Mad Max: Fury Road

2015 is a year of high-profile reboots. This summer and holiday season will bring hotly-anticipated new takes on Star Wars, The Terminator, Jurassic Park, and Ghostbusters; not to mention less eagerly-awaited examples like Poltergeist, The Fantastic Four, and yet ANOTHER identical revamp of Spider-Man. Time will tell if there’s any real imagination in all these “reimaginings,” but if Mad Max: Fury Road is any indication, Hollywood’s endless Xerox machine hasn’t completely run out of ink. With this film, George Miller returns to the iconic series that first put him on the map. In addition to writing and directing the three original Mad Max features, Miller has helmed such diverse fare as The Witches of Eastwick (1987), Lorenzo's Oil (1992) and Happy Feet (2006). At 70, the prolific Australian writer/producer/director shows no signs of slowing down or dialing back the energy and outrageousness of his groundbreaking cinematic style. 

In my estimation, Fury Road, counts as a reboot rather than the 4th in a succession of connected films, because it’s been thirty years since the series' previous installment, Mad Max Beyond Thunderdome (1985), and the titular character is no longer played by the actor who originated the role. I’m not completely sure why Mel Gibson isn’t playing Max here. True, Gibson might be a bit old for a role requiring this much stunt work, but he’s younger than Liam Neeson who seems to make nothing but big action pictures these days. Many also view Gibson now as a lunatic, but a touch of crazy isn’t such a bad thing for a guy called Mad Max.

Regardless, in Fury Road, Tom Hardy (Bronson, The Dark Knight Rises, The Drop) takes over the title role, and he’s a solid choice. The Max Rockatansky of this version is a more tortured soul than the one in the original series. But the story seems set in the same “not-so-distant future” as the first trilogy. Whatever war or environmental disaster that brought about the film’s post-apocalyptic setting is still within recent memory for its thirty-something inhabitants. Hardy’s Max is even more of a stoic than Gibson’s. He’s a man of so few words he almost feels like a secondary character for the first third of the picture. But then, this is an unusually structured movie. Miller unabashedly creates a two-hour multi-vehicle car chase that doles out most of its exposition in small doses as everyone races along the desert (essentially the opposite way he structured Beyond Thunderdome). This high-octane style of storytelling works because we don’t go to Mad Max films for complex narratives; we go for the insane driving stunts, the extreme characters, and the post-nuclear-holocaust fashions. But this is not just a loud, mindless, Michael-Bay-style action movie with no plot, no subtext, and no method to its madness. It's well paced, with plenty of time allotted for the characters (and audience) to catch their breath and regroup between set pieces. And since most of the stunts are done for real rather than relying on CGI, each section of the long chase is distinctive and nuanced. The picture doesn’t end up feeling like one big, messy blur of movement, fire, and crashing metal. 

As in The Road Warrior and Beyond Thunderdome, Max wanders into someone else’s story and quickly becomes a central figure in it. Fury Road centers on Furiosa (Charlize Theron), a driver in the army of a tyrannical leader named Immortan Joe (Hugh Keays-Byrne). Joe sends Furiosa on a routine mission to collect gasoline from a fellow warlord, but Furiosa double-crosses him and takes off with precious cargo. Joe then sends his entire army of “War Boys” after her.  Max, captured by War Boys and unwittingly transfusing his blood into the one of their ranks, begins the chase strapped to the hood of a car with a chain and IV linking him to a driver named Nux (Nicholas Hoult). The rapid-fire opening is an exciting way to launch into the plot and meet the major players. It’s impressive how Miller makes each person distinctive. Though all the War Boys look the same, Nux registers clearly as a main character right away. Furiosa is even more tightlipped than Max in the beginning, but Theron’s intensity and striking appearance stir our curiosity and make her instantly riveting to watch. Immortan Joe is less comically camp than his forerunner in The Road Warrior, Lord Humungus, and we get a real sense of how his empire works in very little screen time. More importantly, the key groups of secondary characters who emerge later bring an unexpected layer of complexity to the story.

Of course, the $150 million Fury Road lacks the homespun qualities of the modest Mad Max and its amply budgeted but still physically grounded sequels. These three films were ‘80s era Australian productions where you could clearly tell every stunt was done for real. Here, anytime CGI is used, the movie looses its grip on the viewer. But the design of each sequence and the way shots flow from one into the other is refreshingly adept. Miller coaxed 72-year-old cinematographer John Seale (Witness, Rain Man, The Talented Mr. Ripley) out of retirement to shoot this picture. These two septuagenarian filmmakers find a nice balance of old-school craftsmanship and modern blockbuster bombast. They hold shots for more than the now customary two seconds or less, and adhere to proper screen direction, fluid action cutting, and an unerring ratio of tight, medium, and wide shots—all of which enables a viewer to understand where and how everything happens. Unfortunately, while Miller doesn’t lean heavily on CGI for his stunts, every frame of the movie is heavily manipulated by many digital techniques, which prevent Fury Road from feeling as authentic as its predecessors. For example: colorizing the night scenes as awkwardly bright, blue-tinged monochromes, and shooting many action shots at low frame rates—which creates an annoying strobe-like effect. The wealth of digital manipulation in this movie diminishes its visual uniqueness, and nothing in it tops the extended car chase that concludes The Road Warrior (still my favorite of these films). 

Thematically however, Fury Road is much richer than anything in the original trilogy. The sharp, funny, and astute gender politics make for an engagingly different take on the post-apocalyptic-motorhead genre, to say nothing of the adolescent male-orientation of most blockbusters. It’s not just that Theron’s Furiosa is every bit as badass as Hardy’s Mad Max; all the major plot elements and much of its imagery revolve around women. This unusual feminist inclination invigorates every aspect of the picture, making it the rare reboot that’s much more than a disappointing retread of an older, superior movie. Mad Max Fury Road effectively launches this series into an ironically promising future.