Fast and Furious movies ranked in order

As the biggest fan of the Fast and Furious franchise that I’ve ever met, I feel I’m qualified to rank all 10 Fast and Furious movies in order from best to worst. Here is that list.

1. The Fast and the Furious

The first movie. The original. The one that started the phenomenon. Car talk, action, over the top bromance and romance, racing, it had it all. Set to the backdrop of Los Angeles in the year 2000. The best of times. Everything we’ve all ever wanted. Hot chicks and big engines and a simple life of boosting DVD players out the back of moving trucks. Why didn’t they just stop the truck and rob it? I don’t know. Maybe they had more fun doing it while the truck was moving.

Either way, this is the best one for so many reasons. No egos existed yet, no pressure from a studio to add anything or be bigger and better. Just pure speed and thrills. Happiness and joy across the board. Beauty and beasts. I yearn for a time like that again. Maybe it’s just nostalgia and youth. Who knows. Regardless, it is, without a doubt, the best Fast and Furious movie in the franchise. It even included extras that were real car fans. And I don’t have that as a fact, but I know it just from watching the background actors interact. Those were just real racing fans. You can see it on their faces.

2. Fast Five

We’re jumping 4 movies here, but the movies in between were all over the place, and this was the next one which had all of the factors closest to the original. Tons of family, tons of beauty with the landscape of Rio, Brazil. Lots of fun, hot, passion. Great things all over. Of course, with the lack of Letty though however, because at the time we were still under the impression she was dead. Paul in his prime, glistening in the sun.

Vin in his prime, pumped as hell.

A fresh Dwayne Johnson, stepping in to kick up the adrenaline. No beef in the air yet. Just love and cars and joy. The stakes have gone up exponentially, from robbing Best Buy trucks on the highway to ripping a bank vault out of a foreign police station and dismembering a drug cartel. But it still feels like the good old days of doing highway heists. Even though the budget has been raised, it’s a down-to-earth, salt-of-the-earth love-fest and the fans couldn’t get enough of it.

3. Fast 7

For obvious reasons this one must be third simply for the fact that it was our last one with Paul. I can barely even write this without tearing up because I remember I saw it the day it came out at Mann’s(?) Chinese Theater on Hollywood Boulevard in Los Angeles, with my roommate who fell asleep during the movie. They were showing Paul’s compilation at the end and I was bawling my eyes out and he was snoring.

Anyway, it had major stunts with major actors including the star of Ong Bak, whatever his name is, along with the cavalcade of other stars who littered this film.

Beautiful scenery, along with the cars being dropped from an airplane moment which was very enjoyable. It also had Jason Stratham introduced, who was cool, but he killed Han, so we hate him, which also played a major role to the lack of excitement for Hobbs and Shaw, but we’ll get to that later. The film had the memorable quote from The Rock when he said, “Daddy’s got to go back to work,” or however he phrased it where he flexed his arm cast off and ripped a machine gun from a helicopter which proceeded to work despite being disconnected from the helicopter.

It also had the guy from Blood Diamond as the bad guy. 10/10 film, could watch it a million times. The ending didn’t make much sense, but they had to do with it what they could because Paul died before it was wrapped.

4. Tokyo Drift

This one literally came out of far left-field, and to the casual fan, it was hated, but to the real fans, it was adored. Brand new location, brand new cast, brand new plot, with a drop of familiarity at the end tying it together with Vin’s appearance. Absolutely amazing everything. Great accent from the lead. Fish-out-of-water story with the country boy thrown to Tokyo.

It was pure perfection in such a way that it’s almost unrecognizable to the untrained viewer. Keeping form, it had a rapper in it, Bow Wow, who was phenomenal as Twinkie. Great names both real and fake. It’s just hard to even talk about this movie without falling out of my chair with happiness and excitement. I can watch it all the way through any time it’s on TV and I’m happy to spread its gospel on a daily basis.

5. 2 Fast 2 Furious

The sequel to the original, it’s a classic in its own regard, the city of Miami is pristine in it and it’s full of sex appeal and style. It features Steve Aoki’s sister which is cool along with other notable feature players. Paul is in peak form as per usual, the use of Florida was executed perfectly, and everything about it is true to the heart of the Fast divinity. I like it, I like it, I love it, I want it all the time.

