With the untimely demise of Paul Walker, the man who played Brian O’Conner, there was a huge cloud of uncertainty hanging over the newest installment of the Fast and Furious Franchise. For a while, it was rumored that Paul’s brother would step in and O’Conner would continue to be a part of the story, while other rumors indicated that he would be written off as being retired. Needless to say, there was a lot of uncertainty surrounding how successful future installments would be without the buster turned gearhead. But, as it turns out, his memory – in conjunction with the rest of the “family” – was enough to keep the franchise going full speed ahead. So much so, in fact, that The Fate of the Furious saw an estimated $532.5 million in earnings globally over the holiday weekend.

For those of you who have been sleeping for the few years, that was enough to top even “Star Wars: The Force Awakens” but $3.5 million, making “The Fate of the Furious” the biggest global opening in history of the big screen. It also broke the international opening record with earnings topping $432.3 million, that’s $116 million more than “Jurassic World” made when it opened and set the international record back in 2015. Domestically, it made a total of $102.2 million here in the U.S., which puts it second place in the franchise, being beat out only by Furious 7 at $147 million.

And, even though O’Conner was written off as retired, there are several references throughout the movie that kept the character, and the late actor, fresh in our minds and a part of the franchise even in his absence.

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Better Than Expected

When news came out that there would, indeed, be an eighth installment of the franchise, there were a lot of mixed opinions about whether or not the movie would be any good. Well, even without everyone’s favorite lead character, the movie performed admirably well and broke records while doing it. It’s only been out for a few days, so there aren’t too many reviews out there, but the ones we’ve seen so far look pretty promising. There’s lots of action, family love, and let’s not forget all of the consequence-free destruction that we’ve all grown to love. I had a feeling the movie was going to be a big hit – there’s just too much history for it to not be – but I didn’t expect it to actually break global records. To be fair, however, “The Fate of the Furious” did have one advantage over Star Wars, and that was that it also opened in China at the same time as it did the rest of the world. “Star Wars: The Force Awakens” wasn’t so lucky. Had it opened in China, which is a big market for movie openings, Fast 8 may not have done down in the books as a global record breaker.