Review: Mad Max: Fury Road

Michael C here to review my most anticipated film of the summer. Isn't it wonderful when anticipation and quality go together?

With each passing Summer the concept of the Event Movie gets a little more cheapened, a little more downgraded. Like eyes adjusting to darkness, we see weightless CG blurs collide with other weightless CG blurs and deem it good enough. That is until a film like George Miller’s Mad Max: Fury Road comes along to rip the curtains down and the light flood in. No, that image is not strong enough. Fury Road tears through the multiplex like a great cleansing fire, leaving the great herd of lesser, timid blockbusters scattering to escape its path. 

It may seem an odd declaration to make about a franchise reboot, itself the third sequel in a series dormant since 1985’s Beyond Thunderdome. But Miller proves that any project can attain greatness with the right spirit of reckless ambition. The prevailing mentality is that an established brand is an excuse to play it safe, to scrub a rehash of the original story down to a neutered PG-13 so as not to risk alienating a single ticket buyer on Earth. George Miller goes full tilt in the opposite direction, embracing the franchise’ twisted id...

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Posterized: "Mad" George Miller, an Australian Oddity

George Miller, the 70 year old director reportedly putting much younger action directors to shame with Mad Max: Fury Road, hails from Australia and he's never quite left. He never went full Hollywood so to speak or, at least, his movies retained their oddity even when he did (Witches of Eastwick). Speaking of odd. His only Oscar is for Best Animated Feature though that's hardly what he's known for.

My favorite peculiarity about his filmography is that you can neatly divide it into three consecutive parts... at least until he comes circling back to Mad Max this very weekend. 

1. Mad Max
2. Susan Sarandon
3. Talking Animals

How many have you seen? 

* Strictly speaking he has two other directorial credits but one of them is only a segment in an omnibus film (Twilight Zone: The Movie) and the other is one of those title only outliers that you just kind of have to trust IMDb that it exists at all 

We Can't Wait #4: Mad Max: Fury Road

Team Experience is counting down our 15 most anticipated for 2015. Here's Glenn...

Who & What: Despite being a sequel – and a third sequel at that – there’s something refreshing about seeing Mad Max: Fury Road on the summer schedule. A passion project of the classic variety, George Miller’s 30-years-in-the-making fourth entry in the influential and groundbreaking dystopian action franchise comes to screens with fire-cannons blazin’. Starring a barely audible Tom Hardy, Charlize Theron’s shaved head and Nicholas Hoult with cracked-out make-up, this elaborately mounted Aussie action fantasy will surely be an IMAX spectacle of the highest order.

Why We’re Excited: Have you seen The Road Warrior? That’s why we’re excited. George Miller is one of the finest director of whizz-bang sequences that cinema has ever seen and I can only imagine what he’ll do with the mammoth budget that he was (inexplicably) given for Fury Road. It’s unlikely that Miller’s distinctly one-of-a-kind automobile mayhem will be what mainstream blockbuster audiences think they want in a year that has Avengers and Star Wars sequels, but it’s also unlikely that Fury Road will be like anything we’ve ever seen before. And then there’s the trailer. The best trailer of any film this year that we’ll see I’m sure of it. It genuinely should’ve been considered for Oscar’s best live-action short category.

What if It All Goes Wrong? George Miller doesn’t exactly do quiet very well. Despite receiving an Oscar nomination for the dying-child melodrama Lorenzo’s Oil, his directing career is more known for bombastic explosions of style. I’ve been skeptical of the project for a while given it started filming over three years ago and has been through more delays than I can count. Furthermore, what we’ve heard suggests the movie is literally just one long, extended chase scene and that Hardy barely speaks a word. Miller’s walking on a very shaky tightrope here and he could face-plant in the worst way, but much like James Cameron it’s probably not wise to bet on it.

When: Max takes over screens globally on May 15^th. Only Japan and Brazil have to wait an extra week. How will they cope?!?

Previously...
#5 The Lobster
#6 Crimson Peak
#7 45 Years
#8 Bridge of Spies
#9 Taxi
#10 Freeheld
#11 A Bigger Splash
#12 The Dressmaker
#13 The Hateful Eight
#14 Knight of Cups
#15 Arabian Nights
Sidebar 3 Animated Films
Sidebar 2 Tomorrowland
Sidebar 1 Avengers: Age of Ultron
Intro Pick a Blockbuster