Saw it last night. I thought it was a kick, and a terrific popcorn actioner.
But...
This film could have been truly
great, if just a few things were different. I thought Tom Hardy was
good, but he lacks Mel Gibson's arresting screen presence. Also, I've said it before, but barring Gibson, my personal choices to play Max would have been Russell Crowe or Hugh Jackman. To start with they are Aussies (and to me, Crowe's whole performance in Gladiator always seemed modeled on Gibson's in The Road Warrior).
The character of Max also comes off as a bit superficial. Quick subliminal flashbacks (of a little girl asking "Where are you Max?" and assorted others he appears to have failed to save sometime in the past) don't provide enough of a background or context for the character. The fact that Max has very little dialog does not help either.
Since this is not really a sequel, more insight into Max's past was imperative, in order to invest the character with some degree of depth. There ought to have been longer flashbacks of his former life -- not necessarily a long, developed "co-narrative" like The Godfather Pt. II, but just some brief sequences to explain who he is.
Charlize Theron was terrific as Furiosa, but in some ways she was almost the main character. I think she had more dialog than Max! I don't know if the script was conceived this way, or Hardy's lesser screen presence simply elbowed him out during editing (or if Theron had contractual say over the final cut?) but this further diminishes Max's heroic image.
Toward the climax, Max's own tricked-up Ford Falcon joins in the chase, and Max even says "Hey, that's mine!" Naturally one expects Max to jump into the Falcon and save the day. I was so primed for a moment (like the one in Skyfall) when the character takes the wheel of his classic mode of transport -- in an homage to the Mad Max legacy and that awesome car which is part and parcel of it. That car is
iconic and tied to the character, like James Bond's Aston Martin DB5, or Han Solo's Millennium Falcon.
But no such luck. The Ford Falcon is destroyed in the chase and Max takes the wheel of a truck instead. Can you say "lead balloon"?
And the score? Again, were this a just another summer popcorn flick, and not part of a legacy of films (which were all incredibly well-scored) I could have better tolerated the music. But Junkie XL turns-in the usual formulaic, themeless Zimmer-esque pablum, overwrought "power chords", and all the cliches of modern film "music". Heavens, he even uses a deduk!
How did George Miller -- the man who worked with Jerry Goldsmith, John Williams, and inspired some of Maurice Jarre's and Brian May's best work, come to hire Junkie XL?
Still, the film has its strengths. It was great to have Hugh Keyes-Byrne back in the Mad Max movies (and Miller wisely avoids the confusion he created when he re-cast Bruce Spence in Thunderdome -- there's no mistaking Imorten Joe for The Toecutter). Still, I wish we could have seen Keyes-Byrne's highly expressive face once or twice.
The supporting cast was excellent, and the storyline better and more well-rounded than I expected (the scene where they meet the old women was an interesting development). And the action sequences are some of the best ever put on film. George Miller has certainly lost none of his touch when it comes to these types of films, and also proves he's not been surpassed by younger action moviemakers. Moreover, despite the complex mayhem that bursts from every other sequence, the film is never frenetic or confusing (which I can't say about a lot of other action flicks over the past 15 years). Miller's avoidance of CGI except when absolutely necessary is also refreshing.
Fury Road was infinitely better than Thunderdome (the "score" notwithstanding), with better characters, more action (and specifically more
vehicular action). The ending was very satisfying, and for me it did have some emotional resonance -- though a real score would really have brought the emotional element (and the overall film) to life far more.
It was a thrill, I enjoyed it, I'll probably buy the Blu-ray...but a few different choices on Miller's part could have easily made this film so much better.
I mean, something like Star Wars or Raiders legitimately were humungous smash hits that appealed to a wide demographic (i.e. everybody). but the Max films seem like the kind of movies that found most of their audience on cable and video rather than in theaters, so why anyone thought dusting off a moribund, thirty-year-old franchise and spending such an insane amount of money on it is anyone's guess. Maybe they thought they'd appeal to the Fast & The Furious car-chase crowd, but those are strictly PG-13 affairs that are more concerned with closeups of jiggling asses than the kind of perverse, hyper-violent excesses of Miller's vision. Then again, Miller is something of a freak when given complete creative control...remember Babe: Pig In The City? A kind of awesome, wildly imaginative sequel...that made peanuts at the box office because parents were horrified at the levels of genuinely distressing peril (and rightfully so...the movie's G-rating was a joke 
). What studio could have read that screenplay, handed Miller over $100 million (the original cost a quarter of that), and said, "Yes, this is exactly what we want"?
