Mad Max: Fury Road

One little detail I loved was that every time a character came into contact with a wasteland creature, they ate it. Max with the two-headed lizard, Nux seeing a beetle for the first time... and eating it. Small details that helped reinforce the struggle for survival in an unforgiving wasteland.

Michael Barnes wrote:

Mad Dog wrote: The movie is kind of like a music video for the Doof Warrior. I mean that in a good way. Dude easily stole any scene he was in.

The latest in a long line of scene-stealing Mad Max characters. I mean, come on...Max is nowhere near the most interesting character in any of these movies. Think about it:

- The Night Rider
- Master Blaster
- Doctor Dealgood
- Iron Bar
- That deformed dwarf
- Wez
- Warrior Woman
- Pappagallo
- Feral Kid
- Pig Killer
- The Bullet Farmer
- Furiosa's Lieutenant
- Gyro Captain/Jedidiah (and son)
- Scrooloose, Savannah, etc.

And that's without listing the main villains, the Brides, Furiosa, or Lux. All of these minor characters that all feel like they have these big stories behind them. It's almost like Star Wars in how Miller creates these almost throwaway figures that collectively build the world and populate it with colorful, unique characters. Doof Warrior/Coma Doof whatever is par for course.

And the blind saxophone player from Thunderdome, Tonton. Another instance of a character playing the soundtrack.

Dude does nothing but play the saxophone and turn around. And yet he's unforgettable. So is the water peddler- "what's a little fallout, eh?"

Michael Barnes wrote: Gosh, now that I'm into day 2 of my post-Fury Road life...

Ha! That's great!

Going back to Leone and showing so much with so little...how about that little telescope dwarf at the end? At the beginning of the film, he's hanging out (huzzah!) in Joe's inner circle and you get a sense he has some degree of pull. Then at the end when Furiosa reveals Joe's body...all that dude does is a little 'hmmpf'...if even that. Just a little twitch, but from it you know he isn't going to send who's left in the citadel to attack her. It's a movement that says 'the citadel is yours...'.

No need for a coronation scene or a character running up and saying 'Furiosa runs citadel'.

Masterful.

What's incredible is, yes, this could have been made 30 years ago, but the fact that it was filmed recently but still in that Leone/kurosawa/early lucas style. I mean Miller basically checked most influences of the past 30 years of blockbuster filmmaking and went pure old school. I'm not sure I could distill myself back down to where I was 20-30 years ago...yet he seemed to do it with 150mil on the line.

A few more thoughts on Fury Road: dichotomouspurity.blogspot.com/2015/05/dramas-milk.html

Mad Dog wrote:

Michael Barnes wrote:

Mad Dog wrote: The movie is kind of like a music video for the Doof Warrior. I mean that in a good way. Dude easily stole any scene he was in.

The latest in a long line of scene-stealing Mad Max characters. I mean, come on...Max is nowhere near the most interesting character in any of these movies. Think about it:

- The Night Rider
- Master Blaster
- Doctor Dealgood
- Iron Bar
- That deformed dwarf
- Wez
- Warrior Woman
- Pappagallo
- Feral Kid
- Pig Killer
- The Bullet Farmer
- Furiosa's Lieutenant
- Gyro Captain/Jedidiah (and son)
- Scrooloose, Savannah, etc.

And that's without listing the main villains, the Brides, Furiosa, or Lux. All of these minor characters that all feel like they have these big stories behind them. It's almost like Star Wars in how Miller creates these almost throwaway figures that collectively build the world and populate it with colorful, unique characters. Doof Warrior/Coma Doof whatever is par for course.

And the blind saxophone player from Thunderdome, Tonton. Another instance of a character playing the soundtrack.

Toadie, the MC for Humongous.

Michael Barnes wrote: Yet nobody really cares about craftsmanship like that anymore, it's completely devalued by spectacle and un-reality.

And, as was said before, nostalgia. Fury Road isn't nostalgic. There certainly seem to be nods to Mad Max fans, but it's a completely separate work from the others. At no point does Max need to go into a cave and learn from old Mel Gibson that Immortan Joe is bad guy. It wasn't a parade of "see? don't you remember this from when you were a kid? it's back!" And in-between action moments the characters did things other than exchange witty banter you can put on a t-shirt or a Tumblr post or a microbadge.

That's what impresses me so much. Fury Road is chock full of "fuck yeah" moments but, unlike so much current media, it doesn't also forget to put something else in the movie. So many current movies (and TV shows, Doctor Who) have no idea what to do when they aren't trying to make people go "holy shit, that was AWESOME". They don't know how to make so-called badass characters do anything other than be badass 24/7.

Another related thing is, a friend was complaining that Max was too much of a dick for too long. I'm not sure I agree with that. Max isn't a dick. I mean he is, but that's not just what he's doing. He's not only in an environment without trust, he's hurt. Emotionally and physically. Without Nux, he would have died in a cage in the first 15 minutes of the movie. With Nux, he was bolted to the front of a speeding car and drained of blood. He's broken and devolved and in no mood physically and mentally to do anything other than get away and lick his wounds. (And, symbolically, he's still chained to the world Furiosa is trying to leave.) He needs to get better and be assured he's in good hands. I point this out because for too many movies, he WOULD be just being a dick. And why not? Movie audiences (and nerd ones especially) LOVE people who are dicks. It makes them more badass. But Max isn't badass as a result, he's a goddamn hurt dog and he's pathetic. He's a mangy skin and bones, shaking animal still growling at you as though he's got even a quarter of the energy to really put up a fight. Even in an action movie setting where people shrug off crippling and mortal injuries and come back for more he's weak and pitiful at this point. I think it's a big difference and one of the many ways this movie deviates from the action movie norm.

