Appleseed said:In reply to Beer Baron :
Or it's a just a chase movie with stunts, and guns, and fire. It can be so many different things to everyone.
That is the nice thing about the movie. It can be as shallow or as deep as you want it to be.
Appleseed said:In reply to Beer Baron :
Or it's a just a chase movie with stunts, and guns, and fire. It can be so many different things to everyone.
That is the nice thing about the movie. It can be as shallow or as deep as you want it to be.
Beer Baron said:wvumtnbkr said:I loved the original movies. When I saw fury road, it was literally driving a truck to someplace that didn't exist and then driving it back. Ooph.
That was the plot, but this movie wasn't about plot. It was about vibe and themes. That the place didn't exist was integral to the theme.
They leave because they want to go to a fabled edenic place where everything is better and everything is sunshine and lollipops. They want to run away to where their problems don't exist. They discover that no such place exists. That their only option is to turn around, face their problems head on, and go back to their disgusting, messy, unfair, world full of suffering and do the work themselves to make it a better place.
There are lots of elements that have a lot of depth when analyzed deeply. Such as how EVERY character is dying, deformed, crippled, etc. *except* for the Wives. (Max may be physically whole, but is psychologically crippled.) I could probably write a full page on the significance of the line, "I had a baby brother, and he was perfect in every way!"
It's a surprisingly deep and MESSY piece of genuine art. It explores a lot of really heavy themes but doesn't fall into the trap of pushing a particular agenda or telling people what they're supposed to think. At least, not beyond, "Life is struggle. Hope comes from facing your problems rather than trying to run away from them."
this this THIS ALL OF THIS.
maschinenbau said:Yes I've seen the movies, but I always found it hard to believe that fuel is getting refined in a collapsed society with no supply chains to keep that equipment running, and all that stuff is hand-waived or barely mentioned in the movies. Even consumables like batteries aren't explained. My point is it's not a very realistic depiction of that kind of future, so the cars don't have to be either.
They don't need to be explained, and the movie is better for not being bogged down in minutiae.
We see in the background that the Citadel, which has water, has a large hydroponics operation.
Gas Town is a refinery, and presumably handles production of anything petrochemical.
The Bullet Farm probably has metalworks.
We see that the tailings from the metalworks and refineries has "soured the earth" at the Green Place.
Is any detail greater than that necessary for the movie? No. Three mutually supporting enclaves, is all that is relevant.
As a visual spectacle and entertaining 'ride' for two-ish hours, Fury Road is decent. But, having seen it twice, I am in no hurry to see it again.
OTOH I've watched Mad Max and The Road Warrior countless times.
I'm not a sci-fi or fantasy guy, so am not the target audience for any of the offerings after the first two. The second one stretches credibility somewhat, but makes up for it in gritty, dirty, identifiable vehicles and good non-CGI stunts. Fury Road goes too far into the sci-fi realm for someone that has no interest in Star Wars movies.
With each installment, it seems like Miller is constantly re-hashing the same basic idea, just amplifying the glitz and spectacle. In the Furiosa trailer we see yet another tanker truck. Road Warrior again, with a female lead.
I know there is an audience for these bigger, splashier productions, and I may see it just because there isn't much else in the movie landscape to get me into a theater. But...meh.
NickD said:Duke said:wvumtnbkr said:vwcorvette (Forum Supporter) said:I don't get the allure of these movies. Am I broken?
The new ones suck out loud. The old ones were cool at the time.
No, you're not broken, or alone.
Mad Max is a fantastic movie, start to finish, especially in it's undubbed release with Mel's actual voice. Made on a shoestring budget and maximized every dollar spent.
Road Warrior is very good - a solid post-apocalypse movie with great chase action.
Thunderdome is terrible, full stop. No redeeming qualities. Pretend it never existed.
Fury Road is... just OK. I do not understand the love for it when compared to the first two, but at least it's better than Thunderdome instead of worse.
