Vin Diesel has ruffled a few feathers with his comments comparing the Fast and Furious franchise to that of J. R. R. Tolkien’s classic, Lord of the Rings.
The Lord of The Rings first hit bookshelves in 1954. Originally adapted as the sequel to the 1937 fantasy novel, The Hobbit, Lord of The Rings ultimately developed into a much larger piece of work and commanded a huge fanbase.
It was published in 3 volumes and was an instant hit. Over 150 million copies have been sold since it came out, making for pretty eye-watering figures.
It was later adapted for the big screen. Director, Peter Jackson, started planning the movies in 1995, and the first film hit the box office 6 years later.
For those that haven’t watched the films, they center around a dark Lord Sauron who created the most powerful weapon that dominates all other rings. Famously, the one ring to rule them all.
Through a strange twist of fate, the ring is given to a small Hobbit named Frodo. But, when Gandalf discovers the Ring is the One Ring of the Dark Lord Sauron, Frodo embarks on an epic quest to Mount Doom to destroy it.
It grossed a whopping $2.919 billion at the box office, so, of course, 2 more movies were to follow. The Two Towers hit screens in 2002, followed by The Return of the King in 2003.
And of course, it wasn’t long before The Hobbit got the big-screen treatment too.
The prequel franchise, once again directed and produced by Peter Jackson, is made up of 3 movies, hitting screens in 2012, 2013, and 2014.
It’s clearly one of the greats when it comes to both literary fiction and cinema masterpieces, so Vin Diesel’s latest comments comparing the franchise to Fast and Furious has understandably got a lot of people wound up.
Attending an event for Fast X, which will be the tenth movie in the franchise, Diesel shared what was most demanding about the movie-making process, he said: “You know what gets harder? The work off-screen. The thinking, the expanding… there’s a reason why Tolkien stopped writing after a while.”
Adding: “It’s so hard to continue mythologies. Nobody thinks about it in that context, but it’s real.”
Diesel then responded to the interviewer when asked whether he thought that Fast was the “Lord of the Rings of action movies,” saying, “Well said, from your mouth to God’s ears, it’s so true.”
And fans have had a field day with his comments online, one social media user joked: “Yeah, I remember that bit where Gandalf came flying over the crest of that hill at 180km/h, drifted through about a thousand Uruk’ai and then NOS’d into the sunset.”
While a second wrote: “The Fast and the Furious movies are like those annoying bands you feel glad haven’t released anything new for a while, hoping they’ve broken up, but then you are like, what? Another one?”
“I’ll never forget the line in the Lord of the Rings when Aragorn turns to the army at the black gate and shouts ‘For Family’ and charges at the army of Mordor in a Nissan Skyline,” a third commented.
However, another added: “I see the parallel. Both are fantasies with tonnes of CGI that started off great then got worse & worse with each subsequent release by directors & companies whose heads are so deep up their own butts they don’t realize we are just absolutely tired of both franchises.”
