Mad Max: Trailer looks awesome!

Egg Born Son said:
What is the brilliant action film that Mad Max fell short of? I can't think of a single action movie in at least a decade where the action moved the plot or character development. I can't think of a single action scene at didn't bore me to tears within 2 minutes let alone sustain me for 90. Can you enlighten me?
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I would tend to agree with you, and I feel that Mad Max isn't much better. I think it's hyped to heck and frankly it loses it's audience during many portions of it's second act. I just had to look around me to see this. Even explosions are boring when the person driving is asleep at the wheel. Hardy had about as much character as a limp cracker.

I would suggest that people here are so obsessed with the craft that they don't even see that while this may be a 13 year olds wet dream, it sure doesn't hold up beyond what was done a long time ago with the first Mad Max. In fact I don't think the franchise has advanced much of our understanding of the primary character in anything but a superficial manner, but hey it's all about making roller coaster rides that line a few executives pockets, isn't it?

The only redeeming feature of this film beyond the new pyrotechnics is Charlize Theron. However, it's such an obvious star vehicle for her that they might as well have let Hardy hold the umbrella to protect her from the noonday sun.
 
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yoclay said:
Yes, you are absolutely right. Everyone should have the same opinion here, dissension or a differing point of view should not be tolerated. That way everyone can agree with each other and talk about what a masterpiece this film is.
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Not at all, I just didn't feel your comments were advancing the conversation in any way. But I see that you have now posted more that have fleshed out your position, and certainly I welcome all to a functional discussion. Didn't mean to offend.
 
Mitch Gross said:
Not at all, I just didn't feel your comments were advancing the conversation in any way. But I see that you have now posted more that have fleshed out your position, and certainly I welcome all to a functional discussion. Didn't mean to offend.
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No offense taken, actually I generally find your comments the voice of reason in the midst of a tide of forum double speak. Your comments about arc are right on.
My position is a bit the same as drawing a line under notions of progress. Technological progress is not necessarily human progress.
Visual and technological innovation in an action film is meaningless to me unless there is a human story that is strong. And I believe you lose the public when the latter is weak.
Mad Max is only half a film to me. It is Charlize Theron and then...what? It felt like a 3 hour film and it was only two. bad sign. It should be the other way around.
 
I would suggest that people here are so obsessed with the craft that they don't even see that while this may be a 13 year olds wet dream, it sure doesn't hold up beyond what was done a long time ago with the first Mad Max.
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And I would disagree wholeheartedly with your suggestion and wonder if you are simply attempting to be a contrarian for contrarianism's sake. This film explored many themes & had a ton to say about a variety of topics, not to mention it is a masterclass in visual storytelling (we are given almost no info through exposition, and learn most everything in the midst of constant movement). Dismissing it as just a 13-year-old's wet dream and a mindless action movie comes across as pretty disingenuous, at best.
 
And I would disagree wholeheartedly with your suggestion and wonder if you are simply attempting to be a contrarian for contrarianism's sake. This film explored many themes & had a ton to say about a variety of topics, not to mention it is a masterclass in visual storytelling (we are given almost no info through exposition, and learn most everything in the midst of constant movement). Dismissing it as just a 13-year-old's wet dream and a mindless action movie comes across as pretty disingenuous, at best.
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Oh dang! I'm with you.

"it sure doesn't hold up beyond what was done a long time ago with the first Mad Max."
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What the hell are you talking about? The first Mad Max was a snooze. You probably mean the second one, Mad Max 2: The Road Warrior.

