This review may contain spoilers. I can handle the truth.
Joel Hilke’s review published on Letterboxd:
This review may contain spoilers.
Well, I decided on today's rewatch of Fury Road to just give up and give it 5 stars. Similar to how I finally decided to admit Terminator 2 was better than Terminator, the same is true with Mad Max. Both Terminator and The Road Warrior were such iconic, pivotal movies in my youth, the idea of admitting their sequels were better was heretical... and yet T2 and Fury Road really are the pinnacle of their franchises.
Not that I ever disliked Fury Road. I gave it 4.5 in my original review back in 2015... and, hell, re-reading that review basically says 90% of what I was going to say in this one.
Fury Road is a beautiful film... a movie set largely in a yellow/orange-tinged desert is gorgeous to simply look at... something I can't say for the grittier, dustier original three films. Fury Road was filmed in Namibia instead of Australia and they surely added digital backgrounds and color timing to spruce things up. I think its still supposed to be set in Australia... but who knows for sure?
It's also every bit as full of exposition-less world building as parts 2 and 3. Borrowing the idea of a new lingo that the kids in Beyond Thunderdome had, the War Boys and the rest of the gang from the Citadel have a patois that is logical and precise for their mixed up, messed up little world. Use of regular slang like "Fang it" is one thing, the giberrish of old world phrases like "Aqua Cola" or the wholesale borrowing of Norse mythology is another. It's internally consistent... shiny and chrome. I actually rewatched the film with subtitles on to catch all the jargon and it was a lot of fun catching all the details (and they informed me the Citadel doctor's name is the Organic Mechanic... which tracks).
The film introduces an interesting continuity with the previous films when it comes to the state of civilization. Part 1 was the collapse of the modern world, part 2 was a scramble for its remnants, part 3 was the formation of two independent but internally consistent societies, and Fury Road gives us an interconnected society with three different city-states, each specializing so they can produce and trade with each other. The Citadel is about Aqua Cola, Mother's Milk, and produce, while Gas Town is presumably an oil refinery, and The Bullet Farm explains why there are so many more guns in this film than in past ones. These communities even communicate through lights and signal flares... and they will ride out to provide support and defense for each other.
Sure, it's a pretty messed up society full of greed and corruption... but at least its growth. And, hey, unlike Bartertown, Max leaves The Citadel in a better place than he found it. Because, of course Max has to leave... that's become his M.O. He's not going to live in these new worlds but he will be remembered.
Curiously, the villain Immortan Joe is played by Hugh Keays-Byrne who also played the main baddie Toecutter in the original Mad Max thirty-six years earlier. Since Toecutter was smashed between two cars in Mad Max, he's clearly not the same character... but wouldn't it be cool if he was? It's odd that George Miller cast him again... looking at his filmography, he's not exactly a member of his film repertoire or anything.
Recasting Mel Gibson with a younger actor was understandable both from a business and youth angle. Gibson is still trying to recover from his... social mistakes... so he was probably persona non grata when they filmed this flick. Tom Hardy is just younger and a more familiar face to modern audiences (even if they keep covering it up). He's fine but he's not really the star of the movie.
That goes to Charlize Theron... who must have made such an impression on Miller that he turned his next Mad Max movie into her backstory (though they recast her). Theron is great in general but the way she commits to the role with her bald head, grease-covered face, and artificial arm... it's not a glamorous role but she's still gorgeous and fierce under all that war paint.
It's been said the movie is basically a two hour actions scene and that's fairly accurate. There's clearly downtime for some character growth and dialog but most of it is just driving one direction for an hour and then driving back.
And these car chases are better than ever. I know they did a lot of practical work with even more tricked out jalopies... though I suspect there's more CGI going on than they admitted back in 2015 (where they largely said most of the CGI was backdrops and ragdoll body simulations). Thing is, it's hard to know what's real or not since the movie remains a technical marvel. I'd like to think all the motorcycle jumps and car flips were real (with painted in human bodies) but I'm less sure as time goes on.
None of which matters when the action sequence are this amazing. The actors or stunt performers are are crawling up and around the war rig, getting pulled into the air by "Pole Cats", and so forth. Some of that has gotta still be reel even if they are strapped in with painted out safety lines (the days of almost killing the performers is safely gone... I hope).
Of course, the film still begs the question what happened to the world in the first place. The intro talks about water and wars for resources which is fairly consistent. No mention of nukes though. Google says this film takes place fifty years after the war... which doesn't track at all age-wise for Max but does for the old lady bikers. So that's odd.
I had a brief thought when watching Beyond Thunderdome that the flashbacks Max has in this film could be about the kids he didn't get out on the airplane. Maybe he went back to help the stragglers and failed them. Or maybe those flashbacks are other people over the years. They could also be his original family... which doesn't track since his boy had been a toddler and the other faces don't match anyone in the earlier films either.
More and more I think about it, the less I think this film is actually a proper sequel. And maybe, once again, those details don't matter. It's just another post-apocalyptic car chase movie and we should all just do a George Miller and let it slide. At this point, it's the only sane thing to do.
Also, how did Max get his old car back? Did he find another V8 Interceptor? D'OH! Let it go, let it go...
Fury Road is a great film and I'm giving it a rare 5 stars after stewing on it against The Roader Warrior and my goddamn nostalgia for so long. It gets there through sheer beauty, grunge, thrills, excitement, and even character. It's a great flick (shocking revelation, I know <eyes roll>).... even if it still itches at my continuity bone.
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