Fans celebrate the anniversary of Christopher Nolan’s favorite ‘Fast & Furious’ movie

The Fast and The Furious: Tokyo Drift was released 16 years ago to the day and fans of the car-revving action-adventure franchise were unabashedly celebrating that fact online Thursday.

The Twitter account, @OnePerfectShot, even posted one of the most memorable scenes in the movie, which put a focus on the art of drifting in street races.

The scene is even more jaw-dropping when you see it in full motion.

Another Twitter account that also celebrated the film’s anniversary, @ScreenOffScript, shared the fascinating bit of trivia that Vin Diesel reportedly agreed to make a brief appearance in the movie as a trade-off for “the rights to the character Riddick from 2000’s Pitch Black.” This bit of trivia about Diesel’s quid-pro-quo was backed up by the trivia page on IMDb for the 2013 threequel, Riddick.

Another fan celebrated Tsumabuki Satoshi’s role in the film. Although the Twitter user’s claim he played a character called “exceedingly handsome guy” may come across as sarcasm, that was genuinely the name of the role for the actor, according to The Fast and The Furious: Tokyo Drift‘s IMDb page.

“HAPPY TOKYO DRIFT DAY!!!!” proclaimed one fan.

Tokyo Drift also has an odd peer group in terms of sharing its birthday with the likes of Grease and The Book of Henry, one movie fanatic shared. The IMDb pages for both Grease and The Book of Henry support this.

And how about that neon-soaked poster? Hasn’t aged a bit.

Although the Fast and the Furious franchise is an easy target to make fun of for being an arguably mindless action movie series, some of its biggest fans are not people you would be so quick to upturn your nose towards. For instance, The Dark Knight director Christopher Nolan once shared he has a “soft spot” for Tokyo Drift, in particular (via Collider).

“[Fast and Furious producer] Justin Lin’s iterations, as they got crazier and bigger and crazier and bigger they became something else, but something else kinda fun,” Nolan said.

The next film in the franchise, Fast X, is currently in production and expected to be released on May 19, 2023, according to IMDb.