Mad Max - Fury Road

[blackmocco]

It's much madder than previous Max films and watching it you realise just how much George Miller got away with when convincing Warner into giving him the money by bamboozling them with thousands of story-boards and ensconcing himself Kurtz-like in Namibia. Apart from a few things I felt it needed more of like [spoiler]the sojourn with All-Mother's before they turn back[/spoiler], I loved it.

Lot of talk about it being Furiosa's movie in place of Max's but I'm not feeling that. Even in MM2 and Thunderdome, it's someone else's story Max gets pulled into (Hardy likens Max to The Littlest Hobo in interviews). My tuppence is that Hardy is eclipsed by Theron as an actor in this case. He's a fantastic actor, but he comes across as somewhat lightweight in FR. Won't go too far into alternate realities, but Gibson had a bit more presence as Max and made him more of a thinker. Hardy plays up the more physical, brutish side of the character.

Yeah, some actors are preternaturally suited to be on-screen and by seemingly doing nothing are doing everything. It's inexplicable how it works and if Charlize Theron never uttered a single word throughout the film it wouldn't matter. She's that good.

Hardy's Max is elemental and animalistic and he plays Max as a resourceful underdog which works, though I wish they'd left his [spoiler]flashbacks, V.O. and the ghost voices of his past[/spoiler] on the cutting floor. They feel throwaway and are at odds with the film's quiet parts where they most likely belong as proper scenes (The Road Warrior does Max's intro better in that regard) and there's better ways to say, or rather show, he was a cop before the war. The film is otherwise so confident in itself  it really didn't need that kind of spoon-feeding and it keeps cropping up during periods of Max's reluctance when a change of mind could be be better played on the face of an actor of Hardy's calibre which is how a younger George Miller would've likely played it.

Hardy is still great though it's easy to imagine an older Gibson do this kind of story.

The attention to detail is sublime.

Seeing the essential American obsession with the automobile as a symbol of personal freedom reduced to a fundamental car-cult religion is genius and you can really see the hand of Brendan McCarthy all over this - it's easy to imagine the Judda living just down the road.

The flashbacks were far, far worse in the rough cut and the movie was bookended with some FAR worse truly awful, badly-written and pretentious narration from Max. Completely at odds with how little he mutters in the movie. I agree we didn't need the flashbacks - the movie is so stripped back in every other respect it seems a cop-out to show us why Max is how he is (although apparently the upcoming video game and comics are going to flesh those flashbacks out a bit) - but they were toned down enough that I was more or less okay with them this time out.

[JOE SOAP]

The flashbacks were far, far worse in the rough cut and the movie was bookended with some FAR worse truly awful, badly-written and pretentious narration from Max.

Did any amount to full scenes? The shortened versions are of the over-played gimmick kind (Fast & Furious) and I'm not sure if they are literally trying to suggest Max is actually a bit 'mad' or not.

[ming]

Seeing the essential American obsession with the automobile as a symbol of personal freedom reduced to a fundamental car-cult religion is genius...

I think George Miller originally made Mad Max in part as a reflection of the Aussie obsession with cars and vehicular mayhem (see also The Cars that ate Paris) which he saw as his nation's counterpart to American gun culture.  See also The Cars that ate Paris which, coincidentally, also starred everyone's favourite gyrocopter pilot, Bruce Spence.

[JOE SOAP]

I think George Miller originally made Mad Max in part as a reflection of the Aussie obsession with cars and vehicular mayhem (see also The Cars that ate Paris) which he saw as his nation's counterpart to American gun culture.  See also The Cars that ate Paris which, coincidentally, also starred everyone's favourite gyrocopter pilot, Bruce Spence.

He did but it's literally a religion in Fury Road. Car-culture exists everywhere now but the US is built on it since the discovery of the combustion engine (Teenagers had cars before they had sex) and suburbia would die without cars.

Fury Road pays homage to The Cars that Ate Paris.

[radiator]

I loved all the world-building stuff - the little subcultures with their own quirks/slang etc. It gave you enough information that you could fill in all the backstory. Loved those last few shots too, which i found quite moving.

Really liked Nicolas Hoult's character too, he got more screentime than I expected him to. You get a real sense of pity for the War Boys which gives the action scenes a lot more depth. The bit with the chain/car door/shotgun was phenomenally well-staged. I also love how visceral it is with Max's facemask. When he finally got it off I felt a palpable sense of relief.

