlander (1986)

A man (Christopher Lambert), born centuries earlier in Scotland where his mentor (Sean Connery) trained him in the ways of the sword, is tasked with defeating another being like him (Clancy Brown) in late 20th Century in New York.

Why it is one of the best action movies on Peacock: One of the most fun and action-packed cult favorite fantasy franchises to come out of the ’80s is the first of the Highlander movies from director Russell Mulcahy (also one of best movies starring Clancy Brown), which is the most fondly remembered.

Stream Highlander on Peacock. 

300 (2007)

The Spartans’ king (Gerard Butler) leads an army of mere hundreds against thousands of Persian warriors during the Battle of Thermopylae in 480 B.C.

Why it is one of the best action movies on Peacock: The fantasy/action hybrid had never been so “historical” (a loose term in this case, admittedly) and such a technical marvel before the release of 300 - a visually stunning and galvanizing war epic based on the groundbreaking graphic novel from Frank Miller and one of director Zack Snyder’s absolute best efforts.

Stream 300 on Peacock Premium. 

The Northman (2022)

A hardened Viking prince (Alexander Skarsgård) vows to avenge his slain father (Ethan Hawke), save his endangered mother (Nicole Kidman), and kill his father’s murderer (Claes Bang).

Why it is one of the best action movies on Peacock: Director Robert Eggers (known for avant-garde, slow-burn horror movies The Witch and The Lighthouse) had never helmed anything so epic and exciting before the brutal revenge tale, The Northman - one of the most astonishing, unforgettable, and highly acclaimed spectacles of 2022.

Stream The Northman on Peacock Premium. 

1917 (2019)

A young English soldier (George MacKay) and his good friend and comrade (Dean-Charles Chapman) are given the dangerous task of delivering a message that would prevent hundreds of men from falling prey to a cruel trap during World War I.

Why it is one of the best action movies on Peacock: Director Sam Mendes and seminal cinematographer Roger Deakins put forth their most ambitious collaboration yet (and to Academy Award-winning acclaim) with 1917 - an absolutely engrossing story of friendship and survival told in real time and, virtually, all in one take.

Stream 1917 on Peacock. 

Independence Day (1996)

The U.S. Military joins forces with the rest of the world when Earth falls under threat of malicious extraterrestrials piloting ships that covers miles.

Why it is one of the best action movies on Peacock: Disaster movie auteur Roland Emmerich’s crowning achievement is, arguably, the technically magnificent blockbuster Independence Day - an essential title of the alien invasion subgenre with one of the most inspiring speeches even given by a fictional U.S. president.

Stream Independence Day on Peacock Premium. 

Ip Man (2008)

A well-to-do martial arts master (Donnie Yen) is forced to leave his home and help others survive by any means necessary when China is invaded by Japan in 1935.

Why it is one of the best action movies on Peacock: Before he brought kung fu to the Star Wars Universe in Rogue One, Yen became an international martial arts movie star as the title character of Ip Man, which is based on the life of Bruce Lee’s mentor.

Stream Ip Man on Peacock. 

Sam Raimi’s Spider-Man Trilogy (2002-2007)

A young New Yorker (Tobey Maguire) takes on the responsibility of protecting the city from a rotation of bizarre criminals after a radioactive arachnid’s bite gives extraordinary powers.

Why they are some of the best action movies on Peacock: Before returning to the comic book movies with the recent Doctor Strange sequel, director Sam Raimi revolutionized the genre for a new century and put Marvel movies on the map with his trilogy of Spider-Man movies, which are packed with earnest thrills, but also a few healthy glimpses of the Evil Dead creator’s signature "splatterstick" tone.

Stream Sam Raimi’s Spider-Man Trilogy on Peacock Premium. 

Turbo Kid (2015)

An orphan (Munro Chambers) assumes the persona of his superhero idol to protect his post-apocalyptic home and new friend (Laurence Laboeuf) from a ruthless tyrant (Michael Ironside).

Why it is one of the best action movies on Peacock: If The Goonies and Mad Max had a love child it would look a lot like Turbo Kid - a wondrously imaginative and shockingly gory B-movie so passionately rooted in ’80s nostalgia that the "futuristic" setting is 1997.

Stream Turbo Kid on Peacock. 

Rarely does a streaming service have such a diverse variety of action moves like Peacock!

Explosions, one-liners, and unbelievable stunts are all a few characteristics found in the best action movies, and help turn great buddy cop movies, high-octane thrill-rides, and the martial arts films into all-time greats. But, what are the best action movies and where can you find them streaming, available for online rentals and purchases, and on physical media like DVD, Blu-ray, and the increasingly popular 4K UHD Blu-ray format?

Funny you should ask, as you can currently watch a couple dozen of the cinema’s most explosive action flicks in more ways than Arnold Schwarzenegger can look badass on a motorcycle, Keanu Reeves can reinvent himself, and Michael Bay can continue to pull off his signature 360-degree camera trick. There’s a lot to unpack here, so let’s break down the best action movies of all time and how to watch them.

Wanted (2008)

After being recruited by a mysterious league of assassins, Wesley Gibson (James McAvoy) learns he is in possession of an incredible, and incredibly lethal, set of skills passed down by his father, a legendary gunman who was recently murdered under rather peculiar circumstances in Wanted.

Stream Wanted on Max.
Rent/Buy Wanted on Amazon.
Buy Wanted on Blu-ray on Amazon.

Hanna (2011)

Upon being sent out on a mission that has her make her way across Europe, a young assassin named Hanna (Saoirse Ronan) finds herself being hunted by the ruthless Marissa (Cate Blanchett), who will stop at nothing to find and capture the teenager.

Stream Hanna on Starz.
Rent/Buy Hanna on Amazon.
Buy Hanna on Blu-ray on Amazon.

Predator (1987)

Sent off on a mission to the heart of the jungle to rescue a group of politicians, an elite squad of soldiers finds themselves standing face-to-face with a hidden killer from another world. When the group begins to be picked off one by one, Major Alan “Dutch” Schaefer (Arnold Schwarzenegger) is left alone with the alien predator and attempts to turn the tables before it’s too late.

Stream Predator on Hulu.
Stream Predator on Tubi.
Rent/Buy Predator on Amazon.
Buy Predator on Blu-ray on Amazon.

Seven Samurai (1954)

One of the best samurai movies, Akira Kurosawa’s 1954 epic Seven Samurai follows a small group of ronin who take an oath to protect a small village from the looming threat of violence by a large clan of bandits who have set their sights on the townsfolk. Despite their lack of experience or skills behind the sword, the hearty band of heroes push forward to protect the innocent from a cruel death.

Stream Seven Samurai on Max.
Stream Seven Samurai on The Criterion Channel.
Rent/Buy Seven Samurai on Amazon.
Buy Seven Samurai on Blu-ray on Amazon.

Rambo: First Blood Part II (1985)

Set several years after the episode in Hope, Washington, John Rambo (Sylvester Stallone) is given the opportunity to clear his name and start a new life, but only if he travels to Vietnam and free a group of American POWs. But when the mission turns personal and the Vietnamese and Russian combatants kill the only person he cares about, Rambo snaps and sets out for revenge.

Rent/Buy Rambo: First Blood Part II on Amazon.
Buy Rambo: First Blood Part II on Blu-ray on Amazon.

Under Siege (1992)

Casey Ryback (Steven Seagal) is a decorated former Navy SEAL working as a chef on the USS Missouri as it sets off on one final mission before being decommissioned at Pearl Harbor. But Ryback is able to put his skills to good use when a group of terrorists led by William Stranix (Tommy Lee Jones) hijacks the ship and threatens to use its nuclear payload in Under Siege, one of the best '90s movies.

Rent/Buy Under Siege on Amazon
Buy Under Siege on DVD on Amazon.

Smokin' Aces (2006)

Just before Buddy “Aces” Israel (Jeremy Piven) can testify against crime lord Primo Sparazza (Joseph Ruskin), he orders a hit on the Las Vegas magician, resulting in several highly-trained and over-the-top killers to descend upon his Lake Tahoe hideout in Smokin’ Aces.

Stream Smokin' Aces on Starz.
Rent/Buy Smokin’ Aces on Amazon.
Buy Smokin’ Aces on Blu-ray on Amazon.

Die Hard (1988)

In 1988, director John McTiernan took a ‘70s action thriller novel, renamed it Die Hard, cast Bruce Willis as NYPD detective John McClane, and gave the world perhaps the most badass yet polarizing Christmas movie of all time. And, remember, it’s not Christmas until Hans Gruber gets thrown off Nakatomi Plaza.

Stream Die Hard on Hulu.
Rent/Buy Die Hard on Amazon.
Buy Die Hard on Blu-ray on Amazon.

Terminator 2: Judgment Day (1991)

James Cameron essentially redefined the summer blockbuster with Terminator 2: Judgment Day in 1991, forever changing how we picture big-budget action movies in the process. The sequel to 1984’s The Terminator, this sci-fi action epic sees Arnold Schwarzenegger’s T-800 take on the role of the good guy to go up against Robert Patrick's T-1000 to save Edward Furlong’s John Connor, in a spectacle of the Terminator movies which still holds up 30 years later.

Stream Terminator 2: Judgment Day on Paramount+.
Rent/Buy Terminator 2: Judgment Day on Amazon.
Buy Terminator 2: Judgment Day on 4K UHD on Amazon.

John Wick (2014)

Keanu Reeves has managed to remain on top for 30-plus years now, and one of the reasons for his latest reign as the champion of action movies is the John Wick franchise. Directed by Chad Stahelski, the 2014 first chapter saw the retired titular assassin as he is drawn back into the criminal underbelly of New York City, after previously leaving that world behind for a new shot at life. If only they wouldn’t have killed his dog…

Stream John Wick on Peacock.
Rent/Buy John Wick on Amazon.
Buy John Wick on Blu-ray on Amazon.

Mad Max: Fury Road (2015)

George Miller’s Mad Max franchise seemed like it was dead and gone before the series’ fourth installment, Mad Max: Fury Road, completely destroyed the competition at the box office in the summer of 2015. Starring Tom Hardy as the titular hero and Charlize Theron as the fearless Imperator Furiosa, this tour de force takes audiences on a journey through the heart of the wasteland in search of a better and less-violent life.

Stream Mad Max: Fury Road on Max.
Rent/Buy Mad Max: Fury Road on Amazon.
Buy Mad Max: Fury Road on DVD/Blu-ray on Amazon.

Edge Of Tomorrow (2014)

The 2014 sci-fi adventure Edge of Tomorrow follows Lt. Col. Bill Cage (Tom Cruise) as he finds himself living the same day over and over again, dying violently in a battle against an invading alien force, until he uses the time loop in his favor. Emily Blunt and Bill Paxton co-star in Doug Liman’s insanely fun and action-packed thrill ride.

Stream Edge of Tomorrow on TBS.
Stream Edge of Tomorrow on TNT.
Stream Edge of Tomorrow on truTV.
Rent/Buy Edge of Tomorrow on Amazon.
Buy Edge of Tomorrow on DVD/Blu-ray on Amazon.

Hard Boiled (1992)

John Woo’s 1992 Hong Kong action epic Hard Boiled centers on Tequila Yuen (Chow Yun-fat), a renegade cop who goes to extraordinary lengths in order to bring down the gang of gun smugglers who violently murdered his partner. With excessive violence, a gripping story, and that classic John Woo flash, there are plenty of reasons Hard Boiled is considered one of the best of all time.

Rent/Buy Hard Boiled on Amazon.
Buy Hard Boiled on DVD on Amazon.

Con Air (1997)

The late 1990s brought us an action movie in which classically trained actor John Malkovich got the opportunity to play the vicious serial killer in Cyrus “The Virus” Grissom, in Simon West’s movie about a group of prisoners who take over a prison transport plane. Even though Con Air is a very silly movie with several questionable moments, it remains one of the best thanks to Nicolas Cage and his portrayal of Cameron Poe, a convict who just wants to get home to meet his daughter.

Stream Con Air on TBS.
Stream Con Air on TNT.
Stream Con Air on truTV.
Rent/Buy Con Air on Amazon.
Buy Con Air on DVD/Blu-ray on Amazon.

The Raid (2012)

There are few movies that compare to The Raid, which is also known by the title The Raid: Redemption. Gareth Evans’ 2012 bone-shattering action flick centering on an elite police force working their way to the top of an apartment tower in order to apprehend a notorious crime lord. With floor after floor of armed guards and deadly fighters, this tower of terror never lets off the gas the entire runtime.

Stream The Raid on Pluto TV.
Stream The Raid on Paramount+.
Rent/Buy The Raid on Amazon.
Buy The Raid DVD/Blu-ray on Amazon.

Escape From New York (1981)

John Carpenter’s 1981 dystopian thriller Escape From New York is not only one of the best Kurt Russell Movies but it’s also one of the best action movies of all time. When Snake Plissken (Russell) is sent into a heavy fortified New York City (which has been transformed into a prison colony) to save the President of the United States, he has to survive the mean streets of the Big Apple if he wants to rescue to the Commander in Chief and get back in time to avoid a premature death.

Stream Escape from New York on Freevee.
Rent/Buy Escape from New York on Amazon.

The Rock (1996)

Nicolas Cage plays Stanley Goodspeed, an FBI chemical warfare expert who, along with Sean Connery’s John Patrick Mason (totally not James Bond), leads a counterstrike to prevent a group of disgruntled American soldiers from launching a chemical weapon on Alcatraz Island in Michael Bay’s The Rock.

Stream The Rock on FXNow.
Rent/Buy The Rock on Amazon.
Buy The Rock on DVD/Blu-ray on Amazon.

Bad Boys II (2003)

Although some would argue Bad Boys II isn’t better than the original, the 2003 buddy cop movie with Will Smith and Martin Lawrence returning as Mike Lowery and Marcus Burnett, respectively, is still a hell of a lot of fun. This time, however, the Miami detectives find themselves in over their head when their investigation into the world of the drug ecstasy comes a little too close to home.

Stream Bad Boys II on Hulu.
Rent/Buy Bad Boys II on Amazon.
Buy Bad Boys II on DVD/Blu-ray on Amazon.

Speed (1994)

Keanu Reeves was already a big name in the action world by the time he was cast as Jack Traven in Jan de Bont’s 1994 action thriller Speed, but the movie, and its logic-defying bus jump, helped take him to the next level. Everything from the concept (the bus will explode if its speed drops below 50 mph) and the chemistry shared by Reeves and Sandra Bullock works far better than it should.

Stream Speed on Starz.
Rent/Buy Speed on Amazon.
Buy Speed on DVD/Blu-ray on Amazon.

Taken (2008)

At one point in his career, Liam Neeson was receiving Oscar nominations and critical acclaim for movies like Schindler’s List, but in 2008 he tried on a different hat when he took on the lead role in Taken. With his gravelly voice, iconic speech (you know the one), and tireless effort to find his kidnapped daughter, Neeson became an all-out action star and started the next chapter of his career.

Rent/Buy Taken on Amazon.
Buy Taken 3-Movie Collection on DVD/Blu-ray on Amazon.

The Matrix (1999)

Every now and again a movie like The Matrix comes along and completely changes what we know as the action genre. Released in March 1999, the Wachowskis took the genre and flipped it on its head, creating a genre-defying spectacle that’s actually about more than a group of humans who break out of a machine-controlled simulation and search for truth and freedom in a dystopian world.

Stream The Matrix on Netflix.
Rent/Buy The Matrix on Amazon.
Buy The Matrix on DVD on Amazon.

Face/Off (1997)

John Woo’s 1997 action thriller Face/Off follows John Travolta’s FBI agent, Sean Archer, as he goes deep undercover to bring down a terrorist organization by switching faces with group’s leader, Castor Troy, played by Nicolas Cage. Things become more complicated, however, when Troy awakens from a coma and undergoes the same surgery.

Stream Face/Off on MGM+.
Stream Face/Off on Paramount+.
Rent/Buy Face/Off on Amazon.
Buy Face/Off on DVD on Amazon.

Mission: Impossible - Fallout (2018)

When three of humanity’s holy sites become targeted for destruction by a mysterious terrorist organization, it is up to Ethan Hunt (Tom Cruise) and the IMF team to locate three plutonium cores and prevent them from being used as weapons. Like previous installments in the franchise, Mission: Impossible — Fallout features insane stunts and even more mind-boggling twists and turns.

Stream Mission: Impossible - Fallout on Paramount+.
Stream Mission: Impossible - Fallout on FXNow.
Rent/Buy Mission: Impossible - Fallout on Amazon.
Buy Mission: Impossible - Fallout on DVD/Blu-Ray on Amazon.

Air Force One (1997)

At the center of the crossroad of political dramas and action flicks is Wolfgang Petersen’s Air Force One, which centers on the hijacking of the world’s most famous aircraft, with the President of the United States (Harrison Ford), the First Family, and White House staff being held hostage by a terrorist group in hopes of freeing a political prisoner. This movie has everything from iconic one-liners, traitors, and an entire subplot dedicated to the 25th Amendment.

Stream Air Force One on USA.
Rent/Buy Air Force One on Amazon.
Buy Air Force One on Blu-ray on Amazon.

The Bourne Ultimatum (2007)

The conclusion (not really, but it was at the time) to the Jason Bourne story, 2007’s The Bourne Ultimatum didn’t hold anything back as Matt Damon’s former CIA assassin finally gets to the bottom of his previous life while also trying to survive an endless wave of elite killers sent to wipe him out before he can uncover the truth.

Stream The Bourne Ultimatum on Max.
Rent/Buy The Bourne Ultimatum on Amazon.
Buy The Bourne Ultimatum on DVD/Blu-ray on Amazon.

Skyfall (2012)

Arguably one of the best James Bond movies in recent memory (and of all time) Sam Mendes 2012 epic Skyfall showed the world a side of 007 (Daniel Craig) that we had never gotten to see before. When ghosts of M’s (Judi Dench) past come back to do more than haunt the MI6 leader, only the world’s most famous spy can save her, and the world, from the monster who has been let out of his cage.

Stream Skyfall on Prime Video.
Rent/Buy Skyfall on Amazon.
Buy Skyfall on Blu-ray on Amazon.

The Mummy (1999)

Say what you will about The Mummy, but the 1999 action comedy starring Brendan Fraser and Rachel Weisz is a ton of fun. With elements of horror, suspense, action, romance, and comedy, the story follows a group of explorers who inadvertently awaken a vengeful and heartbroken mummy in ancient Egypt. Mr. Fraser wants another entry in the franchise, and we can't help but agree.

Stream The Mummy on Peacock.
Rent/Buy The Mummy on Amazon.
Buy The Mummy Trilogy on Blu-ray on Amazon.

Point Break (1991)

Kathryn Bigelow’s Point Break, the 1991 action movie about an FBI agent (Keanu Reeves) going undercover to bring down a group of bank-robbing surfers with a charismatic leader (Patrick Swayze), remains one of the most iconic films of its era. The bank-robbing scenes, car chases, police raids, skydiving without a parachute, all the surfing, and the inclusion of Gary Busey, are just a few reasons why.

Stream Point Break on Tubi.
Stream Point Break on Plex.
Stream Point Break on Paramount+.
Stream Point Break on Shout TV.
Rent/Buy Point Break on Amazon.
Buy Point Break on Blu-ray on Amazon.

Extraction (2020)

Extraction follows a mercenary (Chris Hemsworth) who is hired to track down the kidnapped son of an international crime lord. This seems like a difficult task in itself, but things quickly get out of hand, resulting in even more danger and perilous situations in one of the best Netflix movies of 2020.

Stream Extraction on Netflix.

Aliens (1986)

Despite the first movie in the Alien franchise being a moody and terrifying sci-fi horror story, its 1986 sequel, Aliens, took a completely different path and it paid off handsomely. James Cameron’s iconic action flick, which saw the return of Sigourney Weaver’s Ellen Ripley, as well as the debut of a few of cinema’s most quotable soldiers, remains one of the most fun and unique sequels while also keeping some of the horror elements of its predecessor.

Stream Aliens on Max.
Rent/Buy Aliens on Amazon.
Buy Aliens on DVD/Blu-ray on Amazon.

