Mad Max: Fury Road
Zach Marsh

Review by Zach Marsh Patron

Mad Max: Fury Road 2015

★★★★½

Rewatched 20 May 2024

I know, I know. Look, I'm not quite there yet with the 5-stars, okay? I've had a long and complicated journey with Fury Road. I did not like this movie in 2015. I thought it went "too far" and did not find its melding of the dramatic leanings of Mad Max with the non-stop chase stupidity of Mad Max 2 to be a successful pairing. It feels really, really stupid to say that now, but that was me against the hype train at the time.

Needless to say, that did not hold true on rewatches. My second viewing of Fury Road marked an immediate and massive leap up in my score, and with each subsequent ride it has inched closer and closer. I think this is the most batshit a movie can possibly be without the batshittery turning over into some sort of Sharknado-like idiocy. I love what Miller did here. I love how precise the storytelling is, how Furiosa, Max, Nux, all have arcs. How rich the world is, how the seeds are planted obviously for Furiosa, but also for the Tom Hardy-led sequels/prequels that we very annoyingly never got.

I still have a bit of a hangup though: Fury Road is so excellent as a movie...that something about it feels imperfect as a *Mad Max* movie. Does that make sense? Like there's just something about the spirit of the first two movies that's...missing? The way that in those two films, it's not about satisfying character arcs and precise filmmaking but instead "okay let's smash up some cars and bikes and oh yeah there's an objective here but it's kind of not the point in a way". Do I just sound like a fucking idiot right now? I'm dinging the movie for being AN EXCELLENT MOVIE?

I'm gonna have to find time to elaborate about this feeling. Maybe on another rewatch.

Except it's probably gonna be a 10 then.

9.5/10
#4 of 2015

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