Adi’s TL;DR Proposed title – Mad Max: The awesomeness of Furiosa!
Sahil’s TL;DR Don’t name your kids Rictus Erectus or Capable!
Every once in awhile (or decade) an action movie is made that you know will spark off a thousand heated debates, rip-offs, parodies, sequels, prequels, one-liners and more! Films like Enter The Dragon, Raiders of the Lost Ark, First Blood, Die Hard, Terminator 2: Judgement Day, The Matrix have gained cult following and are all classics in their own right. Is Mad Max: Fury Road on its way to this hall of fame, only time will tell! Meanwhile, here’s a review from The Popcorn Waltz, who coincidentally hadn’t been exposed to Max and his antics before and will talk about their first ride with the madness unleashed by George Miller.
Here’s some dope on Mad Max: Fury Road. Fury Road is the fourth edition in the Mad Max franchise. It’s been directed by George Miller, who also happens to be the director behind Babe and Happy Feet. We’re glad that turned out alright for our animal friends 😉 The screenplay is written by George Miller, Brendan McCarthy and Nico Lathouris. Miller is also amongst the producers of Fury Road, which would explain how the ginormous action sequence budgets were approved! Since we haven’t seen the earlier Mad Max films, we don’t have a comparative theory on where it falls in the Mad Max universe, which in a way ensured we enjoyed the film for itself, with no legacy concerns.
They say, you can only have one – box office success (Read: people’s money) or recognition from the Academy (Read: licence to charge producers more money). Fury Road is one of those few lucky films to have both. If we look at Academy history with action films, there haven’t been too many that got the stamp of Oscar recognition, barring The Hurt Locker (if you consider it an action flick) in the last decade and Gladiator and Raiders of the Lost Ark much earlier. Believe it or not, The Matrix did not win any of the top honours at the Academy Awards! With a staggering 10 Oscar nominations including the top ones for Best Picture and Director, Fury Road is second only to The Revenant, which has 12, making it a serious contender across the board this year. If nothing else, Fury Road has confirmed its place in the Oscar hall of fame!
Watching this movie was like dodging bullets (literally and figuratively) with high-octane action sequences crafted to perfection and very limited CGI use. It was like sitting in a car, hurtling down a mountain at breakneck speed, and yet on a trajectory which wavers not one bit! For its action alone and the way it’s orchestrated, George Miller deserves multiple awards. The film uses a very oft-repeated trope from action flicks, one of a car chase, making it the mainstay of the film with shots that’ll leave you agape with shock and awe. As a viewer, the action was overwhelming on the senses but at no time do you lose sight of what’s happening in every shot. One could possibly go on and on about the action in Fury Road, the way it’s shot, the intense camerawork, but suffice to say this movie is a milestone in technical prowess.
The plot of Fury Road is simple enough to describe; a religious cult leader who has gone off his rocker, a man on the go caught by the wrong men, a woman with anger issues who’s kicking some serious ass and then an epic chase. The movie is based in a dystopic wasteland, where fresh water and ‘guzzoline’ is the currency used to rule by Immortan Joe (played by Hugh Keays-Byrne), the tyrannical leader. Death and decay permeates all levels of this universe. Under Immortan Joe’s dictatorship there are three kinds of people – his war boys that do all his bidding, his prize breeders, the few chosen women of ‘worth’, and everyone else whose existence the tyrant ignores for most part. The dystopia creates sufficient distance to make it believable which is reinforced in the language and cultural fabric of the film. Loose, broken, half-pieced information from the world known before the thermo-nuclear war has creeped in. From ‘McFeasting in Valhalla’ to ‘Aqua Cola’ to ‘Blood Bag’, all reinforce the dystopian world they live in. The war boys use ‘Mediocre’ to highlight a great job, while Immortan Joe later uses it aptly, knowing its real meaning, withholding knowledge from the masses.
Even though the film is titled Mad Max: Fury Road, Max (played by Tom Hardy) is hardly the focus of the story. Fury Road is more Furiosa’s (played by Charlize Theron) tale of defiance and survival. In this world, where women are treated as objects to fulfill specific needs like producing milk and giving birth to the perfect progeny, Imperator Furiosa is an exception to the rule. She stands her own ground and is respected and feared by men. She undertakes the task of rescuing the women kept in captivity by Immortan Joe and she meets Max while on the run. They become an unlikely partnership and Max realizes how both of them are looking for redemption. They are both characterized as loners and working as a team doesn’t come naturally to them, but you see them fall into a rhythm of mutual respect and trust through the course of Fury Road.
Here’s the ‘one stand-out moment’ in the film for each of us. The first one is when the Buzzards start chasing Furiosa’s war rig and Morsov, one of the war boys, jumps on it in a dying moment. He picks the homemade spears, screaming ‘Witness me’ with his face painted ‘shiny and chrome’ and jumps from the war rig blowing the car up on impact. The entire sequence especially the jump captured in slow motion is what the action is all about! This happens within the first twenty minutes and you know here’s an action film you won’t forget in a hurry! The second one is when Nux (played by Nicholas Hoult) in the middle of a wild sandstorm driving his pursuit vehicle, with bodies flying all around, on a suicide mission exclaims ‘What a day! What a lovely day!’. This is literally the film in a capsule. That moment symbolizes everything crazy and scary and freaky about Mad Max: Fury Road and gave us goosebumps.
Fury Road definitely shaves off important plot points and dialogue to keep the action rolling and keep audiences at the edge of their seats. While this goes to show Miller’s incredible skill at keeping the action tight and not letting it overtake the film in a way that renders it meaningless, it’s also a critique of how he’s let go of building what could have been an intense storyline that cuts through lines of gender, politics, power and ultimately survival. One would imagine Miller didn’t want his audiences to be ‘Nolan-ized’! For it’s epic action, cinematography and visual direction, Fury Road will go into both film annals and fan history, while also giving you just enough fodder to chew on philosophical questions about religion, faith, gender and power. The cool part is that you can choose to watch Fury Road just as an epic action film or also as a socio-political commentary on our world and both make it a great film to watch.
Until next time, keep the popcorn tub handy!
Adi & Sahil
P.S. Want some more? Here’s our Extended Cut.