I have read complaints in advance of this movie’s release that this iconic movie franchise had been hijacked to push a feminist agenda—something that one can expect in this day and age. Wanting to go see for myself I was expecting good action at best, wrapped around a simple plotline, with little or no interesting character development.
As for the plot, it was an adequate linear plot for such a straight forward yarn. Asking for more out of a storyline is the general purview of leftists and women, who seek the glee of unrealistic plot turns to torture the psyche of the characters and extend sentimentality into the story. Due to the genius level brutality of the over the top post apocalyptic setting, stocked with more maimed, broken, twisted and tormented souls than you could shake a malfunctioning sawed off shotgun at, such devious plot twists were entirely unnecessary.
Despite sketchy sociological and economic logistics, Fury Road is the best post apocalyptic setting imagined so far on film. The future is dark and nasty, and here it is eating your shivering ass alive!
The action was far better than I have seen in any movie of the genre. Fury Road is absolutely the best chase movie ever made. If you saw the classic Road Warrior movie, recall the chase scene involving the tanker truck, and imagine that is just one of many such scenes. If you took all of Steve McQueen’s, Mel Gibson’s, and Jason Statham’s movie chase scenes and clipped then together, you would have an approximate amount of chase footage—but not violent enough. I went to go see this with Ajay, who is a huge NASCAR fan, and has expressed a desire to run over vagrant hoodrats so often that I wrote the novel Fat Girl, about a female road rager becoming a serial killer, based on what she has said while behind the wheel. I even had her name the character I was basing on her and pick out the car. Fury Road was all she could handle, as she cringed and grabbed me on a few occasions.
Expecting, from the advance manginasphere press, to see the female lead doing wire-assisted kung fu on armored goons and slaughtering tons of guys, I was quite pleased to find an absence of martial arts bullshit, with most combat in the beat-you-with-a-wrench style that comes closest to reality. My favorite fight scene is after Max—who survived the crash of the vehicle he had been strapped to as a “blood bag,” wearing face cage and having a doner tube run from his neck to that of a blood diseased battle boy—confronts the sex slaves of a mutant warlord who have almost succeeded in escaping their oppressor. They want to get away, and he wants to turn them in to get a reward. He is chained to an unconscious battle boy, and a car door, that he has hauled to the big rig that has stalled out on the girls. He then has a fight against five witless girly babes and one vicious one-armed dyke bitch, and beats their asses, while dragging the body and the car door. That’s nasty.
The problem with the writers of the manginasphere is that feminism has become such a dark overshadowing force in society that they cannot bear to see defiant or dominant behavior from women in cinema without it tweaking their insufficiently full and hairless balls. The female behaviors in this film were realistic and varied. In a field of a hundred savage warrior fanatics a handful of feminist reactionaries make a stand and pretty much get slaughtered. The clutch part is when the head dyke bitch realizes that she and her sisters do not have a chance without a man to lead them and do the heavy lifting of exhaust pipe versus monkey wrench combat.
Overall the female characters fell into the supporting roles of objectified and sacrificial personalities. The old feminist radical women were rendered effective through the use of rare long guns, which was a logical device for bringing women in as potent actors in such a scenario. Do not forget that Soviet and Israeli militaries successful utilized women as snipers, including Doctor Ruth, the old lady that used to give sex advice on the radio in the 1980s.
Manginasphere nerds will disagree as they yank on their small members, but violently reactionary feminists have popped up in many historical periods, with Fury Road giving us a taste of this sporadic mode of female behavior. There is a type of feminism that has always existed and is independent from the doctrinal politically correct type of feminism that has been generated by our material-based mass society, and, on purpose or by accident, Fury Road gets that.
The real treat in Fury Road was not in the Mad Max character, who predictably softens to the cause of the sex slaves, but in the development of the battle boy character. The battle boys are the inbred offspring of the mutant Mormon bad guy who believe in ‘Valhalla’ in the same suicidal fanatic fashion as militant Islamists believe in Paradise. This battle boy is where the real story lies, in his finding fault with his cause, and, with the inspiration of a woman’s approval, redirects his masculine energy toward another cause, thereby transforming from sacrificial slave warrior to transformative ascendant warrior. Where so many men sink into a well of emasculation when they see that the patriotic or cultic cause for which they have fought is unmasked and found wanting, this man, seeing himself anew through the eyes of a woman who needs him, rises from the ashes of despair and becomes the co-leading man for the crucial stage of the tale.
The inclusion of this transformative masculine character—who is crucially young, not the obligatory elderly or gritty middle aged sacrificial supporting character that normally stands in as a plot enabler in an action yarn—becoming the lead protagonist when it mattered, when the resolution of the struggle was in question, gave this movie a soul. The movie ends on a postmodern sentimental note that would have Ernst Junger barfing in his popcorn bag. But this bullshit ending is only made possible by the truer story imbedded in the supporting cast.
I recommend Mad Max: Fury Road as the ideal date movie for real men and their prospective sexual property.
It was so bad it was good.
The few scenes where the film slowed down and settled into serious acting were hard to sit through. There was something about the frenetic pace of most of the movie that truly felt crazy—mad rather.
James, I said many of the same things after I saw this greatly anticipated addition to the Mad Max saga. But obviously not as in-depth analysis about Nux's transformation as did you, save that his central contribution to the escape (along with Max's), ran counter to the concerns that this was a movie that had females overshadowing males when it came to getting the job done. There's no success or conflict resolution sans the two males.
I would have liked a bit more character interaction, such as we saw in "The Road Warrior" (which remains the best of the four films, IMO). The interaction between Max and the clan leader (the only character not in fear of, or in awe of, Max) were the best parts of The Road Warrior, IMO. Lastly, in parts two and three of this saga, Max was resourceful and always a step ahead, not as much in this movie. That's not the fault of Hardy, but of the script. The closest we see of these former character traits, is the scene where he finds all the firearms in the truck's cab (which plays off the scene in Thunderdome where Max has to hand over his weapons).
I'd give this movie an overall score of three stars.
As far as story telling goes The Road Warrior was far superior, particularly the ending. In reviewing films made today I do not include the ending in the rating, and have, in fact, stopped rating movies as they generally have 1 star level endings. I know those are mandated by studio economics. The last scene of this movie was literally like slapping the ending of Disney's Pocahantos on the end of Last of the Mohicans!
Which brings me to another point. Recall when Victoria still had time to review books with me in His Take, Her Take? Since she is primarily a screen writer and only got into doing novels to protect her material from the scumbags she works under, she wanted to review books that could conceivably be made into a marketable movie, for no other reason than to make sure that the generally movie-limited sense of literature among post-moderns would make this a viable way to slant the review for maximum appeal. She also wanted to review classics, which left us with a problem, the lack of classic happy cinema endings in classic masculine literature. She vetoed Last of the Mohicans right off the back with a groan about it being 'too dark'. Mind you this chick writes horror!
My ratings of the Max Movies are:
Mad Max: 2 stars, with a 5 star ending
Road Warrior: 5 stars
Beyond Thunderdome: 3 stars
Fury Road: 4 stars, with the caveat that the movie has a 1 star ending, like everything else made today, such as WWZ.
Thanks for checking in Sir—nice to know you're Staying Alive!
Yes, of course you groaned.