Action that never stops, decent commie themes, very original story, and amazing effects. I guess they didn't need to make the main protagonist a white dude, otherwise it's the one film I can watch again and again.
Am I allowed to post links pirate sites or is that banned??
I guess they didn't need to make the main protagonist a white dude
Max is more a point of view character than a hero per se. It's really Furiosa's story, he has an arc but he's more there to witness their struggle than to upstage anyone. In my opinion at least.
I think that's been the case since Road Warrior. He really just wants to be left alone, but happens to stumble across other people's stories from time to time. When he helps out, it's usually the bare minimum to keep himself alive and to get back to being alone as quickly as possible. Like you say, as a story device he's just our eyes into their world.
Apparently George has described Max as not really being a person, but rather a folk hero character whose tales are told around campfires. "this is the story about the time Mad Max went to Bartertown, where he met Masterblaster and helped him escape Aunty Entity." "This is the story about the time Mad Max met Furiosa, the great Imperator, and how he helped her overthrow the warlord Immortan Joe." Like he's the frame narrative, the perspective character a bard uses to introduce the real story. /
That's also so the movies don't have to adhere to strict continuity. The first Mad Max movie was not quite the apocalypse yet. One character even casually buys ice cream at a store and there seem to be functioning highway police. By the third movie the apocalypse had happened so long in the past that no one remembers anything different.
I am a huge fan of ditching strict continuity. I see continuity and "the lore" becoming more and more of a straight jacket for storytelling, with teh result being bizarre, incoherent stories as writers and artist contort their narratives to try to keep them in line with in some cases generations of authors with different beliefs writing for different audiences in different cultural moments.
Yeah, its sort of a throwback to lone gunman type westerns and ronin/samurai flicks. Just a dude trying to exist and getting caught up in other people's shit.
The sene where everything is on the line and max let's furiousa take the movie definig shot is pretty cool though.
movies where the main villain is a man who controls all the cars and is ultimately killed by women once they manage to break his car monopoly are the best
i only know of one other movie that fits this description but it's also very good
how do you know that wasn't what i was talking about? i mean, it wasn't, but still
adolescence of utena, though that has a wrinkle to the girls getting a car plot
spoiler
one of the girls becomes a car and the other has to drive her around and runs the villain over with her, as a metaphor for the car girl having helped the driver self actualize and escape her abusive home life. then they make out. great movie
Of course you can post links to pirate sites.
Also, one of my favorite action movies.
That movie is the spiritual successor to Heavy Metal in my mind. Guitarist on some swinging pole tether thing, flame thrower guitar, massive amp stacks on wheels, all while deranged cultist henchmen throw themselves into a meat grinder so they can see Valhalla. An absolutely maniacal visionary masterpiece, 11/10, no notes.
I lifted so many elements from Fury Road for a post-apoc setting my tabletoppers and I have been working on, specifically because of the Flamethrower Axe Warboy.
Usually when I get done with Fury Road I have to watch Dredd afterwards. I love both those movies so much and they are tied in my head together.
Dredd and Fury Road were like a brief incursion from another universe where blockbuster movies never got replaced by cape slop. 80s style action but with 2010s writing and special effects
Avatar as well. The whole second half of Avatar 2 made me realize CGI could be good if put to better use. Cameron knows how to keep shit grounded and tell a good visual narrative even with blue giants slaughtering yanks
Staying grounded is the important part for good CG. Even though it's capeshit, I always compare Black Panther in Civil War vs the Black Panther movie. Civil War Black Panther looks great because there's a lot of actual actors and physicality to the reference shots. Fast forward to the final fight in the Black Panther movie and it's a floaty, disconnected wholly CG mess.
I saw Dredd in theaters in 3D and I've never since seen a 3D movie that justified the extra expence. I'm sad that it's unlikely I'll ever experience it that way again. It was incredible. Easily one of the best action movies ever.
Long days journey into night by Bi Gan. The theatrical run, which I sadly missed, transitions to a 3d movie when the main character falls asleep 80 minutes into the movie and his 80 minute one-shot fever dream begins.
The 3D in Dredd was very subtle until the perspective shifted to the drugged out lackies, and then it was cranked way up and was tied into really good slowmo action.
