I have always loved the Mad Max movies. I remember 
being a kid and watching the poorly dubbed original Mad Max and falling in love. When Road Warrior came on cable in the 1980s my brother and I watched it every time it aired. We used to act out scenes using the dining room table as a semi and the chairs were cars. Then there was Beyond Thunderdome even though it was the weakest of the 3 I still gave it multiple viewings. Now that you know this you can guess how excited I was when I heard about Mad Max: Fury Road. After all this time they were rebooting on of my favorite franchises. So last night with one of my oldest friends in tow I hit the theater plunked down my hard earned cash for a 3-D screening then sat back to relive my childhood. After a little over 2 hours all I can say is I want my money back. Yes, I know that I am in the minority but I didn’t even remotely enjoy my travels on the Fury Road.
Caution: Mild Spoilers Ahead
I have read nothing but glowing reviews praising George Miller’s genius vision that was Mad Max: Fury Road and yes, it is visually appealing but it lacks substance. I feel that one of the goals of a movie is to make you feel something for the characters. You are supposed to relate to the main character or at least empathize with them. Sadly I didn’t even care if Max (Tom Hardy) was killed. To help you understand what I am saying, I must talk about the plot. The story opens with Max being chased across a desert wasteland by unknown forces. He is captured and set up to be used as a blood supply for this group of madmen whenever someone is injured. We find that this group is led by someone called Immortan Joe (Hugh Keays-Byrne) who is a ruthless dictator with control of the most precious substance in the world, water. While Max is being held, Imperator Furiosa (Charlize Theron) takes the opportunity to escape Joe’s clutches with a bevy of beauties who are some of Joe’s unwilling wives. During Joe’s pursuit of his property, Max manages to escape and join up with Furiosa and the girls. What follows is 2 hours of chasing, very little plot, very little dialog and some stunning visuals. That is the extent of what I will tell you of the movie because frankly, there really isn’t much else to talk about.
I will say that the vehicle designs and the total look of the film are incredible. The haphazard assembly of everything builds a total world. There was one scene in the mud zone where there were people walking on 4 stilts to get around in the mud. They were very surreal and looked like something out of The Dark Crystal. The look of these people illustrated that in this world you either overcome or perish. The score of the film by Junkie XL is perfect for the action on the screen and Miller’s direction is top notch. You would think this would be a perfect storm for a great movie; I don’t know how in hell they missed the mark. I kept waiting for something of significance to happen but it never did. Fans of the Mad Max
movies know that Max lost his family in the first movie, causing his wandering. In this version, we never know for a fact he lost his family but we can surmise from the random flashes of Max’s memories. We see a woman and little girl in these flashes but for all we know they were just some random people he close to. Hell, we don’t find out about Furiosa’s back story until almost the end of the film. We know that her and her mother were kidnapped but by whom? Was it Joe? Was it slavers? Was it the Republican Party? We don’t know…but we want to know so we as the viewers can care. Bottom line I didn’t care enough about the characters to root for them to get away. Part of me wished Joe would win. Since we don’t know shit about what is going on for all we know Joe wasn’t evil; he was getting revenge for his own family’s death. Maybe he was trying to repopulate the world to replace his murdered family. We don’t know and sadly we never will since no one bothered to write a script for this movie. The writers, George Miller, Brendan McCarthy and Nick Lathouris must have watched every Fast and Furious movie and thought, “screw a plot…write a car chase.”
Maybe my assessment of the movie is 100% wrong. Every other review I have read has called this movie amazing. My friends are telling their friends on Facebook to see this waste of time. Some of these people work in the film business so I am at a loss as to why I didn’t like it. I did question 3 people who were in the theater with me, who happened to be film students and they said had been waiting for a plot as well.
Bottom line…this movie is like a beautiful woman with no personality. Amazing to look at but lacks any substance. Sleep with her once and all you have is the memory and the regret. I wanted to like this movie but sadly (if you couldn’t tell) I didn’t. Save your money, there are plenty more movies coming out this summer.
