Remember when Fast & Furious is about street racing and undercover cops? Those days are gone. In each sequel, the car stunts get increasingly over-the-top and CG-aided. They're so outrageous, fantastical and removed from Newton’s Law of Gravity that it’s hard to care about the consequences.

With Fast & Furious 9 in cinemas now, let’s revisit the 12 craziest stunts in the franchise, in ascending level of lunacy, from tame to totally bonkers.

From Fast & Furious: Tokyo Drift (2006)

Takashi (Brian Kee), aka Drift King, proves why he’s given the moniker by drifting his Nissan 350Z on a circular car park ramp. Because it adheres to the laws of gravity, it’s probably the most believable — and least spectacular — of all the stunts listed here. Don’t try this at home, kids.

From 2 Fast 2 Furious (2003)

The bad guy is getting away on a yacht. Instead of calling the coast guards, Brian and Roman do the next best thing: they drive their Yenko Camaro SYC — at 120 mph (or 193 km/h) — and crash into the boat (movie fact: the louder you shout, the further the car flies.) Very Dukes of Hazzard.

From Fast & Furious 5 (2011)

Dom and Brian use two Dodge Chargers to drag a drug boss’ 91,000kg safe from the bank vault into the streets of Rio de Janeiro (San Juan, Puerto Rico, actually), like supersized wedding car cans. In theory, you’d need 500 cars to do that. Also unbelievable: the safe only smashes into inanimate objects.

From Fast & Furious 6 (2013)

In the same chase, just before a military tank flattens Roman’s (Tyrese Gibson) Mustang, he jumps, flies and lands on Brian’s 1974 Ford Escort R2 200 Mark I… with the kind of precision you can only find in video games. A piece of cake.

From Fast & Furious 6 (2013)

Dom crashes an Alfa Romeo Giulietta through the nose cone of a burning cargo plane, which seems to take forever to take off. The sequence lasts about 13 minutes, which means in real life, the runway would have been about 30km long, eight times the length of the runway at Changi Airport. Power.

From Fast & Furious 4 (2009)

Dom and Letty escape a rolling, burning oil tanker by the skin of their teeth when Dom expertly manoeuvers his Buick Grand National GNX and glides it under the whirling hellfire. Sure or not? To be that accurate, Dom must’ve chalked up gazillion hours from playing Crash Bandicoot. Or he’s a psychic.

From Fast & Furious 7 (2017)

In the climactic showdown, Dom & Co. get chased by a nuclear submarine on the frozen Barents Sea. The pursuit ends with Dom narrowly avoiding a missile by jumping over the sub from a makeshift ice ramp (!). The missile hits the sub instead. It explodes but Dom and his car escape unscathed. Sorry, but you lost me at nuclear submarine…

From Fast & Furious 6 (2013)

During the Spanish highway pursuit, Dom jumps from his speeding Dodger Charger and catches Letty (Michelle Rodriguez), who’s catapulted from a flipped-over tank — in mid-air. Is Dom Superman too? Funnier if the scene was set against a Bollywood soundtrack.

From Fast & Furious: Hobbs & Shaw (2019)

We know Hobbs is strong, but strong enough to yank a Blackhawk chopper down, using a chain from a moving Peterbilt truck? Captain America once tried to stop an Airbus AS350 heli which has a 1,400 kg lifting capacity. A Blackhawk’s lifting capacity is 4,000kg. In other words, Hobbs is stronger than Steve Rogers. That settles it.

From Fast & Furious 9 (2021)

The movie’s opening set-piece, set in Central America (but filmed in southern Thailand), is a series of shark-jumping stunts, beginning with Dom & Co driving through a minefield, followed by a jeep crossing a collapsing rope bridge, and culminating with Dom hooking his 2020 Hellcat Widebody Charger on a cable of the said bridge and swinging across a chasm. All that while being attacked by a helicopter. That’s one sturdy cable. Either that, or the car is really, really light.

From Fast & Furious 7 (2015)

Dom (Vin Diesel) and Brian (Paul Walker) drive their Lykan HyperSport from one skyscraper (the Etihad Towers in Abu Dhabi) into another, and then, from that building, drive into another one. Some physicists believe the stunt — under the right speed, weight and wind conditions — is actually do-able. Okay.

From Fast & Furious 9 (2021)

Where Dom & Co are going, they don’t need roads. Of all the insane stunts in the movie (honourable mention: the magnet car demolition derby), this one takes the cake: Tej (Ludacris) and Roman blasting off to space in a rocket-strapped Pontiac Fiero. Director Justin Lin claimed that he consulted NASA scientists and according to him, it’s the “logistically, scientifically” one of the movie’s most plausible set-pieces. Okay… That said, how are they going to top the trip to space in the last two Fast & Furious movies? Aliens? Dinosaurs? Time travel? Or a musical?