Fast Five (2011)

Directed by Justin Lin , Fast Five completely changed the trajectory of the Fast and Furious franchise in 2011 with an action-packed story revolving around Dominic Toretto (Vin Diesel) and Brian O’Conner (Paul Walker) as they put together a new team to pull off one of the most remarkable heists in cinematic history. Oh, and the movie sees the debut of Dwayne Johnson’s Luke Hobbs.

Stream Fast Five on Peacock.
Stream Fast Five on USA.
Rent/Buy Fast Five on Amazon.
Buy Fast Five on DVD/Blu-ray on Amazon.

Atomic Blonde (2017)

Over the past decade or so, Charlize Theron has become one of the leading action stars of her time. That case was made even stronger in 2017 with the arrival of Atomic Blonde, a fun and brutal action thriller centering on an elite spy (Theron) who isn’t afraid to put her life in danger or get her hands a little dirty in order to pull off a job. This eye-catching and action-packed lesson in brutality is a must-watch.

Rent/Buy Atomic Blonde on Amazon.
Buy Atomic Blonde on DVD/Blu-ray on Amazon.

These are just a couple dozen of the best movies on Amazon, Max, Netflix, and other streaming platforms that fall in the action genre. And who knows, maybe we’ll see some of the 2024 new movie releases show up on this list in the future.

In October 2021, Matthias Schweighöfer took us back into the world of Army of the Dead, but instead of offering another zombie thriller, like Zack Snyder did earlier in the year, the director-actor gave Netflix subscribers a story that didn’t have nearly as many ghouls as its counterpart, but more than made up for it with a series of great heists and a thrilling origin story for fan favorite Ludwig Dieter. 

If you like what you saw and want to know about more movies like Army of Thieves, you have come to the right place, because we have a nice and varied list of the best heist movies that share some similarities with the Army of the Dead prequel. From classics like Heat to modern gems like Baby Driver, there’s a lot to choose from here…

Army Of The Dead (2021)

Years after a zombie outbreak has consumed Las Vegas, an elite squad of mercenaries (and an obsessive safecracker) are sent into the walled-off Sin City to pull off an improbable heist at a casino in the middle of ground zero.

Why it’s worth checking out: After watching Army of Thieves, I immediately wanted to go back and watch Zack Snyder’s Army of the Dead for a few reasons, with the biggest being Matthias Schweighöfer’s Ludwig Dieter. Now that you know the character’s backstory and why he’s so obsessed with the vault at the center of the heist, it makes his journey into the quarantine zone all the more meaningful and enjoyable to watch. Also, there’s no such thing as too much Ludwig Dieter and his high-pitched screams whenever he’s in danger or just overly excited.

Stream Army of the Dead on Netflix.

• Check some of the other best movies on Netflix.

Ocean’s Eleven (2001)

As soon as Danny Ocean (George Clooney) is released from prison, the career criminal decides to put together a crack team to pull off what could very well be the biggest heist in the history of Las Vegas, but also one that could land him back behind bars, or worse…

Why it’s worth checking out: Steven Soderbergh’s 2001 heist comedy, Ocean’s Eleven (a remake of the Rat Pack classic of the same name), not only features one of the most impressive robberies in modern movie history, it is also filled with more than a dozen interesting characters with their own goals, motivations, and fears. And, like Army of Thieves, this star-studded crime caper is full of moments in which it looks like they'll be caught and everyone is going back to prison.

Stream Ocean’s Eleven on HBO Max.
Rent/Buy Ocean’s Eleven on Amazon.
Buy Ocean’s Eleven on DVD/Blu-ray on Amazon.

The Italian Job (2003)

When his friend and partner in crime betrays him and his tight-knit group of international thieves, Charlie Croker (Mark Wahlberg) makes it his mission in life to get back at Steve Frazelli (Edward Norton) the only way he knows how: an elaborate heist with revenge and riches up for the taking.

Why it’s worth checking out: Much like Army of Thieves, the 2003 remake of The Italian Job features a story built around a thief finding his way, taking his skills to major cities around the world, and trying to rebound after being double-crossed by one of his partners. What it lacks in the sophistication and grace of the 1969 film of the same name, starring Michael Caine, this F. Gary Gray heist thriller makes up for with loads of great action.

Stream The Italian Job on Cinemax.
Rent/Buy The Italian Job on Amazon.
Buy The Italian Job on DVD/Blu-ray on Amazon.

Baby Driver (2017)

Following a series of successful bank robberies, but also a few too many close calls, Baby (Ansel Elgort), a music-obsessed getaway driver, plans to pull off a final job before driving into the sunset with Debora (Lily James), a waitress offering him a shot at redemption. However, Baby’s employer and partners in crime won’t make that an easy task.

Why it’s worth checking out: Edgar Wright’s 2017 crime thriller Baby Driver, like Army of Thieves, centers on a likable protagonist, who, despite being a part of a crime syndicate, never feels like he truly belongs with him and is destined for something greater than a life that bounces from one illegal job to the next. 

Rent/Buy Baby Driver on Amazon.
Buy Baby Driver on DVD/Blu-ray on Amazon.

Thief (1981)

A no-nonsense and highly skilled jewel thief named Frank (James Caan) takes on what he thinks will be a series of simple heists when he’s offered a gig with Chicago crime boss Leo (Robert Prosky). But, after a series of successful heists, and favors from his new employer, Frank becomes trapped in the cutthroat mobster’s web, setting in motion a deadly showdown. 

Why it’s worth checking out: One of the best things about Michael Mann’s Thief, besides James Caan’s commanding presence, is the way in which it defies conventional heist movie wisdom, in that Frank, a career perfectionist, never messes up during any of the jobs, and things only go awry because of someone else’s jealousy and betrayal, much like with Ludwig Dieter in Army of Thieves.

Stream Thief on The Criterion Channel.
Buy Thief on DVD/Blu-ray on Amazon.

Point Break (1991)

Rookie FBI Agent (and former Ohio State quarterback) Johnny Utah (Keanu Reeves) goes undercover and infiltrates a group of surfers who bankroll their lifestyle by carrying out a series of bank robberies in the Los Angeles area. While investigating the “Ex-Presidents,” Utah finds himself becoming transfixed by the group’s charismatic leader, Bodhi (Patrick Swayze).  

Why it’s worth checking out: There’s a scene in Army of Thieves in which Alexis Broschini (Stuart Martin) dons a Richard Nixon mask and robs a bank as a distraction for the real heist. This mask, and the brazen bank robbery, have references to Point Break, the “Ex-Presidents,” and their style of intense tactics.

Rent/Buy Point Break on Amazon.
Buy Point Break on DVD/Blu-ray on Amazon.

• Take a look at the best movies on Amazon.

Fast Five (2011)

On the run from multiple law enforcement agencies, including the Diplomatic Security Service and its agent, Luke Hobbs (Dwayne Johnson), Dom Toretto (Vin Diesel) and Brian O’Conner (Paul Walker) put together a top-notch team of criminals, thieves, and drivers to pull off a remarkable bank heist in Brazil.

Why it’s worth checking out: Justin Lin’s Fast Five took the Fast and Furious franchise in a new direction upon its release in April 2011 when he turned the series’ focus away from street racing to international heists. With a great balance of story, action, and a tight-knit group of outcasts, it also happens to be one of the best heist films of the past 10 years.

Stream Fast Five on Peacock.
Rent/Buy Fast Five on Amazon.
Buy Fast Five on DVD/Blu-ray on Amazon.

Heat (1995)

Following a life of over-the-top, yet successful, bank heists, career criminal Neil McCauley (Robert De Niro) plans one final job in downtown Los Angeles that could set him up for the rest of his days. There to prevent him from completing his dream heist is Detective Vincent Hanna (Al Pacino), who does everything he can to track him down and end the robbery before it even begins.

Why it’s worth checking out: If you are a fan of the cat-and-mouse game that plays out during Army of Thieves, you will love the pairing of Robert De Niro and Al Pacino in Michael Mann’s 1995 epic crime drama, Heat. Like the history shared by Gwendoline Starr (Nathalie Emmanuel) and Delacroix (Jonathan Cohen) in the new Netflix movie, the two figures at the center of this story have a connection that becomes more and more personal at every step.

Stream Heat on Starz.
Rent/Buy Heat on Amazon.
Buy Heat on DVD/Blu-ray on Amazon.

Logan Lucky (2017)

Jimmy Logan (Channing Tatum), his one-armed brother Clyde (Adam Driver), sister Mellie (Riley Keough), and convict Joe Bang (Daniel Craig) pool together resources, skills, and creativity to pull off an impossible heist at Charlotte Motor Speedway during the middle of the Coca-Cola 600, one of the biggest Nascar races of the year.

Why it’s worth checking out: Steven Soderbergh’s highly-inventive crime comedy, Logan Lucky, like Army of Thieves, perfectly blends together great heists, hilarious encounters, and an extra topping of zaniness that makes it a treat worth revisiting time and time again. And, despite being one of the funniest movies of 2017 it also features some real nail-biters.

Stream Logan Lucky on Hulu.
Rent/Buy Logan Lucky on Amazon.
Buy Logan Lucky on DVD/Blu-ray on Amazon.

Rogue One: A Star Wars Story (2016)

Jyn Erso (Felicity Jones), Cassian Andor (Diego Luna), and a group of outcasts set off an a suicide mission to steal the plans for the Death Star, so that the Rebel Alliance can find a way to destroy the Galactic Empire’s new super weapon before it’s too late.

Why it’s worth checking out: Okay, Rogue One: A Star Wars Story probably isn’t the first movie that comes to mind when you think of a heist film, but at the center of the prequel is a riveting story about a ragtag group of rebel fighters breaking into a heavily-fortified base to steal plans that could forever change the future of the galaxy.

Stream Rogue One: A Star Wars Story on Disney+.
Rent/Buy Rogue One: A Star Wars Story on Amazon.
Buy Rogue One: A Star Wars Story on DVD/Blu-ray on Amazon.

Hopefully, each of these movies do the trick when you’re looking for something to check out after watching Army of Thieves.

CinemaBlend participates in affiliate programs with various companies. We may earn a commission when you click on or make purchases via links.

For the better part of the past two decades, Sung Kang has been a fixture of the Fast and Furious movies (even when his character, Han Lue, was believed to be dead and gone). And, even though his time in the massive multi-billion-dollar franchise is what most know him from, Kang has had his fair share of success aside from that, with more on the way with shows like Obi-Wan Kenobi on Disney+. Below is a quick breakdown of some of the best, or at least most enjoyable, movies and TV shows to feature Sung Kang…

Better Luck Tomorrow (Amazon Prime)

Justin Lin’s 2002 indie crime drama Better Luck Tomorrow, which happens to be one of the best movies on Amazon Prime, tells the story of a group of overachieving Asian-American high school students living in Orange County, California, who, when not preparing to attend Ivy League colleges, pass the time with a series of small, petty crimes. But, like any tale of teenagers sticking their toes in the murky waters of the criminal underworld, this, too, is a slippery slope for all involved.

Why it’s worth checking out: On one hand, Better Luck Tomorrow does a tremendous job of exploring Asian-American culture and showcases a great cast, including John Cho, Roger Fan, Jason Tobin, and Sung Kang. And, then there is the fact that the movie is now connected to the Fast and Furious franchise with Han Lue bridging the two. The movie also answers the question why Han is always snacking…

Stream Better Luck Tomorrow on Amazon Prime.

Rent/Buy Better Luck Tomorrow on Amazon.

Lisey’s Story (Apple TV+)

Based on the Stephen King novel of the same name, the 2021 Apple TV+ limited series Lisey’s Story is a terrifying thriller that centers on Lisey Landon (Julianne Moore), a grieving widow who explores various traumatic memories connected her deceased husband, Scott Landon (Clive Owen), while also battling the evil force that haunted him in life.

Why it’s worth checking out: Lisey’s Story is a must for fans of Stephen King adaptations as well as those who enjoy horror television. Plus, it’s hard to go wrong with the Lisey’s Story cast, which includes Jennifer Jason Leigh, Joan Allen, Dane DeHaan, and Sung Kang as Officer Dan Boeckman, who helps protect Lisey Landon after her husband’s death.

Stream Lisey’s Story on Apple TV+.

Live Free Or Die Hard (Amazon Rental)

The 2007 action thriller Live Free or Die Hard sees franchise star John McClane (Bruce Willis) team up with a young hacker named Matt Farrell (Justin Long) take on Thomas Gabriel (Timothy Olyphant), a cyber terrorist who aims to bring America’s computer infrastructure to its knees as the country celebrates Independence Day.

Why it’s worth checking out: Although not the best movie in the Die Hard franchise, the fourth installment isn’t without its merits, and pushed John McClane to his breaking point multiple times before the end credits roll. Plus, it’s the only Die Hard movie to feature Sung Kang, who appears briefly as Raj, an agent with the FBI’s cyber division.

Rent/Buy Live Free or Die Hard on Amazon.

Raya And The Last Dragon (Disney+)

The 2021 animated Disney adventure film Raya and the Last Dragon follows the titular heroine (Kelly Marie Tran) as she sets out to resurrect Sisu (Awkwafina) and stop an evil force known as the Druun in the hope of saving and uniting all of humanity.

Why it’s worth checking out: One of the most fun Disney movies in recent years, Raya and the Last Dragon has a little bit of everything: eye-catching animation, an emotional story, and a great deal of heart-stopping action. The Raya and the Last Dragon cast, which includes Sung Kang as Talon leader Dan Hai, is great from top to bottom with the likes of Sandra Oh, Gemma Chan, Benedict Wong, and Alan Tudyk, to name a few.

Stream Raya and the Last Dragon on Disney+.

Rent/Buy Raya and the Last Dragon on Amazon.

Bullet To The Head (Amazon Rental)

The 2013 action thriller Bullet to the Head follows hired killer Jimmy Bobo (Sylvester Stallone) when he joins forces with detective Taylor Kwon (Sung Kang) as they attempt to track down and eliminate a common enemy: real estate developer Robert Nkomo (Adewale Akinnuoye-Agbaje), who has attempted to assassinate both parties on separate occasions.

Why it’s worth checking out: No one is going to say Bullet to the Head is the best Sylvester Stallone movie, but as far as recent Sly goes, there are few examples of the action star having as much fun as he does here. Over-the-top action, a rocky relationship that makes for an exciting buddy cop adventure, and plenty of demolition and destruction, make this one hell of a ride.

Rent/Buy Bullet to the Head on Amazon.

Power (Starz)

Power, the Starz crime drama that ran from 2014 to 2020 and has since spawned multiple spinoffs, tells the story of James St. Patrick (Omari Hardwick), a drug dealer who wishes to escape his past and enter the world of legitimate business. This is easier said than done for the man known on the street as “Ghost” as one’s past always has a way of playing catch-up.

Why it’s worth checking out: Sung Kang shows up in Power Season 4 as U.S. Attorney John Mak, the prosecutor leading a murder case he hopes to pin on Ghost. Kang typically appears as a protagonist, so his turn in a more villainous role is a breath of fresh air.

Stream Power on Starz.

Rent/Buy Power on Amazon.

We Can Be Heroes (Netflix)

Robert Rodriguez makes great pulp action movies, but the filmmaker behind El Mariachi, From Dusk Til Dawn, and Sin City has also made multiple family-friendly features like Spy Kids, The Adventures of Sharkboy and Lavagirl, and most recently We Can Be Heroes. One of the best movies on Netflix that can be enjoyed by adults and children, the Sharkboy and Lavagirl sequel shows what happens when the kids of earth’s superheroes are forced to fill in for their parents who have been kidnapped.

Why it’s worth checking out: Not only is We Can Be Heroes a great way to spend a family movie night, it’s genuinely a fun and exciting adventure film that boasts an outstanding cast of child actors as well as some major stars playing their parents. This includes Christian Slater, Pedro Pascal, Sung Kang, and Taylor Dooley.

Stream We Can Be Heroes on Netflix.

The Motel (Tubi)

The 2005 coming-of-age story The Motel follows 13-year-old Ernest (Jeffrey Chyau), a fatherless boy who spends his days cleaning his family’s run-down motel until has a chance-encounter with a drifter named Sam (Sung Kang). As the bond shared by the boy and the man becomes stronger, Ernest begins to explore his dreams of becoming a writer and escaping his life at the sleazy motor inn all while finding a feather figure in Sam.

Why it’s worth checking out: Anyone wanting to see a great movie to watch starring Sung Kang that doesn’t revolve around driving cars or uncovering intricate conspiracies will certainly find something in The Motel. This low-key drama about a teenager finding himself, and a broken man finding redemption, is as inspirational as it is dramatic.

Stream The Motel on Tubi.

Rent/Buy The Motel on Amazon.

Code 8 (Netflix)

Based on the 2016 short film of the same name, Code 8 is a sci-fi action film that follows Connor Reed (Robbie Amell), a superhuman who uses his powers to help a group of criminals so that he can raise enough money to help his mother’s medication condition. Along the way, he has several clashes with police, including Agent Park (Sung Kang), a man with secrets of his own.

Why it’s worth checking out: One of the most popular movies on Netflix not long after it debuted on the streaming service in early 2020, Code 8 is the perfect mix of family drama, crime, and superhuman adventure with multiple twists and turns.

Stream Code 8 on Netflix.

Rent/Buy Code 8 on Amazon.

The Fast And Furious Movies (Peacock; Amazon Rental)

As mentioned in the introduction, Sung Kang has been a major part of the Fast and Furious franchise since his character’s introduction with The Fast and the Furious: Tokyo Drift. Since then, Han Lue has been a bright spot of the series and played a pivotal role even when he was supposed to be dead.

Why it’s worth checking out: It has never been easier to watch the Fast and Furious movies in order (or based on release date) now that so many are available streaming on various platforms. Luckily, a lot of the installments in the franchise involving Han Lue (Sung Kang) can be watched in the same place, making for one hell of a marathon for those wanting to get Justice for Han.

Stream The Fast and the Furious: Tokyo Drift on Peacock.

Rent/Buy The Fast and the Furious: Tokyo Drift on Amazon.

Stream Fast and Furious on Peacock.

Rent/Buy Fast and Furious on Amazon.

Stream Fast Five on Peacock.

Rent/Buy Fast Five on Peacock.

Rent/Buy Fast and Furious 6 on Amazon.

Rent F9 on Amazon.

Bonus: One-Off TV Appearances

Before Sung Kang found his fame and fortune with the Fast and Furious movies, he appeared on various TV shows to take on many one-off roles on series like Monk, Cold Case, The Shield, and NYPD Blue. Kang would even continue this after becoming a star, showing up on Monk once more as well as CSI: Crime Scene Investigation, Hawaii Five-0, and Family Guy, to name a few.

As you can see, Sung Kang has quite a career outside of the Fast and Furious franchise, though this isn’t to say he should leave the series before it wraps up with the two-part Fast and Furious 10.

Following the events starting with Fast Five, it’s kind of hard to imagine the Fast and the Furious franchise without Tyrese Gibson. Yet, there was a short stretch including The Fast and The Furious: Tokyo Drift and the fourth film in the series, Fast & Furious, where the actor wasn’t in the franchise at all. Well, Tyrese Gibson has now explained how the The Fast and Furious franchise was done with him until Paul Walker helped bring him back.

The series was actually going through an interesting transitional period after 2 Fast 2 Furious, which is where the Baby Boy star made his debut alongside other series mainstay, Chris “Ludacris” Bridges. It is interesting to hear though that Tyrese Gibson wasn’t considered for the re-branded, more action-heavy version of the franchise until Paul Walker went to bat for him. In a recent EW's Binge podcast, Gibson had this to say about what happened, calling it a "fight" to get him back into the franchise.

It likely helped that Tyrese Gibson had worked so hard to make sure his Fast character Roman was nothing like the one that Vin Diesel had crafted in the first movie and honed years later in the franchise. The actor says that was an intentional choice and that he wanted to bring more "humor" to the character during his introduction, noting the thought was...

I really love this behind-the-scenes kind of stuff, because I had no idea that it was a “fight” to get Tyrese Gibson back into the franchise. It is well known that Dwayne “The Rock” Johnson and Gibson didn’t get along for a while, especially when it came to the side-story, Hobbs & Shaw. It was here that Gibson thought that Dwayne Johnson wasn’t being fair to the Fast and the Furious (in Vin Diesel’s voice) family by doing a side project without most of the cast. But their feud now looks to be over, so everything is good on that front.

