It's been a long, long wait, but finally F9 is almost here.
The ninth installment in the Fast and Furious franchise is bigger than ever, with cars jumping over cliffs and even hurtling through space. Somehow, it manages to top even the craziest stunts that have come before it, and there have been some real doozies. Once upon a time, we all thought Paul Walker's backwards driving was impressive! Now, Tyrese and Ludacris are car astronauts. How times have changed!
Ahead of the U.S. release of the biggest movie of the summer, we're taking a look back at some of the biggest, wildest, most unbelievable and/or most shocking stunts from the whole saga. There is almost nothing those crazy criminals can't do with a car, and virtually nothing we aren't willing to watch them do with a car—or 50 cars.
There were many to choose from, but we narrowed it down to just nine, in honor of the newest installment. So, without further ado, here are the nine craziest car stunts in the Fast franchise so far, though you can bet there will be a few updates to this list after F9 hits theaters on June 25.
In 2 Fast 2 Furious (the movie with the best name in the franchise), the villain was escaping on his fancy yacht with Eva Mendes in tow. Brian (Walker), with a protesting Roman (Tyrese) in the passenger seat, simply jumped his car off the dock and onto the top deck of the yacht. Easy peasy!
After a major fight with Owen Shaw (Luke Evans), Dom (Vin Diesel) drove his car right through the nose of a burning plane, flipped over a bunch of times, and, as usual, emerged unscathed.
7. Launching Letty Across a Bridge
In Fast and Furious 6, Letty (Michelle Rodriguez) is trapped on a tank on the other side of a very tall highway, so Dom basically uses a bungee jumping car to flip the tank, launching Letty into the air so he can catch her. They both land on a windshield, perfectly fine.
Back in Fast & Furious, before the nuclear submarines and space cars, Dom and Letty were leading a team that was stealing gas from oil tankers. Their attempt at the beginning of Fast 4 went incredibly wrong as the truck got out of control, and Dom and Letty ended up trapped in a canyon as a flaming tanker rolled right towards them. Dom just smoothly drove right under the tanker at the right moment, allowing the truck to flame its way down the side of a mountain. At least the truck driver and his lizard escaped unharmed!
In Fast and Furious 7, the gang has to get some cars to a place it's hard to get cars to. So naturally, they put their cars on a plane, and then they drop the cars from the plane, which is fine because the cars are wearing parachutes. Roman, who is sometimes this franchise's only sensible character, tries to avoid doing this wildly stupid thing, but Tej (Ludacris) activates his parachute and pulls him out of the plane. All the cars land safe and sound on the ground, as expected.
At the end of Fate of the Furious, the gang gets chased over an icy tundra by a nuclear submarine. At one point, Dom takes advantage of a convenient ice ramp and leaps the car over the sub, and even gets caught in a massive explosion. But obviously, Dom is fine!
In Fast Five, the gang tries to steal some cars from a train, and things go, as they typically do, awry. After getting trapped on the burning train, Brian just barely makes the jump onto Dom's car before he would have been beheaded/set on fire when the train hit the bridge. Then, Dom's car jumped off a cliff into the water. Both men, shockingly, were fine!
In Fast Five (the best movie in the saga), the gang steals a massive safe and drag it through Rio between two cars driven by Brian and Dom. It becomes a massive weapon they coordinate their driving to slam it into as many things as possible in their escape from police. After they destroy everything in their path, Dom splits off from Brian and bids him farewell and whips the vault around himself on a bridge over the ocean.
1. Jumping Through Skyscrapers
In Fast and Furious 7, the gang heads to Abu Dhabi to destroy a few really tall buildings. Dom and Brian escape a run-in with Shaw by driving a car out one window, into the window of another skyscraper, out another window, into the window of a third skyscraper, and finally to the ground (after Dom and Brian jumped out). Somehow, they didn't get injured and didn't hit a single person the whole way. Hot tip: Just make sure your breaks are working before you drive your car through multiple buildings.
"Dom, cars don't fly. Cars don't fly!" Apparently they do, Brian.
(E! and Universal are both part of the NBCUniversal family.)