Mad Max: Fury Road (obligatory spoiler warning) (Page 2 of 4)

I liken it to The Raid as a come-from-nowhere non-stop action thriller that beats all the standard PG13 CGI from the Hollywood tentpole factory.

Apparently they did destroy quite a few, but it was part of the plan - http://filmmakermagazine.com/94242-dp-j … fury-road/

Hadn't really thought about how well 7D's and such can serve as crash cameras - they're small and cheap, and all you need to worry about after the crash is salvaging a tiny memory card.  That's an option that's never been available to stunt filmmakers until just recently.

I have my own fridge logic questions

1. How can you possibly carry 160 days worth of motorbike fuel? I reckon two days max, Max. Unless they're some hyper-efficient futuristic engine.
2. What planet are we on? 160 days x 80 miles an hour x 10 hours a day = 5 times around the Earth at the equator.

Speaking of the different turns of phrase used in the film, I think I've fallen in love with the word "schlanger".

That. Is. A. Perfect. Analogy.

Disclaimer: if you dislike the tone of a post I make, re-read it in a North/East London accent until it sounds sufficiently playful

Ditto. Basically everything I always complain about and wish movies would do, this does effortlessly. Visual storytelling, simplicity of plot/complexity of themes, character through action, continuity of motion in editing, world-building without exposition, gender equality, sympathetic villains (what other blockbuster dares to humanize religious extremists).

Think about how rich this movie is in thematic ideas and memorable characters, with barely any dialogue. It's enough to make you disgusted at how lazy every other modern studio movie is.

"Hope is a mistake. If you can't fix what's broken, you'll go insane". What a great thesis statement, and it's conveyed in under 15 words.

Last edited by bullet3 (2015-05-22 02:57:29)

To be fair, it got away with avoiding exposition because it appropriated the existing Mad Max franchise, which is well known, so it had less world building to do. Had it been an original stand-alone movie called 'Furiosa', we would have been subjected to the standard opening titles montage of news reports, headlines, mushroom clouds, etc and more of her backstory in flashback.

I also wonder what the box office would have been had it NOT been a Mad Max movie. We fans complain endlessly about sequels, remakes, reboots, etc, but when there are original new movies like Oblivion, Edge of Tomorrow, etc, they hardly break even.

Last edited by avatar (2015-05-22 09:30:59)

The brand MAD MAX is well-known (even by people that haven't seen the movies)... a car-based post-apocalyptic  wasteland. That's all you need to know. Branding probably accounts for 80% of box office these days.

No one saw John Wick, but had it been exactly the same movie under the James Bond or Mission Impossible 'brands', I'm sure the box office would have been 5X+ as much.

It's like opera - there are only about 20-30 operas in the core repertoire that are resurrected each season. It's lately been criticised as a dead artform, or at least 'ossified'. There are occasional attempts to write new operas, but most of these are financially unsuccessful.
Similarly, in movie tentpoles, there are only about 20-30 brands: Terminator, Aliens, Star Wars, Star Trek, DC, Marvel, James Bond, Mission Impossible, Transformers, etc which are mined each season. Most attempts to launch new 'brands' are unsuccessful, so it's easier just to appropriate an existing one, whatever your story.

I hear there are going to be several more Mad Max movies now that this one is successful. And if Blade Runner 2 resurrects that brand, there'll no doubt be more of those.

I saw this the other night and yup, it was great. Apart from the name, I know absolutely nothing about the Mad Max series and I thought it played well to us newbies. I was expecting some more exposition, but I'm actually glad we didn't get that - just being thrown in to this world was absolutely refreshing.

I do have maybe like one or two gripes about the film:   I felt that even though it was called Mad Max, there was too little Max.  I guess the argument can be made that having an ensemble works better for the film, but idk, I just wanted to see Max have more of a character arc. 

Also,

So playing devils advocate for the filmmaker here. I think it's supposed to play into the whole thematic thing of love and mothers and all that. Since this would be the first time Nux has ever had anyone be like...nice... to him, let alone do that whole mothery thing.

The only thing that bugged me about it is how quickly the tone flips during that scene. We've had half an hour or whatever of insanely high action tension, and then within 5 seconds it flips the switch into a calm, let's talk, romantic sort of scene with them in the lookout. It was just more disorienting than anything. But I didn't and still don't have a problem with Nux's flip in any real sense.

Agreed. But honestly did they have sex? If so I totally missed that. I thought it was just that she--instead of freaking out that he was there--recognized what he was going through because she went through the same thing, and was empathetic. He felt understood, and in their own, emotionally-stunted kind of way, felt a kinship that became love.