I saw this last night, having not seen the earlier movies. I liked it a lot, especially the lack of exposition that you guys are talking about. Contrast it with recent action movies like the Marvels or even worse, Inception, and it really stands out as a movie that creates a world without explaining every detail.

That is a great point Lego. Max is not a dick AT ALL. He is like a savage animal...or perhaps an abused dog. Everything he does in the movie is based on his desire to survive. He is a loner...doesn't trust anyone. His first instincts are to attack, lash out and possibly escape. It takes him a while to gain the trust of Fiorosa, but once he does you see his other character traits appear...nobility and loyalty. It goes back to his days as a cop, but in all the films when pushed to the edge Max always does the right thing and helps those that need it.

A great example of this is when he goes back to fight the Bullet Farmer off-screen. They ask him what to do if he doesn't make it back in time. He responds in a way and with a look that says, "you keep going on without me...what the fuck else would you do? Don't worry bout me".

His character isn't meant to be a dick or GRITTY for the sake of being cool...he's a broken man. I think the film does a damn good job of portraying that.

I saw this for a second time last night in 3-D. Never seen a movie in 3-D before... can't say I enjoy it. Despite the slight distraction of 3-D it was really good a second time. Knowing the parts I loved and being less in awe of the action stuff let me focus on some of the car designs and more subtle details. I went with a group of friends about 8 years younger than me, so most of them had no idea of the other Mad Max movies, everyone really enjoyed it except one couple. My first viewing was an A+, the second an A... pretty high praise.

"yet he seemed to do it with 150mil on the line."

Yeah, the first lord of the rings movie was only 90 million!

Interview parts I thought others migh like to read.

Miller, who turned 70 in March, said he didn’t go into Fury Road with a feminist agenda. “But it couldn’t be a man taking five wives from another man; that’s an entirely different story. So there was Furiosa, and everything grew out of that.” In the film, she and Max meet first as enemies before finding a common ground.

Furiosa’s one arm was an element Miller said was there from the start. “She had to be a warrior … and the moment you see that you know she’s been through a lot. And it was going to be expensive to do because — ” Theron cut in with: “Because I didn’t want to cut my arm off?”

Miller also praised his wife, film editor Margaret Sixel, for her work on the film, after she revealed she had spent some 6,000 hours editing it from 450 hours of raw footage down to its two-hour running time.

“She’s never cut an action movie before, and when she said ‘Why on Earth would you want me to cut the movie?’ I said, because if it was the usual kind of guys it would look like every other action movie you see. And she basically said, ‘My main job here is to stop you from embarrassing yourself.’ She won’t say that, but I can.”

Miller said the new movie doesn’t fit specifically into the timeline of the previous films. “It’s probably after Thunderdome,” he allowed. “It’s an episode in the life of Max and his world. I never wrote any of the stories with a chronological connection.”

Any theories on why Max decided to bug out in the end? Everything he does in the movie is for pure survival, and with that knowledge I can't understand why he didn't stay at Citadel. There was life there and a chance to help the people there rebuild. Did he cut out because he knew the Bullet Farmers and Gas Town would be hot on their heels or what? I'd almost go with Max is a loner and numero uno is his priority but if that's true then he would stay to see how things play out, right? And I'm not so sure about the loner part either. He obviously became attached to the wives and Furiosa, fighting for them and showing real emotion when Furiosa was close to fading away.

On another note, I like the fan theory that the feral kid grew up to be this Max. Especially after seeing how Hardy played the character. He's not like Gibson's Max at all, other than the back story and gear. Who was the girl haunting him? Did she ever call him daddy? I don't think she did so that leads me to believe that was not his daughter but perhaps someone else he had come to care about. It's obvious Max is running from his past and takes on the task to help the wives in their fight for freedom. Perhaps that's why Max bugs out. Is he so broken he can't trust to hope for a future and doesn't want to get attached to more victims that will haunt him?

It's not the Feral Kid. When you see him crawl under the truck, you see the knee brace from the Road Warrior. There's only one Max. And at some point his daughter in the visions does call him "Daddy".

He leaves at the end for the same reason he almost left them after they met the Vuvalini and the exact reason you elaborated: He doesn't want to care about people and lose them again the same way he did his family. He's willing to help people like he did in the two previous films, but long-term attachment isn't in the cards until he lets that wall all the way down.

I thought Hardy played it EXACTLY like the post-family Max in Mad Max and The Road Warrior. He only has about a dozen lines in The Road Warrior, so he's the same taciturn person there as he is here. I was surprised by how well Hardy was able to assume the persona of Max the way Gibson did and add even more depth to it than the latter ever did (which, admittedly, was quite early in his career.)

Saw it today:

10/10!