Mad Max: Fury Road
George Miller, 2015, Australia, Colour, 120 mins, Certificate: 15
“Out of the ruins / Out from the wreckage / Can’t make the same mistake this time / … / We don’t need another hero” sang the legendary Tina Turner back in 1985 for the soundtrack of Mad Max Beyond Thunderdom, in which she also starred as the “evil” Queen, Aunt Entity.
Who could have imagined that 30 years later, after a couple of false starts (due first to financial, then to scheduling complications), unexpected delays (unprecedented rainfall transformed the Australian dessert into a green expanse, forcing the production to relocate to the Namibian desert), and a change of star (Tom Hardy had to take over from the ageing and repeatedly controversial Mel Gibson), the response to that anthemic cry would be this visually and otherwise ingenious Mad chase down the Fury road.
“A very simple allegory, almost a western on wheels”, according to its intrepid, yet humble director, the franchise’s third and most successful sequel is so much more than meets the eye.
A masterclass in pure, visual narration, almost a silent film. An Oscar wining masterpiece of editing (editor Margaret Sixel, who had never edited an action, shot in sequence film before had roughly 470 hours of footage to edit that took three months to watch). And a feat of practical effects (almost 90% of the special effects were practical, with CGI used only to erase rigs, wires and one of Theron’s arms, enhance the colours, enrich the skies and change day into night).
At the same time, a disarmingly effective, ever timely, unlike any other, feminist manifesto (The Vagina Monologues author, Eve Ensler, was called in to consult on the script), with a charismatic female supporting cast (Zoë Kravitz, Riley Keough, Rosie Huntington-Whiteley, Abbey Lee, Courtney Eaton) as a group of enslaved “brides” who are led by the incomparable Charlize Theron’s war rig driver Furiosa, in their effort to escape the “evil” King, Imortan Joe (the series original villain actor Hugh Keays-Byrne in his last role). And an equally effective and extraordinary, as booming and inescapable an alarm sound for the environment as the heavy metal, flame-shooting electric guitar played by Australian singer/songwriter Sean Hape (a.k.a. Iota).
Thus, apart from an instant (cult) classic, it became both reviews aggregator Rotten Tomatoes best reviewed film of 2015 as well as the Academy Awards champion, winning 6 of the 10 Oscars it was nominated for – the most of any other nominated film that year.
Yes, we don’t need another hero. A heroine will hopefully do better.
Reviews:
“George Miller’s Mad Max: Fury Road upends all expectations—about how action sequences are composed, what themes a blockbuster can contain, or who a film’s actual protagonist can be—and puts most other filmmakers working on this scale to shame.” Violet Lucca, Film Comment
“Even after two viewings, I feel as though I’ve only scratched the surface of Mad Max: Fury Road. George Miller’s action fantasy is astonishingly dense for a big-budget spectacle, not only in its imagery and ideas but in the complex interplay between them (Chicago Tribune critic Michael Phillips has aptly likened the movie to a symphony).” Ben Sachs, Chicago Reader
“The characters were intriguing, the stunts were exhilarating, and every frame was bursting with incredible, how’d-they-do-that nerve. “Mad Max: Fury Road” set a new high-water mark for action filmmaking when it came out in 2015, and no summer blockbuster since has been able to match its turbocharged ingenuity.” Kyle Buchanan, The New York Times
“Miller’s Mad Max: Fury Road is a hammer-down, cast-iron-plated, diesel-exhaust-belching manifesto on the physics of screen action, a metamechanics monster truck show with everything but a Robosaurus.” Nick Pinkerton, BFI/Sight & Sound
“Mad Max: Fury Road is a movie with the kind of reach most people—and even most movies—can only aspire to, and it brings with it the kind of story that can change the way viewers think about the ideas they may have taken for granted up until today.” Sarah Marshall, BitchMedia