Overall this new information is really interesting because this took place before the whole Rock/Tyrese beef that ended up going very public. I actually kind of wonder what direction the series could have gone in if they didn’t bring Gibson and Ludacris back? One of the main reasons why Fast Five -- which is arguably considered the best movie in the long-running franchise -- is so good is because of the huge cast of characters, with Tyrese Gibson and Ludacris included. To think of them not in the series after the fourth film almost seems like sacrilege.

But what do you think? Could you even fathom the upcoming Fast and Furious 10 without the one and only Roman Pearce? Sound off in the poll below!

This poll is no longer available.

2011’s Fast Five was an especially notable entry in the Fast and Furious franchise. Not only did it mark the film series’ de-emphasizing street racing and delivering more over-the-top action, it also introduced Dwayne “The Rock” Johnson’s Luke Hobbs, who quickly became one of the most popular Fast and Furious characters and led a spinoff alongside Jason Statham’s Deckard Shaw in 2019. However, Johnson and Vin Diesel, who’s played Dominic Toretto since the Fast and Furious franchise launched, haven’t always gotten along, and Diesel recently talked about “tough love” factored into their feud (not to be confused with the feud between Johnson and Tyrese Gibson).

After more than a year of being delayed, F9 is finally racing into theaters this weekend, and while plenty of familiar faces are returning for this latest Fast and Furious installment, Dwayne Johnson is sitting this one out. Here’s what Vin Diesel had to say to Men’s Health about why he and Johnson have butted heads, particularly during Johnson’s early years on the franchise. In Diesel’s words:

The feud between Vin Diesel and Dwayne Johnson escalated in 2016, when Johnson called one of his Fast and Furious costars a “candyass” It was later confirmed that Johnson was referring to Diesel, as the two of them had frequently clashed during the making of The Fate of the Furious. That said, by early April 2017, shortly before the eighth Fast and Furious movie came out, Diesel said that he and Johnson were quite close, and that things had just gotten a little out of hand. By 2019, nearly two months after the release of Hobbs & Shaw, Johnson thanked Diesel for all his support during the making of the spinoff, indicating that these two had indeed squashed their beef.

Now we know that when Dwayne Johnson joined the Fast and Furious franchise, Vin Diesel, in his duties as a producer, took a “tough love” approach with getting the WWE superstar to properly embody Luke Hobbs, the former DDS agent who initially tried to apprehend Dominic Toretto and his crew, but has since worked with them to fight the forces of evil. Diesel’s approach occasionally led to disagreements between him and Johnson, but in 2021, it sounds like these men are on good terms with one another. The question now is when will Dom and Hobbs reunite?

With two more movies left in the main Fast and Furious film series, there’s definitely no shortage of opportunities to Dwayne Johnson to participate in the finale, and director Justin Lin is certainly game for that happening. And let’s also not forget that even though it’s a ways off, Johnson is on deck to reunite with Jason Statham on Hobbs & Shaw 2, so he’s not leaving Luke Hobbs behind him anytime soon.

As always, keep checking back with CinemaBlend for the latest and greatest news concerning the Fast and Furious franchise. F9 races into theaters this Friday, June 25, but you can read our review for the movie now.

Since we first met Dom Toretto and company in 2001’s The Fast and the Furious, we’ve watched the group of street racers-turned-superheroes bring down planes, trains, and automobiles (as well as other modes of transportation) for one reason or another. And while the exploits of Vin Diesel’s most badass character make for a great movie-going experience, one aspect of the movies that seems to get glossed over (or at not mentioned whatsoever) is the collateral damage caused by the various characters in the first nine films of the multi-billion-dollar franchise.

So, with that in mind, we’ve put together a quick list of all the times the Fast and Furious characters have created a ton of collateral damage, whether it be the destruction of vehicles and property as well as all the injuries and potential deaths left in their wake. And with F9 right around the corner, now is the perfect time to look at all the dangerously unsafe yet popcorn-grabbing-worthy destruction from the franchise thus far.

The Prison Break - Fast Five

The Fast and Furious franchise was already a 10-year-old property by the time Fast Five came around in April 2011, but director Justin Lin and the large ensemble cast made a loud statement in the thrilling opening scene in which Brian O’Conner (Paul Walker) and Mia Toretto (Jordana Brewster) caused a prison transport bus containing Dom Toretto (Vin Diesel) and two dozen other high-risk inmates before the opening title card. With the franchise star sitting in his orange prison jumpsuit waiting to spend the rest of his days in prison, his partners in crime pull off a daring (and extremely dangerous) feat by forcing the prison bus to lose control before letting in slam into the back of one of their cars, flipping over in the process.

And while the in-movie news reports that provide expositional information about what will unfold throughout the movie say all other prisoners were accounted for following the accident, it’s not made all that clear if all survived or how many were injured in the process. After watching the crash multiple times, you can’t tell me no one was seriously hurt in this mess.

The Toretto Crew Drags Vaults Through The Streets Of Rio De Janeiro - Fast Five

The whole “breaking Dom Toretto out of prison” was just the first of many courses in the feast that is Fast Five, with the main entree being the epic vault heist that sees the expanded crew plan to steal $100 million in cash belonging to crime lord Hernan Reyes (Joaquim de Almeida) and start a new life. But instead of breaking into the police station holding the vault and taking the money there, the team instead decides to steal the entire vault.

As soon as the heist starts with Luke Hobbs (Dwayne Johnson) driving an armored truck through the wall of the police station, you know someone (or a lot of people) won’t make it out of this without a scratch. With Brian behind the wheel of one car and Dom driving the other, the two cars pull the vault through the streets of Rio, smashing through buildings, into cars, and wiping out all sorts of structures on city streets. Surely a lot of people were injured or worse, unless they were superheroes like Dom Toretto.

Dom And Brian Drive A Car Through The Abu Dhabi Skyline - Furious 7

By the time Furious 7 came around in 2015, the Fast and Furious franchise had already become the logic-defying yet highly enjoyable thrill ride we know it as today, but the seventh installment in the series took things to the next level. About halfway through the movie, the whole crew head to Abu Dhabi in order to steal the flash drive containing the God’s Eye chip (the powerful computer program capable of tracking anyone and everyone), which happens to be inside a car that is inside a building, an extremely tall building.

What follows is one of the most insane and deadly stunts of the entire movie and perhaps the franchise in general. Dom and Brian drive the Lykan Hypersport out of one building (sending shards of glass falling 100+ stories onto the busy streets of the megacity), through another building (narrowly missing a construction worker), and into a third building into what appears to be a museum before jumping out just as the car crashes to the ground. Destroyed vehicles? Check. Destroyed property? Check! Potential injuries and loss of life? Highly likely.

The Final Showdown Between The Toretto Crew And Deckard Shaw - Furious 7

While not as visually spectacular as watching a car drive across a city skyline, the climactic showdown between Dom Toretto’s crew (with the addition of Luke Hobbs, who literally flexes a cast off his arm) and Deckard Shaw (Jason Statham) on the streets of Los Angeles is utter chaos and had to result in the deaths of like 20 people (I’m spitballing here). But seriously, everything about Furious 7's final fight would end up on the 24-hour news cycle while authorities sifted through the wreckage left behind.

With the God’s Eye having been hacked and taken off line, Deckard Shaw’s last resort is to fight Dom Toretto man-to-man on top of a parking garage in downtown Los Angeles. But through a stroke of luck, Dom takes out his opponent by making the parking garage partially collapse. Then through some nifty teamwork, Dom and Luke Hobbs bring down Mose Jakande’s (Djimon Hounsou) helicopter, making the whole scene even more destructive. And while the city block looks like a ghost town, everyone’s actions cause a large parking garage (with dozens of cars) to collapse. Oh, and don't get me started with Luke Hobbs firing a gatling gun all haphazardly before all of this.

Cipher Takes Control Of Cars In New York City - The Fate Of The Furious

The eighth film in the franchise, The Fate of the Furious, introduces one of the Toretto crew’s most diabolical enemies yet: the cyberterrorist known as Cipher (Charlize Theron). At one point in this 2017 action flick, Cipher takes control of hundreds, if not thousands, of cars in New York City and uses them like a horde of zombies as she tries to steal a nuclear device from the Russian Minister of Defense. What follows reaches a level of absurdity rarely seen in the franchise, which is saying something.

Cars with people in them, cars with people on them, and even cars with no one around start driving on their own and crash into each other and everything around them as the criminal mastermind tries to get her hands on the powerful weapon. And then Dom Toretto (who’s being extorted by Cipher, by the way) starts causing destruction (and putting lives at risk) by trying to evade his former friends through any means necessary. This includes driving on sidewalks, through storefronts, and in busy parks.

There are also other plenty of other scenes throughout the franchise where characters brought destruction in their wake, including but not limited to the opening race in The Fast and the Furious: Tokyo Drift, the Fast and Furious 6 plane crash, and that poor dude who got ran over by an 18-wheeler in 2 Fast 2 Furious.

You can go back and check out all of those moments and more while you watch the Fast and Furious movies streaming ahead of the release of F9, one of the most anticipated 2021 movies on the calendar.

Over the course of the past 24 years, the Fast & Furious franchise has gone from one about street-racing and boosting DVD players to a massive action brand known for its increasingly dangerous stunts and tight-knit daredevils-turned-superheroes.

You can watch all of the Fast and Furious movies available to watch on some of the best streaming services and digital rental services right now. This means you can watch everything from the franchise’s humble beginnings to the supercharged sequels. Below is a full list of all the Fast and Furious movies in order of release date and where you can watch them.

The Fast And The Furious (2001)

In what could be described as Point Break with souped-up Nissan Skylines instead of surfboards, 2001’s The Fast and the Furious follows undercover Los Angeles cop Brian O’Conner (Paul Walker) as he tries to nab a criminal outfit with ties to the street-racing community suspected of boosting DVD players by the truckload. When an attempt to earn the respect of the king of the streets, Dominic Toretto (Vin Diesel), blows up in his face, the eager O’Conner finds himself part of something much larger.

Stream The Fast and the Furious on Netflix.
Rent/Buy The Fast and the Furious on Amazon.

2 Fast 2 Furious (2003)

2 Fast 2 Furious loses Dominic Toretto and the rest of the Los Angeles crew as Brian O’Conner finds himself as a major player in the Miami street-racing scene. Now an FBI agent, O’Conner goes undercover and is forced to mend a shattered relationship with his former best friend and future franchise mainstay Roman Pearce (Tyrese Gibson) to get to the bottom of a criminal organization. Chris “Ludacris” Bridges’ Tej Parker is also introduced in this 2003 sequel.

Stream 2 Fast 2 Furious on Netflix.
Rent/Buy 2 Fast 2 Furious on Amazon.

The Fast And The Furious: Tokyo Drift (2006)

The biggest diversion from the franchise yet, 2006’s The Fast and the Furious: Tokyo Drift introduces a completely new set of characters in a story centering on the high-stakes drifting world in the Japanese megacity as told through the eyes of Sean Boswell (Lucas Black). When Boswell’s need for speed leads to his mom sending him to live with his father in Tokyo, the high school troublemaker quickly finds himself in a whole new world and a new form of racing. Future franchise star Sung Kang makes his debut as Han Lue and quickly becomes a bright spot in the series.

Stream The Fast and the Furious: Tokyo Drift on Netflix.
Rent/Buy The Fast and the Furious: Tokyo Drift on Amazon.

Fast & Furious (2009)

Part sequel, part soft reboot, 2009’s Fast and Furious (the first in the franchise to drop “The” from the title), picks back up with Dominic Toretto as he returns to Los Angeles to hunt down those responsible for killing someone he loves (setting up a major narrative thread for the next few movies). Along the way, the one-time leader of the city’s racing scene crosses paths with Brian O’Conner, setting up a tense and fragile relationship that must be repaired through trust and an epic journey that completely revolutionizes the franchise. Gal Gadot’s Gisele Yashar makes her Fast and Furious debut in the series’ fourth installment.

Stream Fast & Furious on Max.
Rent/Buy Fast & Furious on Amazon.

Fast Five (2011)

The fifth installment in the Fast and Furious franchise, 2011’s Fast Five, really takes things to the next level with its story and over-the-top action set pieces that would eventually become the norm for the series moving forward. When Brian O’Conner and Mia Toretto break Dominic Toretto out of prison, they are forced to take a different path in life, one that leads them to Rio de Janeiro. Now a massive outfit, the Toretto gang prepares to pull off a heist, but only if Dwayne Johnson’s federal agent Luke Hobbs doesn’t get in their way.

Stream Fast Five on Netflix.
Rent/Buy Fast Five on Amazon.

Fast & Furious 6 (2013)

Fast & Furious 6, which blew into theaters in 2013, follows the Toretto crew as they are given the opportunity of a lifetime from their new enemy-turned-friend Luke Hobbs: capture the deadly mercenary Owen Shaw (Luke Evans) and in return, receive a full pardon. What initially seems like an easy mission proves to be anything but when a ghost of Dominic Toretto’s past comes back to haunt him. This would not be the last we would hear of the Shaw family name either.

Stream Fast & Furious 6 on Netflix.
Rent/Buy Fast & Furious 6 on Amazon.

Furious 7 (2015)

The final Fast and Furious movie to feature Paul Walker following the actor’s tragic death two years earlier, 2015’s Furious 7 is one-part loving sendoff to the franchise star and one-part logic-defying and globe-trotting adventure. When Deckard Shaw (Jason Statham) comes back to get revenge for his little brother, he sets his sights on the Toretto crew as well as the powerful satellite surveillance program known as God’s Eye.

Rent/Buy Furious 7 on Amazon.

The Fate Of The Furious (2017)

Just when Dominic Toretto and company think they can sit back and relax with a bucket of ice-cold Coronas, they are brought back into the action, but this time on different sides. In the early stages of The Fate of the Furious, the mysterious cyber-criminal Cipher (Charlize Theron) blackmails Dom to betray his team and become part of her plan to enact nuclear war. Without their leader, Dom’s crew must work with unlikely allies to save their family and the world from utter destruction.

Rent/Buy The Fate of the Furious on Amazon.

Fast & Furious Presents: Hobbs & Shaw (2019)

The first spinoff in the franchise, 2018’s Fast &Furious Presents: Hobbs & Shaw shifts its focus from Dominic Toretto and company and instead follows Luke Hobbs and Deckard Shaw as they attempt to stop the cybernetically enhanced super-soldier Brixton Lore (Idris Elba) from wiping out half the population with a deadly pathogen. And while it doesn’t look like we’ll ever get a sequel, this spinoff movie did give fans of the franchise some incredible action sequences.

Rent/Buy Fast & Furious Presents: Hobbs & Shaw on Amazon.

F9: The Fast Saga (2021)

Dominic Toretto was presented with his most personal fight yet in 2021’s F9: The Fast Saga when his long-lost brother, Jakob (John Cena), showed up and revealed he was working with an old enemy to make the team pay for their past mistakes. The action-packed sequel, which saw the return of a character long believed to be dead, also took the franchise to new heights and out of Earth’s atmosphere.

Stream F9: The Fast Saga on Peacock.
Rent/Buy F9: The Fast Saga on Amazon.

Fast X (2023)

Dom Toretto and company were forced to reckon with a ghost from their past in Fast X with the arrival of Dante Reyes (Jason Momoa), the son of Fast Five antagonist Hernan Reyes. An enemy like nothing the group had faced before, the flashy and sadistic Dante pushed everyone to their breaking point in his mission of destruction and revenge. The Fast X ending left us with some major questions for the future, including those returning stars who’ll surely be a major part of the franchise’s endgame.

Stream Fast X on Peacock.
Rent/Buy Fast X on Amazon.

Now there is nothing stopping you from catching up with the entire “Fast Saga” before the upcoming Fast & Furious 11 comes to theaters at some point in 2026.

CinemaBlend participates in affiliate programs with various companies. We may earn a commission when you click on or make purchases via links.

When The Rock first began to step away from the world of professional wrestling to focus on a career in film and television, few, if any, of his long-time fans thought he would stand a chance in Hollywood, and assumed it would be no time at all before he was back in the ring. While Dwayne Johnson, the actor, had some success in the early days of his transition to acting, there was a stretch in the middle where he seemed to be floundering in a sea of family-friendly comedies, opposed to rising to the top of the action world. That all changed about a decade into his acting career, which is around the time some of the best The Rock movies started landing in theaters.

With his Fast and Furious franchise debut in 2011, The Rock was the biggest thing going in the professional wrestling, Hollywood, and pop culture. To celebrate the 10-year anniversary of what I like to call the Rock-aissance, I’ve made a list of his best movies and where you can find them streaming and beyond.

Fast Five (2011)

Released two years after the Fast and Furious franchise was given a soft reboot, Fast Five took the action series to the next level with its story about Dominic Toretto (Vin Diesel), Brian O’Conner (Paul Walker), and their crew pulling off a daring heist, involving some of the most iconic chase sequences through the streets of Rio de Janerio. Hot on their tail, however, is U.S. Diplomatic Security Service agent Luke Hobbs (Dwayne Johnson), who will stop at nothing to catch the Toretto gang while also showing off his massive physique in one hell of a franchise debut.

Following the success of Fast Five, The Rock, much like the film series, reached new heights and quickly became one of Hollywood's most bankable stars.

Rent/Buy Fast Five on Amazon.

Buy Fast Five on DVD/Blu-ray on Amazon.

Moana (2016)

Between Fast and Furious movies and other successful action thrillers, The Rock went back to his Disney roots, this time voicing a character who looked like someone out of his extended Anoa’i wrestling family. In Moana, the former WWE Champion played Maui, a demigod who helps the titular princess (Auli’i Cravalho) sail across the ocean to save her people and find her calling, thanks to the heart of Te Fiti. The Rock seems to be having the time of his life throughout Moana, even when he’s finally given the chance to sing in a movie after performing all those “Rock Concerts” in WWE years earlier.

Stream Moana on Disney+.

Rent/Buy Moana on Amazon.

Buy Moana on DVD/Blu-ray on Amazon.

Jumanji: Welcome To The Jungle (2017)

In 2017’s Jumanji: Welcome to the Jungle, the wild and untamed world of the titular game is brought to the four high school students who stumble upon it, and they’re sucked into the world that trapped Alan Parrish all those years earlier. Once transported into Jumanji, the teenagers are transformed into characters played by The Rock, Karen Gillan, Kevin Hart, and Jack Black, with each essentially being the polar opposite of their actual appearances.

Jumanji: Welcome to the Jungle absolutely crushed it at the global box office, bringing in $962 million during its historic run in theaters. With a successful sequel released two years later and another in development, we haven’t seen the last of Dwayne Johnson’s Dr. Xander “Smolder” Bravestone.

Rent/Buy Jumanji: Welcome to the Jungle on Amazon.

Buy Jumanji: Welcome to the Jungle on DVD/Blu-ray on Amazon.

Pain And Gain (2013)

Michael Bay’s 2013 crime thriller Pain & Gain follows three gym rats-turned-criminals, played by Mark Wahlberg, Dwayne Johnson, and Anthony Mackie, who come up with an ill-advised plan achieve their twisted version of the American Dream: kidnapping and extortion. One of the craziest things about this movie is that it’s based on the actual crimes committed by the Sun Gym gang in 1990s Miami, Florida, which included the kidnapping and murder of several victims.

Rent/Buy Pain and Gain on Amazon.

Buy Pain and Gain on DVD/Blu-ray on Amazon.

The Other Guys (2010)

Adam McKay’s 2010 buddy cop movie, The Other Guys, largely focuses on NYPD detectives Allen Gamble (Will Ferrell) and Terry Hoitz (Mark Wahlberg) attempting to earn the respect of their peers and get to the bottom of an intricate criminal conspiracy, but the first section of the movie spends a hell of a lot of time with over-the-top and beloved crime-fighting all-stars Christopher Danson (Dwayne Johnson) and P.K. Highsmith (Samuel L. Jackson). Well, that is until the two detectives, who actually cause more damage than they stop, accidentally leap to their deaths in pursuit of a criminal.

The thing about Dwayne Johnson and Samuel L. Jackson here is that they are having an absolute blast playing these ridiculous characters, and despite appearing for only a brief period of time, steal the movie.

