In Fast & Furious, the fourth installment of The Fast and the Furious franchise, the film finally acknowledges one of the biggest plot holes that has been plaguing the film series since its inception. It all started in 2001 as a movie about drag racing with Paul Walker and Vin Diesel competing against one another, but for nine movies and one spinoff so far, the franchise has morphed into an action spy thriller. At the heart of the action are the ridiculous stunts, bombastic heists, and focus on the family.
As the fourth film of the ever-growing franchise, 2009's Fast & Furious is a transitional moment for the series. The first two films are instant classics that showcase the art of street racing and ground the characters into reality. The third, The Fast and the Furious: Tokyo Drift, sends viewers overseas to Japan with mostly new characters and a redirection of the main storylines. With Fast & Furious, Vin Diesel and Paul Walker make their return in a big way as Walker's character Brian O'Conner is now an FBI agent who must work with Diesel's Dominic Toretto to punish those responsible for Letty's (Michelle Rodriquez) death.
However, as the characters of the Fast and Furious series become spies who drive fast cars, one plot hole becomes evident: for a franchise based exclusively on cars and other vehicles, the cars being driven around the world never seem to need gas, and no one is ever seen putting gas in the cars. But Fast & Furious finally addresses this problem with its opening scene by acknowledging reality. In the opening sequence, the gang is traveling in the Dominican Republic and they hijack a gas tanker mid-drive. Of course, because this is a Fast and Furious movie, the tanker explodes over the side of a cliff.
For the Fast and Furious movies, which are mostly about international fugitives and double agent espionage via various vehicles, it's safe to say that taking three minutes of screen time to gas up the car may be wasted space. However, it becomes amusing after a while that hardly any of the characters discuss the need to stop for gas, even when they are seen stopping for other things like food or drafting a plan of action. Fast & Furious finally reflects the point that yes, gas does exist in this fantasy action-adventure series of films, and yet the characters hardly seem to care.
It's not the only plot hole in the Fast and Furious franchise – for example, it's never been explained if they kept the money from the Fast Five bank vault heist – but it's certainly one of the most obvious. As this franchise does best, the characters make more problems for themselves before convoluted plots take over, but it's always a lot of fun along the way. Even though it never appears that their very expensive vehicles ever need gas, the characters in Fast & Furious at least attempt to show audiences that they tried.