Just curious, did you see Fury Road in theaters? Because it was an absolute spectacle on the big screen.
I saw it at the drive In the day it came out.
No me gusta.
I will say that I learned alot about the movie from this discussion.
However, I felt that the entire movie was waiting for something to happen and it just didn't happen.
Trailer 2 released. Man, Hemsworth seems absolutely unhinged in this. I bet he's having a ball as this character. Looks like this movie will be showing how Important Joe makes his rise to power and why Furiosa is his trusted right hand.
Well gee, I hope it has some action in it. 
I have to admit though, those movies give me a bit of anxiety watching them. Running an engine without a filter in the desert....
Well, she has to be his right hand. She ain't got a left one....
Also fun to read through this thread and see the different ways everyone's spellchecker tries to correct Immortan Joe...
Duke said:
No, you're not broken, or alone.Mad Max is a fantastic movie, start to finish, especially in it's undubbed release with Mel's actual voice. Made on a shoestring budget and maximized every dollar spent.
Road Warrior is very good - a solid post-apocalypse movie with great chase action.
Thunderdome is terrible, full stop. No redeeming qualities. Pretend it never existed.
Fury Road is... just OK. I do not understand the love for it when compared to the first two, but at least it's better than Thunderdome instead of worse.
ell now. I messed that quote up. Anyway,
all the Mad Max sequels fall into the same trap as most sequels. Each successive movie tries to be bigger and better than the movie before it instead continuing the timeline and standing on it's own.
And Thunderdome was terrible, but Tina Turner!!!
And Fury Road verged on ridiculous. Fantastic machinery, but the vehicles should have looked more the the vehicles driven by the Horde in Road Warrior.
Oh man, I am SO here for this.
Noddaz said:all the Mad Max sequels fall into the same trap as most sequels. Each successive movie tries to be bigger and better than the movie before it instead continuing the timeline and standing on it's own.
I haven't seen more than miscellaneous clips from the first two movies. Fury Road absolutely stands on its own.
Although I haven't seen the first two, I gather Fury Road entirely different themes from them and is directed in a very different style. I gather the first is mostly a revenge film. Fury Road is definitely not. I'd say it's a film about the difference between Living and merely Surviving.
Stylistically... George Miller has stated that he thinks the best version of Fury Road is black and white with only the orchestral score. It's really meant to be a silent movie. I can easily imagine it with the handful of important lines splashed up in text on the screen like silent movie cards.
The action *is* bigger, but it always felt energetic and purposeful. It's not just Bayhem smashing action figures together. Not bigger for the sake of bigger. It feels more like... he always wanted it to be this big, but didn't have the money or technology to realize previously.
And Fury Road verged on ridiculous. Fantastic machinery, but the vehicles should have looked more the the vehicles driven by the Horde in Road Warrior.
Why? It's been years. Decades. Things have changed. They should NOT look the same. Culture has changed. The vehicles should reflect that.
If the sequels should "...continue the timeline and stand on their own..." the vehicles should be different.
Logically, vehicles would NOT look like they did in Mad Max - production vehicles that have been chopped and had weapons and armor hastily welded on with time for a quick intimidating paintjob. All those production cars would be gone. Logically, vehicles should all be Frankenstein abominations individually built out of the random spare parts over a longer period of time. Likely with extra superfluous bits just welded on for decoration and tribal expression because there's no shortage of scrap. That's... pretty much what we get.
In reply to Beer Baron 🍺 :
The first film ENDS as a revenge film, but it's about an honest cop in a bad system and how bad situations drive him to who he became. It's a hero's journey, or maybe a villain's journey.
He goes from sweet and trying to be the bright cheeked best he can, to chaining Johnny the Boy to an imminent fire of his creation and telling him he might need ten minutes to cut through the chain, might need five minutes to cut through his ankle, then tossing him a hacksaw.
In reply to Pete. (l33t FS) :
Point remains... very different film from Fury Road.