Rent/Buy The Other Guys on Amazon.

Buy The Other Guys on DVD/Blu-ray on Amazon.

Furious 7 (2015)

The vast majority of Furious 7 consists of Dominic and Brian trying to prevent Deckard Shaw (Jason Statham) from forcing a kidnapped computer hacker from using her powerful computer program in a diabolical scheme. Throughout this globetrotting affair, which includes one logic-defying car chase after another, Dwayne Johnson’s Luke Hobbs is largely on the sidelines, but when he gets into the action he straight up breaks a cast by flexing his muscles and walks around with the biggest gun you’ll see pretty much anywhere.

Rent/Buy Furious 7 on Amazon.

Buy Furious 7 on DVD/Blu-ray on Amazon.

Be Cool (2005)

The 2005 crime comedy Be Cool, which is a sequel to 1995’s Get Shorty, sees the return of mobster Chili Palmer (John Travolta), who now has his focus on the music industry instead of Hollywood. But, when Chili plans to make a name for himself in the music world, his past, and an extraordinary collection of characters, come back around to make a mess of things.

One of the standouts of F. Gary Gray’s adaptation of Elmore Leonard’s crime novel is Dwayne Johnson and his portrayal of Elliot Wilhelm, a gay Samoan bodyguard who wants to be a big movie star one day. Johnson, who has a knack for comedy, had only been in action-oriented movies at the time, and Be Cool was a breath of fresh air for the rising film star.

Stream Be Cool on HBO Max.

Rent/Buy Be Cool on Amazon.

Buy Be Cool on DVD/Blu-ray on Amazon.

The Rundown (2003)

The 2003 action comedy The Rundown was Dwayne Johnson’s first major film role that didn’t have anything to do with the Mummy franchise, and saw the wrestler-turned-actor portray Beck, a bounty hunter who is sent to the Amazon to locate the missing son (Sean William Scott) of his wealthy employer. When Beck gets to the jungle he quickly realizes this won’t be as easy as he originally thought.

Rent/Buy The Rundown on Amazon.

Buy The Rundown on DVD/Blu-ray on Amazon.

Snitch (2013)

The 2013 crime thriller Snitch sees The Rock playing John Matthews, a successful businessman who goes undercover to inform on a drug dealer in order to get his son a lesser prison sentence. What first appears to be a simple one-and-done job quickly turns into anything but, as Matthews finds himself in the middle of an international affair after one of the involved parties turns out to be part of the Mexican drug trade.

Snitch isn’t as action-packed as some of Dwayne Johnson’s other roles around this time, but it does give him a chance to step back and work on his dramatic acting chops.

Rent/Buy Snitch on Amazon.

Buy Snitch on DVD/Blu-ray on Amazon.

Central Intelligence (2016)

Albeit a little more complicated than entirely necessary, the 2016 buddy spy movie starring Dwayne Johnson and Kevin Hart, Central Intelligence, shows just how well the two movie stars work together. This time around, Johnson plays Bob Stone, a bullied teen-turned-CIA agent who reconnects with Hart’s Calvin Joyner, the one-time most popular kid in school whose glory days are definitely behind him. Together, the former classmates must prevent a mysterious figure from sending the world into a state of chaos.

If anything, this movie is worth a watch solely for the younger version of The Rock singing his heart out before his good time is brought to an end by arrogant jocks, though they later get their comeuppance.

Rent/Buy Central Intelligence on Amazon.

Buy Central Intelligence on DVD/Blu-ray on Amazon.

Fast And Furious Presents: Hobbs And Shaw (2019)

Released in the summer of 2019, Fast and Furious Presents: Hobbs and Shaw sees Dwayne Johnson and Jason Statham reprise their respective roles, this time being forced to team up to prevent the cybernetic superman, Brixton Lorr (Idris Elba) from releasing a deadly pathogen. While the movie has an engaging story and easy-to-follow plot, the real triumph is Hobbs and Shaw’s insane action set pieces, including Luke Hobbs bringing down a helicopter in the climactic chase scene. Let's just hope a Hobbs and Shaw sequel finds its way into the list of upcoming Dwayne Johnson movies.

Stream Hobbs and Shaw on HBO Max.

Rent/Buy Hobbs and Shaw on Amazon.

Buy Hobbs and Shaw on DVD/Blu-ray on Amazon.

The Mummy Returns (2001)

And then there is the movie that started it all for Dwayne Johnson’s acting career: The Mummy Returns. Terrible CGI aside, the 2001 summer blockbuster saw the return of the central cast from The Mummy but this time with the addition of Johnson’s fearsome Scorpion King. Given a great moment in the film’s prologue and a fun fight scene at the end (again, you have to look past the terrible CGI), this movie is everything you would want from a professional wrestler trying his hand (err...claws?) at acting in a multi-million-dollar movie for the first time.

Stream The Mummy Returns on HBO Max.

Rent/Buy The Mummy Returns on Amazon.

Buy The Mummy Returns on DVD/Blu-ray on Amazon.

Well, those are The Rock’s best movies as of right now, but it’s far from every single of the former wrestler's work in the film industry. There are titles like Fighting With My Family, one of the best movies on Amazon Prime, but on the other hand, there are those like Doom, which won’t be on the list of best Netflix movies anytime soon. If you want to know when you’ll be able to see Dwayne Johnson on the big screen again, go ahead and check out CinemaBlend’s list of 2021 movie premiere dates for all the latest.

Although it was a little under two years ago that the Fast & Furious spinoff Hobbs & Shaw played on the big screen, it’s been four years since the main film series’ last installment, The Fate of the Furious. Fast and Furious 9, a.k.a. F9, was once supposed to drop back in April 2020, but thanks to COVID-19 pandemic complications, the movie is now primed to come out in June. Should you be wanting to rewatch the past Fast & Furious movies to catch up before F9’s arrival, it’s been announced that they’re heading back to theaters as part of a special initiative.

Starting Friday, April 30, Universal Pictures and its theater partners (including AMC Theatres, Regal and Cinemark Theatres) will launch “Fast Fridays,” with a different Fast & Furious movie being screened on that day of the week over the course of eight weeks, in chronological order. So 2001’s The Fast & the Furious will kick off this event, and it will wrap up on June 18 with The Fate of the Furious (Hobbs & Shaw is not included in the lineup). Here’s the best part: these screenings will be free of charge.

You can head to the Fast Fridays Screenings website to learn more about obtaining tickets from one of the more than 500 participating theaters (it will ultimately expand to more than 900 theaters), but so long as you click quickly, you’ll be able to see your favorite Fast & Furious movie in theaters, be it for the first time or the first time since its original theatrical run, without paying any money. Who knows, maybe some of you will try to catch all the Fast & Furious movies playing each Friday. Regardless, with movie theaters getting back into the swing of things following a year that wreaked havoc on the industry, as well as vaccinations steadily rolling out, I imagine this event will entice plenty of people to return to their local cineplex, especially since it won’t cost them anything.

Here’s what Jim Orr, Universal’s President of Domestic Theatrical Distribution, had to say about “Fast Fridays” in the official announcement:

Whether you take advantage of “Fast Fridays” or simply decide to watch the Fast & Furious movies on home media or streaming, it definitely wouldn’t hurt to refresh your memory on past events in this universe before F9 arrives. What was once a franchise that focused on street racing and smaller-scale heists has evolved into Dominic Toretto and his crew getting into snazzy cars and other vehicles to frequently save the world. Hell, Dom himself is practically superhuman in this point, and when you factor in Hobbs & Shaw featuring the cybernetically-enhanced Brixton, the Fast & Furious saga might as well be classified as a superhero franchise alongside the MCU and DCEU.

As for what we can expect from F9, the story will follow Dominic Toretto and the other protagonists clashing with Dom and Mia’s estranged brother, Jakob Toretto, played by John Cena. Jakob has allied himself with Charlize Theron’s Cipher, although what exactly they have planned besides simple revenge remains unclear. F9 will also see the return Sung Kang’s Han Lue, who was thought to have been killed by Deckard Shaw. Behind the cameras, Justin Lin sat back in the director’s chair and co-wrote the script with Daniel Casey.

Once again, F9 will race into theaters on June 25, and following that, there are two more installments left to look forward to in the main Fast & Furious film series. Hobbs & Shaw 2 is also in development, as is a female-centric spinoff, so we’ll keep you apprised on how those projects are coming along as more news comes in.

Most would think that, in a series as fast paced and action packed as The Fast and the Furious saga is, there would be a pretty easy to follow story that goes along with it all. Well, it’s easy if you get to look at it all in hindsight, as watching the hard driving plot unfold in the order the films were released leads to a bit of a headache. 

As such, there’s a bit of creative timeline thinking that needs to be laid out, which has no bearing on the status of this franchise as the home to some of the best action movies. Living life a quarter of a mile at a time leads to some interesting story hiccups, especially when the Fast saga requires audiences to do some mental gymnastics to make it make sense. 

We’ve covered some previous ground on this subject matter with our guide of how to watch The Fast and the Furious movies in either release order or story chronology. With the 2023 new movie release Fast X now hitting its home entertainment window, we’re going to take a look at the entire story, piecing events together where they belong. Which has become even more complicated to keep track of with each additional film.

The Toretto Family Flashbacks In F9

Release Year: 2021
Year Of Events: 1989, 199X

Damn that Toretto family and their extensive backstory. Acting as the most temporally active entry in the Fast Saga, the most recent film F9 jumps into the well of the past to flesh out a long standing feud between Dom and his half-brother Jakob (John Cena). Two flashbacks see the Toretto boys squabbling over the meaning of family and what it feels like to be left behind, starting in 1989 - when they see their father killed during a race. 

After Dom goes to jail for almost killing the man he feels is responsible, his release from jail in the ‘90s saw him butting heads with Jakob yet again. One race fuels the rivalry that the two will see burn throughout the franchise, as the loser swears to leave town for good. At this point, with Jakob out of the picture, Dom becomes the racing king who would turn to thievery not too long after.

The Fast And The Furious

Year Of Release: 2001
Year Of Events: 2004

The Fast and the Furious was the (cinematic) start of it all. In a world where there were no smartphones, just people living in the moment, vibing, and stealing huge amounts of DVD players. There’s no confusion where this film lies, as Vin Diesel and Paul Walker’s Dominic “Dom” Toretto and Brian O’Conner meet for the first time.

Other franchise fixtures introduced are Michelle Rodriguez’ Letty Ortiz, as well as Jordana Brewster’s Mia Toretto. While it’s not explicitly mentioned, some math has been done to estimate that 2004 is the timestamp on the franchise’s origins. That might be a bit confusing, but it’ll all be explained soon enough.

2 Fast 2 Furious

Release Year: 2003
Year Of Events: TBD

We’re still on a pretty straight and narrow timeline when we get to 2003’s 2 Fast 2 Furious, but there’s no specific year as to when this picture actually occurs in The Fast and Furious sequel canon. The greatest contribution is that we’re introduced to Roman Pearce (Tyrese Gibson) and Tej Parker (Chris Bridges), both of whom become more important in a couple of movies. 

But even then, references to these events are few and far between, making the exact timing a nightmare to pin down. Another interesting note: Eva Mendes’ character, Monica Fuentes, technically appears again in Fast Five’s post-credits sequence, but how she factors into things is still a bit of a question, as she hasn’t been seen again since.

Fast & Furious

Release Year: 2009
Year Of Events: 2009

Ok, this is where things start to get complicated. In release order, 2003’s The Fast and the Furious: Tokyo Drift is supposed to go here. However, if you’re tracking the story’s implied timeline, then 2009’s Fast & Furious is the actual third installment in the Fast saga story.

Taking place five years after the end of The Fast and the Furious, Dom and Brian’s reunion is technically set in the “present day,” meaning 2009 starts a three movie run of prequels that not only see Han Lue (Sung Kang) alive and well, but already a part of Dom’s team, until his death later down the road. That’s not the only wrench Fast & Furious throws into the gears, as Letty’s death in the franchise is dated “May 30, 2009,” per the timeline noted by the Fast and Furious wiki on Fandom.

With that in mind, this is where the theory that The Fast and the Furious takes place in 2004, instead of the assumed contemporary setting of 2001, comes into play. If we’re to take Letty’s tombstone as the smoking gun, then 2009 is when this movie should take place; meaning that, for our purposes, we’ll be siding with the 2004 date for the rest of this timeline Buckle up folks, because it’s about to get even more interesting with the next entry in the series.

Fast Five

Release Year: 2011
Year Of Events: 2011

This is it: the big one, the movie that folds Roman Pearce and Tej into the main storyline of The Fast and the Furious series! Fast Five is considered a huge lynchpin to the series, as it also introduces DSS Agent Luke Hobbs (Dwayne Johnson) into the world of the Fast saga.

While it was released in 2011, this fifth film in the release order is the fourth installment in story order, and should take place in the contemporary setting of 2011. This implies that despite the film opening with Dom’s “release” from prison at the end of Fast & Furious, there’s a two year time jump between that moment and the action proper.

Dante Reyes' Flashbacks In Fast X

Release Year: 2023
Year Of Events: 2011

Time has once again been rewritten, Fast familia. Just as F9 introduced an entire new run of Toretto family drama, Fast X has given Dante Reyes (Jason Momoa) and his villainous family their own updated timeline. And, a whole quest for revenge can be traced straight back to the fateful vault chase that saw Hernan Reyes (Joaquim de Almieda) being sent straight to the afterlife. 

Hernan’s death was revealed to be the catalyst that brought both Dante and secret baddie/head of The Agency Aimes (Alan Ritchson) together as twin threats. Both men were being brought into the Reyes crime family as key parties to continue its operation, just as Dom and company disrupted that process in rather lethal fashion. Also, for you Fast X fans, this is a very important timeframe to keep in mind when figuring out where the ninth Fast Saga sequel factors into things. 

Fast & Furious 6

Release Year: 2013
Year Of Events: 2013

Save for the huge example of time displacement we’re going to discuss with The Fast and the Furious: Tokyo Drift’s story order shift, Fast & Furious 6 keeps the series on a contemporary path. It’s also the start of a trilogy of films that directly deals with the “death” of Han Lue, at the hands of Deckard Shaw (Jason Statham.) A supposed act of vengeance after the Toretto gang puts Deckard’s brother Owen (Luke Evans) into a coma, this act is the thread that ties this film, and the next two, in a very tight span of occurrence.

The Fast And The Furious: Tokyo Drift

Release Year: 2006
Year Of Events: 2014

The story of The Fast and the Furious: Tokyo Drift is, allegedly, supposed to take place in 2014. It doesn’t matter all that much, as the story of Sean Boswell (Lucas Black) and his introduction to both Han Lue and Dominic Toretto are all that cross over into the series at large. 

Tokyo Drift is the film where Han’s “death” actually occurs, only for that moment to later be retconned to be shown as a consequence of Fast & Furious 6’s big showdown, as well as part of the campaign of vengeance Deckard Shaw would engage in during Furious 7. Of course, Han’s Fast and Furious history wouldn’t end there, as his death would be retconned through some timeline trickery, as well as his resurrection in F9.

Han Lue's Flashbacks In F9

Release Year: 2021
Year Of Events: 2014

Originally, Han Lue was killed by Deckard Shaw at the end of The Fast and the Furious Presents: Tokyo Drift, and that was that. With future Fast movies pushing that entry further along in the timeline, it feels inevitable that a new retcon was waiting in the wings. 

With “Justice for Han” becoming a frequent cry, and Jason Statham’s face turn in the Fast Saga needing explanation, F9 took up that task. Much as the Toretto family was expanded with new lore, Han was given a new mission as part of The Agency. Thanks to this extended sequence, Han Lue is revealed to have saved Elle (Anna Sawai), and with her, Project Ares.

The “death of Han” turned out to be a smoke screen that hid his continued Agency mission to protect this young woman. While Deckard had gone rogue, and was absolutely trying to kill Han, Mr. Nobody (Kurt Russell) helped turn this unfortunate event into an opportunity. Which is how Han was allowed to operate in the shadows between this point and F9; and why making up with Deckard wasn’t that hard in Fast X. 

Furious 7

Release Year: 2015
Year Of Events: 2014

Are you tired of seeing Deckard Shaw kill Han? Well, too bad, because Furious 7 is going to show you that moment again. Looped into the story of this particular entry, we see that Deckard kills Han just as Brian O’Connor is about to escape a particularly explosive fate, set up by the walking and breathing Shaw brother. So that fact ties this movie into the 2014 timeframe, making Tokyo Drift’s Sean Boswell the oldest teenager to have ever existed since Dick Clark himself.

The Fate Of The Furious

Release Year: 2017
Year Of Events: 2014-2015 (?)

From this point in The Fast and the Furious timeline, the Fast saga is a contemporary affair yet again. The Fate of the Furious is done with showing the death of Han Lue, and the movies have caught up with the clock of the world, seeing the present day enjoying all of the vehicular mayhem that Dominic’s “family” could muster.

While there are suggestions that this film takes place in a contemporary 2017 setting, the fact that Dom’s baby with former girlfriend/DSS agent Elena Neves (Elsa Pataky) was conceived pretty close to the time he found out Letty was still alive pegs this film in a window of time closer to 2014-2015. Little Marcos/Brian’s age in The Fate of the Furious backs this theory up pretty well, as he’s still small enough to fit in an easy to juggle car seat; just ask Deckard Shaw.

Fast & Furious Presents: Hobbs & Shaw

Release Year: 2019
Year Of Events: 2019

Unless there are any more objections, retcons, or questionable decisions in The Fast and the Furious timeline, it’s to be assumed that Fast & Furious Presents: Hobbs & Shaw takes place in its contemporary release year of 2019. Not satisfied with getting into trouble with the Toretto family, Hobbs & Shaw beat Brixton, aka “Black Superman,” like a Cherokee drum, after becoming pretty good friends in The Fate of the Furious. 

We have no clue when, or if, we’ll be seeing this duo again on screen together. Though Deckard Shaw’s appearance at the end of F9 does serve to further confuse the timeline. Especially if F9 is supposed to take place after this entry.

F9 (Excluding Flashbacks) 

Release Year: 2021
Year Of Events: 2019

With the Toretto family history flashbacks aside, the bulk of F9 is supposedly set two years after The Fate of the Furious. Holding true to the conception/aging of little Brian, that means that this entry should slot into either 2016 or 2017; but that’s another best guess. Again, as we’ve seen in the case of Sean Boswell and Han Lue, age progression is unpredictable in the Fast and Furious universe. 

Cipher’s return, Jakob Toretto’s involvement, and Deckard Shaw’s post-credits scene are all complicating factors in trying to figure out when F9 takes place in the timeline.Which, yet again, proves why the timeline that is The Fast and the Furious saga is a ball of loose yarn, gently tied together enough to make some sort of sense. 

Once again, the Grim Reaper has lent a hand in keeping the Fast and Furious timeline somewhat consistent. With an estimated 30 year passage of time between Jack Torretto’s death and F9’s events, that would peg this episode as taking place in 2019. That assumption is further backed by the details we’re about to discuss in the next chapter, which doubles down on this assumed chronology.

Fast X (Excluding Flashbacks)

Release Year: 2023
Year Of Events: 2021

Much like the Saw franchise, the Fast Saga continues to dig deeper into the past while building its future. Fast X is the second film to do just that, and with new clues from this entry in the timeline, we may have cracked where F9 is supposed to slot into the overall picture. 

In this tale of Dante Reyes (Jason Momoa) and his quest for revenge, it’s mentioned that Fast Five’s heist took place roughly 10 years ago. With that benchmark in place, Fast X is supposed to happen in 2021, which puts F9 in that 2019 timeframe we specified above.

The timeline only looks to become even more confusing and twisty, thanks to Fast X’s mid-credits scene. Reintroducing Luke Hobbs (Dwayne Johnson) into the fold, we’re not sure where that moment will technically fit into Fast Saga canon. You can blame the existence of that question on Deckard Shaw’s F9 post-credits scene taking place in the middle of the 2023 installment’s adventures. 

CinemaBlend participates in affiliate programs with various companies. We may earn a commission when you click on or make purchases via links.

In the discussions that have been triggered since the announcement of Zack Snyder’s Justice League, a very important question has arisen: Should HBO Max become a “platform for lost director’s cuts” or not? When you look at the lineup available, it turns out there’s a definite answer to that question, as there are plenty of titles beyond Batman v. Superman: Dawn of Justice that have proven the new streaming service already serves that purpose.

