MFF Data – Vin Diesel and His Sleeveless Shirts

Vin Diesel loves sleeveless shirts. He wore sleeveless shirts while bouncing, and if you check out his 1995 New York Toy Fair clips, or his 1995 short film Multi-Facial, you’ll see that long before he was rocking TWO sleeveless shirts at the same time in F9, he was all about the sleeveless life.

While watching F9 for another research assignment, I started wondering whether the amount of sleeveless shirts, or screen time in which Diesel wears a sleeveless shirt affect the overall quality of the movie. Thus, I went through all of his live-action films where he appears on screen (sorry Groot), pulled the minutes of sleeveless screen time, counted the shirts, and broke down the data to see if there is an optimal amount of sleeveless t-shirt wearing that Vin should adopt. Having done this before with Brad Pitt, Tom Cruise, and jet ski action scenes I felt certain that I could mine his filmography and present some incredibly random and unimportant data that might make you chuckle a bit while you read this.

Quick Note – Since I’m not a total maniac I didn’t sit there with a stopwatch and count every second of his screen time. I count the scenes that he’s in where he could appear on screen at any time. For instance, this scene in Fast Five when he’s talking to Brian and Mia about putting a team together. The toughest film to crack was Pitch Black. Diesel’s character Riddick wears a sleeveless shirt during the duration of the film. However, he isn’t always around so I only counted scenes where his presence is felt and or he could pop up at any moment.

Also, I didn’t count the scenes where he’s wearing a sleeveless t-shirt underneath a shirt. The arms had to be out for the world to see.

He’s technically wearing a sleeveless shirt, but there’s a shirt covering it. No arms = No inclusion

Fun Vin Numbers, Facts and stats

• Overall Tomatometer Average – 47%
• Overall Rotten Tomatoes User Score – 64%
• IMDb User Score Average – 6.38
• Worldwide Box Office Average – $335.5 million
• # of Fresh Movies (Tomatometer score of 60% or more) – 8 – Saving Private Ryan, Boiler Room, Find Me Guilty, Fast Five, Fast & Furious 6, Furious 7, The Fate of the Furious, F9
• If you’re interested in listening to me talk about how all the data came together, check out the podcast episode I recorded about my quest. You can listen to the Movies, Films and Flix podcast wherever you listen to podcasts.

Fun Vin, Sleeveless Shirt Facts and Stats

• He wears a sleeveless shirt in 16 of his 23 films.
• He averages 1.95 sleeveless shirts per film
• Percentage of Screen Time In Which He Wears a Sleeveless Shirt On Screen – 18.67%
• Total Minutes Spent Wearing Sleeveless Shirts – 503 minutes
• Average Amount of Minutes He Wears a Sleeveless Shirt in All of His Films – 21.89 minutes
• He wears a white tank top in 11 of his films
• The seven movies that feature him wearing a black shirt with no sleeves have the highest Tomatometer average with a Fresh 62% score.
• The five movies that feature him wearing a gray button up shirt with no sleeves have the highest worldwide box office average – $808 million
• The seven movies that feature him wearing a black tank top have the highest IMDb User Score Average with a average score of 6.45 (not bad)
• When it comes to the amount of sleeveless t-shirts worn in a Vin Diesel movie, four is the best number in regards to box office and critical/audience scores.

Quick Note – In Fast & Furious 6, Diesel wears a white tank top and a black tank top. I counted this as two sleeveless shirts despite the fact that there are three scenes in which he wears sleeveless shirts (2 white / 1 black). I was looking for overall sleeveless shirt variation, not scenes involving sleeveless shirts.

Here’s a look at Vin’s sleeveless T-Shirt Timeline Since 1997

Can anything be figured out about his career by the number of different sleeveless shirts he wears in his films?

• 0 – Between Saving Private Ryan, The Pacifier, The Last Witch Hunter, and Billy Lyn’s Long Halftime Walk , Vin doesn’t play a villain or anti-hero – which is interesting because he mostly plays villains or anti-heroes. Also, in Boiler Room and Find Me Guilty he takes part in white-collar crime and general criminal shenanigans (not world exploding action). Also, 5 of the 7 take place between 1998 and 2007, and Billy Lyn’s was released almost six years again. He rarely goes sleeveless, and not lately.
• 1 – It’s been 10 years since Vin Diesel only wore one sleeveless shirt in a movie, and he went out with a bang with Fast & Furious 6 (the most fast and furious of the franchise). It’s worth noting that his foray into gritty cop dramas and gangster films saw him wearing only one sleeveless shirt. Also, Pitch Black and Riddick, the two movies that feature the most sleeveless shirt wearing of all his movies only involve one sleeveless shirt.
• 2 – Early Vin was all about two sleeveless shirts. Between The Fast and the Furious, xXx, and The Chronicles of Riddick, he was all about the double. I’m thinking Chronicles of Riddick halted the momentum.
• 3 – I love this fact – Vin Diesel wears three sleeveless shirts in Fast and Furious and Fast Five which are the two Fast movies that transitioned The Fast & Furious world from movies about racing and cars, to movies that blow up lots of cars while they are racing away from nuclear submarines.
• 4 – Diesel has only worn four shirts in two movies, those two movies both made over a billion at the worldwide box office. Furious 7 and The Fate of the Furious made bank.
• 5 – It makes me happy that Vin’s movies are bookended by movies (Strays, F9) that feature him wearing five sleeveless shirts. Also, between xXx: Return of Xander Cage, Bloodshot, and F9: The Fast Saga, the dude has gone sleeveless t-shirt crazy

Here are some fun stats

Average Amount of Sleeveless Shirts He Wears in his Fresh (Tomatometer Score Above 60%) and Rotten (Tomatometer Score Below 60%)

• Fresh – 2.14
• Rotten – 1.92

Average Percentage of Screen Time in Which Vin is Wearing a Sleeveless Shirt in His Fresh and Rotten Films

• Fresh – 11.29% – This is partly down to Saving Private Ryan (0%), Boiler Room (0%), and Fast & Furious 6 (6.15%) featuring very little sleeveless t-shirt work.
• Rotten – 22.61% – This is high because in the Riddick Trilogy there is a lot of sleeveless shirt work. Riddick hates sleeves.

Quick Note – I counted every scene involving sleeveless shirt wearing towards the percentage.

Average Amount of Sleeveless Shirts He Wears in His Movies That Have Made More Than $500 Million at the Worldwide Box Office

• More than $500 million – 3.14 – Furious 7 ($1.5 billion) and The Fate of the Furious ($1.23 billion) feature him wearing 4 different sleeveless shirts in each film. Dom loves a variation.
• Less than $500 million – 1.35

Conclusion – When it comes to a critical and box office sweet spot, the best option for Vin is to wear 3-4 different sleeveless shirts and he needs to wear a black shirt with no sleeves and a button up gray shirt that also has no sleeves. If he does this, a huge box office is sure to follow, and the movie has a chance of being Fresh.

Also, despite the fact that he wears four different sleeveless shirts, the sleeveless screen time needs to be limited. This is why Furious 7 and The Fate of the Furious work so well, because they’re like “Alright Vin, you get your sleeveless shirts, BUT, you gotta wear some sleeved shirts as well.”

More sleeveless shirt variation + limited screen time dedicated to them = $$$$$$$

Proof of all the shirts with sleeves that Dom wears in F7 and F8