We saw "Mad Max: Fury Road" and it was the most metal movie ever

[drwex]

I've been reading various reviewers struggling to describe this movie. Here's my take...

Imagine that the kernel idea of the original Mad Max movies - a post-collapse desert world given over to brutality, drought, and near-barbarian levels of struggle for survival - was a laser. Now fire that laser down the intervening decades from 1979 where those decades contain prisms called Cirque de Soleil and Bandaloop and Burning Man and a thousand outdoor festivals and Maker culture that repurposes everything it can lay hands on and body modification and oh my god how much metal has there been in the 80s, 90s, and onward and whatever progress we've managed to make in thinking about women as equals(*). Refract the idea through all those prisms and that is this movie.

The movie doesn't really have a plot so there's nothing to spoil. There's a maguffin and it's an excuse for an epic car chase/motorized gladiatorial combat.

All that said, it's a good movie. It's good for how it treats its subjects. It's good for having a fine sense of pace. It's good for making clear what motivates the characters to do what they do. It's good for not talking down to anyone, either in the movie or the audience. It's good for being so incredibly fucking METAL.

It's good for Tom Hardy putting the "mad" in Mad Max. It's good for Charlize Theron playing a character that is at once so real and so fantastic that you can't help living through her. It's good for pushing the bounds of what people think science fiction can be and it's good for being thoroughly fantastic and over-the-top without ever once jumping a shark.

I give this film +1 for making Theron's character obviously disabled, having that character's disability and compensation for it be part of the story and the action, but not making her be pretty nor making it a focus. I mean, it's her arm and it's there and nobody so much as mentions it.

And oh my god is it metal. From the screaming guitar soundtrack to the fire-blasting guitar to the mentions of Valhalla and un-subtle swipes at ubermenschen. Yeah, it's metal.

4/5 stars. Would see again. I expect there to be sequals, which I will also want to see.

(*) Don't get me wrong, Tina Turner was awesome, but she was a one-off.

Comments

I didn't realize it till you said it

[sweetmmeblue.livejournal.com]

for as BIG and jarring as some of the images are, and what's going on, it never jumped the shark. Thank you for pointing that out clearly.

Re: I didn't realize it till you said it

[drwex]

That's what good design does. I expect this movie nearly to sweep the design awards this year.

[selenite.livejournal.com]

I keep hearing praise for this movie, but I'm the kind of guy who uses car chase scenes for bathroom breaks. How much of this movie is not a chase scene?

[unseelie.livejournal.com]

almost none of it. The car chases start about 20 seconds in, there is a fight scene, and then a car is stolen, which leads to another short chase... And then a truck is loaded with every gun ever, and then it get stolen and then the rest of the movie is a car chase.

[drwex]

That's true but it misses the point. I once did a side-by-side for friends of a chase scene from a Bond film and from a John Woo film. There is no comparison: the Woo is just so superior.

Same thing here: comparing the scenes in this film to any car chase you've ever seen before is going to give you the wrong idea.

I don't think I know you well enough to say whether or not this movie is for you, but I know movies well enough to say you should not think of this as being like any car chase you've ever seen before.

[rmd.livejournal.com]

a lot of the chases are less like car chases and more like naval battles, actually.

I like Charlie Jane's take on it over on io9 - she hadn't realized she was grading action movies on a curve until this showed up and blew the curve.

[drwex]

The analogy to naval battles is pretty apt, actually, for naval battles in the age of sail and crappy guns when boarding, ramming, and fire ships were real things.

[selenite.livejournal.com]

Right. I think I'll wait for the youtube clip of the Bardmobile's moments.

[unseelie.livejournal.com]

I read an excellent article by a woman born with one arm missing below the elbow, and how through life she never made a big deal of it. And she saw this movie. And how she loved that Theron had 1 arm; and
1) it was never talked about. no one asked, commented, told stories - nothing.
2) it wasn't a plot point. she had no super powers, she had no significant loss of functionality.
2a) except when she used Max's shoulder to study the rifle as she couldn't really do it well.

These bits were things I hadn't thought about, but it makes sense; almost every-time I encountered someone with say, a missing let or arm; there is the 10 minutes of how/why/what/work arounds/etc. That no one gave Empiritor Furiosa a second glance - ESPECIALLY in a movie, was unexpected and awesome.

I love Insane Max.
They apparently had an expert on female PTSD/rape onsite, to talk with the Brides to discuss how they might act/react to various stimuli as well.

I spotted some behaviors in them, so she did a good job. Again; it wasn't a Big Thing; it was KNOWN but no one talked about it.

And I *LOVE* the Vuvlina. The older women/bikers. Turns out that they did a most of their own stunts. Much to the directors concern. Seeing some 60 and 70 year old women riding motorcycles up and down dunes and wielding rifles made the director and stunt team cringe.
Which of course, just makes them even more kick ass. :-D

[drwex]

That's great to know. If you find the article drop a link.

[unseelie.livejournal.com]

http://nospockdasgay.tumblr.com/post/119381643753/my-reaction-to-mad-max-fury-road-and-the-utter

found it!

[intuition-ist.livejournal.com]

fire-blasting guitar, o yes. i was giggling but i was also like "holy crap, how... what... all these guys are a whisker from death and they just. don't. care."

was that really silver paint they were spraying on their lips, or was it supposed to be some terribly poisonous substance?

[drwex]

It was chrome paint. There's a line, I forget the exact wording, about becoming shiny perfect chrome in death. SO metal.

[sariel-t.livejournal.com]

Woo! Thanks for the review. I'm excited to see it.

[vvalkyri.livejournal.com]

I love both your review and the comments