Latest Fast and Furious film takes the checkered flag

Despite struggling with weak reviews and the controversy surrounding cast member John Cena, F9: The Fast Saga－the latest and ninth installment of the Fast and Furious franchise－topped the country's box-office charts in May, according to live trackers Maoyan and Beacon.

Statistics show the blockbuster had earned 1.33 billion yuan ($207.50 million) as of Tuesday, surpassing director Zhang Yimou's first espionage film, Cliff Walkers, to become the highest-grossing film last month.

In the course of 18 days since its opening in mainland theaters on May 21, F9 stayed on top of the country's box office for most days before being overtaken by Japanese animated feature Stand by Me Doraemon 2 on June 1, Children's Day.

Over 20 years, the Fast and Furious franchise has evolved from its humble beginning as a street racers' story to one of the world's highest-grossing movie series, which has garnered more than $5 billion across the world.

During the past six years, three movies in the franchise, which now consists of nine installments and one spinoff, earned more box office in China than North America, respectively with Furious 7 (2015), The Fate of the Furious (2017) and Fast & Furious Presents: Hobbs &Shaw (2019).

With China becoming one of its most important international markets, F9 exemplifies Hollywood's effort to appeal to Chinese audiences.

Vin Diesel, the backbone star of the franchise, said during an online interview with Chinese journalists last month that he once asked Universal Pictures "to do something they've never done before".

Diesel said: "We asked the studio to open Fast and Furious 9 in China first."

F9 is scheduled to debut in North America on June 25, five weeks after its China debut.

It's an unusual practice for Hollywood blockbusters, which are often released simultaneously in both locations or a few days later in China.

Diesel said the franchise's enduring theme is family－a concept bigger than the biological group with shared DNA that brings together the protagonist and his comrades.

Chinese have always been supportive of the saga because of their appreciation of family, as they understand the "central thing" of the films, he said.

Diesel revealed that part of Fast and Furious 10 will be shot in China.

With the first Fast and Furious film released in 2001, the 20-year-old franchise will conclude with two films－F10 and F11.

In the latest film, F9, Diesel reprises his role of Dominic "Dom "Toretto, the patriarch of a group of street-racers-turned-heroes who leads a quiet life with his little son and companion, Letty Ortiz.

But as a new threat puts the world on the brink of peril, the protagonist is forced to join his crew in facing off a nemesis, a skilled international spy who surprisingly turns out to be Dom's long-lost younger brother, Jakob Toretto.

John Cena, who plays Jakob Toretto, said at the same interview that joining the Fast and Furious franchise was a life-changing opportunity for him.

A few questions related to his impressions of local delicacies in China that he responded to in Chinese.

Cena, a former wrestler with World Wrestling Entertainment, started to learn Mandarin after he visited Shanghai earlier, according to the movie news website Mtime.

After controversy over his Taiwan remark in a promotional video of the film, Cena apologized to Chinese people on Sina Weibo, where he has 609,000 followers.

This week, the film's score was 5.5 points out of 10 on the review site Douban, the lowest for all the franchise's films in China.