I think the fact that different people can each prefer different films in the series for completely different reasons speaks highly to what good art they are, and how well crafted the series is. Great art doesn't speak to everyone equally. It will explore specific things that resonate stronger with some people than others.
The first movie is really a completely different type of movie from the rest. Mad Max movies are generally considered post-apocolyptic movies, but the first one very much is not (except, maybe, the very very end). Certainly worth a watch. Just beware that it is an old, low budget movie, but it still works. Heck, the motorcycle racing down the rural road scene alone is fantastic (mostly because how it was filmed).
The first two are a bit like Alien and Aliens.
In reply to Beer Baron 🍺 :
Oh, very much so. I enjoy the first movie and Fury Road for different reasons. (I don't enjoy The Road Warrior or that other movie) And multiple reasons per movie. One can enjoy a movie on multiple levels and that's okay.
aircooled said:
The first two are a bit like Alien and Aliens.
Now I'm going to have to gird my ADD-addled loins and try to sit through Road Warrior, since Alien was a horror movie, and Aliens was an action movie that was part condemnation of the US involvement in Vietnam, and now I am curious what parallels there are in Road Warrior...
Beer Baron 🍺 said:Noddaz said:And Fury Road verged on ridiculous. Fantastic machinery, but the vehicles should have looked more the the vehicles driven by the Horde in Road Warrior.
Why? It's been years. Decades. Things have changed. They should NOT look the same. Culture has changed. The vehicles should reflect that.
If the sequels should "...continue the timeline and stand on their own..." the vehicles should be different.
Logically, vehicles would NOT look like they did in Mad Max - production vehicles that have been chopped and had weapons and armor hastily welded on with time for a quick intimidating paintjob. All those production cars would be gone. Logically, vehicles should all be Frankenstein abominations individually built out of the random spare parts over a longer period of time. Likely with extra superfluous bits just welded on for decoration and tribal expression because there's no shortage of scrap. That's... pretty much what we get.
Also something I've noticed already in the trailers: a lot more polished, shiny vehicles in Furiosa, versus Fury Road. Because stuff hasn't had decades of wear and tear and destruction.
That shot of Hemsworth riding in the chariot being towed by three motorcycles is metal AF
In reply to aircooled :
Mad Max gave the impression there were still pockets of civilization but it was crumbling and authorities were losing control. Max heading out into the wastelands could be considered a metaphor for the complete collapse as the movie ended with despair.
Road Warrior was the result of the collapse, but conversely ended with hope.
Thunderdome... well... to be honest, I haven't watched it again since the 80's when it was first on video. It did seem more like a money-grab, although at the time it seemed it was successful in that goal.
In reply to Ian F (Forum Supporter) :
There's a lot of story telling in the background conversations in Mad Max. The ones I recall were admonishments on the police PA system about gasoline trading... apparently gasoline was rationed and officers were trading their rations for other goods.
Even that early on, they were scavengers. They built the Interceptor from bits here, bits there. They got tires from a junkyard. ("Don't know where I got them from, but I got 'em"), etc.
In reply to Pete. (l33t FS) :
The first Mad Max is pre-apocalypse, like weeks beforehand. Johnny gets released because nobody other than the police are charging him with a crime (the cops can't charge you? What the hell happened to occur that?) the TV discusses government rationing of gas and now power in the evenings (how little power can you generate if even at night it has to be sheparded?) and when Max is forced into a vacation he tells his boss that there's literally nobody else that can work- so it's not just authority breakdown, it's also that this has been going on for some time and the avalanche is beginning to slip off the mountainside. Pete's bit on the Interceptor is also great- as they said, it's the "Last of the V8s" that was made from bits and pieces they squirreled away. It's a vulture society that's picking the bones clean, and it ends with Max moving on from all the bodies a broken man.
Ian F : Thunderdome was an attempt to bring Mad Max more into a "How does Max move on and change?" question. Basically Miller wants anything after Thunderdome to be when Max finally realizes he can't keep running and (from the video game) There is no "Plains of Silence" for his peace- he can only fight it.
