Its premier star, Paul Walker, has been gone since 2013 when he died in a fiery car wreck. Other characters have come and gone. Wildly successful actor Dwayne “The Rock” Johnson has dropped out of the series because of a feud with long-time lead Vin Diesel. Yet, the Fast & Furious series has done more than endure since 2001. Its nine movies have been extremely successful. Box Office Mojo ranks it as the 12th most successful franchise of all time, with total domestic ticket sales of $1.8 billion. Its most successful installment so far is “Furious 7,” which brought in $353 million.

The latest installment may be among its least successful. “F9: The Fast Saga” has sold only $163 million in tickets domestically. Perhaps the COVID-19 pandemic crippled it as people stayed out of theaters. Or, perhaps the franchised has aged too much.

To pick the best Fast & Furious movie, 24/7 Tempo developed an index based on measures from the Internet Movie Database and Rotten Tomatoes. The index is a composite of the movies’ IMDb rating, Rotten Tomatoes audience score and Rotten Tomatoes Tomatometer score. All ratings were weighted equally. Supplemental data on domestic box office and production budgets by movie came from the industry data site The Numbers.

Seven of the movies featured star Vin Diesel — eight including his cameo at the end of the third installment of the franchise. Paul Walker was in six of the movies.

As is the case with many franchises with more than three movies, the plot timeline does not correspond to the order in which the individual films were released. After the first two, the chronological order is all mixed up.

The Fast & Furious series did not start very well, as far as critics were concerned. With time, scripts and acting performances seemed to have improved, winning over most critics.

The best Fast & Furious movie was “Furious 7,” released in 2015 and directed by James Wan. Here are more details:

• Cast: Vin Diesel, Paul Walker, Dwayne Johnson, Jason Statham
• Worldwide box office: $1,648,560,633 (adjusted for inflation)
• IMDb rating: 7.1 out of 100 (363,090 votes)
• Tomatometer score: 82% (276 votes)
• RT audience score: 82% (195,125 votes)

“Furious 7” is the last movie in which Paul Walker appeared. In this installment of the franchise, the crew is retired and back to normal lives … until the brother (Jason Statham) of an old enemy seeks revenge. The movie was the second most expensive to make out of the nine in the series so far, with a production cost of $190 million. It is also, however, the biggest blockbuster, turning a profit of more than $1.3 billion.

Click here to see all the Fast & Furious movies ranked.

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