The films are nothing like one another. So, your opinion is at the least... questionable.
 
yoclay said:
I would suggest that people here are so obsessed with the craft that they don't even see that while this may be a 13 year olds wet dream.
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I would suggest you confine your critique of the film to your own opinions about it instead of telling us what we think. Your opinion should be able to stand on its own two feet without essentially saying 'you only like it because you're idiots'. All that's going to do is piss people off. Defend your own opinion. Don't cast aspersions on ours and question our motives.
 
refocusedmedia said:
And I would disagree wholeheartedly with your suggestion and wonder if you are simply attempting to be a contrarian for contrarianism's sake. This film explored many themes & had a ton to say about a variety of topics, not to mention it is a masterclass in visual storytelling (we are given almost no info through exposition, and learn most everything in the midst of constant movement). Dismissing it as just a 13-year-old's wet dream and a mindless action movie comes across as pretty disingenuous, at best.
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I see and so what would be those themes?
Have they been developed in any way shape or form that is convincing and takes us somewhere new really?


I will put it in real plain and simple terms.
This film is nothing but a well crafted COMIC BOOK.
There is not a true sentiment to be found in it anywhere. The acting from the secondary cast is at times downright embarassing.
The script is so bad that the characters even go so far as to TELL US what they represent.
Has Hollywood sunk that low, that they have to tell us rather than show us?
My god, do we really have to have Furiousa tell us that she stands for Redemption?
If that's not exposition in it's most pathetically simplistic form then I don't know what is.

Further, Hardy telling Theron, that they should go back to find redemption (2nd plot point turning towards the resolution) is done in such a trite hackneyed way, how is it possible to be surprised by the ending? How could they take an actor as sensitive and magnificent as he was in The Drop and transform him into Ryan Gossling meets Conan the Barbarian on the set of Lord of the Rings?

At least the first Mad Max had the halfbreed texture of reality, because they couldn't afford to do otherwise.
I never said I like the first film by the way. I said simply that this last film tells us practically nothing more about the character than the first one so long ago.

You know what this reminds me of ? The Warriors (1979) trying to make their way home. We encounter one groovy looking gang after another. There is a heap of violence and in the end we are back we have started. The only difference for me, was that the Warriors was more entertaining.

Come on folks, seriously what can you say that you have taken away from this film, other than a lesson in visual craft than none of us can afford anyway?
This is what headlined Cannes? Seriously?
There is barely a plot, barely good acting, barely character development to be found anywhere. The story and the themes are the barest skeleton of what we have seen a million times before, but hey at least we got some good looking models thrown into the mix!

Lastly, disingenuous implies untruthfulness.
Well, I have been absolutely truthful about what I see here.
Which is a whole lot of hullabaloo about not so much.
I have no illusion that I would convince anyone here of anything, but I will assert my right to state my opinion and call it as I see it.
And in this case, if you look closely, you just might notice too that the emperor definitely has no clothes.
 
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yoclay said:
I would tend to agree with you, and I feel that Mad Max isn't much better. I think it's hyped to heck and frankly it loses it's audience during many portions of it's second act. I just had to look around me to see this. Even explosions are boring when the person driving is asleep at the wheel. Hardy had about as much character as a limp cracker.

I would suggest that people here are so obsessed with the craft that they don't even see that while this may be a 13 year olds wet dream, it sure doesn't hold up beyond what was done a long time ago with the first Mad Max. In fact I don't think the franchise has advanced much of our understanding of the primary character in anything but a superficial manner, but hey it's all about making roller coaster rides that line a few executives pockets, isn't it?

The only redeeming feature of this film beyond the new pyrotechnics is Charlize Theron. However, it's such an obvious star vehicle for her that they might as well have let Hardy hold the umbrella to protect her from the noonday sun.
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It didn't lose the audience at the opening night screening I went to. While the storytelling through action did not live up to the bar set in the late 80s/early 90s it was refreshingly engaging compared to anything recent. I'm an action movie fan, drama bores me. And it has been a long time between drinks so that may be part of the reason it engaged me so much. There was a lot more going on besides 'I have the package and you're chasing, oh no you've got the package and I'm chasing' of action scenes for a long time now. The motivation of the scene never gets beyond catching, getting away or securing the package. In Mad Max choices were being made between competing motivations, plot reveals and character development (admittedly at a fairly shallow level for everyone but Charlize) all happening in motion. A lot of show don't tell. In fact the worst moments of the film was the few moments of clunky verbal exposition. The converse of stopping the movie to have an action scene is the stopping the action scene to have some dialogue a la Joss Whedon. Which sucks just as bad.

