Mad Max: The Review Warrior.

It’s pretty rare for me to see the same movie twice in theaters. There’s a number of reasons. First, I’m lazy as all heck and there isn’t a movie theater in my neighborhood. Second, there’s so many movies out at any given time it seems like a waste to spend time on the same one. Third, movies are not exactly a cheap activity to indulge in. Now that you know that about me here’s something else: I saw Mad Max: Fury Road twice in theaters and I would see it again.

I’m a big Mad Max fan. A few months ago the movie theater that I usually go to (Alamo Drafthouse) had a Mad Max marathon. It was about five hours and it was perfect. I’ve heard people complain in the past about the movies (the first and third seem to be particularly susceptible to critique) being nonsensical and too violent. I’ll be the first to admit that there is a lot of violence in the series and that Mad Max has some gut-wrenching scenes. But in a movie where there are characters named Toecutter, the Feral Kid, and Master-Blaster you’re kind of getting what you paid for at that point. Was I happy when Sprog and Jessie get killed? No, watching a toddler get run over by a maniacal motorcycle gang is harsh. Do I continue to enjoy the movies? Heck yeah.

 

It’s fairly common for a series to get progressively worse the longer it goes on. I don’t think that the Mad Max series suffers from this. Sure, Road Warrior introduces a drastically different world and Beyond Thunderdome has some tongue-in-cheek self-awareness. But the tone is the same on the whole throughout those three movies. The character of Max is the same. He’s a cop pushed to the edge who finds that he is just as much a part of the violent culture of crime that he was supposed to be fighting against. Cue a nuclear holocaust and a man who’s lost everything except his drive to survive no matter the costs. Max can be a bad man. He can do terrible things. He has that potential. That’s what I love so much about these movies is that they don’t ignore that part of him. They just show him continually rising above the culture of chaos that it would be all too simple for him to fall into.

The series is consistent and Fury Road is no exception. At first I was worried. A sequel after 30 years? Recasting Max Rockatansky? Female characters?! George Miller did not disappoint. In Mad Max, Max goes to his boss and says: “It's that rat circus out there, I'm beginning to enjoy it. Look, any longer out on that road and I'm one of them, ya know? A terminal crazy, except I've got a bronze badge that says I'm one of the good guys”. In Fury Road one of the first things we hear Max say is: “It was hard to tell who was more crazy... me... or everyone else”. As a sequel it maintains the themes that have been set up previously. Despite having a massive Hollywood budget nothing was compromised to bring about the story that George Miller started telling in 1979.

Not only did George Miller maintain the integrity of his original work, but he made an AMAZING movie. Visually it’s beautiful. The scene of riding into the sandstorm is breathtaking and made even more stunning once inside. More than the stunning visuals was the exciting story and well-written characters. Max, as always, is a man of few words and Tom Hardy does a great job looking tough and gorgeous. But the other characters: the Wives, the War Boys, and Furiosa? Give me another movie about any of them (preferably the War Boys, I’m a sucker for apocalypse death cults) and I’ll be a happy camper. And yeah, there’s a lot of violence. The whole War Boy culture is built on the idea that they need to die glorious deaths in combat in order to reach their full life in Valhalla. But it’s also empowering. The Wives are on a mission to free themselves from the despot who used them only as breeders and considered them property. Furiosa is on a similar path as Max and it’s nice to see two super badass characters kicking butt and taking names rather than just having Max do all the heavy lifting.

At its heart the movie is about redemption. This is a world where the strong hurt the weak, even if they are only doing it for their own survival or because they don’t know any better or because they’ve been told. Max, who has consistently been seeking something to make him move on from the death of his wife and child, is able to lend a hand to these people seeking their own end. We see Furiosa desperate to go home and clean her slate from years of working for Immortan Joe. We see Nux the War Boy who is dying from the radiation sickness that poisons the land realize that the world is not only the way he has been told.

This movie is fast paced and filled with action (surprisingly little CGI actually!). However, it's not just a dumb action movie. The plot is detailed and there is emotional subtlety to a lot of the characters. The actors have done amazing work with what, according to articles that I've read, wasn't a typically written and filmed movie. I give it an A+ in pretty much every category. Tom Hardy is a perfect recast for Mel Gibson. Charlize Theron is amazing as the one-armed war driver. Hugh Keays-Byrne, who played Toecutter in the first film, is creepy and wonderful as the new villain.  

See the movie for how it looks. See it for the characters. See it for the next installment of Max Rockatansky’s life. But, seriously, just see this movie.