Mad Max: Fury Road (2015)

[Nostalgia]

Max is the title character but everything else is Furiosa , best written and performed character in recent times. 

 

I think pitch perfect 2 can't be more femine than madmax with Furiosa in ...... LOL

[ShouldIBeHere]

Not sure how successful this will be, people seemed very mixed here.

Great action opera with some truly poetic image-language and story-driven action scenes that are lacking from so many recent blockbusters.

Biggest issue was Max' character who remained completely in the shadows of Joe and Furiosa.

I hope it inspires some directors of action heavy movies. It is a great movie, yet no absolute masterpiece IMHO.

A- 9/10

[Goffe]

Watched it again

 

The action, the aspect that everyone is praising the most, is the problem I have with this. Too much too early.

 

Personally, I can’t enjoy action sequences if I barely know any of the characters, if I’m not attached to any of them, it isn’t exciting, it isn't gripping, it’s just a bunch of spectacular images, nothing more.

 

In my ideal world, the film would be more character based, a couple minutes shorter and the action would get bigger as the film progressed, not the other way around.

 

The film shines every time Miller focuses on characters, they’re interesting, don’t surrender to clichés and the performances are on-point. The world building and action are impressive despite the problems I had with it. Script and direction are near perfect, Miller didn't go for the predictable route or easy solution one single time, taking a surprising turn every time.

 

The second act is far away the best part of it I think.

 

I enjoyed just as much as the last time, but now it’s clearer why I didn't fall in love like everyone else did.

 

80/100

 

What was the point of Max’s visions?

Cinderella still is the best movie of the year so far.

[Plain Old Tele]

What was the point of Max’s visions?

 

To illustrate his PTSD. He's literally haunted by the memories and visions of people he cared about and couldn't save. That's what drove him to essentially an animal state of survival, and what he has to push away in order to become a person again... and of course the irony is that the vision of his child is also what enables him to do that.

[Fanboy]

Are your friends movie fanatics though? Or just normal people that like to go to the cinema? I think this film is simply too weird for casual movie goers and unlike us, casual movie goers couldn't give a shit if a certain action scene was constructed solely on stunts and no green screen, the dobt care about symbolic images or feminist pleasing heroic leads like critics do, they prefer stuff that looks cool with a story they can engage with. I think the lowest this movie drops this weekend is 45%, im expecting a 50-55% drop but I'd like to be wrong.

One is a movie buff. The rest are all pretty casual. Saw it with my cousin today and she really liked it too. Word of mouth seems very positive just from what I've heard among people and what they've wrote on Facebook. I'd put money on a sub 50% drop this weekend. Sure, generally speaking it might be getting mixed reactions from audiences, but so did Gravity. It was the high praise from the people who did like it that propelled its box office.

[TalismanRing]

To illustrate his PTSD. He's literally haunted by the memories and visions of people he cared about and couldn't save. That's what drove him to essentially an animal state of survival, and what he has to push away in order to become a person again... and of course the irony is that the vision of his child is also what enables him to do that.

 

It felt clunky, a big ole sign post screaming PSTD without doing any of the real groundwork.  I didn't buy his transition from surviving animal into becoming a person.  Like Oakland, there wasn't a lot there there in the performance or the writing. As a character Mad Max lacked the vulnerable fractured humanity and ferocious drive that Gibson brought to the role.  Furiosa better filled that role though not as well because it wasn't set up and written as well as in the first two Mad Maxes.

[Plain Old Tele]

It felt clunky, a big ole sign post screaming PSTD without doing any of the real groundwork.  I didn't buy his transition from surviving animal into becoming a person.  Like Oakland, there wasn't a lot there there in the performance or the writing. As a character Mad Max lacked the vulnerable fractured humanity and ferocious drive that Gibson brought to the role.  Furiosa better filled that role though not as well because it wasn't set up and written as well as in the first two Mad Maxes.

 

Oakland?

 

Sure, it was obvious.... but Miller tends to be really subjective and the whole point is just to put you in his head at those moments. I did buy the transition, though it was more powerful for me the second time around. I agree that Hardy's Max doesn't reach Gibson's, but that's a high ladder to climb, especially with how the character's been reimagined. But Furiosa I felt was arguably better than anyone in any of the original MAXs.

[Jessie]

The opening 10 minutes of this film were incredible, one of the best set ups I've seen in a long time, but then the film stopped focusing on Max .

[TalismanRing]

Oakland?

 

Sure, it was obvious.... but Miller tends to be really subjective and the whole point is just to put you in his head at those moments. I did buy the transition, though it was more powerful for me the second time around. I agree that Hardy's Max doesn't reach Gibson's, but that's a high ladder to climb, especially with how the character's been reimagined. But Furiosa I felt was arguably better than anyone in any of the original MAXs.

 

Gertrude Stein on her returning to her childhood Oakland home  - "there is no there there".   Which has since commonly, pejoratively and unfairly been used to describe the entire city. 

 

I would say devolved more than re-imagined. The original Mad Max seems to have been split into two characters -   Mad Max and Furiosa.

[TalismanRing]

The opening 10 minutes of this film were incredible, one of the best set ups I've seen in a long time, but then the film stopped focusing on Max .

 

It really did.  But at a  certain point it became funny about how so much wasn't about him.   Like when he leaves for his big badass/confrontation/fight where he finally wins at something and returns with all the ammo covered in other people's blood and it all happens off screen. It's like Miller is saying - Psyche!

