Hyperbole is part and parcel of the entertainment business, and having already compared himself to J.R.R. Tolkien when remarking on his career-defining franchise’s status as the action movie equivalent of The Lord of the Rings, Vin Diesel has gone one better by making a factually-inaccurate statement about the record-breaking status of Fast & Furious.
Having racked up nine installments and a spin-off over the last 22 years – with penultimate chapter Fast X gearing up to hit theaters in just a couple of weeks with an 11th already on the way – there’s no denying that the long-running blockbuster extravaganza is one of the most popular properties of the modern era, something that’s reflected in the box office numbers.
However, the patriarch of cinema’s favorite family might have gotten a little carried away when he claimed at CinemaCon that Fast & Furious is the longest-running motion picture franchise in history that’s featured the same actors playing the characters. Looking at it from multiple different angles, he’s dead wrong.
In terms of longevity, Tom Cruise and Ving Rhames have appeared as Ethan Hunt and Luther Stickell in every Mission: Impossible film dating back to 1996’s opener, and they’ve still got at least two more outings to go, while Harrison Ford returns as Indiana Jones in Dial of Destiny 42 years after Raiders of the Lost Ark. If he’s talking volume, then Samuel L. Jackson’s Nick Fury has made more appearances in the Marvel Cinematic Universe than anyone has in The Fast Saga.
Even if you want to split hairs and discount the MCU because it’s technically a shared universe, there isn’t a single member of the Fast ensemble that’s shown up in every single installment to muddy the waters of Diesel’s ironclad belief eve further, and it’s probably worth mentioning that James Bond legend Desmond Llewelyn also reprised the role of Q no less than 15 times between his debut in Goldfinger and final outing in Tomorrow Never Dies.