Most the complaints of my group revolved around the models and their lack of acting chops (I thought the redhead was engaging though and Megan Gale at least looked cool posing with a gun), the expositionary monologue from the blonde model that unnecessarily summarised the film and the all too brief moment of transition for Nox from bad guy to good guy. In retrospect while I still think it could have been done better, Nox's instant turnaround actually works through the interpretation of being an allegory for women's place in the world and their various relationships with men.

I agree with your assessment with Hardy. His best contributions were while he had the mask on and couldn't speak. As soon as it came off I was dissatisfied. Even while strapped to the front of the car he wasn't capable of the wide-eyed fear/mania that Mel is. I really wish they'd gone with old Max. I don't see why it wouldn't have worked. Or at least if Hardy had made the film his own. It also doesn't work because he is about the same age as Mad Max 2 and yet the world have evolved at least half a generation since then, with this level of dystopia more like two or three. Old Max would actually have made more sense.
 
I would like to say, I'm posting this before I read everyone's review of the movie. I wanted to do it so I wouldn't be sway by other opinions, then I'm going to go back and see what everyone thought about it.

First, I'd like to say I liked it. It was fun. However, I just felt it wasn't really Max's story, so therefore it wasn't Mad Max in the true form. It was a great action movie, and because it was directed by Miller, it definitely qualified as a Mad Max movie. It was Furiosa's movie, which I have no problem with, but why call it Mad Max? lol. Okay let me stop nitpicking. A couple more things that bothered me,... Spoilers below...

I wished War boy Nux did not flip, I wished he stayed bad throughout, and another thing is, the fact that they went back, I can't quite say exactly why that bothered me, but it seems like that entire first hour was for nothing. And why were the bad dudes just chilling there waiting for them to come back? End Spoiler.

But besides all that, I really enjoyed it, especially that fight scene between Max, Furiosa & Nux. But Road Warrior is still King lol.
 
youclay, I'm not clear how you can say that Fury Road is such a hollow shell of a movie. Yes Max's character was underdeveloped in this film and underutilized for a title character, but let's look past that. Let's forget all of the action sequences (one hellva thing to forget!). Let's look at the thematic elements, the world created, the statements being made.

Immortan Joe established a society at the Citadel, and he did it as a religious cult dictatorship. But what he sold his followers on was HOPE. Hope for survival, not just at the moment, but in rebirth in an afterlife ("I live, I die, I'm born again."), and in continuing the human race by breeding with the best selected human females he could find. (It is not stated, by it is easy to draw the assumption that Furiosa was kidnapped originally to be one of these breeder women, but then pressed into other service.)

The story is about HOPE. Furiosa may have sought redemption, but she could not find it when she looked, and Max's one real act was to open her eyes to stop chasing the false dream and instead turn to a real chance at hope. The hope of starting a new life, the hope of survival, the hope of a decent society, instead of women on the run (who without any male counterparts, would eventually die out even if they did find a survivable place). At the end of the film they are going to try to start a new society that is borne of the idea of HOPE in the survival of the human race with its humanity intact.

That may all sound like pipe dreams and a lot of big metaphors to pile onto an action movie, but that's what always made the Mad Max movies so great. There are similar themes in the other three films, and each one is a little different. The tattered remains of civilization still trying to cling to rules that no longer function in #1, Gas=Life and Pappagallo's dreams for his tribe in #2, Aunty Entity's Bartertown and its clashing with the children's New Eden in #3 -- these are all big themes and rumination on society, its breakdown and rebirth. And Max is the one who loses his humanity, tries to deny there's a bit of soul left within him, and then has his inner decency and hero self rise to the occasion in the end, because in the end he truly is our One True Hope for any future at all. Action is nice and all, but this is the stuff that elevates a Mad Max film over something disposable like this week's installment of Fast & Furious 97.

