RogerBW's Blog

2015 action, dir. George Miller, Tom Hardy, Charlize Theron: IMDb / allmovie. Who killed the world?

Beyond Thunderdome felt as if it were trying to remount The Road Warrior but bigger, and instead did it as a child-friendly comedy. Fury Road remounts the bit of The Road Warrior that everyone remembers, and it succeeds. And with minimal CGI there's sweat and grime, and the Doof Warrior with his flame-throwing guitar is an actual thing.

Perhaps it's a little too long? In the final battle sequences, for me everything was just too close up and just too quickly cut, and I had trouble getting a sense of who was meant to be where and what they were doing. But the rest is fine, especially the carefully-constructed legendry and culture that Joe has constructed to make his warriors into fanatics who will gladly die in his service, and we don't need to have that explained – it just works from what we observe.

The boss/henchman duality is back, and Nux (Nicholas Hoult) is one of the stars of this show, as he keeps his fanaticism but changes the goal it's serving. The other of course is Furiosa (Theron); Max is pretty much a side character here, or perhaps Furiosa's henchman as he was Pappagallo's in The Road Warrior.

Though I do slightly wonder why Max, who looks about the same age as Furiosa, is clearly meant to be the same guy who remembers a pre-collapse world, while Furiosa evidently doesn't.

But mostly this is an action-fest that doesn't compromise itself with half-digested Hero with a Thousand Faces; it lets the people do what they do, and when their plans collide, there's action. It's not perfect but it doesn't claim to be more than it is, and that's just fine with me.

(A Furiosa-backstory film has been shot and is due for release next year, and another Mad Max is planned.)

I talk about this film further on Ribbon of Memes.