The power of family has fueled the Fast Saga for nearly a quarter century, but even that might not be enough to overcome the consternation of studio bean counters as the franchise’s finale Fast 11 struggles to get rolling. The Fast Saga’s 10th mainline installment, Fast X, hit theaters in the summer of 2023, and news was quiet on Fast 11 until earlier this year when Vin Diesel announced and April 2027 release, with the finale to take the franchise back to its L.A.-based street racing roots and bring Brian O’Connor back into the series. However, this was later contradicted by Fast X’s Jason Momoa in an interview with the Playlist’s Bingeworthy podcast, who despite stealing the show as the villainous Dante Reyes, revealed he’s completely in the dark on Fast 11’s development.
Now, a new report in the Wall Street Journal (via Collider) suggests that Fast 11 is far more up in the air, with no script in place, most of the cast still not signed, and Universal Pictures wanting to shave the budget down to $200 million after Fast X’s gargantuan $378 million budget (which itself would have been a whopping $453.6 million if not for a $74 million tax credit for filming in the U.K.) The idea that the Fast Saga’s finale might be in jeopardy of not happening would have been unthinkable a decade ago, but it could also be a blessing in disguise. Considering the cliffhanger that Fast X ended on, and just what the Fast Saga has transformed into, the best course of action, at least from a storytelling standpoint, might be to follow in the footsteps of 2013’s Machete Kills – and not have a finale at all.
The Fast Saga Is A Great Action Franchise That’s Flown Off The Handle
Nearly a quarter century ago, nobody predicted that 2001’s Point Break knockoff The Fast and the Furious was going to evolve from street racing and stealing DVD players (just Google that last part, readers under 20 years old) into the modern action classic that is 2011’s Fast Five. Nonetheless, Fast Five’s transition into a heist plot with wild automotive stunts and bruising fight scenes combined with the addition of The Rock and the ever-winning power of family made it the slam dunk the series was waiting for. Universal Pictures knew what that had on their hands and struck while the iron was hot with the equally strong follow-ups Fast & Furious 6 and Furious 7, elevating the action and stunts in both and even giving a still powerful and emotional send-off for Paul Walker in the latter after his tragic death in 2013. However, the post-Furious 7 landscape for the Fast Saga has been a radically different one.
Beginning with 2017’s The Fate of the Furious, the Fast Saga has taken its penchant for over-the-top stakes and action and gone into more and more cartoonish and laughable territory ever since. 2021’s F9 really showed how much reality itself has taken a backseat in the Fast Saga with Dom Tarzan-swinging his car across a cliffside, pulling concrete pillars down with the strength of Samson, and about 100 moments where Dom or someone else skids their car under a falling ally to allow them to land safely on the hood – and that’s all before Tej and Roman go into space in a Pontiac Ferrio while wearing scuba-diver suits. Fast X found its own ways to get even more ridiculous with Dom driving his car straight down the side of a dam to escape an explosion, but at least Jason Momoa knew what kind of movie he was in with his supremely hammy and entertaining villain performance as Dante Reyes.
Really, since Furious 7, the 2019 spin-off Fast & Furious Presents: Hobbs & Shaw has been the only entry in the Fast Saga that rose to the same heights as the middle trilogy of Fast Five through Furious 7. It’s with its own ridiculous physics-be-damned moments like Hobbs pulling a Captain America to keep a helicopter chained in place, Hobbs & Shaw had a believability in context enhanced by excellent stunt work and fight scenes the likes of which have all but vanished from the latter day Fast Saga movies, with John Wick co-director David Leitch and the 87Eleven crew packaging it all splendidly. In all, with the exception of Hobbs & Shaw, the Fast Saga hasn’t felt like the Fast Saga in a decade, instead morphing into a wacky game of one-upmanship of “how ridiculous can we make this?”, with each installment a monument to how much Chuck Norris omnipotence Dominic Toretto can unleash with the power of family on his side. With that, the $378 million price tag of Fast X, and the Fast Saga’s gradual box office decline coupled with its unstoppable incline of absurdity, it’s no wonder that Fast 11 is having difficulty getting off the ground. Then again, Fast X might already have a workaround for that with its own ending.
Machete Kills Ends A Lot Like Fast X
The Robert Rodriguez Machete movies are every bit as campy and ridiculous as the Fast Saga, being born out of the Machete short in the 2007 Rodriguez-Tarantino double-bill Grindhouse, but they’re also a lot cheaper, with Machete Kills topping out at $20 million. Even still, Machete Kills didn’t match the success of its predecessor with its final $17.5 million worldwide tally, and this inadvertently made its ending into a joke about how to go out with a bang and still leave your audience hanging. In Machete Kills, the determined Machete Cortez (Danny Trejo) learns that the villainous Luther Voz (Mel Gibson) has not been defeated, but simply fled to space, and is tasked with venturing into the stars to apprehend him. This leads into the final scene of Machete Kills, which is a trailer for Machete Kills Again…In Space, with Machete wielding a lightsaber version of his signature blade while he and his allies battle Voz and his villainous cohorts in a Star Wars-inspired sequel set-up…that ultimately didn’t go anywhere after Machete Kills flopped (though Trejo and Rodriguez have spoken about the possibility of a third installment in the years since.)
