Sunday, May 24, 2015

Why I thought Mad Max - Fury Road sucked

So again today I am seeing all sorts of tweets about how great Mad Max - Fury Road is.  Most revolving around the fact that Furiousa was a kick ass character.

I disagree.  I think the movie, as a Mad Max movie, sucked.

As a generic post-apocalyptic car chase movie it was OK.  I would give it a C+.  It looked great.  The action was good, and all the technical stuff that I don't really know much about but which are immediately obvious if they aren't done right seemed to be done right.

And I like the Furiousa character.  She kicked ass, and Charlize Theron did a great job with her.

Down side.  The story was just a rehash of Road Warrior with a few extra bits thrown in and the extra bits were stupid.  First off as despotic post-apocalyptic warlords go I'm not so sure Immortan Joe was really that bad.  Yeah his people were living in squalor, but apparently everyone in this world does.  The sex slavery, forced breeding, and Japanese breast milking fetish were all troubling, but in the context of this world where it appears there are very few healthy fertile females in relation to the male population it might (might mind you) make sense. Aside from that though I didn't see ritual human sacrifices, cannibalism or anything like that.  Hell Immorten Joe's people were even raising crops.  Second, there was no reason for this story to take place.  They can build these gigantic goddamn treadmills and pumps and war machines, but they can't build two pipelines to Gastown?  I mean seriously those are literally just a metal tube.  So no need for the tanker and no opportunity for Furiousa to help the wives escape.  Plus where were they going?  A spring somewhere to the east that Furiousa was last at 20 some years before.  Good plan.  (Amazingly they find it and the last 4 survivors of her tribe, who all happen to remember her.  With the entire continent of Australia to chose from they manage to hit the bullseye)

But let's ignore all that.  Like I sad the cars were cool, the action was good and the scenery was fabulous so I can live with it.

No the reason Mad Max - Fury Road sucked was it's not a Mad Max movie.  Yes there is a character named Max in it but he serves no purpose.  All he does is drive a truck, any schmuck could have done that.  In the first three movies Max was a force of nature.  He drove faster, fought harder, and kicked more ass than anyone, and if he did get jammed up he always had the brains to figure out a way out.

In this movie he is literally just along for the ride.

They should have just left him out of it, called it Fury Road and let Furiousa carry the load.  This movie ruined the character in my opinion and by ruining Max they ruined the movie.

There were a couple other things that grated on me too.

1.  The subtle anti-American dig.  The insignia and at least some of the medals on Joe's chest plate were American.

2.  At one point in the movie they were talking about driving east for 160 days.  To where?  There is an ocean a couple weeks from anywhere on Australia, and if there isn't.  If the oceans boiled off, well none of these guys are alive to make the movie about anyway.

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