While the extended cuts included with the movies we’re about to highlight aren’t exactly “lost”, they’re surprisingly available on the HBO Max platform, as they’ve been brought over from HBO’s own library and into this brave new streamer. Some are more expansive, while others are more streamlined, and still more minorly tweaked; but all are available right this moment, for your viewing pleasure.

Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice (Ultimate Edition, 2016)

It wouldn’t be an extended cut rundown if we weren’t able to talk about a Zack Snyder movie. As a majority of the director’s films have an alternate cut of some sort, Batman v. Superman: Dawn of Justice might be one of his more substantial alternate versions. With 31 minutes of additional footage, the Ben Affleck/Henry Cavill showdown includes, among other things, a little more Jimmy Olsen action, an entire character played by Jena Malone that wasn’t in the theatrical cut, and a bunch of bloody, R-rated violence.

Stream It On HBO Max here.

Green Lantern (Extended Cut, 2011)

Despite their best efforts to play down their previous collaboration, Ryan Reynolds and Taika Waititi did star together in the failed Green Lantern franchise starter. And should you be a fan of that particular film, there’s an extended cut that runs about 9.5 minutes longer. In the moments that are restored, we get more of a feel for Reynolds’ Hal Jordan’s backstory, both from his childhood and some extra scenes in his adult incarnation. By and large, the Green Lantern you see is the one you get, but it’s good to know that viewers have a choice when it comes to how they want to experience this DC Comics movie.

Stream It On HBO Max here.

Little Shop of Horrors (The Director’s Cut, 2012)

After the original, Broadway musical ending to director Frank Oz’s adaptation of Little Shop of Horrors was cut down in test screenings, the full color version was reinstated for the film’s Director’s Cut 26 years later. Changing the events the audience witnessed into a darker, more horror-comedy worthy ending, the musical number “Don’t Feed The Plants” was restored, and audiences can watch this drastically different third act alongside the more traditional happy ending theatrical audiences were given.

Stream It On HBO Max here.

Fast Five (Extended Edition, 2011)

It used to be that you could depend on a blockbuster like Fast Five to deliver an “extended edition” almost instantaneously when it hit Blu-ray and DVD. But one of the big differences, besides the adding of some blood effects, is that director Justin Lin actually prefers this cut of the pivotal entry to the Fast Saga. Considering one of the changes involves Dwayne Johnson’s Luke Hobbs snapping a guy’s neck in a more pronounced fashion, we can kind of see why this is true.

Stream It On HBO Max here.

Hostel/Hostel Part II (Extended Versions, 2006/2012)

It’s not always about how much footage you can cut or add to your alternate cut. Sometimes, like in the case of Eli Roth’s extended cuts to Hostel and Hostel Part II, it all comes down to the gory details. The first film’s extended cut makes the final murder all the more brutal to watch, with the second film’s alternate version giving audiences the same sort of treatment earlier on in the film’s events. It’s a shame the director’s cut of Hostel isn’t available though, as instead of a gory finish, the film takes a more sinister turn in its last moments.

Stream Hostel On HBO Max here / Stream Hostel: Part II here.

King Arthur (Director’s Cut, 2004)

Here’s an interesting scenario: director Antoine Fuqua made a Clive Owen starring King Arthur movie that, if released in its untouched form, would have been an R-rated film. In the waning days of Disney’s Touchstone Pictures brand, that was a possibility the studio just wasn’t into. A shorter, PG-13 version went to theaters, with King Arthur’s director’s cut going to video upon the film’s arrival on the home market. This cut is roughly 15 minutes longer, with violence and blood from the R-rated version restored, as well as some scenes removed and rearranged from that initial cut.

Stream It On HBO Max here.

Paul (Extended Version, 2011)

The Simon Pegg/Nick Frost sci-fi comedy Paul is, surprisingly, another one of those extended versions that popped up on home video and have stuck around ever since. Getting down to brass tacks, this extraterrestrial road trip is only about 6 minutes longer, with extended and alternate jokes added into the mix. You might only notice them if you’re a devout follower of Greg Mottola’s Paul, but with a movie this funny, why not watch it twice in a row and compare the differences?

Stream It On HBO Max here.

Pearl Harbor (Director’s Cut, 2001)

You might laugh at the fact that Michael Bay’s World War II epic Pearl Harbor has a director’s cut that’s only about a minute longer. However, as we’ve seen time and again in the examples we’ve discovered, sometimes the smallest differences are the most meaningful. With more profanity throughout, and some added brutality during the invasion sequence centerpiece, this extended cut of the film was supposed to net the project an R-rating. Much like King Arthur after it, Disney had the film toned down to obtain a PG-13 rating; leaving home audiences a chance to see Bay’s intended version down the line.

Stream It On HBO Max here.

The Alien Franchise (1990- 2003)

If you’re a fan of the Alien franchise, or happen to own the Alien Anthology Blu-ray set, the alternate cuts are known to you rather well. But if you’ve yet to experience the gauntlet of extended material for each film in the Ellen Ripley portion of the series, HBO Max offers the perfect chance to learn more. From 1990’s first special edition release of Aliens, to the rest of the extended editions that came to be in 2003, there’s a lot of backstory contained in these differing versions of Alien films past. Most notable is the fact that the workprint cut of David Fincher’s Alien 3 runs 30 minutes longer, and includes a new creature, and a lot of different odds and ends that flesh out the film’s story more completely.

Stream Alien On HBO Max here / Stream Aliens here / Stream Alien 3 here / Stream Alien: Resurrection here.

Crash (Director's Cut, 2006)

If you’re not a fan of the controversial Best Picture winner that is Paul Haggis’ Crash, the director’s cut more than likely won’t convert you. Only about two minutes worth of differences exist, and all those extensions are bits and pieces of scenes that Haggis feels play better in this extended version. That said, it’s interesting to see how various conversations in this ensemble drama elaborate on the work that was already done with the previous film.

Stream It On HBO Max here.

We’re going to have to wait for Zack Snyder’s Justice League to join the ranks above, as early 2021 is when we’ll finally see this infamous alternate cut make its debut. But if you’re looking for some earlier exercises in comparing and contrasting theatrical and extended cuts, you’ve got plenty of material to choose from above. And if you’re not a subscriber to HBO Max, you can check out the 7-day free trial to sample the movies we’ve mentioned above. As you can see, there’s plenty of time to do just that.

James Bond fans across the globe were gearing up for the highly anticipated 25th installment in the 007 franchise with No Time To Die before MGM, Universal, and the film's producers announced they were shifting the release date from April to November 2020 in light of the Coronavirus. With a seven-month delay sitting between everyone and the latest 007 spectacular, now would be a perfect time to catch up on that seemingly never-ending list of action movies that are available for streaming.

This extended delay gives everyone more than enough time to watch all of the stunning and thrilling action movies that take up so much real estate on Netflix, Hulu, and HBO, so there's no excuse not take a trip down memory lane. With so many options available at your fingertips, it can be overwhelming to pick out one action flick over the rest, so here's a short list of 10 of the most stunning action movies currently available to stream.

Mission: Impossible - Fallout (Hulu)

The Mission: Impossible movies (all six of them) are filled with enough espionage, plot twists, and action sequences to make your heart explode. That's never been more evident than in Mission: Impossible - Fallout in which Ethan Hunt (Tom Cruise) performs a high altitude (HALO) jump into the heart of Paris.

The jump, which Cruise actually filmed three times for the final product, makes for one of the most beautiful and breathtaking scenes in the entire franchise. Add some lightning and an unconscious Henry Cavill and you have yourself a recipe for near disaster. The movie is worth watching for this scene alone, but there are still plenty of crushing fight scenes and all the spy action you've come to know and love.

Where To Stream: Hulu

John Wick: Chapter 3 - Parabellum (HBO)

John Wick: Chapter 3 - Parabellum picks up right where the second film in the neo-noir action thriller franchise left off - with John Wick on the run with nowhere to go. When he tries to make his escape from New York City and the assassins on his tail, Wick finds a horse in the stables of Central Park to make a daring escape in the rain.

Showered in rain and the neon lights of the busy New York City streets, Wick fights traffic and hitmen on motorcycles around every corner. The scene really sets up what the audience should expect from the third installment in this popular franchise. And finally, we got Keanu Reeves on a horse.

Where To Stream: HBO

Kill Bill: Volume 1 (Netflix)

Kill Bill is an epic tale of revenge about a woman known as the Bride (Uma Thurman) who sets out to kill the team of assassins after they attempted to murder her and her unborn child on her wedding day. Written and directed by Quentin Tarantino, this two-part saga follows the Bride from the brink of death to the satisfaction of sweet revenge.

The first half of story, Kill Bill: Volume 1 takes the audience on a wild ride to Tokyo, where the Bride cuts through the hordes of the street gang, the Crazy 88 to get to their leader and her former friend, O-Ren Ishiii (Lucy Liu). While the rest of the movie (both parts) are violent and highly detailed, nothing compares to the epic conclusion of Volume 1, which sees the Bride and O-Ren square off one final time in the peaceful tranquility of a snow-covered garden that is quickly broken by bladed combat, blood, and vengeance.

Where To Stream: Netflix

Hanna (Cinemax)

People just not learning about Saoirse Ronan are in for one hell of a surprise with the 2011 action thriller Hanna in which a young Ronan portrays the titular character whose entire life has been a training exercise to create a lethal assassin. It's hard to believe that you're watching the same actress that would go on to star in Lady Bird and Little Women when you see her mercilessly kill multiple people throughout the movie.

There's one scene in particular where Hanna is forced to confront a group of hitmen in the middle of a darkened container park. The bursts of hand-to-hand combat are only broken up by a parkour scene that leave you wanting more from the character. And fans got just that when Hanna was adapted as an Amazon original series several years later.

Where To Stream: Cinemax (with subscription through Hulu)

Fast Five (HBO)

For the release of Fast Five in 2011, the Fast And Furious franchise traded in the street racing scenes that had become a staple of the series and replaced them with one of the most memorable and imaginative heists scenes in recent memory. When Dom (Vin Diesel), Bryan (Paul Walker), and the rest of the crew are on the run from the FBI, they hide out in Brazil. Little did they know that DSS agent Luke Hobbs (Dwayne Johnson) was on their tail the whole time.

The movie is pretty much non-stop action from the jump, but it's the epic climax of the film that has everyone talking nearly 10 years after the fact. During the legendary heist sequence, the crew steal not one, but two bank vaults and drag them through the streets of Rio de Janeiro. The way the vaults slide across the busy streets taking out cars, building facades, and everything else in their way is something I go back and watch time and time again.

Where To Stream: HBO

Spenser Confidential (Netflix)

What is a disgraced former Boston police officer to do after getting released from a five-year stint in prison? Go out on the streets and solve crimes on his own. And that's exactly what Spenser (Mark Wahlberg) and Hawk (Winston Duke) do in the Netflix original movie Spenser Confidential. This hilarious and action-packed buddy crime movie has been all the rage lately.

Most of the movie is pretty much a paint-by-numbers buddy crime affair, but the pairing of Wahlberg and Duke really bring this comedy to the next level. Plus, it has one of the greatest restaurant fight scenes thanks to a lot of fists and some machetes.

Where To Stream: Netflix

Bad Boys (Netflix)

As Bad Boys For Life continues to crush it at the box office, now is the perfect time to go back and see where it all started for Mike Lowrey (Will Smith) and Marcus Burnett (Martin Lawrence) in Michael Bay directorial debut Bad Boys. This 1995 ultra-stylized action crime thriller follows the two Miami police detectives as they investigate the disappearance of $100 million in heroin from police headquarters. But that's just the beginning.

The film concludes with one of the most "Michael Bay" action sequences that looks more like a music video than anything audiences had ever seen from a buddy cop movie prior to its release. It should come as no surprise that the final airport chase scene looks so amazing even 25 years later because prior to signing on to direct Bad Boys, Bay was an accomplished music video director.

Where To Stream: Netflix

Alita: Battle Angel (HBO)

Alita: Battle Angel was one of the big box office surprises in 2019, bringing in $404 million globally. Set decades in the future, Alita (Rosa Salazar), an abandoned cyborg is discovered by cyber-doctor Ido (Christoph Waltz) who revives the deactivated android. As she begins to regain her memory, Alita learns more and more about her dark and mysterious past.

Through the use of beautiful and hyper-realistic CGI, Alita: Battle Angel has some of the most well crafted and thought out action set pieces in any movie that came out during its year of release. One of the most exciting of those scenes is the Motorball scene in which the cyborg discovers her true power.

Where To Stream: HBO

Captain America: The Winter Soldier (Disney+)

If you thought I'd make an entire list without including at list one entry from the Marvel Cinematic Universe, you'd be mistaken. And while I could have added each and every one of the MCU movies to this list, you'll have to settle for Captain America: The Winter Soldier. For those who don't remember, this film served as a turning point for Steve Rogers (Chris Evans) and introduced the Winter Soldier (Sebastian Stan), but it also gave us one of the best fight sequences in franchise.

The elevator fight between Cap and nearly a dozen of Shield/Hydra's most vicious operatives is still a scene I go back and watch from time to time, even if I have no plans to watch the rest of the movie. In a franchise that has gone great lengths and introduced some of the most dastardly villains, this fight reminds everyone that sometimes you just need a badass fight in an elevator.

Where To Stream: Disney+

Inception (Netflix)

And then there is Christopher Nolan's 2010 psychological action thriller Inception, which has at least three of the most beautifully crafted action sequences we've in the 21st Century, and the movie is nearly 10 years old. The film follows Dom Cobb (Leonardo DiCaprio) a professional thief specializing in infiltrating his victims' dreams who is given the opportunity to wipe his criminal record upon completing a job.

Trying to name the best set piece in this Academy Award-winning picture is almost as impossible as figuring out the film's ending, but the sequence where Cobb's partner Arthur (Joseph Gordon-Levitt) has to fight a group of henchmen in an inverted hotel room and corridor comes to mind whenever I think about the movie. It gets even better when you realize that most of effects were accomplished through choreography and set held together by wires and motors.

Where To Stream: Netflix

Those are just 10 stunning action movies to stream while you wait for No Time To Die to hit theaters in November 2020. Now that you know about the movies, there's no time to waste.

In the past twenty years, The Fast and The Furious has gone from being a critically-derided, C-rate streetcar racing flick to one of the most profitable, critically acclaimed action franchises of the early 21st century. That's certainly no an easy feat. While a number of factors played into the franchise's rousing success, part of its appeal came, quite simply, from being both fast and, indeed, furious. Yes, the franchise had expectations to meet, and it often succeeded in one specific regard. It kept things fast, and it kept things furious — though, looking back on the Fast & Furious movies, it's apparent that, sometimes, it could be a little more fast than furious, and visa versa. That begs the question, which one of these movies is the most fast and furious?

Without further ado, let's take a look at just how fast and how furious the Fast & Furious movies could get, ranked from the least to most. It's an exceptionally packed film franchise, and it all leads up to this summer's Fast & Furious 9, i.e. F9, which roars into theaters on May 22nd. The "Fast" score is based on the car racing and chasing elements of the film. For "Furious," we're looking at fight sequences and other action-packed moments that take place off the road and out of vehicles.

9. The Fast And The Furious (2001)

• Fast Score: 6
• Furious Score: 4

It's the movie that started a whole franchise. Who knew when The Fast and the Furious came out in 2001 that it would become most one of the most defining film franchises in early 21st century cinema? This series started humbly as a blatant knock-off of Point Break but with fast cars, and while it doesn't quite get as extreme as any of the sequels that followed, it does get pretty fast. There are a lot of street races to be found, since that was the main draw here. Although, besides Paul Walker's Brian O'Connor's desire to stop the bad guys, this original doesn't get very furious — not yet, at least. Of course, as things got more intense as the series moved forward, the car-racing films had more opportunities to live up to their name. Total F&F score: 10/20

8. 2 Fast 2 Furious (2003)

• Fast Score: 7
• Furious Score: 3

This is a classic example of the imbalance between being fast and being furious. While 2 Fast 2 Furious is most certainly fast, it doesn't quite live up to the second half of its title. For all its fast-paced car chase sequences and goofy, over-the-top racing antics, including a climatic chase sequence involving a lot of cop cars and plenty of vehicular damage, it doesn't get very furious in comparison. There aren't too many fights; they mostly keep the action between the high-speed racing and car chases. While it's by no means calm, to be clear, 2 Fast 2 Furious doesn't have enough furious emotions to warrant being called that "furious," let alone "too furious." Nevertheless, this high-octane driving sequel is definitely fast. Total F&F Score: 10/20

7. Fast & Furious (2009)

• Fast Score: 7
• Furious Score: 5

Bringing back the four leads from the original movie for another action-filled installment, Fast & Furious isn't as well-received nor is it as memorable as the sequels that follow, but it does get pretty fast. There are a number of action sequences and high-speed driving scenes abound, including a rescue sequences on a rocky terrain, that certainly drive up the fast factor, although it doesn't have as many furious scenes in comparison, with the exception of a fight scene between Paul Walker's Brian and Vin Diesel's Dom. In short, it was the drive-by point until we would get to the more heavy-duty sequels, and the fast moments and the furious moments don't stand out as much as they do in the first two films. As it stands, while it's safe to say Fast & Furious brings fast-paced moments throughout, the sequel doesn't nearly get as furious as you'd expect from its title. Total F&F Score: 12/20

6. The Fast and the Furious: Tokyo Drift (2006)

• Fast Score: 8
• Furious Score: 5

While it doesn't get as much love as some of the other installments in the fast-moving franchise, which is a shame since it's probably one of the more underrated films in the series, The Fast and the Furious: Tokyo Drift is pretty good about being both fast throughout its fast-paced runtime. Notably, in its sideways-driving cars and action-packed action sequences, it keeps things moving. While it's not quite as furious comparatively, the unjust death of one beloved character does fuel burning furious feelings, which gives the third act emotional gravitas as its races towards the high-adrenaline climax. Total F&F Score: 13/20

5. Fast & Furious Presents: Hobbs & Shaw (2019)

• Fast Score: 5
• Furious Score: 9

Similar to how 2 Fast 2 Furious is much more fast than furious, Fast & Furious Presents: Hobbs & Shaw is much more furious than fast. While there are a few fast-paced action sequences, the spin-off action-comedy is often centered around our two title characters, who are positively furious with one another. In fact, Hobbs & Shaw is based on two characters who, after despising each other for two previous films, must eventually put aside their differences in order to work with each other (assuming that they can, of course). When these two buff dudes team-up, a whole lot of furious fighting ensues from there. While The Rock/Jason Statham spin-off can be fast in key moments, the furious meter on Hobbs & Shaw is nearly off-the-charts. Total F&F Score: 14/20

4. Fast & Furious 6 (2013)

• Fast Score: 8
• Furious Score: 6

Following the critical surprise success of Fast Five, proving the action-franchise had serious potential to be a critical darling in addition to being a box office draw, Fast & Furious 6 had some serious expectations, and it mostly met them. Indeed, the action needed to be bigger and more intense, and it needed to bring out the emotions as well, which it does in frequent rotation. Thankfully, the action is highly thrilling, notably with a rousing highway chase sequence that defies all known laws of gravity. Once again, we find ourselves with a sequel that is more fast than furious (we take it you noticed this trend?), but it gets plenty fast and it also gets plenty furious as well as it races towards another satisfying new installment. Total F&F Score: /20

2. Furious 7 (2015)

• Fast Score: 8
• Furious Score: 6

Furious 7 is often considered one of the best movies in the Fast & Furious franchise, not the least of which comes from its emotional ending. Indeed, the tragic circumstances of Paul Walker's death gives the movie a sense of melancholy throughout, which is often affecting but doesn't making it quite so furious. That said, there are furious moments to be found, notably with The Rock engaging in a fist fight with Jason Statham and Vin Diesel having his own combat moment in a parking lot. Likewise, the movie is filled with high-speed action sequences throughout, which certainly makes it fast. But when it comes time to end the film, Furious 7 slows down appropriately as it's filled with bittersweet feelings of tender love and somber remembrance. Total F&F Score: 14/20

3. The Fate Of The Furious (2017)

• Fast Score: 7
• Furious Score: 8

While it has its sharp critics (not me among them), The Fate of the Furious is ultimately pretty good about being both fast and furious. It features a good number of fast-moving action sequences, CG-addled though they might be, and there's a lot of furious moments as well, not the least of which results from the growing feud between Vin Diesel and The Rock happening off-screen in the well-reported "candy ass" debacle of 2016. This seven sequel also features the rivalry between The Rock's Hobbs and Jason Statham's Shaw, which would foster its own spin-off movie in an effort from The Rock to distance himself from working with Diesel again. Unless, of course, this furious co-stars can eventually find a way to work together in the near future. Total F&F Score: 15/20

1. Fast Five (2011)

• Fast Score: 10
• Furious Score: 7

In a surprise turn of events, Fast Five became an unexpected critical hit in addition to being a box office favorite but bringing the characters of the past four installments together to make a thrilling heist picture with more fast-moving vehicles. The results were astoundingly successful, resulting in what could easily be considered the fastest movie in the Fast & Furious film franchise. There are no shortage of action-packed moments, particularly in its high adrenaline third act, which really put the petal to the medal and give audiences a game-changer of a sequel. While it doesn't have quite as many combat moments to justify being considered very furious, there's little doubt this fourth Fast & Furious sequel delivered the good — in fast fashion too. Total F&F Score: 17/20

As it is made apparent here, the Fast & Furious franchise is better at being fast than it is furious. While the later installments have definitely gone out of their way to keep the furious factor in check, it has sometimes come at the sacrifice of being fast, which was where the series traditionally excelled. In any case, when it comes time for Fast & Furious 9 to make its way into theaters this summer, we're hoping that the newest action-packed installment is able to keep things both fast and furious in equal measure. If not, there's always the tenth to look forward to later on. Do you agree or disagree with our assessment of how ultimately "fast" and "furious" these Fast & Furious films can be? Let us know in the comments!

