The latest film in the "Hell Streets" series, "Fast X," was released worldwide on May 19, making it the tenth installment in the popular multi-billion dollar franchise. Starting with the first part of "Hell Streets", more than 20 years ago, this series of high-budget films firmly rooted itself in the world of illegal street racing, writes "Farout" magazine. It has since made an alarming departure from the genre, dividing its fans like no other franchise. However, box office receipts can't lie: fans keep coming back to Hell's Streets.
The story of the first four films follows agent Brian O'Connor, famously played by the late Paul Walker, who infiltrates a street racing gang led by Vin Diesel's character Dominic Toretto, whose thoughts, beliefs and lifestyle are vividly portrayed in every installment of the franchise.
Initially based on the 1998 article "Racer X" by writer Ken Lee in the 2 issue of "Vibe" magazine, the first film stuck entirely to its story of car theft and illegal racing. With each installment of the franchise, that story expanded and took on new scope. Diesel withdrew from the parts of "2 Fast XNUMX Furious" and "The Fast & The Furious: Tokyo Drift", which focused on a completely different team and place.
When the core group of O'Connor, Toretto and Letty returned for the fourth installment, it marked the last time the films would focus on car culture, introducing a revenge plot and a drug-dealing villain.
The fifth installment of the “Fast Five” franchise completely abandoned its core concept, and the film gave us a plot involving a $100 million heist, as well as the introduction of fights, shootouts, and global espionage; elements that defined the series from that moment on. It can be either a very cynical move or an incredibly smart one, depending on how you look at it. Certainly, "Universal Pictures" made a very conscientious effort to insert the film into a much wider field of cinematography.
After all, the success of “Fast Five” cemented what the franchise eventually became: while car/racing fans are quite unhappy with the change of story, the incredible amount of money that the films of this franchise continue to generate says a lot about audiences and cinema in general.
Many people wonder why "Hell's Streets" are still so popular? Much like any long-running TV series, and even the average soap opera, once the fans get attached to the cast, the directors and producers can do whatever they want with the movie/series. No matter how much they joked about that topic, the viewers of "Hell's Streets" loved that "family".
Moreover, the increasingly ridiculous story and defiant antics of Toretto, Dwayne Johnson and others incited a kind of excited hysteria in the viewer.
After all, the audience likes pointless fun, big spectacle and impossible cartoon actions, but only if there is soul in all of it. Movies have a soul perhaps precisely because the audience has known the characters for more than 20 years. Certainly, one thing is certain: fans keep coming back to "Hell Streets", and judging by the success of "Fast X", they don't plan to stop.
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