In reply to NickD :
Wait, are they using The Man Who Sold the World as the song for this one? Also (I know I'm posting a SUPERIOR cover) but the point of that song supposedly was Bowie's disgust at selling his art; will this song be for Furiosa for selling herself to the Immortan for revenge?
Bringing this back up- Saw Furiosa last night, and I'd love to discuss it so long as we're cool with this thread being a little spoilery from here on out- but only if the majority are cool with that. My NOT spoilery thoughts are-
I do have disagreements with some things tho, but there's only one thing I didn't "like" that actually brought the movie down. I'd say solid 8-9/10.
I saw the movie yesterday with someone completely unfamiliar with the setting, so it was interesting to hear her thoughts.
My thoughts are various, random, and as yet currently unstructured.
The trailers were awful. They made it look like the movie was going to be a CGI-fest and it very much was NOT.
The handling of Furiosa's backstory was pretty consistent in the setting. Without getting too spoilery, she was NOT a failed Wife as many had theorized. She ran away from Rictus, which tracks because one of her jobs as a Praetor was to protect the wives from his advances, and she fell into being a Blackthumb and later advanced into Warboy status by circumstance. She advanced up before anyone knew she was a woman and avoided becoming a Wife.
I didn't see her interaction with Immortan Joe as anything but mildly antagonistic. When she said "he's MINE [my kill]" he spoke volumes with just a look: "who are YOU to give ME orders? But go ahead." He was probably still incensed that she disappeared from his harem but was also smart enough to recognize a good warrior when he saw one, and hated that this was the case.
Lots of callbacks. I instantly recognized the stone arch at the Rock Rider's territory, except it was all green. The Rock Riders were probably a tribe that split off from Dementus's group.
I could swear that one of the blackthumbs that spoke up during their first scene was Nux. Sounded just like him. Furiosa also pointed out in Fury Road that Nux was originally a blackthumb.
If Scrotus looked familiar at all, he was the same actor as Slit.
Toward the end we see Furiosa, now an Imperator, from the same angle we see her when she is introduced in Fury Road: from behind, Citadel brand clearly visible on her neck, walking away from the camera.
Yes, her friend in the beginning is the same person we saw acting as bait on the tall pole in Fury Road: Valkyrie. (Edit: Somewhat interesting in that the last thing Furiosa says to her is to say silent and hidden, several times. When we "first" see Valkyrie, in Fury Road, she is naked on a tall pole, out in the open, screaming her lungs out...)
Much earlier upthread, an interpretation of Fury Road as a tale of having to fix your problems instead kf running away from them meshed very, very well with the monologue that Dementus had with Furiosa during his final scene. (I don't buy his "canon" ending, it sounds too much like a fairytale saga from an unreliable narrator, I buy the first version we see)
Saw it last night. It may not have been a CGI-fest, but the CGI that was there was ridiculously obvious. I also think that the use of sped up frames to increase the frenetic nature in which characters drove away or moved was much less subtle (to the point of distraction) vs fury road.
I also saw it last week. I enjoyed it, and as others have pointed out, its a pretty different beast from Fury Road. I remember reading a review that said it had even bigger setpieces than Fury Road, and I'm really not sure what they were talking about. Don't get me wrong, it was very good, but it wasn't quite on the same level of action. Also, a pretty bleak film since, if you saw Fury Road, you know that a lot of the actions are going to be futile or you have a good idea what characters aren't going to survive. Also, was it me, or did some of the violence seem much more graphic than in Fury Road?
Unfortunately, the film is absolutely tanking at the box office, as is pretty much every other big film this year, and it seems like, barring a miracle or George Miller cashing in some earned good will, this might be the last we see of the Mad Max franchise for a long, long time. Too bad, because Miller said he had another film Mad Max: The Wasteland written which was going to be a Max-based film set after Fury Road.
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