It's
difficult for me to say this, but I like this one more than 'The Road
Warrior'. Not a whole lot more, but on a series so bent of explosions
and chase scenes, a modern film that's effectively a two hour long
explosion-filled chase scene using real explosions, stuntmen, and a
cacophony of special effects will win out against my old favourite.
This
has some of the best action I've ever seen in a film. The cars were
all great (though it hurt to see his Interceptor get trashed as soon
as the movie began) and there's too much awesome stunt work to list
individually. Suffice to say that the action elements were all
exemplary and were shot beautifully.
Even
the big bad was better fleshed out than his predecessors (who were
visually great, but lacked much depth). The fairytale quality to the
legend of Max continues, and we have a further step up from
'Thunderdome', with this film featuring a huge castle like structure
complete with knights, damsels in distress, and hordes of mutant
peasantry. Max comes into all this, and characteristically just wants
out. But of course the very empathy that distances himself from this
world's villains forces him to help some people out, and so we have
conflict that goes beyond merely trying to escape selfishly.
This
is standard stuff for the Max films, and I'm glad to see that we came
back to it here, and that this film didn't try to re-do his origin
story or something. I don't care that it's not Gibson; Max is a bit
like Bond, in that the legend is bigger than the man himself.
The
few detriments I can think of are basically just about scale. We're
going even more outlandish here, which works fine for me in this
universe, but with this comes a feeling of Hollywood, where each good
character's death comes with a big cinema moment. In 'Road Warrior'
several of the main good guys die almost immediately after the main
chase starts, and not a huge deal is made of it. This film is more
traditionally cinematic, with main characters mattering more in it's
fiction. This is what comes with a production shift to America and an
inflated budget though, and it's not a huge deal. It certainly didn't
annoy me during viewing, and on the flip side we get this beautiful cinematography, with every shot looking like a painting, each practical explosion looking oily and real, and every surface covered with grit and flaking paint.
Mad Max: Fury Road: 78.7