While Vin Diesel has become synonymous with the Fast and Furious series, he was noticeably absent from 2 Fast 2 Furious, and it seems he had a few reasons why. The Fast and the Furious spawned an entire franchise, including the spin-off film Fast & Furious Presents: Hobbs and Shaw, while the main series is up to a ninth film waiting to be released. Most of the success of the first movie is attributed to the action sequences, but Paul Walker and Vin Diesel carried the film as the story's lead characters, Brian O'Conner and Dominic Toretto
The Fast and the Furious' director Rob Cohen wanted to use Diesel after seeing him in the 2000 movie Pitch Black, and while he was able to persuade the actor to join the film, Diesel wasn't happy with the script when it was finished. He went on to work with the writers for week, trying to give the characters a bit more street cred. The effort seems to have paid off, as the movie was number one at the box office during its opening weekend and continued to perform strongly. It wasn't long until a sequel went into development.
It is reported that Diesel was offered up to $25 million to reprise the role of Dominic Toretto in the John Singleton-directed 2 Fast 2 Furious, but he declined to return. With such a big payday being offered, why wouldn't Diesel return to the role that helped propel him to stardom?
As with the first movie, Diesel was not impressed with the script when it was completed. He stated [via #legend], "I had started to think of that first Fast and Furious as a classic, like a Rebel Without a Cause. If we 'sequelised' it the way studios were doing at the time, just slapping a story together, I’d ruin the chance of that first one becoming a classic." He felt that 2 Fast 2 Furious wasn't a proper sequel to the original, but they just so happened to attach the Fast & Furious name on it. Citing his preference for Francis Ford Coppola's approach to sequels, Diesel would have preferred the second movie be a direct continuation of the first, or even an exploration of the characters' background, as they did with The Godfather saga. Diesel decided to instead to star in the Pitch Black sequel, The Chronicles of Riddick, a movie he championed, as he would with other projects like The Last Witch Hunter.
Years later, Diesel commented that he may have done things differently now that the time has passed and perhaps would have fought a bit harder for revisions to 2 Fast 2 Furious' script, as he felt he did with the first movie. So while he didn't appear at all in 2 Fast 2 Furious and only had a small cameo at the end of The Fast and the Furious: Tokyo Drift, when he was asked to return for the fourth installment, Diesel agreed, with the stipulation that he would now be a producer, giving him the opportunity to put his personal stamp on the sequels that followed. Subsequently, The Fast Saga has taken off with each installment building higher box office returns and more excitement for the series.
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