Inside Fast Furious Most Dangerous Stunts

From cars falling out of an airplane, to dragging a giant ball through the city, and even smashing cars with a wrecking ball, the Fast & Furious saga takes no shortcuts when it comes to filming death-defying scenes. The car stunts have gotten riskier with every film, but how were the craziest stunts filmed? And more importantly, what's in store for Fast 10? Let's find out. Welcome to Explained. Fast & Furious is probably one of the most adrenaline-pumping franchises out there. And that's because there's very little CGI. Even the early films like Too Fast, Too Furious had 95% of their car stunts filmed for real. The stunt is planned carefully with computer-generated sequences, so everybody knows what needs to be done. And then the stunt is filmed in parts. Let's break down the most dangerous stunt in each movie from Fast 5 to Fast 10. Starting with the vault heist. The scene of the vault being dragged through the streets is terrifying, but what's even crazier is that 98% of it was real. Different vaults were used for different parts of this scene. One was a fake vault driven on wheels for this small clip. The other was a real 4,000 kg vault. And they actually had two of these. Because it was so heavy, the Dodge Chargers were fitted with strong frames. Then they took it onto a real street. But they couldn't just wing it. Each crash was carefully planned. For example, the vault is literally tumbling on this turn and crashing into the concrete sidewalk pillars. And Andy Gill, the stunt driver for Fast and Furious, told us the Chargers had to be in sync while driving to maintain control where the vault was going. Two cars had to pull it. That's kind of why we went to two cars. We had to learn how to drive. Both cars pull it, but if you want to make a turn, then the guy on the inside has to initiate the turn. The guy on the outside has to give slack and let it do what it does. But then to stop it, the guy on the outside has to take over and stop it and the guy on the inside has to not run over the cable. It was a dance between two drivers that we had to learn. We were in a parking lot for probably a whole week doing it until we finally figured it out. Then the special effects team constructed a fake bank building in a parking lot. The vault was mounted on a huge hydraulic ram that shut it out and it crashed into the bank building. The vault being dragged on the bridge is also legit. And get this, they literally wrecked around 190 to 210 cars while filming the entire vault heist. Next is the tank on the highway in Fast and Furious 6. Chase scenes were pushed to a whole new level when they introduced a real Chieftain World War II tank to the mix. The tank weighed over 60 tons and they had two of these monsters. They even customized them and upped their speed from 48 kilometers per hour to 96 kilometers an hour. The real tank can only do 30 miles an hour. So far, we've done over 60 miles an hour. It's a custom tank. Very appropriate for Fast and Furious. First, they shot the tank bursting out of a moving truck. Then they constructed a cement ramp and it burst through it again. The scene was shot on a deserted highway in Spain and it was one of the hardest that they shot because if the tank hit anything it wasn't supposed to, there was no going back. That was awesome, Lee. You hit both the cars. To make it even more interesting, they figured they'd make the tank drive against incoming traffic for real. So we had meeting after meeting with the little cars and where everybody was going so everybody knew exactly what they were doing. So we said, can we run over a car with a transmission, with the engine, everything in it? They ran over it like butter. I mean, it just didn't even slow it down. But it looked better because it crunched and everything else. We had effects. Put a tube in the cars and they would fire the cars on air out into the street in front of the tank so they're moving when you hit them. You would not want to be in front of them. They even blew up part of a bridge in the process. Next is the airplane jump in Furious 7. This death-defying stunt where the actors jump out of an airplane in their cars, free fall, and parachute into the mountains was insane. To pull this off, it started with a C-130's pilot. He had to make sure they were at exactly 12,000 feet and above their drop zone so the cars wouldn't fall on people. The three cameramen flying with parachutes and helmet cameras were from Red Bull. And they had to maneuver around the cars in mid-air and capture everything. One thing they couldn't control entirely during the free fall was how fast the cars were dropping and their movement in mid-air from left to right of the camera guys. The cars just wanted to tumble. And it was very hard for the jumpers to get anywhere because it was tumbling and moving around so they didn't feel comfortable getting close to it. I suggested, well, would a drone shoot work? If we have a small drone shoot to stabilize the car. That worked out perfectly. And so then we were able to get exit from the airplane, the falling, everything all in one shot. And then at a certain height, the altimeter on the car shoot would automatically deploy. So the camera guys had their altimeters. They knew exactly when it was going to deploy so they knew to get away from it and everything else. Even when they opened the parachutes at 5,000 feet, it was pretty nerve-wracking for the helicopter pilot who had to film this as well. The guy had to make sure they were capturing the right shots, avoid chopping up the skydivers who were all over the place, and avoid flying into the falling cars. Next is the frozen lake in The Fate of the Furious. This race across the lake was shot in Iceland and it had 42 inches of frozen ice. The crazy part is they actually used a real Lamborghini and not a kid car. First car we had out there was a Lambo. So I said, all right, let's bring Lambo out with the regular tires. Well, they couldn't even get it there. So then we go to short studs and it worked pretty good. It was still slippery. And by that time I had two of my stunt drivers there who were really good at what they do in drifting and everything else. And with their input, we ended up going with mediums and longs, kind of intermittent. We would change out depending on what we wanted to do. If they wanted to drift, they would go with medium. If they want to really turn and not drift, they would go with long. We got the right parameters with what the studs were and he was doing 360s all day long. What's even more insane was that they simulated actual explosions and they had 16 cars out on the lake at a time. So to make sure the crew and cast didn't actually fall in, they brought in ice engineers. These guys measured the strength and thickness of ice at intervals. They also had a team of rescue divers and medics. One of the coolest thing I ever saw was I was on one end of the run and I'd sent, I think it was 14 cars to the other end and they're all running towards me. And all of a sudden, they disappeared. And what had happened is the entire frozen lake, they were pushing away in front of them and that entire ice came up like this. So I'm seeing this hump of ice come at me and then I go up and over it and then they come in. The submarine was CGI, but the explosion to show it bursting through the ice was real. They took dynamite and gallons of ammonia and nitrate and hid it in buckets below a certain portion of the ice. Then they towed empty military cars over it and triggered a giant explosion that sent the vehicles flying 30 feet into the air. Then comes Peligro Minas in F9. This scene had more explosions than any scene in the previous movies. It was shot in Thailand and they basically dug massive holes in the ground and rigged it with pounds of explosives. So every time a car drove over one, it created 20 to 30 foot fireballs. Then they custom built the Marauder. This beast was as armored as a tank and it could literally smash through anything. Finally, it's time for Fast 10. No Fast and Furious movie is complete without a chase scene and Fast 10 seems to have a lot of them. Let's start with this intense chase through Italy with the Carbineri police and lots of explosions. There's also an awesome gold-plated Lamborghini that's racing through tiny lanes. And check out this heart-stopping giant iron ball that rolls out of control on the street. The rolling ball, that was tough. We needed an eight-foot ball that he built and we put an axle through it and put it on overhead wires and we had to push and pull so we could control it anywhere it went in a straight line. We had two different ones. We had a full steel one that was one and a half tons. That's the one that went through cars. It does a lot of stuff. Then we had a lightweight one which we interacted with around motorcycles and everything else. It was 800 pounds. This thing is huge and they even set it on fire. Have a look at how it completely destroys this bus. How crazy do you think Fast 10 will get? Tell us about them in the comments and don't forget to subscribe to Explained.