No individual entry has reached F&F7/8 levels of success, but James Bond feels like it'll outlive the universe. It's had 24 films across 55 years, and adjusted for inflation has pulled in almost $16 billion in revenue (on average $650+ per film). 

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Reviewing the history the series has done well domestically, but it is really the international audiences that elevated it to a mega franchise. Any insight as to why this has such broad appeal across the globe?

You have cars, chicks, explosions. What's not to like? Mindless fun all the way!

Our tastes are just simpler.

I don't know if simpler is the right word, but certain elements are easier to translate from one culture to another.  For example, action is action, while dialog can lose nuance going from source language to subtitles or dubbing.  I'm curious if particular lines of thought can even be translated properly across a dozen languages.

The way they capitalized on Paul Walker's death was so disgusting.

I don't think people care about the dialogue that much in these kind of movies.

Some stuff is probably going to be different when you have a lot of languages to translate to. But I doubt it could have any effect on why people watch these movies.

Around since the 70's, going into it's 8th mainline movie this year, always pulls in hundreds of millions of dollars if not billions, even it's side sequels make over a billion dollars, has the third highest world-wide grossing movie of all-time, highest grossing movie domestically all-time, highest grossing merchandise of all-time...and on and on.

The franchise I'm talking about is of course, Star Wars.

The movies are also generally better recieved, have a higher budget, and the addition of key actors like Dwayne Johnson, Luke Evans and Jason Statham. The higher budget allows to film internationally, for a wider appeal. Also the series in general has a cast of various races, which has become important to appeal to international markets (mostly China)

Not these movies but movies of other genres. A comedy can be a huge success in USA but not that much in some other countries simply because the jokes don't work for people who speak another language or because they translate them to have a different meaning which is also not as funny. 

Other films may be successful in some countris but not in others because they are book adaptions and the books weren't that successful in some countries and so on...

But The Fast and Furious movies? They are just simple fun action movies you could watch even without understanding what they say. They implement some stuff which is just beloved in any country (in some it's because of the cars, in some it's because of the action stars or whatever) 

They are also very great at marketing for these movies.