Edited May 19, 2015 by TalismanRing

[Jake Gittes]

That was beautiful.

[JohnnyGossamer]

I fall somewhere in between you two on the PTSD visions. I thought they looked hyper slick. But, they didn't do anything for me and eventually became a distraction. Agree with Max being a hollow version of his former self and Furiosa absorbing the attributes he flexed in the earlier films, especially the later half of Max and the entirety of Road Warrior. I liked that. I also thought it stretched the character of Max extremely thin in that he's two characters. As written, he's a hollowed, essentially mute Buster Keaton. And, he's also Furiosa. One less arm and a hazy back-story of abduction being her reason for redemption. Theron was so fucking good. Although drawn far better than any other character in the wasteland apocalypse, I didn't think Furiosa was drawn nearly as well as Charlize portrayed her. Theron breathed remarkable, brutal, fiery life into the new, improved, revised Max. She was more Mel's Max than Hardy. And, upon second viewing, it's pretty damn clear that was Miller's central aim. And, it's pretty brilliant.

 

These are old campfire stories, right? Legends passed on for generations, no? Be pretty funny if Miller turns all the controversy on its head in the next one and reveals Furiosa and/or one of the surviving wives is an extremely unreliable narrator and just literally stole Mad's fury to infuse more power to suit her/their agenda in the Citadel they rule. They could milk something else from only the worthiest men to propagate their idea of an ideal kin. That'd be a hell of hysterically horrific image for dudes.That might actually stir up some real controversy. Call it Gone Max: Book Of Furiosa.

 

Oh... I did like it more the second go 'round. Right on the verge to bumping it to an A- but still a B+. Final score until RedBox BluRay allows a third go 'round.

Edited May 19, 2015 by JohnnyGossamer

[dashrendar44]

The ellipsis was so powerful. Max comes back like the living legend he is bathed with the blood of his enemies emerging from the darkness like a born again and Furiosa gains immense respect toward him as he purifies himself with the Mothers milk like a baptism that he is indeed on Furiosa and the brides side. We see it in the gazes of Furiosa and the brides from their POV. It was really the symbolic turning point when Furiosa and Max assert their trust and mutual respect to each other, sealing it all. It is also a chuckling moment capping and paying off the previous beat when Furiosa uses him as a sniper rifle stand. Max was like "OK, I'm not as good as you regarding your sniper skills but let me take out this tank all by myself, I'll be back in a minute..."

Edited May 19, 2015 by MADash Rendar

[Plain Old Tele]

One less arm and a hazy back-story of abduction being her reason for redemption.

 

But that doesn't make it less powerful, it just means it's inferred. You get a sense of how you move up through the ranks of the War Boys to become one of their leaders... and you can imagine the things she's seen (and done) to get to that point. I also like how it's not completely clear that she's doing this simply to do an altruistic deed; part of her motivation was simple revenge, to hurt the man who hurt her by taking his most precious possessions from him, though of course there's a significant part of her choice was to help save the Wives from the rest of their terrible lives.

 

There's another understated moment (well, understated compared to the rest of the movie), when Max finally makes the suggestion to turn back, and the mental ellipsis between "we'll be able to...." and "... together ...", the years of solitary survival going by the wayside as he consciously chooses community (and hope, and redemption).

[JohnnyGossamer]

 I also like how it's not completely clear that she's doing this simply to do an altruistic deed

I also thought it made her likelihood of success much greater as the precious cargo made her a more difficult target. As in, her knowing he'd go to such great lengths to avoid damaging said cargo. I actually thought, aside from wanting to hurt Immortan Joe, that made the most sense and I loved it for that. More of a I gotta get out of here and this dead weight will help me. The more wives the merrier.

 

So much inference makes the insinuations more horrific than what I personally felt. I had that issue in both viewings. Sometimes, in the case of this one, it's almost leaned on as a crutch to support the meaning and power of it. A lot of movies infer a lot of horrific things occurring in the past of the lead player. Heck, in Polanski's Chinatown, the whole film's based around what's insinuated happened to Jake in Chinatown. But, depending on the viewer, inference/insinuations either stick or don't stick. What's inferred throughout Fury Road with many of the characters of stuck for me about half of the time. That's just a subjective, personal reaction that may or may not change with repeat viewings.

 

I definitely appreciated just how absurdly deft the staging/choreography of the action yesterday night. Also, I sought out more of the themes in the imagery and steampunk influences Dash had mentioned... Very impressive world building. Just so fucking unreal and yet so real within Miller's realm.

Edited May 19, 2015 by JohnnyGossamer

[Blankments]

On a rewatch, I realize that my issue with the first act is that, even though the action is really well-defined, the only person you're empathizing with is Nux, since everyone else hasn't been fleshed out yet. However, as soon as the Nux/Furiosa/Max fight starts, the movie becomes great because we start to truly understand our three protagonists. Still an A+, if just because even without good character work, the first act still excels in the world-building that makes the rest of the film understandable.

[Spidey Freak]

Converted.

[Phil in the Blank]

Greatest Action movie ever.

[baumer]

Looks up word ellipses.....doesn't understand why it's used here....how is it a mental ellipses?

[dashrendar44]

Looks up word ellipses.....doesn't understand why it's used here....how is it a mental ellipses?

 

It's "ellipsis", the figure of speech in rhetorics.

Edited May 20, 2015 by MADash Rendar