Fast and Furious

Short answer: More places... more vehicles

Now that the series has been to-- outside the US-- Tokyo and Rio, that still leaves plenty of sunny, fun places to explore, race it, and blow stuff up in. New Orleans comes immediately to mind. The French Riviera and/or Monaco. Ibiza, Spain. What about Toretto's ancestral homeland, Italy? Plenty of pretty cities to race in, there.

One idea would be to have the movie set somewhere without roads, though... like the Canadian tundra or the Sahara Desert or the Amazon jungle. Now, it's also about survival in harsh wilderness conditions, with none of the handy fuel sources cities provide. Also, now there are snowmobiles, dune buggies, and hovercraft to race and/or explode.

Which brings up the next idea-- instead of just using some of the best drivers in the world to catch this or that drug kingpin, what if the government let them test secret, experimental vehicles? Doesn't this make more sense than having them chase a hacking-based McGuffin, as long as we're getting super-tech involved? 

You'd need people who have the following characteristics: the bravery of test pilots, the skills to drive pretty much any vehicle, the willingness to push said vehicle to its limits, the ability (and incentive) to keep secrets, and-- should you die or be injured-- the anonymity for the government to vanish our body without anyone wanting to come to look for you. 

Which is pretty much what the F&F "family" is, right?

The team gets recruited to Area 50. Area 51, see, if where the government tests experimental aircraft, often mis-seen as UFOs. But Area 50 is for experimental LAND vehicles. And it's deep inside the Rocky Mountains or something. I mean, tunneled into the actual mountains. No one even knows it's there. It's radar-, earthquake-, and nuke-proof.

We have a lot of fun watching the F&F crew take these futuristic cars out for spins on the track and "off-road" simulated terrain. We watch them learn what these high tech "cars" can do.

But someone who is tailing the F&F crew finds out they are being recruited and follows them there. They sneak inside and download some plans. Six months later, a vehicle that looks exactly like an Area 50 vehicle-- let's call it a "hypercar"-- is spotted out in the world! And then someone is selling them! On pre-order-- they are not built yet. 

The F&F crew is of course suspected. They have to clear their name by bringing in the thief. They break out of Area 50 and-- using some of the prototype vehicles (which they have by now mastered, of course), hunt down and bring in the thief, the plans, and his mock-up of the hypercar.

Also of course, their flight is taken as an admission of guilt, and the Area 50 assault team heads out after them and their stolen prototypes.

The "family" realizes this is an opportunity, and once they find the thief, MAKE the assault team chase them... all the way to the thief's door.:"We can't take on all those guys!" "No, but the Army can."

They leave him and his high-tech machine shop (and minions) to the assault team, which calls in Area 50's experts to dismantle the lair, wipe the hard drives, and recover the hypercar replica the thief created. And the ones the F&F crew "borrowed" (with a list taped to each one's steering wheel suggesting improvements). 

And where is the "family?" We see them last in a bar, watching a news story about how the thief is being sued for fraud by his investors and pre-order customers. 'There is no hypercar and never was!" says one. "I saw the promo video, but it turns out it was all CGI! I demand my $10 million back!"

Then the camera turns to the amazing-- but very real-- vehicles that WERE in the thief's garage, which the F&F crew used escaped the thief's lair: Bugattis, Lamborghinis, Maseratis, Porsches, Ferraris, etc, etc: "We did all that testing of their new tech, risking our lives, and never even got paid!" "Well (gestures to the cars), we kinda did..."