Fury Road Is The Best Genre Film Since...

I think we can all agree that Fury Road is a rare masterpiece that can be held up with the likes of Aliens, Terminator, Conan, and Escape From New York (I said it!), but what was the last great genre flick prior to this 5 star extravaganza?

I enjoyed John Carter and The Hobbit, but no, they aren't as good. Avengers? Nope. I'm thinking maybe, maybe Raimi's Spider-Man or one of the LotR movies, but they came with a bunch of expected hype...I don't think any of us expected Miller's Fury Road to be what it was.

So, from your point of view, what was the last genre flick that even comes close to Fury Road?

LOTR. Anyone that bellyaches about Arwen being at Helm's Deep instead of acknowledging the staggering achievment those films were in genre filmmaking should be shunned.

But in a way, Fury Road is kind of reboot for genre film in the post-LOTR/post-Marvel context. It's really very back to basics, almost like all the movies between it and 1982 never happened.

Interstellar? Did that take itself too seriously to be a "genre" film?

I liked Interstellar okay, but it's not even close to Fury Road. I'd pick Inception as a better movie than Interstellar, but for me Inception isn't as good as Fury Road, either.

I can see the achievement of the LotR movies filmed as a whole. So would we be saying the best film since RotK then or only considering the trilogy as a single film? Are we leaping over the Nolan Batman films? The Harry Potters?

If we're limiting it to one LOTR film I would choose The Fellowship of the Ring over the others, mostly because it was so much better and well-crafted than I expected (though I was already a Peter Jackson fan and was hoping for the best) and it single handedly set a new standard for quality in fantasy films.

I don't think one should skip over the Nolan Batman films and the clear standout is The Dark Knight, which came out in 2008. All three films are good - and The Dark Knight Rises is growing on me - but TDK is in a class by itself.

I've never been all that enamored with the Harry Potter films. The Prisoner of Azkaban is my favorite and considered to be among the best of the series but I don't consider any of them to be particularly transcendent. Deathly Hallows Part 2 is the other one people pick as the best and it came out in 2011.

The Lord of the Rings trilogy for sure. And a shout out to the Man Bat trilogy. I thought about the recent Marvel movies but while they are totally solid entertainment options I think there is some kind of mystery magic missing to make any of them classics.

I'm STILL waiting for the next science fiction classic to come around... I was hoping Interstellar or Prometheus would be serious candidates but they fucked those up.

Guardians of the Galaxy. That film was the perfect blend. Of all of the Marvel films, this one was dead nuts on as the best example of a "Superhero" genre movie.

Children of Men.

Looper comes close.

Hex Sinister wrote: I thought about the recent Marvel movies but while they are totally solid entertainment options I think there is some kind of mystery magic missing to make any of them classics.

I can see that. I'm cynical about them, but I feel like they're the epitome of films as commercials. Not only for tie-in merch, but for other films as well. Some of them are better than others for sure, but for some reason I just can't get behind any of them as being 'great' films (haven't seen Winter Soldier) much less anywhere near Fury Road's level.

I'd probably have to agree with LotR as well, then before that, probably The Matrix.

What's a genre film?

My GF hates that word in English, "john-ra"! Whenever we watch an interview on a show or movie and someone says that, I laugh at her reaction.

In French it means "like " and is used in the same way Valley girls say "like" a hundred times in a sentence. Drives me nuts

So if that's the context of what a genre film is, then my vote would be Clueless

Black Barney wrote: In French it means "like " and is used in the same way Valley girls say "like" a hundred times in a sentence. Drives me nuts

So if that's the context of what a genre film is, then my vote would be Clueless

Well, that's the colloquial use, but it's not all it's used for. It also means the feminine/masculine type of a word (in Homer's words: "In French, every word's a boy or a girl!" - he meant substantives, but whatever); also simply "type".

English uses it to designate speculative fiction works.

I'd put Dredd in the running even though this film was overlooked and underrated by the critics.

www.imdb.com/title/tt1343727/