Movie Issues: Mad Max: Fury Road

This summer we see the return of a sci-fi cult hero who hasn’t been seen in over 30 years, written and directed by his original creator, George Miller, who worked tediously for years to bring him back. Making fans wait, he has finally returned to the screen: Mad Max, hero of his own post-apocalyptic series of films that started in 1979. After months of on set issues and re-shoots Miller finally gets to unleash his movie: Mad Max: Fury Road. Was it worth the wait? No. No it was not.

Miller comes back to what made him a name back in the day by trying once again to capture what made Mad Max a cult star. With the casting of Tom Hardy in the lead role, it seemed a sure bet this would be awesome, and it does have its awesome moments. After spending years in “development hell” the film finally advanced into the production stage and the on-set issues started: weather, stunt injuries, location dramas, etc. The movie was even pushed back a whole year due to the need for more re-shoots. Ultimately, after a long wait, Miller finally got to make the movie he wanted.

Miller described the film as “a very simple allegory, almost a western on wheels.” This leads me to wonder if Miller has actually ever seen a western? Because this is not one. This movie is a chaotic mess with no clear direction; all style and no substance. The movie relies on you knowing Mad Max already. Sure, there’s a small voice-over recap in the beginning, but it really doesn’t tell you anything about him or the world. Max keeps having these visions throughout the whole movie that I think are supposed to be character development, but they never have a pay off. And, if you haven’t seen the other films, I’m not sure what purpose this serves.

Having Max’s name in the title is a disservice to him as a cult character, being that the movie isn’t about him at all. The movie really should been titled after Charlize Theron’s character Imperator Furiosa. We spend more time getting to know her than Max. Case in point: Max, while in the movie and having some stuff to do, has no character arc, hardly speaks, and when he does it’s with incomprehensible grunts and pointing at what he wants and needs, whereas Furiosa has a past and many arcs in the flick. It’s really her movie, and Max is just brought along for the ride, as far as the plot ins concerned. After waiting 37 years, you’d think the movie would be about just Mad Max.

The “plot” is easy enough to grasp because you’ve seen other movies over the past 30 years with the same plot and done better. The antagonist of the movie, Immortan Joe, controls something in the desert? Is some sort of religious zealot? Honestly you’re never told. He’s just bad, because he is. He controls the water and has a freaky army of people who’d die for him with no explanation why. Well, Furiosa is taking oil to another town. We’re told in dialogue there’s an “oil war,” but it never comes back into play or is a part of the overall story. So why mention it at all? Just because you say cool things, doesn’t make the movie more interesting.

As Furiosa takes the oil, you learn she is actually helping Immortan Joe’s wives escape. They don’t want to give him any more children, and Furiosa has given them a way out, thus leading Immortan Joe to call in his crew: Prince Rictus Erectus, The People Eater, and The Bullet Farmer, who chase Furiosa all over the desert as she tries to stay one step ahead of all the gangs. Max, who is captured in the beginning of the flick and not seen for some time, is being used as a blood source for Nicholas Hoult’s character, Nux. Max escapes from him and ends up on the rig used by Furiosa and he begins helping them all escape. Which, of course, begins a 90 minute car chase across the desert where everything blows up and lots of people die.

Tom Hardy, Charlize Theron, and Nicholas Hoult do what they can with so little to work with. At least with Theron’s character she is given a back-story. You sort of understand her arc in the movie, since we spend more time with her than anyone else. Hoult is just a two dimensional henchmen who becomes a bit more by the end of the movie, but still nothing to write home about. The biggest crime is the lack of character in Max. Hardy does a great job of grunting, pointing, and shooting lots of people, but that’s it. If you haven’t seen the other movies, who is Max? After 30 years we should spend some time getting reintroduced to this character. We do not. It’s a shame. On the surface he looks like an interesting character, but he’s just a guy who is in the wrong place at the wrong time.

The main issue with the flick is that we’ve seen this movie so many times at this point; Miller, in the past 30 years, has been out-Miller’d by newer and younger filmmakers that grew up watching his movies! If this franchise is something a studio wants to continue then it needs new blood to make it interesting. Miller’s old school style of filmmaking just doesn’t make the cut any more. In the 1990’s this movie would have been balls-to-the-wall, insanely, awesome. But now, it seems rather tame and subdued.

The look of the movie is a complete mystery. Never once was it explained why everyone looks so stupid. I can’t even come up with a witty adjective for how they look. Other than Max, everyone else just looks, well, stupid. There are additions to costumes that have no use, and if they do have a use, they’re never explained. Understand that this is not important to the flick itself, but with such a lackluster movie you start to notice and think of things you wouldn’t typically wonder about if all your attention was on the movie and not what a character was wearing.

How long after the nuclear war is the movie set? It’s never said. I assume years, maybe even decades. There is no past in this, no explanation of how humans got to where they are. For example, as all of the cars are chasing down Furiosa and her crew, the villains have a useless truck with a band on it. Yep. A band. Lead by a Clive Barker-looking creation that’s playing an electric guitar that shoots flames. Is this so that the villains will always have terrible heavy metal music with them at all times? Really? The reason for this eludes me. So, no running water, no food, no normal society, people dress completely crazy, have new religious icons, and have no memories of the past, yet all have a working knowledge of vehicle maintenance and guitar playing? Oh, that needs some explaining. Without an understanding of the world you’re about to spend 2 hours in, it makes for more questions than answers.

The special effects and use of practical effects are great. They look real and you can see the time and energy being spent on making the movie feel alive and real. It’s a shame the same energy couldn’t have been spent on, I don’t know, a plot and a story. All of the explosions are awesome, and they rock the theater as they should, but you never get the surge of adrenaline other, better, movies have given. The stunts are amazing and each stunt actor is great, but there is just so much going on that it’s hard to center your eyes on one thing.

The camera use in this is odd as well. There are a lot of shots made by ramping up the footage to a speed that makes everything move faster than it needs to. It’s a stylized choice that doesn’t work here, it just makes everyone look like the have super speed, which they do not. The best shots of the flick are in the trailer; there’s nothing better than that. The movie is so right on front street, there is no hidden twist or surprise, what you see is all you get.

Overall it’s not a bad movie, just not a good one. It leaves you wanting way more than what you’re given, but what you’re given isn’t really what you waited 30 years for either. It’s a ball of confusion with no clear path. Yes, it’s balls-to-the-wall action insanity from start to finish, but it could have been more. We’ve seen this done many times, and done better. It’s sad really; this should have been a movie to stand on its own and rock, but it really just falls into yet another post-apocalyptic action movie that’s just okay. It is even sadder when you think about how Miller basically started this genre. I guess you really can’t go home again.