Thoughts On Mad Max: Fury Road

I just (finally) watched Mad Max: Fury Road and my first reaction is that even from the very beginning of the film, I already regret not having paid to see it on the big screen. But I've become just completely unwilling to give Hollywood my money for making more reboots.

Q: Is this, in fact, just another reboot, or simply a new installment in a long running film series and just as relevant as all the ones before it?
 
A: Well let's see, it's a full 30 years later. The original actor has been replaced for the first time with someone who looks younger than Max had been in the previous installment. On the plus side, it's directed by the same director of all the other films in the franchise so it does have some sense of consistency with the series. But the audience is different. The audience of the earlier Mad Max films are still around but now there is a whole new generation in play. So it has both the attraction of something that already has notariety and fan-base but is also something relevant to the current age. 
 
Verdict: It's hard to say. It seems to be an even split between keeping with a brainchild franchise from the same creator but also a market tool to just sell movies to people who are much more inclined to watch something they recognize. But I think the absence of Mel Gibson is mainly what gives it the quality of being naught more than just another reboot in an endless series of reboots. Actually, even Mel probably wouldn't have saved it from that but at least it wouldn't have been a recast. And I am aware that George Miller has mentioned that the Mad Max films are not necessarily connected. Except they obviously are. So you can take your pick with that.

I will contrast it with the Zatoichi series which went on for about 28 years with a total of 26 installments and also a tv series and starred the same actor in the lead role the whole way through. Conversely, the James Bond had a bit of difficulty at first with changing the lead actor, but eventually grew into a long running pan-generational series that is still around today and still evolving along with rest of the cinematic world, although I can't help but regard the new films as being part of an all new, yet again, rebooted series.

The truth is that Mad Max came and went. This new generation of film makers and audiences needs to get their own heroes. There is a time and a place and even a way to bring things back and it seems to the current age that these are right now, right here, and with lots of CG effects and action and notable actors. The reason these movies sell so well is because they are not a risk to anyone. There is no risk to the audience because if nothing else, they will be finding out if this new version or adaptation or sequel will be any good and how much of the original material they will try to sneak into the film in the form of easter eggs and cameos. That's become the whole point of watching movies now. To see what they do with things that you already know about and to see how many references you can "get" to prove how geeky you are. This means that the film makers are going to make their money off of this curiosity and, if nothing else, people's desire to just know how much they need to hate this new version of something they didn't even think needed to be made.

But all that aside, let's adress the movie itself.
Firstly, though I think Tom Hardy is one the more interesting actors of his time, I couldn't help but keep wanting him to be Gerard Butler. I mean, if you had to replace Mel, I personally think that Gerard would have made a better Max, but that's just my private impression. But what I would have liked a lot more is if Mel Gibson had just reprised his role again and let it just be a much older Max. I think that could've worked out just fine and then it might've seemed more like a sequel than a reboot. And maybe the main reason that didn't happen is because nobody wants to cast a well known anti-semite in their film, but who knows? Maybe he was just busy. In any case, replacing the actor with a much younger and more relevant one just screams "new version". The one saving grace about it is that it is directed by George Miller whom I'm actually a little surprised managed to keep the series to himself all this time.

The directing style is solid. I don't know how best to describe George Miller, but it definitely reads as having been made by someone who actually knows how to direct a film rather than a 2 hour long self-advertisement. There is a great deal of depth and intrigue and you never get a lot of direct explanations of anything but get the idea that there is a lot happening in the universe in which the story is being told. You get the idea that there is a whole world here, just in the context of this episode, which has been very elaborately thought up and could be explained to you if George Miller decided he felt like it. The action is made to be very exciting and fast but the CG effects are used minimally but effectively and not relied upon for everything. As usual, there is a story going on that Max seems to have just inadvertantly walked into and in which he ends up being a catalyst rather than the main focus. I think this has always made Max a more compelling character than your average walking mcGuffin Mary Sue protagonist.

It's as though Hollywood has actually figured out that a film series like this works out a lot better when you get the same director on board. Progress, I guess. But what it amounts to is that it's just the only reason Fury Road is just another piece of crap with no substance. Instead, it's a really awesome well directed piece of crap with no substance but at least a sense of consistency with its franschise.

Yes, Imperator Furiosa is an both an awesome character and also a woman. Can we move on now? NO OF COURSE NOT! I really wish I could have simply watched this movie and enjoyed it or not based on its own merits and downfalls. Maybe it's my own fault for being even slightly interested in the dialogue between feminism and whatever its opposite force actually is, but once the idea that this is a character who has been deliberately placed in a spotlight that would usually be occupied by men, and also the paranoia idea that people object to this on the grounds that it somehow is an emasculation of men has been planted into your head, it's impossible not to see it. I could have just watched this movie and thought, "damn, this one-armed chick is a badass! and hey, another good woman character to prove those damn feminists wrong.". Or I might not have taken much notice of her at all other than thinking she was a cool character. But the way feminists ruin everything isn't by wanting to see more women playing tough and cabaple characters but by being such a squeaky wheel about until creators finally start capitulating to them just to show how modern and unsexist they are. It's now too hard for me to tell if a character was written as a woman just because that's how the creator thought her up, or if they were just responding to feminists' foot stamping. But let's forget about that too.

Besides the directorial style that is consistent with the series, one of the film's major strengths is despite how action-packed it is, it doesn't seem as though it's trying way too hard to impress me. I respect a film a lot more for just being itself and not just keeping me at the edge of my seat so I can find out if the world ends. The action is well done and I really can't find any way to justify that opinion, it just seems to be a matter of personal taste. But one of its major weaknesses is that it seems to be completely uninterested in any kind of content that isn't either a chase scene or an obligatory breathing period between chase scenes. The film even stops and turns around mid way through and goes in reverse so it's as though you've just watched half a movie and then hit rewind and watched it again in reverse. Yes, it's exciting. Yes, it's actually well done. And yes, I even like it. But it's just not the least bit engaging. The whole movie is the world's longest chase scene. If all you want is to go to the theater and be entertained for a couple hours, then Fury Road is exactly your kind of movie. But in the long run, I don't think this movie really gives us much to remember it by.

This entire cinematic generation seems to be almost entirely devoid of quotable dialogue that gets shoehorned into real life situations by people who have seen the movies way too many times(no such thing, I know). And I am confident that when people look back on this era of film-making, they will find that it has very little in it that is unique to its time. The best you can hope for these days is a very successful knock-off.

In the end, Fury Road amounts to a really awesome post-apocalyptic car chase.

Self-gratifying afterthought about remakes
 
As I mentioned, there is a time and a place to revisit. For example, The Thing From Another World(sometimes known as simply "The Thing") was an old piece of sci-fi schlock that is so campy in comparison to the films of today that it's impossible to take seriously. John Carpenter's The Thing was more an alternate interpretation of the original short story than it was a remake, although it does, to some extent, pay homage to the older film. But it was done in a style particular to Carpenter that makes it quite a bit more memorable than simply another monster movie. To put it in another way, (and again, personal taste) John Carpenter just did it better. Now there's a new version of The Thing that was clearly made to emulate John Carpenter's but turns out actually to be a prequel despite having the same title. It falls short of doing anything better or even as good as Carpenter in my opinion and serves as nothing much more than a supplement to his film.

More on that in another post