Christopher Nolan may—finally!—be an Academy Award-winning director but that doesn't mean he's above enjoying the revved-up action fun of the Fast & Furious franchise. The filmmaker, who took home the coveted Best Director statuette for his blockbuster biopic Oppenheimer during Sunday night's Oscars ceremony, recently revealed that he has "no guilt" about his affections for the street-racing movie series, which he has called a "tremendous action franchise."
While appearing on The Late Show With Stephen Colbert last month, Nolan discussed his admiration of the "guilty pleasure" Vin Diesel-led franchise and also schooled Fast & Furious novice Stephen Colbert on exactly how best to enjoy the F&F movies.
The talk-show host admitted to never seeing any of the Fast & Furious movies, which span more than two decades and 11 films, and asked the director if he'd sit down with him and watch all of them in a row. (They'd have to start at 6am and would be done by midnight, Colbert had worked out.) Nolan responded:
Absolutely, anytime. You've never seen any of them?...I watch those movies all the time, I love them. I'm amazed you've never seen one of them.
However, the action-movie aficionado did fittingly have a few expert directions for Colbert to follow when it comes to viewing the Fast & Furious movies:
You do not need to watch them all in one sitting. It's only the last few where a very specific arc and mythology sort of develop. I would start with 'Tokyo Drift' and just watch that as its own thing.
The British filmmaker previously revealed his preference for The Fast and the Furious: Tokyo Drift, the 2006 Justin Lin-directed standalone sequel to 2001's The Fast and the Furious and 2003's 2 Fast 2 Furious. Nolan said during an appearance on the Happy Sad Confused podcast:
I’ve got a very soft spot for Tokyo Drift actually. And then with Justin Lin’s iterations, as they got crazier and bigger and crazier and bigger, they became something else, but something else kind of fun.
During the Colbert interview, Stephen went on to ask Chris where Tokyo Drift temporally falls within the larger F&F universe, which seemed to momentarily stump Nolan. (For the record, 2009's Fast & Furious, 2011's Fast Five and 2013's Fast & Furious 6 each are set prior to Tokyo Drift, despite coming after the Japan-set sequel in the franchise lineup.) The late-night host poked fun:
Did I just catch Chris Nolan not understanding something about time?!
@colbertlateshow ♬ original sound - colbertlateshow
As a writer, director and producer, Nolan is, of course, known as a master of complex timelines and confoundingly intricate plots in his films like Inception, Interstellar, Tenet and, most recently, the non-linear bio-drama Oppenheimer, so the thought of him getting confused by a sheer popcorn franchise like the Fast & Furious movies is especially funny.
If you, like Stephen Colbert, want to experience the Fast & Furious franchise for the first time, you can stream, rent or buy nearly all of the action flicks—including Christopher Nolan's personal preference, Tokyo Drift—on Amazon Prime Video, though the most recent edition, 2023's Fast X, is also available with a Peacock subscription.
