Mad Max: Fury Road

2015 action sequel

Rating: 16/20 (Other Person in Theater: no rating)

Plot: Max, following prolonged exposure to mercury while making felt hats, sulks around a desert wasteland until a bunch of pasty guys employ him as a blood bag. Sean Penn's future wife runs off with the king's five wives, and a chase ensues.

That's right--I made a very rare trip to the theater to see this thing. This also marks a first for me as I saw this in 3D accidentally. I don't think Mad Max: Fury Road is a movie that best shows off 3D's capabilities or anything, but I was really unimpressed and can't see myself wanting to do that again. This is also the first movie I can remember watching in a theater by myself since the second Kill Bill movie. There was one other person in the theater with me. We both waited around until the credits were over, and on my way out, she said, "That was so good! I'm going to see that one again." I don't like talking to people and said something like, "Yeah, it was crazy." I forgot to ask her what her rating was but wouldn't have liked explaining my rating system anyway.

The movie really is completely crazy. It's almost like somebody said, "Hey, I wonder if anybody would watch a post-apocalyptic chase sequence for two hours," and then decided to just go ahead and make one and find out. I'm most impressed that this doesn't feel like a reboot at all. It should. It's got a brand new person playing Max; it takes advantage of modern technologies they didn't have when making the original trilogy, giving this a flashier and glossier look; and the score is throbbingly contemporary. This surprised me with how well it feels like just another chapter in Max's troubled existence though. Tom Hardy, the kind of actor who doesn't really need a lot of dialogue anyway, resembles Mel Gibson enough to make that transition seamless. He also grunts a lot. The shinier, more computer-generated version of this post-apocalyptic world that was so frequently duplicated but never quite matched in the 80's looks terrific--mostly miles and miles and miles of lonely sand. There's also an ingenious stone "castle," the only other set you get other than the aforementioned miles and miles and miles of desert. Because seriously--this movie really is just one gigantic car chase through a desert wasteland. I am not exaggerating about that. That score I mentioned, composed by something called Junkie XL, didn't really hurt this film's ability to blend with the original 80 movies as Beyond Thunderdome has a score that sounds contemporary anyway. Mostly, it's all about the vehicles and the stunt work. The vehicular monstrosities that grace the screen in this are actual working Frankensteinian beasts that catch fire, flip around, speed through desert sands, run over people, fly through the air, have people dangling from them, blow up, ram into each other, careen down cliff sides, and then start all over and do it all over again. I don't know how some of these machines even move with seemingly seven other vehicle pieces glued onto them. I do know that I wouldn't want to be poised on top of any of them which is precisely what the stunt men and stunt women do for the majority of this movie. This stuff looks dangerous, but it kept my eyes glued to the screen for the duration, real Spectacle that earns that capital S. Big dumb action movies aren't necessarily my thing, but when it's done this well, this old-school, and this beautifully, it becomes less big dumb action movie and more like something close to a work of art. This is artistic machismo movie making, and I felt my balls grow as the movie went on.

It's hard not to fall in love with this kind of creativity. The vehicle design is one thing--I especially dug the spiky vehicles that reminded me of The Cars That Ate Paris--but dig these characters. The main bad guy sounds all growly with this skull-ish gas mask thing, the half-alive soldiers are crazy enough to almost root for, and all these auxiliary characters somehow manage to simultaneously blend in with everything in this perfectly-created world while popping out of the screen and standing out. I want action figures of all of them, and I don't even collect action figures. And don't even get me started on flamethrower guitar guy. Does this movie need a flamethrower guitar guy? No. I mean, does any movie need one? But this movie fucking has one, and that's part of what makes it something that I want to watch again and again. Oh, and this is the second Mad Max movie in a row with a little fellow, some guy named Quentin Kenihan who is really cool. Cherize Theron's one-armed character is really good and just might be the main character in Mad Max's movie. Hardy's a more-than-admirable Mel Gibson. And there's a guy named Rictus Erectus. And old people. And a flamethrower guitar player! Oh, I already mentioned him.

One thing though: That "what a lovely day" catchphrase at the top of the poster was preceded by a "What a day" which was an obvious attempt to capitalize on the success of Tommy Wiseau's The Neighbors.