It’s a joy always, even just the thought of it. Every time I think of it I smile. I even ended up owning the same car that Tyrese drove in the movie, a 2001 Mitsubishi Eclipse Spyder. For years people called me “Spyder Man” when I drove that car, because I constantly asked people to please call me that. I stood up in the car with the top down on the highway many, many, nights, and filmed it on Facebook live. The videos are still up on my profile go check them out! I was very, deeply, influenced by this film and it will live on forever in history as an absolute gem.

6. Fast and the Furious

Now things start to get a little messy. This movie was relatively boring, which is pretty much unheard of for a Fast film, but because it brought Paul and Vin back together for the first time since the original, it still beats out the other movies in the saga, simply for that fact. Weak story, weak everything for the most part, lack of featured characters, lack of anything really. But it was our sign that we knew the series was back, and that excitement was enough to spark us forever.

We could finally stop holding our breathe waiting for another. It had been a long, long, break between Tokyo Drift and this one, so we were all just very happy to see another Fast get made. In fact, when I was a child, I prayed and I said, “As long as they keep making fast and furious movies, I won’t kill myself,” and that was 18 years ago. They’re still making them.

7. Fast 6

There was a tank that was nice. Letty was reintroduced, but she was on the wrong side of history, which was very upsetting, I didn’t like that at all. The bad guy was forgettable, there wasn’t many memorable things about this one except the long runway fight on the plane that takes forever to take off. That was a fun scene. Relatively boring, I can’t remember too many details. Vin jumps across a highway to catch Letty that was a nice moment and one of the first moments where a Fast team member demonstrated superhero-like powers which we had not seen before.

8. Fast 8

I believe this is the one with the submarine. The fact that I can’t even remember much of this one shows how not great it was. This may be the one where Vin Diesel was a bad guy. If that’s the case this might need to be at 10 instead of 8. Because that was the most upsetting plot in the history of Fast. Toretto turning on his family. He would never do that no matter what. And Cypher made him do it and it was not fun to watch at all. 

It was like watching a movie where your own parents are trying to murder you the whole time. It was jarring and unsettling and I think I remember this is the one where he turned on his family. I think I blocked it out of my head because it was so traumatizing. It’s also the first one without Brian AKA Paul Walker, and the emptiness was extremely noticeable but instead of addressing it they just act like he’s just out of frame doing something else and they don’t want to bother him which is infuriating. 

This one should have been called The Fast and the Infuriating.

9. Fast 10

It’s a 2-parter. Need I say more? Did the franchise forget that we live our lives a quarter mile at a time? A lot of us will not live to see the second part and that’s very infuriating. We like fast action! We need gratification now! We’re not here to wait 2 more years for the second part! Jesus Christ, you’re going to make me scream! I saw this one in London. I remember that.

But I also remember I was furious with the fact that it was a 2 parter.

Also, what’s his face as the bad guy. Jason Mamoa. Playing a Joker-like character who’s having weird perverted fun and trying to bring light humor to his crimes. Doesn’t work!

The whole point of Fast bad guys is to bring an eir of seriousness to the films. All the bad guys were always mean and serious and it made it feel legitimate and scary and important. 

This bad guy is prancing around and cracking jokes! This isn’t funny guys! Most of the humor in Fast movies is supposed to be unintentional. We laugh with our friends about the thing Bow Wow said or the country kid said because it’s ironic and silly, not on purpose. Tyrese and Ludacris cracking jokes, that’s ok. They’re comic relief. That was established. 

Bad guys being funny? Not funny. Not good. Did not like it.

10. Fast 9

This is really meant to be Fast 8 but I got them mixed up. Fast 9 was the one with Cena. I liked it. I cried a ton. Learning about Toretto’s past and background was amazing. Beautiful, every part of it. It just felt cold and sad, because again, the absence of Walker is glaring and it’s depressing. It hurts. And the franchise itself is just reminding us of his death with every passing movie. This is not the worst one in the core saga, it’s 8, but this one is not much better. But the scene with the truck bomb and the satellite being driven through with a space car was very nice and fun. We liked that.

11. Hobbs and Shaw

Are you fucking kidding me? You made a movie about the guy who murdered Han? Are you out of your mind? We love Han. We would never watch a movie about the character who murdered him. The franchise even realized this, which was part of the reason why Han was brought back in 9. Because we love him so much that we would not watch a spinoff movie about the guy who killed him.

There was some ok, cookie-cutter action, but it’s not about the real Fast crew so it might as well have been an episode of Frasier. 

I don’t even acknowledge it as a Fast and the Furious film, and it’s basically a stain on their banister.

I do appreciate taking risks though, as that is true Fast and Furious fashion.