This is the way to do it. Use the 3d as a tool to signal something to the audience; tell them something has changed or draw attention to things you want them thinking about. Not just “object looks like it’s getting closer to you, wow!”
Dredd absolutely should have had more movies. It got lost in the 3d craze so people handwave it away but it was truly great. Karl Urban is legend.
I agree. I feel like Dredd was just a few years too early to catch the brief R-rated blockbuster resurgence. I wanted high budget Dredd vs Death?
Another great movie. Top 10 action movie for me easily. It's too bad they didn't make more. Urban is perfect.
i should have read further down thread because i just commented this! same here!!!
The absolute Hollywood pinnacle of style over substance, a style so well-defined and layered that it becomes a substance in and of itself. From this foundation a solid and simple story is told, flavored with interesting, iconic characters (iconic as in that's how they're written, as archetypes, not the soyface vernacular) and carried with fun action.
My favorite little fun fact about the movie is that the storyboards, all 3500 of them, came before a word of the screenplay was written. Miller worked with 5 artists to get the look of the film solidified and then made a concrete script to direct from based on that.
Good art must have a good initial vision. This is also subjective and not something you can quite teach, which is probably why so many Hollywood movies are 🗑️
Fury Road is something fucking else. I would say it's a perfect movie for sure, not a single second is extraneous, the structure, pacing, storytelling and holy fuck the visuals are everything movies could be and should be. It's why cgi is bad. There is almost no end to the praise I can heap onto that movie.
I still like Road Warrior better.
My stepmum worked on the second one (make-up). I haven't seen it. Middle class Australia is quite small.
That's badass. Road Warrior is a longtime favorite movie of mine
I watched this with my husband at home after months of hearing hype about it. We have no prior experience with Mad Max anything, except knowledge of the general style vibe that has permeated the culture. We laughed in astonishment and confusion for most of the movie, and at the end wondered what the fuck. We have always meant to revisit it, but never gotten around to it.
I would love to drink of your Mad Max koolaid. Help my autistic brain understand what the fuck I watched and why everyone continues to be so fucking stoked about it?
I know they did a lot of practical effects in a way that is basically unheard of anymore, and that's the one tiny part of the reverence that I understand and share. I am dying to get in on the rest of it. Would any of you like to just go the fuck off about it or is there a blog post I should read?
There is a dude whose official job is HYPE MAN and he rides around on a giant speaker setup and plays a heavy metal guitar that is also a flamethrower
What do you not understand
I found a YouTube link in your comment. Here are links to the same video on alternative frontends that protect your privacy:
The movie's ridiculous presentation hides its fairly sophisticated inner workings. I'm not claiming it's high art, but it's not just pure stupid action a la Transformers or something. There is a lot of interesting storytelling happening just through careful attention to detail, and it's almost a case study in "show, don't tell"*. For example, we know a lot more about Furiosa than you'd expect. She's a capo in this horrific, misogynistic tyrant's society. Towards the end of the film, Max asks her what she's hoping for and she just answers "Redemption". The look in her eye tells us the rest. These little pieces are deliberately placed - we don't know the exact details of how she went from kidnapped slave girl to commander in the Immortan's forces, but we can figure out enough of it.
Or, let's look at Max's changes throughout the movie. He starts off deranged, disheveled, covered in matted hair - feral, in a word. Then he's captured and literally caged. He's got a muzzle on for the first third of the movie! He gets free, lashes out, and is slowly tamed by Furiosa and the other women. Ultimately he ends up helping two generations of women fight back against the tyrant who ruined their collective lives. I don't want to say that this has a direct meaning (something like "oh he's learning how to shed toxic masculinity and be a better ally!), since I think that literal interpretations tend to detract from emotional depth. Themes in story are best when they're expressing feeling and not a literal message. There is a lot going on with gender conflict. From the repeated "Who killed the world?!", to the obvious level of the wives fleeing the big gross dude, the one war boy slowly realizing he's just another foot soldier for a man who doesn't care about him, to the greater susceptibility of men to follow dangerous men to destructive ends while women seem more resistant to that.
Come to think of it, Fury Road is best compared to Chainsaw Man. The manga and anime are about a lot of things - the struggles of growing up poor in Japan's lost generation, a government that explicitly views you as an animal to be used for their own ends, the corrosive nature of workplace politics, cynical sexuality used for manipulation, and more. It's also about a man who is a fucking chainsaw. Ridiculous, over-the-top action serving as the capstone to a carefully planned world and story.
