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| Mad Max: Fury Road "Here they come again." |
Since this is the most hyped movie created in the last decade, me reviewing it and telling you NOT to go see it is probably as much a waste of time as watching it was. Everyone in the world is going to go and see it at least once. But I have a small hope that I might save someone from a generation yet unborn, so I will continue with my review.
I didn't like the original Mad Max movie at all, but I found Road Warrior weirdly interesting and I loved Mad Max:Beyond Thunderdome. So now you know where I am "coming from" and that I don't just go for "Christian" Films or "Chick-Flicks".
In a Theater this film is nothing less than an assault on your senses. Especially your eyes and ears. But several semi-clever post-apocalyptic ideas, a myriad of phallic symbols, a gazillion "cool" cars and trucks and tons of tricks to entice every young teen age boy into the theater and out of his allowance does not a good film make.
From the loud cars to loud, thrash metal to the bikini clad models hosing themselves down with water to the the suicide-glorifying "war boys"and (let us not forget) the electric guitar that shoots out flames , this is every teen age boys "w*t dream".
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| Let us not forget the nubile, Bikini clad models hosing themselves down with water |
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| So Many "Phallic" Symbols There's No Room for a Story |
So let's take these a point at a time:
George Miller gives us several semi-interesting ideas about what he envisions a Post-apocalyptic Australian future might look like, But since he's had his entire life to think about it, I would expect at least a few good ideas. He's been mulling it over for decades.
Tom Hardy is probably the best actor of this generation but his talent is pretty much wasted here. In fact, the character of Mad Max is superfluous to this entire film. He's only here as an excuse to get us
back to this time and place. But Tom Hardy still manages to get in a few good acting licks anyway and manages to bring out some of the "humor" in the character of Max without actually imitating Mel Gibson. The way Hardy runs around and also the way he uses the file on the face mask is reminiscent of Max's fight in Thunderdome, (Remember Gibson running around with the chain saw during his fight with MasterBlaster?) But your time would be better spent viewing a different Tom Hardy film.
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| Tom Hardy or Mad Max or Puppet Master or Winner of Hannibal Lector Look-a-like Contest ??? |
The lightly disguised "story" in this film is all about the Charlize Theron character, Furiosa. (And Kudos to Theron and her agent for actually getting her top billing at the beginning of the film). It makes me think maybe Miller had a crush on Charlize and constructed this entire film as an excuse just to hang around with her.
As a side note: I watched Charlize Theron interviewed for 15 minutes where they only discussed how she came to the decision to get all her hair cut off for this role. (I'm going bald from illness, I won't get my hair back and I didn't get millions of dollars to lose it and I was just wondering if it was as hard for every other sick person who is losing their hair to listen to how "amazing and self-less" she was to get her hair cut for this role).
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| All those teen years wearing perfume to get a guy, when I should have been wearing axle grease on my head. |
But in a nut shell, if you're over the age of 14 and actually expect a story when you see a film,
you're out of luck here. As to the massive amount of hype that has gone on for literally years surrounding the release of this film ... their final big "selling point" as the release date approached is that most of the stunts were done in real life instead of using CGI. Uh, that describes almost EVERY film made before the year 1990. So excuse me if I'm not impressed by that.
The actual talent in making a BIG film is to BALANCE it with enough INTIMATE moments that make you sympathize with the characters enough to care what happens to them. (An example of this being done the right way is James Cameron's "Titanic") But in this film I don't care if all the characters die.
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| Nicholas Hoult |
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| Tom Hardy (sans mask) |
Who knows? Maybe they were? I never actually saw any changes in the facial expressions of the "wives" and almost every camera shot was a long one so we could see all the 'pretty' cars and trucks.
As to the Christian aspects of this film ... there are none. It's not really even interesting enough to be truly offensive. But if you are the parent of a teenage boy you're going to need to believe in both prayer and miracles because this film is aimed at relieving him of his virtue, as well as his allowance. But if an "old biddy" like me took the time to see this film, good luck trying to stop a teenage boy from watching it.
Also, through the years I've come to expect a lot more from post-apocalyptic films because we, as Christians, actually know what the future will hold now that the book of Revelation (the last section in the Bible) reads like a daily newspaper (even though it was written almost 2,000 years ago). So everyone elses' "supposing" doesn't impress me much anymore.
I've probably stopped nobody from seeing this film, but if I had my way I'd buy each of you a rope and tell you to 'skip, skip, skip'.
It gets two gold, Christian fishes out of ten (and that's just because I'm in a generous mood today).