I think the only moment i got confused was near the end - a baddie dropped a grenade into the cab and then it seemed to get forgotten about, unless I missed something (very possible).

[blackmocco]

Initially thought the same, Radiator but pretty sure it's a gas grenade.

I loved the war boys and how the soundtrack portrayed them as majestic noble warriors aka as they saw themselves.

[Hawkmumbler]

It was indeed a gas grenade, and it got lobed back out the window moments afterwards.

[ming]

Brendan McCarthy just pointed out that Tony Riot also worked on Fury Road back in the day...  Awesome!

http://tonyvwright.tumblr.com/

[blackmocco]

The flashbacks were far, far worse in the rough cut and the movie was bookended with some FAR worse truly awful, badly-written and pretentious narration from Max.

Did any amount to full scenes? The shortened versions are of the over-played gimmick kind (Fast & Furious) and I'm not sure if they are literally trying to suggest Max is actually a bit 'mad' or not.

No, they were always just in flashback flashes, as they are now, but far more intrusive. [spoiler]Also, I guess it's not meant to be his daughter after all. Her name is Glory and apparently the comic tie-in will feature her in a prequel to the movie's events. Always wondered why she kept calling him "Max" instead of "dad". [/spoiler]

One scene that was noticeably (although very subtly) changed was right before [spoiler]Max chases the Vulvalini(!) to convince them to return to the Citadel. In the movie now, Max stands over the Plains Of Silence watching them leave and there's a child on the horizon that calls him "pa"[/spoiler] but in the rough cut, I remember Glory telling him to head back alone to the Wasteland. She says something like "Let's go, Max. Six degrees from nowhere...(a phrase she repeated a few times throughout the movie to let us know - duh - that Max is always six degrees from nowhere)" [spoiler]and it's clear Max is going against his survival instinct to help them.[/spoiler] I actually liked that scene although it was told pretty clumsily.

The end of the movie also had Max narrating as [spoiler]himself and Furiosa exchange grateful nods.[/spoiler] It was pretty bad.

Actually, I really had a lot of problems with the rough cut I saw but man, what a difference a tighter edit makes, the sound dubbing is all in there and tidied up, the loose ends are addressed and a great music score is added. There's a moral here: Avoid watching a half-finished movie.

[blackmocco]

From the upcoming comic, here's the synopsis:

MAD MAX: FURY ROAD – MAD MAX #2
Written by GEORGE MILLER, NICO LATHOURIS and MARK SEXTON
Art by MARK SEXTON
Cover by TOMMY LEE EDWARDS
On sale AUGUST 5 • 40 pg, FC, 2 of 2, $4.99 US • MATURE READERS
[spoiler]Left for dead and his V8 Interceptor stolen, Max Rockatansky sets out to retrieve it... heading straight into the bowels of the sunken city with nothing but his sawed-off shotgun. But the stakes are much higher than the fate of Max's ride... an innocent girl, Glory, has also been kidnapped by the depraved Buzzards. By the time Max arrives, it may already be too late...[/spoiler]

[Hawkmumbler]

I don't like the idea that a film is THAT dependent on a tie in comic. I'll just pretend Max has really lost it by the time of Fury Road.

[radiator]

For me, having never seen a Mad Max film before, it didn't bother me at all and it wasn't a blank that I needed filling. You just accept that Max and Furiosa are both haunted by failing loved ones and go from there.

[radiator]

There was another thing i wondered about - during the climactic chase, Max furiously gestures at a pursuing car and shouts "that's mine!!!".

So was this his (fixed up) car from the beginning of the movie? It felt like it was leading up to a scene where he'd commandeer it that never came.

[JOE SOAP]

So was this his (fixed up) car from the beginning of the movie?

It's his Ford Falcon V8 and it gets crushed between 2 larger vehicles at the end so I think that's it for that car.

There's a continuity argument to be made that this film could fit in between The Road Warrior and Thunderdome because Max doesn't have the car in Thunderdome but had it in Road warrior. Not that continuity really matters in these films.

[JOE SOAP]

But then again it was destroyed in Road Warrior too so continuity, rightly, doesn't matter a jot.