*I happen to think that "Show, don't tell" is overused as storytelling advice, but the execution here is flawless.
I happen to think that "Show, don't tell" is overused as storytelling advice, but the execution here is flawless.
Dunno, but I keep seeing films fail at this, so I think it's worth being said.
Not everyone needs to vibe to a movie. I've seen stuff that everyone was raving about and felt nothing. Like Juno didn't do anything for me, although the expectation that everyone loved it probably didn't help. Also maybe this isn't your thing. I'm in my mid-forties, and I know that my comrades in their twenties can't fucking sit through a whole movie, and that's fine. Also maybe you haven't a high expectation didn't help.
I guess I've had such low expectations for films, they're always such lib pieces of shit. Whereas Fury Road at least had patriarchal white men as the reason that everyone was fucked, and the rejection of all that as the way things are gonna get better. The film references the US oil wars, and frequently asks the question "who destroyed the world". It's pretty obvious that militaristic dudes destroyed the world, although it doesn't explicitly answer that.
Honestly you don't have to like it.
It asks, "who killed the world?" And it answers: patriarchy (immortal Joe and his desire to recapture the wives), greed and oil(the corpulent guy in the limo truck from gas town), and militarism(the bullet farmer in his tank)
corpulent guy in the limo truck from gas town
Dude is literally named The People Eater
You cannot get more on-the-nose than that and I love it
Mad Max is more vibes than Lore. The only other one I'd really recommend is Road Warrior, it's the Ur post apocalyptic movie and is a prototype for fury Road in many ways restrained by budget and the time it was made but has a more slow and realistic and brutal vibe. Fury Road is a lot ore fantasy feeling, Road Warrior is grim as hell.
road warrior has a guy who flies a gyrocopter and tosses snakes on people
it's cool. it rules. it fuckin slaps. explosions, racing, overthrowing a reactionary tyrant. the real journey is the friends we made along the way (also seizing the means of water)
Mad max road warrior and beyond thunderdome watch those too
Basically climate cataclysm leaves a wasteland ruled by warlords who taken over the last sources of water and power. Max was a cop in the first film which is more pre-apocalyptic and is set in Australia.
Fury road is set in Australia (but filmed in Namibia so you don't get the 4 billion year old rust red sands)
I grew up with the movies and my mom loved mel gibson (lol) so they have tremendous memorable value for me. But the bleakness of the scenery, the harshness of the people, the will to survive despite it all, it captured a real mood that people connect with. The wardrobe choices and sick automobiles made it even cooler.
The new one captured the original mood, tied it to current themes, and nailed the cinematography
The wardrobe choices and sick automobiles made it even cooler.
Mad Max 2 practically codified post-apocalypse vibes and fashion.
you should try Kin Dza Dza
low budget russian mad max sort of thing
it's a bit slow to start but it really settles you into their bizarre world
Did you not think the movie was good? My wife and I were in the same boat as you when we saw it and we loved it.
Y'all should try the Black and Chrome edition if you're already a big fan
it's a cool take on it
I too loved it but everyone I know hated it. "its not mel" "its not in line with the other films" "its too over the top, its seems silly"
Its nice to know I'm not crazy.
"its too over the top, it seems silly"
Ah yes, you know you've got a true Mad Max aficionado on your hands when they recognise that the earlier videos were deeply grounded in reality in the most dour of ways.
Lars Von Trier's Dogville ain't got shit on the original Mad Max movies.
Same lol. I liked it, but everyone else didn't and just wanted to watch the next Marvel superhero slop instead.
Ah yes, Mad Max, must be a kids-friendly movie from the director best known for his films Happy Feet and Babe: Pig in the City.
Sometimes the different movies a director is involved with are kind of weird.
Mouse Hunt and Rango have the same director- not that weird.
He also made the Pirates of the Caribbean movies- well they're for older kids, still not too adult
He also did the American version of The Ring and A Cure for Wellness.
The same person did all of those movies? Do you remember who it was?
Yeah, more or less. teaches kids that you can't escape tyranny, you have to fight it and destroy it, and also that women aren't things.
He made the original babe too. George Miller rules so fucking much.
