Amid the great resplendent buffet of cinema, no one is likely to mistake the Fast and Furious franchise for caviar. The film series – from its humble 2001 beginnings as a street-racing crime drama, through to its latest instalment, the bombastic, preposterous Fast X (out this week) – is basically Hollywood’s answer to the Big Mac. The dialogue is bad. The plotting is risible. The acting – from Vin Diesel, playing family-centric motorhead Dominic Toretto, and his ever-expanding cadre of supporting stars – is pretty woeful. And yet, thanks in part due to a sheer abundance of spectacle, audiences always eat it up. Now, everybody knows fast food is bad for you. But that’s only the half of it. What if it’s bad for the planet as well?
While the Fast and Furious films have mutated pretty radically down the years, there’s one thing that’s remained the same: a hallowed, almost fetishistic reverence for four-wheeled motor vehicles. The franchise regards cars as the pinnacle of macho accomplishment. Yes, there is always star power on screen – Fast X includes such names as Charlize Theron, Brie Larson and Jason Momoa – but the true heroes of the film are always the fast, fast cars, and the wondrous road acrobatics they are able to perform. This is all well and good. Chases are exciting – doubly so when they take place at 100mph. But we live in an era of devastating climate crisis, which is rapidly worsening. Should we really be lavishing so much adulation on one of the world’s foremost methods of pollution?
