They really never were about the cars. The first film it only used cars that mechanically were largely stock, but got details about the cars grossly wrong and had characters who supposedly were car gurus but don’t know that electronics manufacturers don’t make exhausts or surprised that a popular and well known car had... the engine it came with from the factory. It was meant to be a loosely based on reality film about street racing and the people/personalities as well as a fantasy exaggeration of the world of street racing culture.
The third film was also a fantasy version of the world of drifting. The second film was.... sort of about racing but more a spy/heist flick that one might assemble by splicing footage from different episodes of Miami Vice? But to keep the same cast and not keep retelling the same story they basically morphed the franchise into the expendables.
I like expendables as well. I wasn’t saying the expendables is bad- I was saying the expendables isn’t a movie about cars or racing. Fast and the furious stopped being remotely connected to reality a long time ago and just became an increasingly high stakes spectacle of an ensemble cast going on various thinly linked adventures to settle on and off screen grudges.
I’m not saying that’s an inherently bad recipe for a film or for a fun romp- I’m just saying that if you shoot rush hour 4 and do it like rocky 4 where it’s a serious sports drama about Chris tucker being killed in a boxing match against a North Korean, and Jackie Chan sets out to Korea to box the guy.... that’s not what the franchise was based on. Doesn’t mean rocky isn’t one of the best franchises of all time- it means I’ll watch a rocky/creed movie if that’s what I want to see and not a rush hour movie which I expect to be a buddy cop comedy.
Takes a role in stuber.