The Japanese release titles of the Fast & Furious films are rather wonderful.
With the latest entry, F9, blowing up domestic box office, enjoy these alternate titles (which have been circulating to appreciative amazement on Reddit and were confirmed late Friday by Universal Pictures) for all nine movies in the franchise:
- The Fast and the Furious (2001): Wild Speed
- 2 Fast 2 Furious (2003): Wild Speed X2
- The Fast and the Furious: Tokyo Drift (2006): Wild Speed X3: Tokyo Drift
- Fast & Furious (2009): Wild Speed MAX
- Fast Five (2011): Wild Speed MEGA MAX
- Fast & Furious 6 (2013): Wild Speed: Euro Mission
- Furious 7 (2015): Wild Speed: Sky Mission
- The Fate of the Furious (2017): Wild Speed: Ice Break
- Fast & Furious Presents: Hobbs & Shaw (2019): Wild Speed: Super Combo
And finally …
- F9 (2021): Wild Speed: Jet Break
There’s a refreshing don’t-overthink-it, free associative arcade-racing-game quality to the alternate titles; it’s easy to imagine playing Wild Speed: Euro Mission at a Dave and Busters. The best of these is probably the Hobbs & Shaw title: Wild Speed: Super Combo. The Rock and Jason Statham are indeed super combo-esque.
To be fair, The Fast and the Furious is also a terrific title. It almost sounds like an overseas cinema title translation itself. And it’s notable that even the Japanese title adaptor didn’t try to improve upon the legendary “Tokyo Drift” (though did add “X3” to punch it up a bit).
After being pushed back a year, F9 delivered a $70 million domestic debut over the June 25 weekend, marking the biggest opening of the pandemic era. It’s unclear if the film would have grossed more had it been called Wild Speed: Jet Break.
