I Watched 3 Ninjas With My Kids, And The Similarities With The Fast And The Furious Are WILD

When I was a kid, my brothers and I would watch 3 Ninjas all the time. There were three of us. There were three of them. They were kids. We were kids. It made perfect sense. I recently went back and revisited one of my favorite childrens movies from the ‘90s with my three kids, and I was shocked to discover that not only did this movie still rock with all its iconic movie characters (Rocky, Colt, and Tum Tum), it also had a lot in common with The Fast and the Furious. Wait? What?

I’m not kidding, when I showed my kids the 3 Ninjas trailer before watching, I thought they would think it was nothing more than a Home Alone knock-off. Instead, I was left with all these examples of the first film in the Fast & Furious franchise having a lot in common with it. Here’s what I mean.

First Off, There's An 'I Almost Had You' Scene Involving Cars In Both Movies

What brought this all on, and what made me sound like a crazy person to my kids while my wife was at a wedding, was a sequence early on in 3 Ninjas when the boys’ grandpa (played by Victor Wong) puts them through their final test for their ninja training (because elementary school-aged boys should be playing with ninja stars and jumping out of trees). In one scene, one of the boys jumps from a tree and attacks his grandpa in a car, who pretty much thwarts the offensive. In that moment, he says something to the effect of “I almost had you.”

If you’ve watched The Fast and the Furious as many times as I have, you know that this is the same line Brian O’Conner (Paul Walker) says after losing an early race to Dom Toretto (Vin Diesel). Sure, the boys’ grandpa doesn’t go on a rant about “a quarter mile at a time” or anything like that later in the movie, but the lines were so similar that I immediately went to both movies’ IMDb pages to make sure they weren’t written by the same guy. They weren’t.

Both Movies Are Big On 'Family'

It’s safe to say that “Family” is more important to Dom Toretto than anything else in The Fast and the Furious and its various sequels. Sure, he loves racing. Yeah, he likes boosting DVD players out of semi trucks late at night in matching blacked-out cars and green neon lights. I’ll admit he loves winning. None of that compares to family in the movie, and lets every character and every member of the audience know this… multiple times.

This is also true for 3 Ninjas. Sure, Tum Tum (Chad Power) would probably sacrifice Rocky (Michael Treanor) and Colt (Max Elliott Slade) for some candy or pizza, but the youngest of the three brothers would come back for them. Throughout the movie, the three brothers, as well as their grandpa, do anything and everything for the family, even if that means taking on a literal army of ninjas led by a guy with a bad ponytail and even worse suit.

Like The Fast And The Furious, This 1992 Kids Movie Gets Messy After An Undercover Operation

One thing I completely forgot about 3 Ninjas was the fact that the young boys become the target of Hugo Snyder (Rand Kingsley), the aforementioned bad guy, because their father was part of an undercover FBI operation to bring down the ruthless arms dealer. After the botched operation at the beginning of the movie that allows him to escape, Snyder goes on a warpath and starts a plan to kidnap the FBI agent’s kids to get back at him. Unfortunately for Snyder, that plan involves three dim-witted surfer punks that feel like a combination of the Wet Bandits from Home Alone with the attitudes and appetites of the titular duo from Bill and Ted’s Excellent Adventure.

Though there isn’t any kidnapping (or surfer dudes going on and on about pizza) in The Fast and the Furious, the primary drama does revolve around Brian O’Conner being an undercover LAPD officer trying to nab a gang of street-racing thieves. It’s his undercover operation that gets everything going in the first place.

There Aren't Any Street Races, But Characters Lose Their Bikes In A Competition

Later movies in the Fast & Furious franchise would include some remarkable and insane technology and fewer and fewer street races, but the underground racing scene was a crucial part of the 2001 franchise starter. With no fewer than a half-dozen races in the movie’s runtime, some of the best scenes in the film (and the series as a whole) involved souped-up cars racing through the streets of Los Angeles.

Though there aren’t any street races in 3 Ninjas (the three main characters are still in grade school), there is a scene about halfway through the movie where Rocky and Colt put their bikes on the line against a pair of bullies in a basketball game. Just like Brian O’Conner having to hand over the slip to Dom Toretto, these youngins lose their bikes to the bigger kids, and look like chumps in front of all their peers. Maybe Rocky shouldn’t have stacked the odds against himself when he was trying to impress his crush.

Both Movies Feature A Badass Leader Who's Extremely Spiritual

Grandpa Mori Tanaka in 3 Ninjas and Dom Toretto in The Fast and the Furious can both hold their own in a fight, but they do just as well when it comes to all things family and spirituality. They’re centered, both physically and spiritually, which makes them not only great movie characters but also wonderful leaders that other characters aspire to be.

Sure, both of these guys can kick ass (and they do), but they do everything the can to prevent conflict from happening in the first place. Well, I have to admit that Dom does take things a little too extreme later on in the franchise, but I’m just talking about the first movie here. For most of their respective movies, these guys do everything in their power to prevent having to use their hands, and it isn’t until the very end that we see them go all out.

Another thing these two movies have in common is the fact that they both spawned franchises with multiple sequels that should have called it quits long ago. But that’s for another time.