Dwayne Johnson’s professional career has come a long way from his heyday as WWE superstar The Rock. He already had fans who adored him, but now he has even more of a dedicated fanbase. Johnson began building his movie career in 2001 with The Mummy Returns, and nearly 20 years later, he has appeared in over 40 studio films and has become one of the highest-grossing actors around the world. His films’ box office successes have made him a bona fide movie star.

The movies starring the actor occassionally known as The Rock have grossed billions of dollars worldwide, which usually leads to sequels and spin-off movies. Dwayne Johnson's action-hero status turned him into someone that studios can count on to help launch or revamp a franchise. With so many successful projects is his past, it's easy to wonder which of his box office hits actually achieved the most financial success. So let's go down the list of his top ten.

10. Rampage ($428 Million)

In the 2018 action-adventure Rampage, Dwayne Johnson plays primatologist Davis Okoye, who teams teams up with George, an intelligent gorilla that he cared for since birth, to stop a wolf named Ralph and a crocodile named Lizzie. An experiment gone wrong turns all three creatures into gigantic versions of themselves. As Lizzie and Ralph wreak havoc, Okoye and Georgie team with the military and a genetic engineer to try to stop the destruction and save Chicago.

Rampage marked the third pairing of Johnson and director Brad Peyton. Dwayne Johnson and Peyton had already achieved two box office successes prior to rampage. Their first film together, Journey 2: The Mysterious Island, grossed over $335 million worldwide, and their second film, San Andreas, shows up later on this list. Peyton and Johnson have proved that they’re a winning combo for studios, but monster films, especially those involving King Kong like creatures, have also historically been proven as box office success.

9. The Mummy Returns ($443 Million)

The Mummy Returns marked Dwayne Johnson’s first acting role in a featured film. In it, he plays the Scorpion King, a ruler who sells his soul to Anubis, the God of death, in order to defeat his enemies. The Scorpion King faces off against Imhotep (Arnold Vosloo), who has returned to try to take control over Anubis’ army of the dead. The Mummy uses the O'Connell family as pawns in this battle. The Mummy Returns is the sequel to Brendan Fraser's surprise hit, 1999’s The Mummy.

The original The Mummy film had already earned the franchise $415 million worldwide, so of course Universal Pictures wanted to capitalize on its success. The Mummy Returns went bigger and bolder, and adding The Rock made fans of The Mummy even more excited to see what the wrestler could bring to the acting world. The success of The Mummy Returns resulted in Dwayne Johnson getting his own spin-off film, The Scorpion King, which unfortunately wasn’t as big of a financial success as the three original Mummy movies.

8. San Andreas ($473 Million)

Director Brad Peyton and Dwayne Johnson paired up again for this disaster action film San Andreas. San Andreas follows LAFD search and rescue helicopter pilot Raymond Gaines (Dwayne Johnson) through Los Angeles and San Francisco as he tries to navigate the destruction caused by a 9.1 magnitude earthquake. His main mission is to bring his estranged wife Emma (Carla Gugino) and daughter Blake (Alexandra Daddario) to safety.

Moviegoers love big and explosive action films, especially during the summer, and even more so with big destruction sequences involving The Rock. San Andreas became one of Warner Bros. Pictures biggest box office successes as one of their highest-grossing films of 2015, according to Box Office Mojo. The success of San Andreas led to a sequel being in the works, though nothing has come of it yet.

7. Fast Five ($626 Million)

Fast Five follows franchise regulars Dominic Toretto (Vin Diesel), Brian O’Conner (Paul Walker), Mia Toretto (Jordana Brewster), Roman Pearce (Tyrese Gibson), Tej Parker (Ludacris), and Han Lue (Sung Kang) as they try to steal $100 million from Hernan Reyes (Joaquim de Almeida). While planning and trying to execute the heist, U.S Diplomatic Security Service Agent Luke Hobbs (Dwayne Johnson) plans to take them down and arrest the team. Fast Five marked Johnson’s debut into the franchise.

Before Johnson joined the crew, The Fast and The Furious franchise was already four-films strong. The first Fast and The Furious film made over $207 million worldwide, and the three following films continued to grow the series’ box office numbers, with a slight dip with Fast Furious: Tokyo Drift. The fourth film, Fast & Furious, earned the franchise over $360 million worldwide. Despite the gradual global success of The Fast and the Furious franchise, Fast Five is when the series grew to a massive commercial success, gaining nearly $300 million more than the previous film. The Fast and Furious films have continued to gain box office success, possibly leading to unlimited sequels.

6. Moana ($643 Million)

In Disney’s animated hit Moana, Dwayne Johnson plays Maui, a shapeshifting demigod. Moana (Auli'i Cravalho) is a young girl who leaves her island to restore the natural order and save her people. She finds Maui and he guides her along her journey.

As a Disney production film, Moana seemed destined to be a box office success. However, the film exceeded expectations and became one of Disney’s biggest animated hits. During the five-day Thanksgiving weekend, Moana gained over $82 million in North America, making it the 7th biggest Thanksgiving opening of all-time according to Box Office Mojo, and the $643 million total is certainly nothing to sneeze at. It's even funnier when you hear that Dwayne Johnson's daughter still doesn't believe he was Maui.

5. Hobbs & Shaw ($758 Million)

Hobbs & Shaw is the first spin-off series from The Fast and The Furious franchise. It follows Dwayne Johnson and Jason Statham as they reprise their roles of Luke Hobbs and Deckard Shaw. In Hobbs & Shaw, the titular badasses become an unlikely and unwilling duo when they must team up to stop a genetically modified terrorist, Brixton Lore (Idris Elba). Helen Mirren, Eiza Gonzalez, Vanessa Kirby, and Cliff Curtis also star.

The Fast and Furious franchise already proved that it had massive box office appeal by the time Universal Pictures released Hobbs & Shaw, but all those action movie fans were definitely just as excited to watch Jason Statham and Dwayne Johnson team up in this stand-alone offshoot.

4. Fast And Furious 6 ($788 Million)

Dwayne Johnson returned to the Fast and Furious franchise in this sixth installment. In Fast and Furious 6, DSS agent Luke Hobbs seeks help from Dominic Toretto (Vin Diesel), Brian O'Conner (Paul Walker), and their crew. He offers them amnesty in exchange for them helping him stop Owen Shaw (Luke Evans), the leader of a mercenaries group who plans to steal high-tech devices and sell them on the black market.

Fast and Furious 6 became the second highest grossing film in the Fast and Furious franchise. It gained most of its initial box office success during Memorial Day weekend of 2013. This gave Furious 6 the fourth biggest Memorial Day weekend opening of all-time according to Box Office Mojo, and it topped out just under $800 million.

3. Jumanji: Welcome To The Jungle ($962 Million)

Dwayne Johnson joins Kevin Hart, Jack Black, Karen Gillan, and Nick Jonas in this reboot of the 1995 Jumanji. In Jumanji: Welcome To The Jungle, the four stars play avatar characters for their teen counterparts within an old video game that they get trapped inside once they start to play it. The teens must reach the end to escape Jumanji.

The popularity of Robin William’s Jumanji definitely helped the star power of Jonas, Black, Hart, Gillan, and Johnson in turning Jumanji: Welcome to the Jungle into a hit, and it helped that Sony Pictures released it as a holiday action film. Overall Jumanji: Welcome to the Jungle received very favorable reviews, which helped spark more public interest and led to it staying at the top of the box office for four consecutive weeks, according to Box Office Mojo. Jumanji: Welcome to the Jungle became one of Sony Pictures’ highest grossing films of all-time, only falling third to Spiderman: Far From Home and Skyfall.

2. The Fate Of The Furious ($1.2 Billion)

The Fate of the Furious, also known as Fast and Furious 8, follows Dominic Toretto (Diesel) as he’s pulled back into a life of crime by cyberterrorist Cipher played by Charlize Theron. It’s the second film in the franchise to not include Paul Walker, who tragically died before filming was complete on Fast and Furious 7. It was also the third Fast and Furious film to not include Jordana Brewster as Mia Toretto. In The Fate of the Furious, Dwayne Johnson reprises his role as Luke Hobbs, who once again joins the team to help save Dom.

Upon the films’ release, The Fate of the Furious broke numerous box office records, including becoming the biggest global opening until Avengers: Infinity War (which was then beat by Avengers: Endgame). By the release of The Fate of the Furious, the Fast and Furious franchise had become a global success that shows no signs of stopping anytime soon.

1. Furious 7 ($1.5 Billion)

In Furious 7, after receiving amnesty for helping DSS Hobbs (Dwayne Johnson) in Fast and Furious 6, Dom (Diesel), Brian (Walker), Letty (Michelle Rodriguez), Roman (Tyrese Gibson) and crew try to retire. However, Deckard Shaw (Jason Statham) wants revenge after they put his brother Owen Shaw (Luke Evans) in a coma during the previous film.

When Furious 7 was released, the franchise had amassed huge global box office gains, with the two previous Fast and Furious films grossing over $600 million worldwide each. Fast and Furious found its global fanbase, but this one was even more special to the series as it marked the end of Paul Walker’s involvement in Fast and Furious, and it acted as sort of a goodbye and tribute to the actor.

Dwayne Johnson has plenty of upcoming projects that have massive block office appeal, such as the sequel to The Jungle Cruise, or the highly anticipated DC Comics’ Black Adam. With a strong action portfolio, and more high profile projects coming, Dwayne Johnson will continue to dominate the box office for years to come.

The Fast and Furious franchise is one of the most popular franchises in Hollywood, and it doesn't take long into one movie to understand why. Big budgets are blown on fast cars, heart-pounding action and exotic locales, and each installment seems to be even bigger than the last. We're even at a point where spinoffs are happening, as Hobbs and Shaw is set to premiere later this summer.

When a franchise is so successful and as loved as the Fast and Furious, fans look past or forget some of the weird things that happen in these films. I'm not saying they're bad, stupid or even problematic, but it's safe to say there's a lot that happens regularly in this cinematic universe audiences tend to accept even though that's not how things fly in real life. There are plenty of examples, but here are some big ones that stand out.

Fast And Furious Characters Regularly Exhibit Insane Feats Of Strength

It's kind of funny that Hobbs and Shaw will introduce strength-enhancing suits to the Fast and Furious franchise, as the movies have already established one doesn't need one to exhibit superhuman strength. Like, remember that time when Dom lifted a car in Furious 7 so Brian could get underneath it? What about when Hobbs obliterated an interrogation room throwing a criminal through walls and the ceiling?

Hobbs actual exhibits superhuman strength a lot, as Fast and Furious has gone to some pretty extreme lengths to show he's strong. Flexing his broken arm out of a cast was pretty damn impressive, but what about when he used his concrete cell wall as a punching bag while he was in prison in The Fate of the Furious? He did absolutely no damage to his hands, and even managed to run through a horde of prison guards shortly after.

The Characters Converse In Separate Cars And Shouldn't Be Able To Hear Each Other

This weirdness is primarily seen in the early Fast and Furious franchise, and seemed to stop around Fast & Furious 6 when someone thought to give the characters walkie talkies. Before that, however, one will regularly notice characters taunting each other and engaging in dialogue during a race, despite the fact that there's no established way either one can hear each other.

Now, one may say "well they used Bluetooth," and that's something I tried to justify until I found out Bluetooth wasn't a standardized feature in cars until 2010. Now, no doubt Dom and crew had the wits and know-how to get a hold of the tech and get it installed, but then we have to assume each mission/race started with everyone getting together for some massive three-way call situation just to talk shit. Again, it's not unbelievable, but not realistic.

A Chunk Of International Incidents Can Be Solved With Expensive Cars

The Fast and Furious universe has seen its fair share of disasters that Dom and his crew weren't up to the task for, I'm sure, but to think that they've been needed for so many jobs these past two decades is just insane. At what point does a villain just dedicate their time to creating a fortress that can't be accessed by vehicles?

Granted, that's a pretty tough task considering the franchise has had its heroes drive across skyscrapers, over ice and through forests. Hell, they've even air-dropped into locations, so unless the villain is hanging out on some densely forested remote island, Dom and his crew has a good shot at being tasked with taking them down. Cars are a big part of this franchise, of course, but is there ever going to be a situation where they can't use them?

The Casualties In Fast And Furious Films Are Numerous

One thing The Fast and Furious films often skirt around is that as successful as Dominic Toretto and his crew often are, they tend to leave quite the body count in their wake. Bad guys are a given, and while we don't know much about the faceless minions that hang out with dastardly villains like Owen Shaw, we can assume they deserve it.

But like, what about the scores of police officers and special agents that have their cars destroyed in the early films? Are we to assume they walked away like Dom and Jason Statham's Shaw did when they rammed each head on going top speed during a game of chicken? For as many bad guys as these characters have killed, a close eye may notice they've inadvertently killed quite a few innocent bystanders as well with little acknowledgement after the fact.

Jumping Into Moving Cars Apparently Always Works

By this point in the franchise, nearly every character in the Fast and Furious movies has had to jump from one moving object into a car. It's typically a vital situation of life or death, and to the credit of the characters, there's little reason not to considering they all have a 100% success rate in performing the action.

In case it needs to be said, jumping into a car is an incredibly dangerous feat, and probably shouldn't be the go-to option for anyone needing to escape a vehicle/locomotive/giant plane. In fact, there's a couple times in the movies where a simple tuck and roll to the ground may have been the better call. It certainly would've been when O'Conner dove from that train into Dom's car, which then drove off a cliff into the river below.

People Constantly Joke About Roman's Big Head, Which Is Pretty Average

Tyrese Gibson's Roman is often the butt of the joke throughout a lot of The Fast And Furious movies, and is frequently insulted by other members of the crew. Around Fast Five, Tej made fun of him for having a big head, and that's an insult that's interchangeably been brought up between jokes about his stupidity or cowardice.

Here's the thing though, Roman's head is very clearly the same size as many of the other characters in the Fast and Furious world. So either everyone else has a big head that everyone else chooses to ignore, or everyone has a normal sized head and the whole big-headed insults are lame disses that don't even make sense. Audiences can decide for themselves which is true, but let's maybe ease up on calling Roman big head in future movies.

Characters Are Frequently Experts At Whatever They Need To Be For A Situation

Remember when Tej used to organize street races in Miami, and now he's a tech expert/safe cracker/martial artist? Hey, respect to him for being so diverse in his skill set, but he's a classic example of how characters in Dom's crew all have one specific skill, until a scene comes up where the expert is occupied and whoever is there has to do it.

Everyone is a capable fighter, marksman, driver and perhaps with the exception of hacking, everything else that any other character is known for. They're all essentially miniature Dominic Torettos, with Dom of course being the ultimate Dominic Toretto. It's handy considering it means most every member is capable of having their own spinoff, and remarkably convenient considering these seemingly normal people are all so damn talented.

Fast And Furious 9: What We Know So Far

Are there any other weird things about The Fast and Furious franchise that need to be called out? Mention it in the comments below and continue to stick with CinemaBlend for all the latest news in movies and television.

Warning: SPOILERS for the Fast and Furious movies are in play. Just in case you haven’t seen them, you can read the order of how the films play out chronologically, and then come back later once you’ve experienced the series in its entirety.

We’re in an interesting juncture in the Fast and Furious franchise, as we won’t be seeing the ninth film in the series proper until next year. This is despite the fact that The Fate of the Furious was unleashed upon the world in 2017, and while we’re all on board with good things coming to those who wait, we’re anxious to see what happens next.

That being said, there is some excitement on the horizon in the world of this supercharged franchise, as Dwayne Johnson’s Luke Hobbs and Jason Statham’s Deckard Shaw will be holding court in their own blockbuster spin-off, Fast and Furious Presents: Hobbs and Shaw. And while you probably won’t need to see the films that came before this one in the series proper to truly enjoy it, it’s a long wait until August, and it certainly couldn’t hurt.

It also doesn’t help that the titles to the Fast and Furious films don’t exactly spell out the proper viewing order. So once and for all, in the name of franchise fans new and old, we’d like to nail down the correct order for your next Fast and Furious movie binge. Buckle up, because not only is it time for driving puns, it’s time to live your life in the name of family, a quarter mile at a time. Let's start off by laying out the Fast and Furious movies in order of how they were released.

The Fast And The Furious (2001)

The starting line for the franchise, The Fast and the Furious was inspired by real life street races and a Vice article that covered their existence. This might come as a shock to people who tend to remember the more recent films better, but Paul Walker’s Brian O’Conner and Vin Diesel’s Dominic Toretto started out as adversaries on opposite sides of the law.

Brian at this point is an undercover cop who's trying to send Dom and his family up the river through an extensive sting operation. However, by the end of the film, both are brothers in arms and ready to start an entire franchise of action. At least, that was the eventual intent, as there would be two sequels that would try to redefine the formula of the series without Vin Diesel’s contributions.

2 Fast 2 Furious (2003)

With the focus put on Brian O’Conner this time out, Paul Walker was the central lead for 2 Fast 2 Furious. As such, there was a need to explore a new setting with Miami, as well as introduce a couple new characters to aid in his investigation of a local drug lord. Which, of course, involves some fast street racing through various Florida based locations.

The second of the Fast and Furious movies, 2 Fast 2 Furious introduced two characters that would eventually return to the series fold down the line: Tyrese Gibson’s Roman Pearce, and Chris “Ludacris” Bridges’ Tej Parker. They won’t be seen for a couple more films though, as another huge shift is about to take place in the Fast and Furious universe.

The Fast And The Furious: Tokyo Drift (2006)

As if 2 Fast 2 Furious’ problem of having a lack of Vin Diesel wasn’t bad enough, The Fast and the Furious: Tokyo Drift lacked any significant participation from any of the series’ lead actors. This prompted an entirely new story to be told, through even more new characters. Introducing Lucas Black’s Sean Boswell and Sung Kang’s Han Lue into the series, the film tells the story of Sean being forced to move to Tokyo after getting into some legal trouble with some fast cars back in the U.S.

With Sean’s introduction to drift racing on the streets of Tokyo, the fast paced excitement of Fast and Furious franchise history had finally gone global, introducing new characters that would return later down the line in the series’ history. Han would become an especially crucial member to the team in subsequent films, despite his character meeting a fiery death in The Fast and the Furious: Tokyo Drift. And while it wasn’t a significant role, Vin Diesel does return as Dom at the very end of the film, tying this installment even tighter to series continuity, as well as presenting another chronological problem.