Fury Road doesn't fulfill everything, but it sure hits a lot of those points. There is greatness in there, certainly enough that it doesn't deserve to be dismissed.
 
yoclay said:
This film is nothing but a well crafted COMIC BOOK.
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+1

...But if you can turn your brain off most of it is a fun rollercoaster ride, that you will never think twice about after leaving the theater.

I enjoyed Fury Road, but I would take the original series over this megabuck eye-candy any day.
 
Mitch Gross said:
youclay, I'm not clear how you can say that Fury Road is such a hollow shell of a movie. Yes Max's character was underdeveloped in this film and underutilized for a title character, but let's look past that. Let's forget all of the action sequences (one hellva thing to forget!). Let's look at the thematic elements, the world created, the statements being made.

Immortan Joe established a society at the Citadel, and he did it as a religious cult dictatorship. But what he sold his followers on was HOPE. Hope for survival, not just at the moment, but in rebirth in an afterlife ("I live, I die, I'm born again."), and in continuing the human race by breeding with the best selected human females he could find. (It is not stated, by it is easy to draw the assumption that Furiosa was kidnapped originally to be one of these breeder women, but then pressed into other service.)

The story is about HOPE. Furiosa may have sought redemption, but she could not find it when she looked, and Max's one real act was to open her eyes to stop chasing the false dream and instead turn to a real chance at hope. The hope of starting a new life, the hope of survival, the hope of a decent society, instead of women on the run (who without any male counterparts, would eventually die out even if they did find a survivable place). At the end of the film they are going to try to start a new society that is borne of the idea of HOPE in the survival of the human race with its humanity intact.

That may all sound like pipe dreams and a lot of big metaphors to pile onto an action movie, but that's what always made the Mad Max movies so great. There are similar themes in the other three films, and each one is a little different. The tattered remains of civilization still trying to cling to rules that no longer function in #1, Gas=Life and Pappagallo's dreams for his tribe in #2, Aunty Entity's Bartertown and its clashing with the children's New Eden in #3 -- these are all big themes and rumination on society, its breakdown and rebirth. And Max is the one who loses his humanity, tries to deny there's a bit of soul left within him, and then has his inner decency and hero self rise to the occasion in the end, because in the end he truly is our One True Hope for any future at all. Action is nice and all, but this is the stuff that elevates a Mad Max film over something disposable like this week's installment of Fast & Furious 97.

Fury Road doesn't fulfill everything, but it sure hits a lot of those points. There is greatness in there, certainly enough that it doesn't deserve to be dismissed.
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I don't know Mitch. Hope may be what the film wanted to be about, but I don't think it fulfilled that promise on any level.
I think that Max's clunky line about being careful about Hope before the second plot point and his abrupt switch in thinking isn't credible.
I think it's handed to the public in such an obvious way and frankly I don't think the public took much of that home with them.

I did like the guitarist though.
 
mail4joeg said:
What the hell are you talking about? The first Mad Max was a snooze. You probably mean the second one, Mad Max 2: The Road Warrior.
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Agree to disagree. The first film is hardly a snooze. (I will say it gets a bit clunky before the final act, when it briefly thinks it's a horror film)

After seeing the opening 15 minutes again (I don't think I'd watched this one in over 10 years) I think it stands up fine as one of the best car chase scenes ever. Those low angle, wide angle lenses!
The power struggle between the gang members, they dynamic of the Main Force Patrol, the way they show how Max loves his family...I think it was a brilliantly executed film considering the low budget.

I did like the guitarist though.
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Aggrghhh, yoclay....And I was just starting to like you! hahahaha
 
TheDingo said:
...But if you can turn your brain off most of it is a fun rollercoaster ride, that you will never think twice about after leaving the theater.
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I sincerely pity anyone that feels this way. I urge you to reexamine. This movie is a powerhouse of both storytelling and filmmaking, and demands to be thought about well after leaving the theater.

