Vin Diesel’s announced salary for the upcoming Fast X perfectly demonstrates the significant changes in the franchise since its more modest beginning. Vin Diesel is one of the biggest and most recognizable action movie stars working today, largely due to his role in the Fast and Furious franchise. Diesel’s character, Dominic Toretto, helped shape the Fast and Furious saga, securing Vin Diesel’s place among the most successful Hollywood stars. During the Fast and Furious films, Toretto’s house changed significantly along with the focus of the franchise.
Although the first film of the franchise, “Fast and Furious” in 2001, was a rigidly written action movie, subsequent parts have moved away from this format in favor of more attention to huge action scenes and high-octane robberies. Regardless of whether this change has affected Diesel’s character change or vice versa, the simple fact is that the Fast and the Furious movies have changed a lot since the franchise was created. This significant change makes the upcoming “Fast and Furious X” — the tenth film in the franchise — a beast very different from the first appearance of Dominic Toretto.
Now, when it is reported that Vin Diesel’s salary in “Fast and Furious” is a whopping $20 million — 10 times more than his salary in “Fast and Furious” — this change becomes even more obvious. This demonstrates not only how the scope and budget of “Fast and Furious” have grown along with its success, but also how the role of Vin Diesel has changed in it. Along the way, Dominic Toretto, played by Vin Diesel, became the only star of the franchise, and his cast was in the shadows, and this was reflected in a huge increase in the actor’s salary.
How and why “Fast and Furious” became a Vin Diesel franchise
However, the changes to the Fast & Furious franchise were not entirely intentional. In the first film, Diesel played one of the two main roles along with Paul Walker’s Brian O’Conner, and when Diesel decided not to return to 2 Fast and Furious 2, Paul Walker became the main character of the franchise. In the third film of the franchise, “Tokyo Drift”, Vin Diesel appeared in a cameo role, and Walker was nowhere to be seen. Only after the return of Walker and Diesel in the fourth Fast and Furious movie, these two again became the undisputed protagonists of the franchise. However, the tragic death of Paul Walker drew even more attention to the character of Diesel, making him the unofficial leader of the acting ensemble of the franchise.
A real-life tragedy combined with subtle but successful narrative trends to see the franchise turn into a chaos of action movies led by Toretto. The more mundane drama of the first film was replaced by incredible stunts and spectacular robberies, which made the Fast and Furious films huge action movies. This corresponds to the image of Vin Diesel, when the mythical transformation of Dominic Toretto becomes something that the actor embodied in his public persona.
The last important factor in Vin Diesel’s salary increase is his other role in the Fast and Furious franchise. Since the fourth film in the franchise, Diesel has also acted as a producer of the Fast and Furious films, which makes his role even more significant both on and off the screen. All these factors combine to make the Fast and the Furious franchise a very personal property of Vin Diesel, and his salary in Fast and Furious X reflects the importance of the actor, as well as the larger and widespread success of the franchise.