Fast And Furious (2009)

Eight years after the original adventures of The Fast and the Furious, the franchise started to hit the stride that it currently enjoys with its run of films. Pretty much the entire original cast of that first film is back, though the plot of this fourth film, strangely titled Fast and Furious, sees the death of Michelle Rodriguez’s Letty kick off a quest for vengeance on the part of Dom and Brian.

Bringing back Vin Diesel, Paul Walker and Jordana Brewster for the first time since they starred in The Fast and the Furious, Sung Kang’s Han Lue is folded into the overarching group in Fast and Furious, with Gal Gadot also being brought in as Gisele, one of Dom’s substitute love interests while Letty is out of the picture. From this point on, while some characters would shift in and out of the group, the core cast of Diesel, Walker and Brewster would remain for a while, with some new friends to be added along the way.

Fast Five (2011)

After tangling with drug cartels and organized crime through the power of street racing for four straight films, the Fast and Furious movies were about to take a hard left into the heist genre. Dom, Brian, and the gang would solidify into a cohesive unit, tying together even more of the series’ rogues gallery into the team on Fast Five’s mission to rob a Brazilian crime lord blind.

Returning to the group in Fast Five are Han Lue, as well as Tyrese Gibson’s Roman, Chris Bridges’ Tej and Gal Gadot’s Gisele; and in the role of Dom’s latest romantic person of interest was Elsa Pataky’s Elena. But perhaps the greatest addition this time out was in the film’s law bound antagonist and later ally to the Toretto family team, DSS agent Luke Hobbs. With Dwayne “The Rock” Johnson making an explosive entry into the series with this film, things would truly never be the same.

Fast And Furious 6 (2013)

Remember how Letty supposedly died two films back? Surprise, she’s still alive! Michelle Rodriguez returned in Fast and Furious 6 as an associate to the film’s villain, ex-MI6 agent-turned heel Owen Shaw. Played by Luke Evans, Owen’s inclusion would allow the Fast and Furious movies to tap a new vein of antagonists that would turn teammates with the Shaw family.

Fast and Furious 6 also continued the series’ evolution from a street racing franchise into one that involved high-tech espionage and big ticket thievery. Needless to say, Dom, Brian and Mia all return, as well as Roman, Tej, Han and Hobbs. Though the mid-credits sequence of this film does put Han’s story to a final end, as his fatal accident is refolded into canon with a new assailant responsible for his death: Jason Statham’s Deckard Shaw, looking for revenge after the team’s foiling of Owen’s plot in Fast and Furious 6.

Furious 7 (2015)

Properly introducing the character of Deckard Shaw into the Fast and Furious series, Furious 7 saw the brother of the now comatose Owen Shaw coming not only vengeance, but also for a rather shady piece of technology that could be a surveillance nightmare if in the wrong hands. For the last time, we see poor Han’s death through a fiery wreck, and for the first time we see Kurt Russell’s cool as ice DSS handler, code-named Mr. Nobody.

Furious 7 also ties up some loose ends with the re-introduction of The Fast and the Furious: Tokyo Drift’s Sean Boswell, setting him up for further films down the line of the franchise. Sadly, this would also be the final appearance of Paul Walker’s Brian O’Conner, as Walker's untimely death in an automobile accident prompted those behind the series’ story to retire the character at the end of this film.

The Fate Of The Furious (2017)

The last film in the line of proper entries to the Fast and Furious franchise, The Fate of the Furious sees Vin Diesel’s Dominic Toretto breaking bad, under the influence of Charlize Theron’s new baddie Cipher. Apparently the mastermind behind turning Owen Shaw in Fast and Furious 6, her efforts have been behind each major threat through the last two films, with her aim being to cause irrevocable global chaos.

Returning to fight alongside the rest of Dom’s team are Dwayne Johnson’s DSS Agent Luke Hobbs, as well as Jason Statham’s controversial addition to the hero roster, Deckard Shaw; the two members of the Fast and Furious movie team that would go on to have their own spinoff in this summer’s Hobbs and Shaw. While Dom does return to the side of good, it comes at the cost of Elsa Pataky’s Elena, who is killed in the line of duty by Cipher.

With the full rundown of the Fast and Furious movies now complete, it’s time to think real hard about what order to watch them in. Because believe it or not, with one quick alteration, the story makes so much more sense in the long run. even if the real world timing doesn’t exactly work out in its favor.

The Right Order To Watch The Fast And Furious Movies In

If you want to experience the Fast and Furious movies in the right order, there’s only one movie that needs to be shifted in place. While technically running as the third film in the chronological order, you can take The Fast and The Furious: Tokyo Drift and slot it in before Furious 7 in your watching order. This not only puts Han’s death into proper context, it also leads straight into the seventh film’s integration of the event into its own storyline.

Alternatively, if you really wanted to, you could drop the film out of your watching order altogether. Not only would this leave Lucas Black’s Sean Boswell with a clean slate for his eventual return to the Fast and Furious movies, it wouldn’t impact the storyline all that much as all the vital components are already wound into the series’ narrative through Fast and Furious 6 and Furious 7’s storylines.

We hope that this crash course in Fast and Furious history has helped you figure out which order to watch the franchise in, as well as the correct order in terms of chronological release. Who knows, you might be quizzed on the titles and their running orders at a bar quiz in the near future. Or a friend might trust you to set them straight on how The Fast and the Furious started it all, but it took the film three sequels to get Fast and Furious.

The point is, the information you need to navigate this high velocity thrill ride of a franchise is right at your fingertips, and now you’ll never need to worry about whether or not you’re watching the Fast and Furious movies correctly.

Meanwhile, if you’re looking forward to Fast and Furious Presents: Hobbs and Shaw, you’ll only have to wait until August 2 to see that particular end result. Though should you want to get some action into your movie watching lineup before then, take a look at our 2019 release schedule to see what else is waiting on the road to August.

SPOILER WARNING: The following article contains massive spoilers for The Fate of the Furious. If you have not yet seen the film, please bookmark this page, and return to it after your screening!

In case you haven't heard, there is a certain word that has been used for many years to explain the key theme of the Fast and Furious movies: family. No matter how big the action gets, or how many countries the lead ensemble travels to, the core of the films is meant to be Dominic Toretto (Vin Diesel) willing to put everything on the line for those closest to him. In the latest chapter of the series, The Fate of the Furious, this idea is directly challenged, but not only because Dom finds himself nearly killing all of people he loves. It's also because the film bafflingly pretends that Sung Kang's Han Seoul-Oh -- a key character in four of the sequels -- never existed.

With the exception of the Vin Diesel cameo, Han spent a long time as the primary link between the events of The Fast and The Furious: Tokyo Drift and the rest of the franchise -- but that was also a period he spent as a "doomed" character. Han actually dies during the events of the third chapter in the series, but because that narrative was set after the events of Fast & Furious, Fast Five, and Fast & Furious 6, he was given time on screen to become a central member of Dominic Toretto's family. You'd think that all this history would mean something to the group, but it doesn't seem that way watching The Fate of the Furious, given that Dom never for a moment hesitates about teaming up with Han's killer, Deckard Shaw (Jason Statham).

While the eighth Fast & Furious movie highlights its "Han problem," it's actually an issue that has been with the franchise since Furious 7. With Deckard killing Han being featured at the very end of Fast & Furious 6, the aftermath is left to be dealt with by the next film... but it doesn't really do a satisfactory job. There is a funeral sequence with the "family" members in attendance, but once that is over and done with, the film hastily moves forward with its international adventure and never looks back. Certainly one factor playing into this choice must have been the death of Paul Walker -- which required Furious 7 to dedicate its ending as a send-off for Brian, but the issue gets much, much worse in The Fate of the Furious.

From a macro perspective, it's bad enough that Han isn't mentioned by name once in The Fate of the Furious' 136 minute runtime, but the narrative progression makes things a whole lot worse. When Deckard Shaw is introduced in the new movie, it is as an antagonist... but only because of the throw down between him and Dwayne Johnson's Luke Hobbs in the previous movie. Hobbs is plenty and understandably pissed that Shaw nearly killed both himself and his partner, and has a chip on his shoulder throughout the movie as a result (mind you his personal issues don't really involve Han) -- but the same can't be said for any other member of the main cast. Not only is there extremely limited protest from Letty (Michelle Rodriguez), Roman (Tyrese Gibson), Tej (Chris 'Ludacris' Bridges), or Ramsey (Nathalie Emmanuel), but Dom formulates an entire plan around getting Shaw to help out with his personal mission. How did all of these people completely forget that the guy killed one of their best friends?

The Fate of the Furious really rubs it in with the last scene of the film, as Han's killer not only shows up for a family dinner, but does so carrying what has been established as the one thing in the world that can get Dom to betray all of his values. It's a set-up that presumably will allow Deckard Shaw to join the ensemble in their next adventure, but it's hard to see how the franchise does that without coming across as incredibly hypocritical. When we spoke with producer Neal Moritz about it recently, he had this to say:

Even if it is brought up in whatever the ninth movie is called, how do introduce the topic without it being incredibly awkward following The Fate of the Furious? Shaw will have every right to call out Dom as a phony for everything he did in the previous adventure, and it will still come across like Dom suddenly remembers how Han died. It's easy to see the appeal of having Jason Statham as a key member of the franchise going forward, but the series has also used him to dig a seriously big whole for itself.

Brotherhood. Bravery. Car crashes. Courage. Fist fights. Family. The Fast and Furious franchise has been fueled by a number of fascinating components over the years, helping the engine-revving series to sustain incredible levels of energy for the past 16 years. Familiar faces have come and gone in the silver-screen's most action-packed soap opera, but the core group -- the "Family" -- has always found a way to stay together, to ride as one from each adventure to the next.

Tragically, that ride changed direction with the release of James Wan's Furious 7. As we all know, founding Fast & Furious father Paul Walker lost his life during the filming of the seventh Fast film. And while Wan was able to figure out a way to finish the movie, the Fast universe had to find new ways to movie forward. And that's where we are at now.

The Fate of the Furious continues the story after Furious 7, following Hobbs (The Rock), Letty (Michelle Rodriguez) and their team as they contend with a rogue Dom Toretto (Vin Diesel). I am updating our list of official Fast & Furious rankings, and I'm including Fate, so we will update its box office standings as time rolls on. The Fate of the Furious is said to start a new trilogy of films, so we expect this ranking list to grow and evolve over time. For now, this is where we think every Fast & Furious movie falls in line.

8. Fast & Furious

Released: April 3, 2009

RT Score: 28% Fresh

Global Box Office: $363 million

The fourth film in the Fast & Furious franchise could have sent the entire series down the drain. While earlier chapters like 2 Fast 2 Furious succumbed to camp, they at least could be chalked up as colorfully entertaining distractions. Justin Lin's Fast & Furious thought it had the distinct advantage of luring Vin Diesel back into the fold, but it forgot to give Dom (Vin Diesel) and O'Conner (Paul Walker) anything fun to play with. The opening sequence involving high-speed fuel tankers is memorably exhilarating, but the rest of the plot -- involving a somber drug runner (Robert Miano) and a race across the Mexican border -- is muddled and dull by Furious standards. No matter how many Fast movies they end up making, this likely will always be the series' lowest point. (We hope, anyway.)

7. 2 Fast 2 Furious

Released: June 6, 2003

RT Score: 36% Fresh

Global Box Office: $236 million

Easily the best title in the bunch, but not one of the best movies. John Singleton's 2 Fast 2 Furious shows what happens when producers mistakenly try to extend a popular brand but are unable to lure everyone back for a sequel. Paul Walker happily reprises his role of exiled law enforcement agent Brian O'Conner. Diesel, however, wanted to do other things. A different director, a shift to Miami, and only half of the macho combination that helped power the first movie led to diminished returns. However, 2 Fast gets credit for introducing both Tyrese and Ludacris -- new actors and crazy characters who would become integral to the franchise's future success. But that's about it.

6. The Fate of the Furious

Released: April 14, 2017

RT Score: 78% Fresh

Global Box Office: TBD

Yep, this is where F. Gary Gray's The Fate of the Furious falls, in my humble opinion. And there are a number of reasons why, but I don't want to ruin your experience with spoilers. So I'll leave it to this. Even by the exaggerated standards of the Fast & Furious franchise -- a series that allowed one of its characters to LEAP through multiple skyscrapers in Abu Dhabi -- the action set pieces and soap opera plot twists on display in Fate are cartoonish and silly. Splitting up the team was a mistake. Vin Diesel doesn't have enough range to capture the emotional turmoil of a rogue Dom. And most of the Jason Statham highlights look like recycled footage from a Crank or Transporter sequel. (You'll understand when you see them.) Because Fast & Furious operates like the Bond movies now, the next film easily could rebound. But there are far better movies that this in the anthology (as you will see).

5. Fast & Furious 6

Released: May 24, 2013

RT Score: 69% Fresh

Global Box Office: $788 million

Bigger isn't always better, which seems to be the lesson learned by Justin Lin as he tried to top the organic insanity of his incredible Fast Five. Furious 6 marks the point where the franchise finally embraces its roots as a long-running soap-opera story, with familiar characters coming back from the dead (Michelle Rodriguez returns as Letty, leading the gang to London to find out why she's back) and forbidden romances powering unnecessary sidebar plots. If anything, Furious 6 is remembered for the ludicrously long action finale on an airport runway that must stretch for miles. But the plot isn't memorable, The Rock is underused, and even a face-off between Dom's gang and a tank didn't have the stunt-sequence impact director Lin might have hoped for. This marks Lin's last turn in the Furious director's chair (for now).

4. The Fast and the Furious: Tokyo Drift

Released: June 16, 2006

RT Score: 37% Fresh

Global Box Office: $158 million

Tokyo Drift is a strange anomaly in Fast & Furious lore. At the time, it was a total reboot -- an effort to take the fast-cars motif of the original film and transfer it to an international location, with new characters (played by Lucas Black, Bow Wow and Sung Kang) following a different and seemingly unrelated story. But then Dom (Vin Diesel) showed up at the end of this movie. And Han (Kang) started contributing to subsequent Fast films -- even though, spoiler, he dies in a fiery wreck in this chapter. How was all of this possible? Answers eventually followed. Still, we couldn't dismiss Tokyo Drift as one-off junk, primarily because it had tons of attitude and admittedly ridiculous but energetic race car sequences... something fans of the series were clamoring for at the time. But the film's box-office disappointments convinced producers to throw dollars at Diesel and Walker to return -- and by the time the Drift timeline caught back up with Dom at the end of Furious 6, we realized just how important to the mythology this chapter ended up being. Plus, the race on the mountain is just badass.

3. The Fast and the Furious

Released: June 22, 2001

RT Score: 53% Fresh

Global Box Office: $207 million

I hear you. It's first in the series! How can it rank third?! Yes, the original gets huge bonus points for being first, as well as for establishing the blueprint that would power all subsequent movies. If you go back into each Fast & Furious movie as a standalone exercise, they all have the DNA of Rob Cohen's muscle-cars-and-crime thriller that supercharged summer audiences with his freestyling action sequences and incredible, bro-mantic cast chemistry. If Cohen doesn't go with Walker and Diesel in the original film, there's no way we're still talking about Fast 16 years later. However, the film might not hold up quite as strong as you remember -- it has a deep, cheesy 90s vibe despite its 2001 release date. And subsequent sequels improved on the formula. Still, it's the strong foundation upon which this series is built, and The Fast and the Furious deserves all the credit for kickstarting the fun.

2. Furious 7

Released: April 3, 2015

RT Score: 79% Fresh

Global Box Office: $1.5 billion

This movie shouldn't exist, let alone be as satisfying as it ended up being. As you know, Paul Walker died during the filming of this movie. Not on set, but still, in the middle of production. And the reality of the situation should have stopped the franchise in its tracks. The Fast & Furious series is all about family, and Walker was a Founding Father. But Vin Diesel fought to push on, and James Wan -- through the magic of movie making -- figured out a way to complete the movie and ALSO give Walker's character Brian some closure. Paul Walker aside, Furious 7 also wins huge points for bringing a spectacular villain into the fold with Jason Statham's Deckard Shaw. It has brilliant set pieces, including a multi-car rescue mission (which begins with parachuting hot rods) and the aforementioned Abu Dhabi skyscraper jump. Furious 7 understands what works in a Fast movie, and performs all of it to the best of its ability. There's a reason this one crossed the $1 billion mark at the global box.

1. Fast Five

Released: April 29, 2011

RT Score: 77% Fresh

Global Box Office: $626 million

The best of the Fast & Furious bunch. The most pure, tough, macho, unapologetic installment of the franchise, and the one that you could bring ANYONE to -- regardless of how they felt about these movies -- and guarantee that they would have the time of their lives. The biggest reason for the unbridled success of Fast Five is the addition of "Franchise Viagra" Dwayne Johnson, who was the perfect foil to Dom, serving as the unstoppable force that runs right into Vin Diesel's immovable object. When they clash, it's like watching two Greek Gods going toe-to-toe. We all win. But the movie had the best pacing, the most eye-popping action sequences (the bank vault scene near the end of the film might be the coolest in the whole series), and I think every Fast film released in the post-Five era will be chasing the high that director Justin Lin injected directly into the veins of this already incredible series.

This poll is no longer available.

If you were to go back in time to 2001 and tell your past self that The Fast And The Furious movies would still be around almost two decades after the first film hit, your past would probably laugh. Admittedly, the first couple films were a bit rough, and definitely didn’t signal becoming the box office juggernaut that the series is now. Yet here we are, 14 years and seven films later, still begging for more.

With Furious 7 hitting theaters this weekend, now’s the perfect time to buckle up and rev up 10 memorable moments of high flying, adrenaline pumping, badassed vehicular carnage. These are the moments that we’ve raved about over the past 14 years, and they’re probably going to be the moments we’re talking about 14 years from now. They've got the coolest cars, the fastest speeds and the most danger behind them...

10. Dom Races A Train, Wins, Then Loses

Let’s get the harsh truth out of the way: as cool as The Fast And The Furious was, it was a very rough draft of the formula that the films successfully employ today. However, just because the car action was limited in the initial street racing format, doesn’t mean there weren’t some impressively close calls in the early days. The train race is one of those moments that built the Fast And Furious series’ reputation for speedy stunts, and Dom’s wipeout is just the destructive cherry on top.

9. Brian And Roman Catch A Ferry

While 2 Fast 2 Furious lost Vin Diesel’s Dom, it gained Tyrese Gibson’s Roman in his place. Along with the smooth talking egoist came a new found taste for outdoing the action of the past film’s intense street racing. It was a challenge that the film gladly accepted, as the climax featured a race between Brian and villain Carter Verone. While cars may not do their best work on the water, they sure as hell can fly if you know how to drive them.

8. Dom And Brian Exit A Burning Train, Skydive Off A Cliff

While trying to rip off three cars from the associate of a drug dealer, Dom and Brian hit one of their infamous snags in the plan at the beginning of Fast Five. With an armed lunatic on one end, a burning truck on the other, and a bridge rapidly approaching, Brian’s options for escape are limited. That is, until Dom jumps into action and rescues his best friend the only way he knows how… by gunning the engine and knowing how to time a jump.

7. Two Racers Drift Their Way Down A Mountain

While most fans of the franchise will easily dismiss The Fast And The Furious: Tokyo Drift as the film they kind of discredit in the official canon, there are just as many who are ready to defend the under loved gem that kept the series in the game when both Vin Diesel and Paul Walker didn't headline the film. Just as The Fast And The Furious made street racing hot again, The Fast And The Furious: Tokyo Drift made its audiences really want to learn how to drift… albeit, minus the harrowing cliffs seen in the sequence above.

6. Dom Races Out of the Nose of a Burning Plane

If there's any image that sums up Dominic Torretto and his tenacity to prevail, it's definitely this moment in Fast And Furious 6. After kicking Owen Shaw out of a crippled C130, it starts to look like Dom's done for as his options for escape are limited. Never fear, for this iron giant of racers and thieves has a plan after all, and it all hinges on the answer to one question: is it cooler to drive out the back of a burning aircraft, or to burst through the nose cone in spectacular fashion?