Suggested reading:

http://www.hitfix.com/harpy/7-ways-mad-max-fury-road-sublimely-subverts-movie-sexism
http://nospockdasgay.tumblr.com/post/119381643753/my-reaction-to-mad-max-fury-road-and-the-utter
http://grantland.com/hollywood-prospectus/mad-max-avengers-cgi-computer-animation-action/
http://birthmoviesdeath.com/2015/05/19/mad-max-fury-road-as-reviewed-by-my-70-year-old-mother-in-law
http://www.rogerebert.com/reviews/mad-max-fury-road-2015
https://thedissolve.com/reviews/1588-mad-max-fury-road/
http://www.themarysue.com/george-miller-feminist-answer-franchise/
http://www.slashfilm.com/mad-max-masculinity/
 
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yoclay said:
I don't know Mitch. Hope may be what the film wanted to be about, but I don't think it fulfilled that promise on any level.
I think that Max's clunky line about being careful about Hope before the second plot point and his abrupt switch in thinking isn't credible.
I think it's handed to the public in such an obvious way and frankly I don't think the public took much of that home with them.

I did like the guitarist though.
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Not to any level? You didn't find anything of value or interest in the society created by Immortan Joe?

Hey, to each his/her own, but I personally got a lot more out of the movie.

And I DID like the guitarist too. It was the perfect level of over-the-top insanity. Sorta their version of playing Ride of the Valkyries in Apocalypse Now (okay, it doesn't quite measure up to that one).

Wonder if Hardy's Max would've been more interesting if he used his Bane voice for the role.
http://www.realmofdarkness.net/pc/sb/batman/bane
 
refocusedmedia said:
I sincerely pity anyone that feels this way. I urge you to reexamine. This movie is a powerhouse of both storytelling and filmmaking, and demands to be thought about well after leaving the theater.

Suggested reading:

http://www.hitfix.com/harpy/7-ways-mad-max-fury-road-sublimely-subverts-movie-sexism
http://nospockdasgay.tumblr.com/post/119381643753/my-reaction-to-mad-max-fury-road-and-the-utter
http://grantland.com/hollywood-prospectus/mad-max-avengers-cgi-computer-animation-action/
http://birthmoviesdeath.com/2015/05/19/mad-max-fury-road-as-reviewed-by-my-70-year-old-mother-in-law
http://www.rogerebert.com/reviews/mad-max-fury-road-2015
https://thedissolve.com/reviews/1588-mad-max-fury-road/
http://www.themarysue.com/george-miller-feminist-answer-franchise/
http://www.slashfilm.com/mad-max-masculinity/
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Yes, and peanut butter and jelly sandwhiches are gastronomic masterpieces too.
I pity all those who don't understand this.
The moral underpinnings of our culture are in fact embedded between those two slices of wonderbread.
 
Not sure if it was the screening or not or the opening was sorta of a dream... but it was like the film was overcranked...

Liked it... but Thunderdome in my opinion was a much better film... really it could have been called Mad Maxine... Charlize was the best thing in the film...

Third act is what pulled it out for me... enjoyed the quiet moments much more than the action...

I like most of Miller's work... well except Happy Feet... .

lol will probably be beat up for this or maybe I don't play video games... but its like Ultron after the 100th robot is destoryed... been there seen that... same with the car crashes... 5 or so is cool but by the time its the 50th car crash... its like I said been there seen that...
 
http://thescreenblog.com/george-miller-mad-max-fury-road-charlize-theron-tom-hardy/

"So we have ‘messed’ with every shot – reracks, resizes, speed changes, sky and background replacement, rig removals, ground removals, digital intermediate colour manipulation using a baselight, but we still feel it is not a computer-generated movie. It is old school meets new school!

...

We also sped up many shots in the film. Almost nothing remains at 24 frames a second. The fastest vehicle could only travel 40 kilometres on the desert floor in Namibia so everything in the dailies looked very slow. Speeding up shots is something George did in the earlier Mad Max films but the technique now is much more refined. In the old days it was either 24 or 12 frames. Now, within the same shot, you can go from 24 to 12 back to 18 frames a second."

Great insight for those interested.
 
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