Mad Max: Fury Road
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Metallijosh
Well-Known Member
If they're gonna do a furiosa movie without Mad Max then it shouldn't have his name in the title. I'm all for it, but it makes no sens to call it Mad Max anything with no Mad Max. That's like making a Ghostbusters movie and calling it Ghostbusters, but it is only about Dana Barrett.
I actually just got around to seeing this movie. I liked it but for me it does not hold a candle to Road Warrior. My issues with this film are not with the story or the actors. My issues are with just things like the cars. I love the look, they are awesome. They also pull me right out of the movie. For me having so many old classic cars just doesn't make sense. No one has a newer car? Did the Apocalypse happen in 1960 or is the movie set in Cuba where the newest car is a 1959 Ford? The Road Warrior for me was the perfect blend of current cars ( for the time frame) and also some older ones in the mix along with other vehicles that resembled nothing more than a big lawn mower! In Fury Road though the main bad guy has not one but 2 1959 Cadillacs mounted on top of one another. You would be hard pressed to find cars like that now but set in the future where its the end of the world? That stuff just pulls me out of a movie. For me trying to exist day to day is what it is all about not having these Rat Rods that are all tricked out.
My other issue is the use of bullets, sheesh! How many bullets did they use?! OK they make the bullets, fine. Do they have a factory going around the clock to make them? They would have to work around the clock to keep up with these guys wasting ammo! Back to the Road Warrior again, look at Max, for most of the movie he carries a shotgun that does not even have bullets in it! The man villain Lord Humungus has a gun in a box with a handful of bullets. He uses those bullets SPARINGLY! He knows that once they are gone, they are gone! No more bullets so make them count.
Like I said this movie was fine, liked it a lot better than Thunderdome, but no where near as good as Road Warrior.
My other issue is the use of bullets, sheesh! How many bullets did they use?! OK they make the bullets, fine. Do they have a factory going around the clock to make them? They would have to work around the clock to keep up with these guys wasting ammo! Back to the Road Warrior again, look at Max, for most of the movie he carries a shotgun that does not even have bullets in it! The man villain Lord Humungus has a gun in a box with a handful of bullets. He uses those bullets SPARINGLY! He knows that once they are gone, they are gone! No more bullets so make them count.
Like I said this movie was fine, liked it a lot better than Thunderdome, but no where near as good as Road Warrior.
CB2001
Master Member
You have to remember, the first film had classic cars. Since it's explained that the economy was slowly collapsing in the first film, there's a good chance that automotive manufacturers ceased to exist, leaving only what cars were left. Then, there is also the fact that two weeks after the first film, nuclear war broke out. So, if automotive manufacturers continued to existed during MM1, there's a good chance they ceased to exist after the end of MM1. Even with some of the revisions in MM:FR, it's still abiding by the fact that this is still taking place after a nuclear war. Hence the reason why all the cars are old: because there's no one manufacturing brand new cars in the apocalypse and Immortan Joe's armada, like everyone else's, are salvaged from the old world.
Also, considering The Citadel is the only place around, wherever this takes place, that has agriculture and clean drinking water, it makes sense Immortan Joe and company would want to have a ready stock of munitions to protect their assets. Hence, The Bullet Farm and the People-Eater who keeps accounts of all of it.
As to the cars, in this setting, each one is not just a tool but an artistic expression of the people who built them. To paraphrase Miller in interviews "just because it's the end of the world, doesn't mean there can't be beauty and art". This society is reduced back to an analog state and, in this instance, rather than expressing themselves through wall paintings and drawings, their tools are whatever bits of scrap they can find.
Road Warrior is Road Warrior; Fury Road is Fury Road.
As to the cars, in this setting, each one is not just a tool but an artistic expression of the people who built them. To paraphrase Miller in interviews "just because it's the end of the world, doesn't mean there can't be beauty and art". This society is reduced back to an analog state and, in this instance, rather than expressing themselves through wall paintings and drawings, their tools are whatever bits of scrap they can find.
Road Warrior is Road Warrior; Fury Road is Fury Road.
Mola Rob
Sr Member
Well I understand all of that however my thing is what is easier to find right now today, a 1959 Cadillac or a 2004 PT cruiser, 2008 Honda, 1996 Ford F150 etc. etc? If a Nuclear War broke out what type of vehicle would you be able to find readily versus what would you have to hunt for? A newer car out there ( heck even cars from the 1980's or 1990's) would be easier to get your hands on then the classic cars. Look just my observation. I am not railing against the movie which was fun and visually great to watch I just have my favorites in the Mad Max franchise and The Road Warrior is still my favorite then Fury Road followed up by Thunderdome. I never cared much for the first Mad Max.
Cars/trucks became too electronic & plastic to last in the 1980s/90s. These days the owners of exotics (Ferraris, etc) from that era are struggling to keep them running because the stuff is so impractical to fix when it fails and so difficult to reproduce in small runs.
If there is not a steady supply of replacement electronics and plastic & rubber parts then vehicles from the modern era will be doorstops. You can't even diagnose their problems without computers now, let alone repair & drive them.
Even modern bodies are pretty easily damaged for the kind of beating you see in FR. Their plastic & urethane panels easily tear off, with the plastic cracking and the urethane tearing out the mounting holes. The internal structures are great for safety in crashes but they accomplish this by being very "sacrificial." Study any modern car that has been rear-ended at a decent clip - the trunk area is so folded up it's just GONE.
