Mad Max: Fury Road

• Co-Written, Co-Produced, and Directed by George Miller
• May 7, 2015 (TCL Chinese Theatre) / May 14, 2015 (Australia) / May 15, 2015 (US)
• Based on characters created by George Miller and Byron Kennedy

Max Rockatansky joins forces with Imperator Furiosa against cult leader Immortan Joe and his army.

There is nothing like a Mad Max film. A unique vision of a post-apocalyptic future. So original and so impactful that these films are that they have set a visual style that I don’t think any other movie has replaced with a storytelling form often imitated and rarely duplicated.

While the original is not my favorite of the series, I love them all and when I first heard about this I was more than a little worried. The legacy sequel or general reboot is in my opinion notoriously not good at all. Those behind the newer version often miss the point or the general magic which made the original movie(s) so appealing. 

Fury Road opens and hits you like a ton of bricks and right away it feels like a Mad Max film. It gets the look and the tone correct right off the bat. It’s a world that has fallen apart. It is rotting and decaying. And the latter films could be viewed almost as a post-apocalyptic folktale being related by others. Connected but maybe not necessarily factual. That last part is rather important considering even though this has the look and feel of the old Mad Max films it doesn’t necessarily fit in with the continuity of the first three movies. It’s a story unto itself.

And how can you do Mad Max without Mel Gibson? Seemed improbably hard but Tom Hardy steps into the role. Perfectly cast. A broken man barely clinging to humanity. Little separates him from the insane monsters which threaten every day human existence. He is perfectly stoic.

And special shout out to Hugh Keays-Byrne as Immortan Joe. A talented actor that should have been better known than what he was. Toecutter in the original though considering all the makeup you would be hard pressed to recognize him. Immortan Joe was a threatening and insane villain. More monster than man. Just disturbing and creepy and evil beyond evil. He mixed together Norse mythology with Car & Driver Magazine to produce something bizarre.

Nicholas Hoult as Nux. Nux is a member of Immortan Joe’s Half-Life army which are group of young men whose lives are cut short because of the environment in which they live. Knowing he is about to die he wants to die in style so he can enter Valhalla. Despite being in the X-Men movies and enjoying them I didn’t think too much of Hoult as a performer, but he really went all out in this. Totally threw himself into the part. He made himself so engaging. You couldn’t look away. And there was a wounded quality to his performance as it went on.

Charlize Theron as Imperator Furiosa is probably the weakest of the group. Not saying she was a weak performer, but all the main actors turned in fantastic performances so somebody’s got to be the weaker of the group and it was her. But if you put her performance here against any number of performances of anybody in a similar movie she would outshine them easily. A strong warrior with complexities below the surface.

What this does uniquely as all Mad Max films have done is make it so success of the lead characters does not save the world. It aids and improves the world of those in the film, but it doesn’t restore civilization which is an important hallmark of the Mad Max films. Max wanders in and makes things better but at no point does he put things back on the right track. Usually victory in the post-apocalyptic genre means the return of civilization is right around the corner.

And this isn’t just a mindless action film, but a well-crafted bit of drama with heavy action. There’s emotion and highs and lows. Defeat and sacrifice. And things don’t turn out as planned, but rather they turn out better. Fury Road is a story about revolution and hope and change. It’s a good versus evil story told in a way that only George Miller can. And despite the darkness and insanity there’s a weird positivity that the film ends upon. The world may not be a better place, but the world of the characters is better. The people of Immortan Joe’s tiny kingdom have a chance at a better future. Furiosa has saved the brides with the survivors having grown into themselves. And Max has come to terms with some of his inner demons.

Another hallmark of these is that Miller centers the camera on the action. And what else sets this apart from so many other films today is that the action is not largely computer graphics. Calling up a massive storm is not possible unless you’re Christopher Nolan, but all those cars and all those explosions and all those wrecks and all that dust is so very real making this so much more engaging.

It has often been said that Max is a supporting character in this film and it is true though it does not necessarily feel like it. Under a lesser hand this would not have worked but George Miller gets it to work. In fact Max barely is a part of the opening of the film. He doesn’t become a significant player until further down the line. In reality it is very much the story of Furiosa. She is the main character even though she’s not the title character. But her story connects to all the others. They are all looking for something. Escape. Hope. Redemption. A better future. Max is looking for it as well though his pathway is less clear.

Driving around the Australian outback in gas guzzling machines with men playing flaming guitars and people that look half dead made this into a into an fevered nightmare dream. This is filmed insanity. It’s a post-apocalyptic nightmare done in a way only George Miller could do.

And the car chases in this are absolutely epic. These aren’t like one or two minute things but 10 minutes or more. Complicated scenes that are adrenaline pumping and testosterone driven. But more importantly events occur that push the story forward. I have no data to back this up, but I think chases in each of the Mad Max films have just gotten longer and longer with Fury Road just being one long chase.

This is filled to the brim with strong characters. Not because others are weaker but because they step up and give it their all and don’t back down. They are caught in a desperate struggle and don’t give into despair and desperation. It’s a desperate struggle from start to finish. The characters are often asked to do make hard choices and do hard things in order to survive. As with much of the Mad Max universe this is filled with shades of gray. The morality of something can be open ended and rather unclear.

Fury Road is quite possibly one of the most perfect examples of a legacy sequel done right. It has not forgotten any of what made the its predecessors memorable. And more importantly it did very little to change the formula. It understood how to satisfy fans and critics alike.

Mad Max: Fury Road is an amazing movie that I cannot say enough good things about. Even the worst or weakest elements are thousands of times stronger than the strongest stuff you will find in other films. It’s thrilling an exciting and dramatic and despite being nearly 2 hours moves at a brisk pace. You can’t go wrong with this movie!