That spectacularly silly ending with a tease for what’s to come is pretty close to how Fast X wraps up in its final moments. After Dom has driven his car directly down the face of a dam to escape an exploding truck, he and his son Brian are faced with a new calamity with Dante detonating the entire dam, unleashing a tidal wave of water and debris right in front of them. Meanwhile, Dante’s associate Aimes has just shot down a plane carrying Tej (Ludacris), Roman (Tyrese Gibson), Ramsey (Nathalie Emmanuel), and Han (Sung Kang), while Dom’s wife Letty (Michelle Rodriguez) and the villainous Cipher (Charlize Theron), forced to team-up in order to escape a high-tech prison, are rescued by the newly returning Gisele Yashar (Gal Gadot) after her presumed death in Fast & Furious 6. Fast X tops that teasing off with an end-credits scene, in which Dwayne Johnson’s Luke Hobbs receives a threating message from Dante, with Hobbs crushing his phone and vowing to take down Dante. Adding in the apparent death of Dom’s brother Jakob (John Cena), all of that teasing for Fast 11, and even the announced spin-off Fast & Furious Presents: Hobbs & Reyes, could very well go nowhere if Vin Diesel and Universal Pictures can’t get their ducks in a row and the budget under control. Then again, there’s another angle to look at it from that the ending of Machete Kills shines a spotlight on.
Why A Machete Kills-Style Ending Might Be Best For The Fast Saga
Let’s face it – in terms of popularity, consistency, and quality, the Fast Saga most definitely peaked with the mid-series trifecta of Fast Five, Fast & Furious 6, and Furious 7, with a singular return to form in Hobbs & Shaw. Audiences no longer show up in the same kind of droves as they once did for the Fast Saga, and to the extent that they do, it’s not to thrill to the exciting, action-packed popcorn fun of the series’ heyday or by the inviting warmth of the franchise’s theme of family. From the perspective of the audience, it’s become all about “how many more sharks are they going to jump?”. The Fast Saga has simply become a Saturday Night Live version of what it once was, and prolonging it further is just making it into more and more of a joke.
However, by ending Fast X on a cliffhanger and with such reputation of cartoonishness already at its disposal, the Fast Saga could put a bow on both by not putting a bow on the series at all and leaving Fast X as the de facto finale of the Fast Saga. Essentially, the franchise would be pulling an intentional Machete Kills with its last installment doing at least well enough to greenlight one more, only to never follow through on such a series of explosive teases and finale sets up. Hobbs and Gisele are back? Cipher’s part of the family now? Half the family might be dead, and Dom and little Brian are staring right into a dam collapse? Not following through on any of that would normally be an infuriating example of the studio pulling the rug out from under its audience, on their biggest franchise no less, but in the case of the Fast Saga, the series has gotten so explosively and cartoonishly crazy and utterly bereft of believability, it could be the most fitting place to pull such a troll move while recognizing that the Fast Saga has long since peaked and needs to fittingly end. That might only be possible with a Machete Kills-style tease of a finale that goes forever unmade.
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Why Fast 11 Will Probably Still Happen
Despite the behind-the-scenes difficulties in getting enough fuel in Fast 11’s tank, in all likelihood, the Fast Saga’s finale will probably still happen. Even with its quite evident decline in quality and box office pull, the Fast Saga has been the biggest tentpole series Universal Pictures has ever produced outside of the Jurassic Park franchise. Anything that generates the kind of revenue the Fast Saga does even in its weaker entries along with the sheer legacy of how it has snowballed such popularity over so much time falls into the “too big to fail” camp. Even if Fast 11 isn’t likely to become the kind of $1 billion plus success as the franchise’s financial peak in Furious 7, it is still in Universal Pictures best interests to properly conclude it in a way that can be packaged, presented, and passed on to future viewers in perpetuity, as a saga with a clear beginning, middle, and end, and not one that was simply cut off at the literal eleventh hour.
All of that is the business case for why Fast 11 can, should, and likely will move ahead, but from a storytelling standpoint, the Fast Saga really had the perfect finale with Brian driving off into the sunset in Furious 7. With one last side storyin Hobbs & Shaw asa great dessert after the main course, the Fast Saga is just lampooning itself at this point, and continuing it any further is beating a dead horse. Financially, the case is clear for Fast 11 to move ahead with a more responsible budget as a way to end the Fast Saga as a complete story that can generate revenue for Universal Pictures for decades to come. Narratively, on the other hand, the best approach may be to simply take the Fast Saga’s absurdity and disregard for believability to its most logical conclusion and just end Machete Kills-style with the cliffhanger of Fast X.
