It started quietly simply as a street racing variation on the 1991 Kathryn Bigelow film Point Break, the tale of an undercover cop that gets too close to the criminals he’s trying to put away. It was fairly straightforward, but in one of those packed summers at the multiplex filled with sequels and remakes, The Fast and the Furious stood out from the pack, launching the career of two young actors named Paul Walker and Vin Diesel, and, inexplicably, starting a franchise that’s now 14 years and 7 films long.

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It was not an easy path from part one to part seven, nor was it a direct path. The fascinating tale of the Fast and Furious series would make a good story in and of itself, but the result was a unique confection, even in modern franchise crazy Hollywood. Fast and Furious was not the subject of extensive pre-planning nor were the storylines for three or four movies laid out at a time. Instead, it grew organically from one film to the other. It’s also an incredibly diverse series, a mosaic of modern life with people of many different backgrounds.

While Furious 7 opens in the wake of tragedy, the untimely death of Paul Walker, it remains a popular and versatile film series with a wide-range of characters, crises, and adventures. Before checking out the latest chapter, you can take the time to watch all six movies released in the franchise so far, or you can read the following article, which breaks down the various players, plot points and points of interest in The Fast and the Furious series. From the streets of Los Angeles to the parking structures of Tokyo to the highways of Spain, it’s been a wild ride and thankfully, it’s not over yet.

So, let’s now look back at where Dom, Brian, Letty, Mia and all the rest of the Fast & Furious gang came from in our recap of what’s become one of the biggest franchises in movie history.

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