After an apocalypse it would be easier to keep a simple steel-bodied & carbureted vehicle running than a modern one.
All this reasoning doesn't make the whole issue go away and make FR's classics-only scene 100% credible. But it helps.
If there is not a steady supply of replacement electronics and plastic & rubber parts then vehicles from the modern era will be doorstops. You can't even diagnose their problems without computers now, let alone repair & drive them.
Even modern bodies are pretty easily damaged for the kind of beating you see in FR. Their plastic & urethane panels easily tear off, with the plastic cracking and the urethane tearing out the mounting holes. The internal structures are great for safety in crashes but they accomplish this by being very "sacrificial." Study any modern car that has been rear-ended at a decent clip - the trunk area is so folded up it's just GONE.
After an apocalypse it would be easier to keep a simple steel-bodied & carbureted vehicle running than a modern one.
All this reasoning doesn't make the whole issue go away and make FR's classics-only scene 100% credible. But it helps.
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CB2001
Master Member
Again, this film is following a pre-established reality. There was no 1980 and 1990 vehicles because the reality/future depicted in the film was filmed in 1979. Essentially, the series is a retro-futuristic apocalyptic film. It's a part of the reality Miller created for his films. You know the game Alien Isolation? The films the game is based on were made years ago, though set years into the future. The game follows the retro-future design of those films. The same is true with Fury Road, it's a film set and following a pre-established look and design of a retro-future turn apocalypse that was created in the first three films.
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cayman shen
Master Member
It's the totality of it that's great. The visuals, art direction, stunts, cinematography, all the eye candy. But also the world building (great slang/lingo, costumes, props) is a huge part of the appeal. Finally, it's wonderfully performed and has a real, human, emotional core. The whole film is a nightmare circus freak show with heart. What's not to adore?!
CB2001
Master Member
The story is in discontinuity, yes, but the world of the story itself is within continuity. In the first film, we see a future on the edge of anarchy and falling apart. MM2 shows that after the events of the first film, the complete collapse and nuclear war that turns the land into a barbaric and savage place with people scrounging for scraps. MMBT shows the eventual low of everything, turning most of the land into a desert wasteland because everything is gone. MMFR continues from there in the world continuity. The same is true for the vehicles.
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Different people see different things of course. It's also a matter of how deep you look. An explosion is not just an explosion is not just an explosion and so on- how meticulous they appear to have been with choreographing the action, where great care was taken with time, space and placement in comparison to films that just "pile things on" with the believe that the more stuff you can have go on per second the better.
I recall Miller stating in an interview a while back that he viewed each film as a "legend" of the wasteland, as if they were told by the children like they do at the end of Thunderdome. (This explaining any continuity errors or that things are slightly different... with the tales being interpreted slightly different all the time.)
I know you were actually defending the film, but I absolutely believe that a film like this can be equivalent to Shakespeare in artistic value. Being an action movie does not discount its merit as such. (The Academy probably disagrees with me on this one haha.) Even something like Armageddon can be a refined piece of work. (I'm serious... Armageddon is a horribly sentimental, cheesy and unrealistic film but in the context of the kind of film that it represents, it's a masterpiece of filmmaking. Bay went downhill when he lost the guiding hand of Burckheimer...)
Fury Road isn't a film I'd watch on a weekly (or even monthly basis) but I do still maintain that the ability to make such a simplistic (in plot terms) movie hold interest for so long, in a time where (at least I find) action scenes usually to be tediously dull and undramatic, is quite extraordinary.
People have been ripping off Mad Max for decades. The genre already has several hundred thousand miles on the odometer. Just being a post-apoc desert crasher flick was not going to do anything for FR.
The George Miller connection didn't ring any bells with most mainstream viewers before FR came out either.
FR is the most recent example of an action movie that would have gotten Best Picture if the academy wasn't full of crap.
The George Miller connection didn't ring any bells with most mainstream viewers before FR came out either.
FR is the most recent example of an action movie that would have gotten Best Picture if the academy wasn't full of crap.
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^^this
completely made sense to me along with the art statement... civilization being forced to drop the technological advances and go back to carburetors and non fuel injected rides (less nitrous) and onboard computers. older cars break down, you could fix it with spare parts... nowadays... you have to take it to a shop.
i look under the hood my current 2013 charger and i cant identify as much as i can on a 1967
then there's the whole art thing too. i had to watch Fury Road a second time and started to appreciate it as a film. first time thru, it was a fun ride but the more i watch it, it's damn good storytelling even if it is a reboot, but it being a reboot, damn fine job when you compare all of the others we've gotten that absolutely blow.
Laspector
Master Member
I agree with this. Recasting Max is like recasting Indiana Jones. While it can be done, I'd just rather they didn't. You could've called Tom Hardy Jack or Bill or Jimmy and it would've been the same movie as it was. I thoroughly enjoyed the movie, but it just doesn't seem like it connects with the other three IMO.
CB2001
Master Member
Though I agree that it would have been great to have Mel back, I thought Hardy did an excellent job of capturing the essence of Max, showing how the character would be with years of mistakes riding on his shoulders like Atlas holding the world on his. He kept true with Max, yet still made the character just as much his own.
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same can be likened to 007... over time, each one shined on their own but none will ever replace Connery. think the same could be applied to Hardy should he land the next 2/3 and they hand the baton onto the next... i've no issue with it so long as it become stand alones and not constant reboots.
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