Movie Review: Mad Max Fury Road

To be fair, I should mention that I am a little partial to post-apocalyptic stories.

I've read and seen a lot of them...

And a big part of my love of this stuff came from seeing two big movies in the 80s, The Terminator which showed in a few brief examples what the world could look like, and The Road Warrior, which showed a post-apocalyptic world in all its terrifying glory.

So I'm a little biased.

At the same time, they were switching up the star, and I've seen a whole lot of disappointing sequels, reboots and re-imaginings when it comes to my favourite genres over the last few years, so I went in a little cautiously...

This movie was pretty fantastic.

Yes it was a little light on story, and yes the dialogue is pretty minimal.

But oh my god did I love seeing this on the big screen.

The fact that almost 80E% of what you will end up seeing is crazy car and physical effects rather than CG makes this to be one of the most visually stunning things I've seen in a long long time.

Will it end up on my DVD/Blu-Ray shelves?  Yes, no question.

Should you see it on the big screen while you still can?

Absolutely.

Genre Character of the Week: Max Rockatansky

Realizing I hadn't talked about my personal favourite sub-genre (post-apocalyptic) in a little while, I figured that this weeks character should be a classic of that sub-genre for me - so I picked the character who first got me excited about the genre - Max Rockatansky (aka, Mad Max, aka The Road Warrior).

As a kid, I first watched Max in the film The Road Warrior on a cable network called Superchannel (a movie network in Canada). I had no idea that the film was a sequel and was simply in awe of this strange world filled with marauders and villains who terrorized anyone they came across. Max shows up as an emotionally shut down loner, completely unwilling to help the only group of decent people the film introduces us to, until he looses pretty much everything he owns and effectively has no choice.

What I loved about this film (not counting the costumes or that amazing boomerang!), was how in-depth it got into the character of Max without saying anything directly. It didn't tell me about Max, it simply showed me who he was. Max was someone who had lost everything and was merely surviving, not living. By the end of the film he begins to connect a little with the people around him, but for me this larger-than-life character started my interest in post-apocalyptic stories.

As an older teen I found Max Max and then re-watched the Road warrior just before Thunderdome came out. As a series, Max goes through a lot more emotionally than you would expect from your average run-of-the-mill action flicks. Although the last two films as they are among my personal favourites, check out all three if you want to see Max's entire journey - they are definitely worth the viewing.