Jump between skyscrapers by car? Why not? Walk through a store from window to window and come out unscathed? Why not? Travel to space in a Pontiac Fiero? Why not? The Fast and Furious saga has been built on breaking the limits of reality and not being afraid to create surreal action. That is just the essence of the franchise and what viewers are looking for when they go to the movie theater to see the latest installment of Vin Diesel .
Chapter after chapter, Fast and Furious has been increasing its desire to go against the laws of Physics, something that it has only been able to achieve by increasing its budget -eye, also backed by its box office receipts-. This weekend there is a Fast and Furious marathon in Cuatro -don’t miss Fast and Furious 6 at 10:15 p.m.- and we take advantage of it to take a look at the most expensive scenes of the saga.
THE MOMENT OF ‘FAST & FURIOUS 5’ THAT COST 25 MILLION DOLLARS
There is a moment in Fast and Furious 5 where Dominic Toretto and his men steal a shipment of exotic cars from a moving train. Why? Because they can. To get hold of them, they are loaded onto modified trucks, a sequence that entailed great technical complexity.
One of the cars used in the scene is a 1963 Chevrolet Corvette Grand Sport. Of course, they couldn’t destroy the real car, so the producers commissioned 12 replicas for the shoot , many of which were completely destroyed. The ones used for the stunts were practically hollow, while the one the protagonists drive had the equipment of other cars. Several of them were air cannoned across a train and into the lake at the bottom of a cliff.
In what does this spectacularity translate? A whopping 25 million dollars, part of which was also used to buy a train and build 600 meters of railway.
THE MOST EXPENSIVE CAR OF ALL MOVIES
The car that has cost the most appears in Fast and Furious 7 . It is the Lykan Hypersport, from W Motors, the vehicle they chose to jump between skyscrapers while Dom flees from Shaw. So that you know what is special about this car, here are some data. The car’s headlights are made of white gold, diamonds and blue sapphires, it can reach 394km/h and only 7 have been manufactured in the world.
It costs 3.4 million dollars, a detail that by itself makes the scene in which it stars more expensive, but behind the scenes there are a lot of logistics that make filming more expensive . 10 replicas were built to be able to mistreat it at ease and without remorse, 9 of which were totally destroyed.
THE SCENE FROM ‘FAST AND FURIOUS 6’ THAT INVENTED A CAR
Shooting movies like Fast and Furious requires a lot of money, yes, but also a great deal of ingenuity to be able to make whatever comes into the heads of the producers a reality. In Fast and Furious 6 , for example, Dennis McCarthy’s team had to design a specific Flip Car for the action scenes carried out by Owen Shaw ( Luke Evans ). They fitted the car with a low wedge at the front so that any other approaching vehicle could use it as a ramp.
The Flip Car uses the drive system of a speedboat to give you that extra oomph. Of all the equipment, the exhaust was the most difficult to do. It weighs about 1,800kg and it took drivers several days to learn how to handle it.
8 MONTHS OF PREPARATION FOR A FEW SECONDS OF ACTION
The producers of Fast and Furious put a lot of effort into making their crazy scenes and aren’t afraid to put in enough time to get everything right, no matter how long the scene lasts. In Fast and Furious 9 there is a scene where a speeding car hits a store, goes through it and collides with a truck passing by on the other side. It barely lasts 4 seconds, but it took 8 months of preparation and 3 cars destroyed. We don’t know how much it cost to make, but the vehicles on screen are worth nearly $4 million, making it probably one of the most expensive sequences in the movie.
THE SCENE THAT WAS NEVER SHOT BECAUSE IT WAS TOO EXPENSIVE
In Fast and Furious 9 , what will undoubtedly be the most remembered scene of the franchise takes place. Tej ( Ludacris ) and Roman ( Tyrese Gibson ) travel to space in a car armed with the necessary equipment to withstand the speed required for such a feat. To make it as authentic as possible, director Justin Lin contacted scientists and tried to learn as much as possible about fuel and physics. It cost, but it came to appear on the screen and during the process there was more than one change of plans.
As Lin confessed in an interview with SlashFilm , in an initial plan they were going to blow up the car using a weather balloon, but they scrapped it because it cost too much money. ” I was on a train trip to Edinburgh and had a plan to get a Fierce into the outer atmosphere in a weather balloon . The cost kept going up, I was still fighting for it. If I look back now, I would have personally paid for it.” weather balloon,” said the filmmaker.
