Breaking down the most iconic Fast and Furious stunts

The Fast and Furious saga takes no shortcuts when it comes to filming death-defying scenes and the new film Fast X is no exception.

Universal always goes to extreme lengths to avoid using CGI, which means that when it comes to Fast and Furious stunts, cars are crashed for real.

Each stunt is planned using computer generated images and it is then filmed in separate parts, before being put together in the edit.

In our latest Xplained video, we broke down the most dangerous and craziest stunt in each movie, starting from Fast Five.

READ MORE: Every Fast and Furious movie ranked from worst to best

Fast Five – Vault Heist scene

Believe it or not, 98 percent of this scene was real.

Different vaults were used for different parts of the scene.

One was a fake vault driven on wheels, while another was a real 4,000 kg (8,818 lbs) vault.

And because they were so heavy, the Dodge Chargers had to be modified with stronger frames and more power.

Andy Gill, Fast Five stunt coordinator, said it was absolutely crucial that all Dodge Chargers were in sync while driving to maintain control over what was going to happen with the vault.

The sad part is, nearly 200 vehicles were totaled for this scene alone.

Fast and Furious 6 – Tank on the highway

The production team used two real Chieftain tanks for the scene.

They also decided to customize the 60-ton tank to make it faster, giving it a top speed of nearly 60 mph (96 km/h).

The scene was shot on a deserted highway where Universal built a custom cement ramp to make sure the tank could crash into the truck at an exact angle.

Further, they decided to use real cars, not just shells, to make it look more realistic.

Furious 7 – Airplane jump scene

In order to pull this off, they had to make sure the plane was flying at exactly 12,000 feet and above the designated drop zone.

Red Bull provided three flying cameramen who jumped from the plane with a parachute to film their cars during their descend.

They also used drones and helicopters to film the sequence.

Coordinating all cameramen was the hardest part, mostly because when the cars were in the air, it became very difficult to control and predict their movement.

The Fate of the Furious – Frozen lake scene

The race across the lake was shot in Iceland, driving over 42 inches of frozen ice.

The craziest part is, the Lamborghini they used in the scene was real, not a kit car.

The car was obviously hopeless on regular tires, so they tried using studded tires.

It was a bit better but still not good enough, so they relied on a clever solution the stunt drivers came up with.

They used winter tires with no studs when they wanted to drift to make the scene look good, and harder studded tires for when they actually needed to move across the lake.

The explosions were real (duh) and at any given moment they’d have up to 16 cars on ice.

So in order to make sure no one would actually fall in, they brought ice engineers to coordinate with stunt drivers, medics and scuba divers trained specifically to dive in these harsh weather conditions.

The submarine was CGI, but the explosion that sent the vehicles 30 feet into the air was real.

F9 – Peligro minas

This sequence, shot in Thailand, had more explosions than any other scene.

They dug massive holes in the ground and filled them up with real landmines.

For this shoot, Universal customized a Marauder, a massive go-anywhere off-roader, to make it bulletproof and explosion-proof.

Fast X – Carabinieri chase scene

Filmed in Italy, this scene depicts a car chase with the Carabinieri, Italy’s national gendarmerie.

Several cars were used for the sequence, along with a giant rolling ball.

Andy Gill said they built two eight-foot balls, and used overhead wires to control the ball’s movement.

“We had a full steel [ball] that weighed over 1.5 tons, [and] then we had a lightweight one that was 800 pounds,” said Gill.

In the end, they even set the ball on fire, because why not.

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