5. Dom Rescues Letty, An Exploding Tanker

When opening a film like Fast And Furious, you need a moment that’s going to really grab the audience. After a rousing oil tanker chase that puts Letty in massive danger, Dom rescues his lady love while putting them both between a rock and a hot place. With a fiery wreck barreling down on them, Dom thinks fast and times their escape just right. And by just right, we mean his car passes right under the wreck with the right amount of clearance to save their skins with only minimal roasting.

4. Skydiving, In Order To Catch A Speeding Bus

Is it too early to throw in some Furious 7 action into a series spanning countdown? Depending on who you talk to, it is. However, after seeing the latest entry into the almost two decades long/seven entries strong series, it's amazing that the franchise has the action and excitement of a much younger property. As if skydiving in a series of high end automobiles wasn't thrilling enough, the whole sequence turns into a road chase between Dom's team and a bunch of terrorist mercenaries. Still think it's too early to include the new stuff?

3. The Gang Attacks a Tank, As One Does

After the safe chase antics of Fast Five, how in the world was Fast And Furious 6 ever going to continue ramping up the stakes for us folks in the seats? Justin Lin took the advice of history itself and waged a war against his previous film with superior firepower. Lin’s weapon of choice this time around was a stolen tank, piloted by Luke Evans’ ex-military baddie Owen Shaw. After doing a fair amount of damage, the tank falls prey to a hastily improvised anchor and not only triggers an awesome car stunt, it also sets up an awesome mid-air catch between Dom and Letty.

2. Building to Building to Building in Dubai

The best damned stunt in the entirety of Furious 7 has to be, without a doubt, the tower jump sequence with the Lykan Hypersport jumping between three different towers with two high speed jumps. In a fun nod to the previously mentioned moment from 2 Fast 2 Furious, it's Brian's turn to freak out as Dom not only makes a temporary truce with his deep love for American muscle, he jumps those towers like a madman. Yet with its over the top moment of action, the Furious 7 sequence manages to thrill and impress instead of inspire a big old face palm.

1. Safe Driving With Brian and Dom

Could the top spot have gone to any other sequence in Fast And Furious history? Honestly, Fast Five redesigned the franchise into a hybrid of Ocean's Eleven thievery, Mission Impossible stunt work, and the flash and panache that made The Fast And The Furious such a long lasting franchise to begin with. Admit it: the moment the safe chase started, your jaw hit the floor and you were hooked. It's what's kept the franchise alive, and it's what's going to bring Furious 7 to glory this weekend. And it all wouldn't have been possible without this insane moment of wonder.

KATEY: Do you have any background/love for the Fast & Furious franchise?

SEAN: Well, yes. I mean, I've seen them all. I actually loved Fast Five. And I was really impressed with last night's spot.

KATEY: I've noticed a ton of commenters responding to last night's trailer with "Whatever, these movies suck!!!" So I want to figure out a way to be like "listen, guys, it transformed itself completely from where it started. Give it a shot." I have only seen 4 & 5, though 4 was boring as hell and loooooved 5.

SEAN: Yeah, I'm trying to remember Four as I type this, and can't.

KATEY: it involves Mexico and the desert.

SEAN: Oh, shit. Yeah. With that tunnel that went underground?! That was terrible.

KATEY: Yup! Totally terrible.

SEAN: But yeah, the franchise should be out of Movie Jail after Five. It totally saved itself. I can pick it up from here ….

SEAN: Katey, I was most surprised to find that the second trailer to completely blow me away (after the Iron Man 3 spot, which was fantastic) was the trailer for Fast and the Furious 6. That series has completely shifted gears -- pun intended -- from the dregs of Tokyo Drift and the bland fourth installment. Fast Five put it back on the right track, and I'm not ashamed to say that I'm genuinely looking forward to a F&F sequel. Are you with me?

KATEY: I'm totally with you on Fast Five-- but I think some people need convincing on what made it so great. When I go back to remembering it all I can think of is pumping my fists in the air with triumph when they went over the goddamn cliff in the car and survived. It starts off like a Looney Tunes cartoon, and pretty much ends that way too. But I think a live-action Looney Tunes cartoon is the destiny of this franchise, and it just took them 4 movies to figure it out.

SEAN: Maybe. I'm singling out one addition to the franchise that, for me, helped it turn the corner: Dwayne "The Rock" Johnson. The ensemble consistently grew from sequel to sequel. But the focus kept falling on Diesel because he simply has more screen presence than Paul Walker or Tyrese. Johnson became another massive, glowing sun around which this franchise can spin, and so long as he's willing to play ball in the F&F universe, I think these sequels can exist on another plane.

That being said, if Six ends up being as unremarkable as the fourth Fast films, I think it's right back to Movie Jail for the series. Don't you? I'm keeping the franchise on a short leash!

KATEY: I don't know-- one look at that car flying through the cockpit of the flaming plane and I was 100% in. And I'm right there with you on The Rock. I find him compulsively likable in absolutely everything, and so long as he and Vin Diesel are getting up in each others' faces and sweating, I have to assume I'll enjoy it a little bit.

But for people who weren't convinced by Fast Five... how can we talk them into keeping some faith?

SEAN: I'm willing to believe that the people who are bitching about this new one didn't bother to see Fast Five. And after the third and fourth films, I can't say that I blame them. Case in point: Critics could write until they are blue in the face that Breaking Dawn: Part Two reinvented cinema. (It didn't, but bare with me here.) Non-fans still aren't likely to check it out, because if they watched the first few movies, they'd been burned, and they weren't willing to try it again.

If anything, I'd try to convince people to give Fast Five a spin if they haven't yet. Yes, it LOOKS like more of the same. But for various reasons -- from the plotting to the casting to the insane stunts -- it simply works better than any other film in the series ... and if they're able to build on that success, then the sixth could be a breakout hit of the summer blockbuster season.

KATEY: Absolutely. Especially right after the release of Bullet to the Head, which promised all this brawny action and was just totally boring, I can see why people are skeptical. But I think it goes back to what I said about Fast Five being a live-action Looney Tunes cartoon. It's willing to go there with the action, the absurdity and the surprisingly sharp humor in this way that pretty much nothing else is. Most franchises try to play it safe as they get older, but these movies seem to be doing the opposite.

At a time when so many blockbusters require piecing together all the comic book backstories and figuring out which character is showing up in the post-credits scene, I love that Fast & Furious 6 promises a standalone story and a ton of action that's not about superpowers, just the rules of physics and how to break them.

SEAN: Exactly. Plus, I think it's fair to point out that the longer director Justin Lin lives in this universe, the more he's figuring out how to maneuver around fast-moving car-based action clips and stunts. He has improved drastically as a director ... specifically, a Fast and the Furious director. There's a LOT to be said for continuity, and I think the improvement of the stunts from film to film prove that.

KATEY: Honestly, everything has improved. And if people can't trust the word of people like us, who had no interest in the first four films, who else should they trust?

SEAN: They should trust the eyeball test, which Fast Six passed last night. In terms of action star power, that Super Bowl clip had it last night. In terms of original stunts few have ever seen before, that Super Bowl clip had it last night. And the reveal of Michelle Rodriguez at the very end feeds into what I believe the Fast movies have become over the years. You say Looney Tunes cartoons, and that's accurate. But they also have been a long-running daytime soap opera, with recurring characters coming back from the dead, and melodramatic subplots that barely hold our interest in between the next car race and explosion. Fast Six passed the eyeball test with its trailer last night. Couple that clip with the overwhelmingly positive buzz Fast Five generated, and you are only cheating yourself if you don't hop on this speeding bandwagon and enjoy the ride!

Justin Lin’s lucrative sequel Fast Five roared to a $626.1 million worldwide take, making it the highest-grossing film in the franchise’s history. Imagine how much more it could have made, though, if 9.2 million people didn’t illegally download Five to their computer, robbing Lin (and Universal) of some hard-earned cash?

Fast Five leads TorrentFreak.com’s list of the most-pirated films in 2011, putting it ahead of Todd Phillips’ The Hangover: Part II (8.8 million) and Kenneth Branagh’s Thor (8.3 million). The site collects its information from multiple sources – including reports from BitTorrent trackers – and includes all versions of pirated releases, including cam recordings and streams.

We don’t condone pirating. At all. In fact, blockbusters like Fast Five and Thor -- which feature some of the most impressive action and fight choreography that we saw in 2011 -- deserve to be seen the largest screen possible. Just thinking of someone reducing Brad Bird’s breathtaking IMAX cinematography for a pirated version of Mission: Impossible – Ghost Protocol makes me sad.

At least TorrentFreak says that the 9 million downloads logged by Fast Five is way down from last year’s list leader, Avatar, which earned 16 million downloads in 2010. (Again, a film that loses all of its impact without 3D and reduced to a computer or home-video screen.) So anti-piracy technology and the advancement of easy-streaming technology could be cutting down on user’s pirating practices. But for the time being, sadly, as long as torrent samples of hit movies exist online, people are going to pirate, and the industry is going to feel the pinch.

It wasn't a surprise that Fast Five made a lot of money. With the exception of The Fast and the Furious: Tokyo Drift, all of the other films in the franchise made over $100 million at the domestic box office and the fourth installment, Fast and Furious, had made the most money yet. What was surprising was the fact that that Fast Five made $16 million more in its opening weekend than Fast and Furious and is the biggest opener in the history of Universal Studios (not to mention the film's international gross by the end of its run was aleast $240 million more than any other in the franchise). When that level of success happens people get handsomely rewarded and the person getting rewarded today is director Justin Lin.

THR has learned that Lin, and his newly formed Barnstorm Pictures, has signed a two-year first-look deal with Universal. While Fast Five is Lin's most recent sucess, the director has been working with the studio for years now, having also made the two previous Fast and Furious movies (not to mention that he directed three episodes of Community on NBC, of which Universal is a subsidiary). The filmmaker has become one of the most in-demand names in recent months, with rumors and deals connecting him to a new Terminator movie, Die Hard 5, and The Wolverine.

In announcing the deal, the trade also received the list of projects on Lin's slate with Universal. This list includes Fast and Furious 6 (which already has a May 24, 2013 release date); a sci-fi/crime project he's producing with Bobby Glickert, a former assistant; and a movie about a battalion of Japanese-America soldiers in World War II that "is the most decorated unit in American history." Lin has also said that he plans to return to his roots making smaller films, not just major tentpoles.

As a big fan of Better Luck Tomorrow I was disappointed when I first heard that Lin dedicated himself to the Fast and Furious franchise, but he's a talented guy and has truly done an amazing job building his career. I'm looking forward to seeing where he goes from here.

Thor arrived in theaters, pretty much everywhere except the United States and Canada, on April 28th. It’s been making big money in international markets for more than week now, earning $176 million before the biggest movie consuming market got a chance to take a crack at it. This weekend Americans got their chance to support the movie I called Marvel’s best so far, and they showed up, without seeming all that enthusiastic about it.

Thor came in at number one this weekend, earning $66 million over the three day period which started with 12:01 am showings on Friday. That’s a solid, if generally unspectacular number for one of the year’s biggest, most heavily promoted superhero movies on the first weekend of summer. To put that number in perspective for you, Iron Man earned $98 million its first weekend. Thor was nowhere near Tony Stark’s weight class. Instead that total puts it in the company of a less well regarded movie like The Incredible Hulk, which earned $55 million its opening weekend and ended up totaling around $134 million domestically. Strong word of mouth should help Thor push beyond Hulk’s totals, but don’t be surprised if the god of thunder struggles to break $150 million in the United States.

Yet I doubt Marvel Studios really cares how well this movie does in the US, since it’s already made back its $150 million production budget and more overseas. Anything the US brings to the table with its increasingly less critical audience is all gravy.

Still, it’s strange that such a heavily promoted superhero film would fail to surpass Fast Five. When released last weekend Fast Five earned $86 million domestically. The film lost some steam this weekend but still turned up in second place with a respectable $32 million showing. What’s particularly noteworthy about Fast Five is that it’s making that money in 2D. Thor, on the other hand, is making almost all of its money off 3D showings. 2D tickets are cheaper than 3D tickets, which makes the real gap between the number of people seeing Fast Five and Thor all that much bigger.

Outside the top ten chart The Beaver, Mel Gibson’s new indie movie with Jodie Foster debuted in a limited, 22 screen release. It’s not exactly selling out. The film did moderately well, achieving a $4,727 per screen average. By comparison, Thor had the weekend’s highest per screen average with $16,688 while Hoodwinked Too! had the worst, with a measly $750 per screen. The Beaver falls somewhere in between, but unless it picks up some steam next week, that may not be enough to push it out into a wider release.

Box Office for the Weekend Of May 6 – 8, 2011

WR = Weeks In Release | LW = Position Last Week

1. Thor *

WEEKEND: $66,000,000 | TOTAL: $66,000,000 | WR: 1 | LW: N/A

2. Fast Five

WEEKEND: $32,519,000 | TOTAL: $139,853,000 | WR: 2 | LW: 1

3. Jumping the Broom *

WEEKEND: $13,700,000 | TOTAL: $13,700,000 | WR: 1 | LW: N/A

4. Something Borrowed *

WEEKEND: $13,155,000 | TOTAL: $13,155,000 | WR: 1 | LW: N/A

5. Rio

WEEKEND: $8,200,000 | TOTAL: $114,902,000 | WR: 4 | LW: 2

6. Water for Elephants

WEEKEND: $5,600,000 | TOTAL: $41,614,000 | WR: 3 | LW: 4

7. Tyler Perry's Madea's Big Happy Family

WEEKEND: $3,900,000 | TOTAL: $46,806,000 | WR: 3 | LW: 3

8. Prom

WEEKEND: $2,425,000 | TOTAL: $7,800,000 | WR: 2 | LW: 5

9. Soul Surfer

WEEKEND: $2,100,000 | TOTAL: $36,679,000 | WR: 5 | LW: 7

10. Hoodwinked Too! Hood vs. Evil

WEEKEND: $1,880,000 | TOTAL: $6,714,000 | WR: 2 | LW: 6

Pretty much the minute Arnold Schwarzenegger left office as the Governor of California earlier this year, he started threatening not just to return to acting, but to produce and star in remakes of all the movies you loved him for to begin with; back in March he promised, in a single sentence, plans to remake The Running Man, Predator and yes, even The Terminator.

At some point down the line the rumor developed to include Justin Lin, the Fast and the Furious franchise director who apparently might be willing to tread on the ground that McG pretty thoroughly destroyed with Terminator: Salvation. And believe it or not, that rumor is actually true. Omelete (via their English-language partners Collider) spoke to Lin at the Brazil junket for Fast Five, and he acknowledged that he's had conversations with Schwarzenegger about reviving the Terminator, and might be willing to consider taking it on:

Between this and the godawful Governator nonsense, I find myself wishing Schwarzenegger had somehow found a way to stay in office after all. It's not even that I think Lin would do a bad job with a Terminator movie-- he proved in the paintball episode of Community if nothing else that his action skills are unparalleled-- but that I wish Schwarzenegger would stop meddling with the pop culture that was good once, but doesn't need to be rehashed constantly now that he's free to act again. Anybody else want to stick their head in a lake until this goes away?

Most high-profile trailers debut online at Yahoo! Movies or Apple or some more traditional trailer site, but Fast Five star Vin Diesel decided to make things personal, debuting the trailer for this new film on his own Facebook page. The trailer is now live online, probably testing the strength of Facebook's servers as we speak; you can also watch it embedded in our player below.

In Fast Five Diesel's character Dominic Torretto is once again teaming up with former enemy Brian O'Conner (Paul Walker) to drive fast cars and generally irritate drug lords and other bad guys. Joining the action this time is Dwayne Johnson, as a federal agent on their case; Jordana Brewster, Tyrese Gibson and Ludacris also star for director Justin Lin, who is back for his third installment in the franchise. Check out the trailer below.

In the introduction Diesel promises "more action than you ever expected to see in a Fast and Furious movie," and as hard as that is to believe given how many explosions and car crashes we've seen over the years, he might be right. The trailer is pretty much nonstop squealing tires and bullets and machismo, with even the square cop Johnson is playing eventually getting advice from the ouside-the-law Diesel and Walker. Oh yeah, and the stunt they pull at the end, yanking an entire bank safe out of a wall and pulling it down the highway? Even in a franchise as action-crazy as Fast and the Furious that's setting a pretty impressive new standard.

For more on Fast Five, including the official synopsis, check out its page in our Blend Film Database. The movie hits theaters April 29 next year.

For those of us who have always had trouble distinguishing between the careers of Dwayne Johnson and Vin Diesel, their team-up in Fast Five presents a real problem. It's not that we won't be able to tell the two of them apart in the movie-- they've both got the bald, ambiguously ethnic meathead thing going on, but they do look pretty different-- but that years from now, when we try to remember which one of them was in Fast Five, we'll go around in circles until finally realizing, for once, it was both of them.

To start burning it into your head now that the two will be sharing the screen, USA Today has released the first image from Fast Five, which hits theaters April 29 this year. They also talked to director Justin Lin about Johnson joining the franchise, and he made a pretty good point about what it was about the Fast and Furious name brand longevity: "That's pretty amazing, for a star like him to join the fifth part of a franchise. That says a lot about him and the fans."

Now that Paul Walker's and Vin Diesel's characters have teamed up, Johnson is on board for Fast Five to play the cop on their trail, following them to Brazil for surely more fast-driving action and trash talk. As Lin puts it, "If you're going to do a Fast and Furious movie, you've got to go bigger each time. People thought it would be impossible to get Dwayne. But he didn't show up looking to cash a paycheck."

To read more about the movie and Lin's admission that "I'm not a big car guy" and the movie, for him, is about family, click on the larger image below and check out the full USA Today article. Presumably we should also expect a Fast Five trailer out before too long, maybe in front of one the January action releases?

Thanks to tweets and on-set photos, there isn't a great deal of mystery surrounding the cast of Fast Five, the next installment of the Fast and the Furious franchise. It's been well established that the film would be a reunion of sorts, bringing back characters from previous installments, including Ludacris, Tyrese Gibson, Sung Kang, Paul Walker and Vin Diesel. Now, casting has been officially announced and has come paired with an official synopsis.

In addition to confirming that the film's events will take place after those in Fast & Furious, the release confirms the presence of Jordana Brewster, Gal Gadot, Matt Schulze, Tego Calderon, Don Omar, and, the big new addition, Dwayne Johnson as federal agent Luke Hobbs. Scope it all out below.

Fast whips, cop cars and bank safes, OH MY! That’s about all you’re going to get out of these new images from the set of Fast Five, the latest in the profitable and never-ending Fast and the Furious franchise. A pile of pics dropped over at ComingSoon and there are a few that are mildly intriguing mixed in among the mostly boring shots of cars sitting still and torn up vehicles.

The first image that piqued my interest was that of a fully exposed bank vault seemingly being dragged through the street. How this plays into the story of Vin Diesel and Paul Walker’s characters we don’t know. But if you don’t have enough time to crack a bank vault before the cops get to you, you might as well just take the vault with you, right?

The other pair of interesting images shows off a city bus with a curiously flat looking roof, followed by a shot of about a dozen police dirt bikes. I’d put money on seeing those bikes on top of that bus before the end of that movie.

While there’s no actors present at this particular shoot, the images at least give us a little insight into what we’re going to see in the film: more cars driving really fast doing shit normal cars can’t do and all in the comfort of fun-loving Rio de Janeiro (although filming is taking place in Puerto Rico). Expect more from this soon, as they’re surely going to want to put this as in front of you as possible.

Have a taste below and view the rest over at ComingSoon.

I admit, it's only within the last few years that I've been able to remember the difference between The Rock and Vin Diesel, mostly because The Rock repeatedly makes bad family comedies like The Tooth Fairy, and Diesel just made one, 2005's The Pacifier. Plus, Vin Diesel could constantly be recognized by the endless Fast and Furious franchise, which will be continuing with next year's Fast Five.

But wait... Deadline Hollywood is reporting that The Rock, a.k.a. Dwayne Johnson, is looking to star in Fast Five. Well, there goes my entire system. The deal isn't complete, and it's unclear which role Johnson would play, but I'm guessing he and Diesel will be chasing each other in basically identical flashy cars, which means it will be completely impossible to know what's going on in this movie (not that it was that easy in any of the earlier films either). Add this to the fact that Johnson's next film will be Faster, which is also about car racing, and I'm just going to be a massive ball of confusion until this all blows over.