The Wasteland has never been so vibrant, so mad, so overpowering, so fast or so furious before.
Like many of you reading this site, I was alive and fully engaged when George Miller’s MAD MAX, MAD MAX 2 (aka THE ROAD WARRIOR) and MAD MAX BEYOND THUNDERDOME hit. Before I fully engage into George Miller’s new masterpiece of motorized mayhem, let’s have a bit of a trip down memory lane.
I don’t think this is overly necessary. I had a very dear friend that saw MAD MAX FURY ROAD that had some how spent a large amount of time on planet Earth as a fairly hardcore movie geek and… hadn’t seen the 3 prior films. With Tom Hardy taking over the role that Mel Gibson seared into our collective consciousnesses 36 years ago, it would seem to be a perfect place to get underway from… except, if you go in fresh at this point, without at least seeing the first MAD MAX, you’re going to miss some powerful and to my way of thinking integral character building.
That 1979 MAD MAX, it takes place while civilization was circling the drain, hanging on by the fingernails. There was still Law trying desperately to clutch on to Order. At that time the fresh faced young Mel Gibson was playing a hot shot officer of the law named Max Rockatansky, he patrolled the highways trying to peel the scabs of society clean off the highway, then return to the comfort of his family, but still… throughout the first MAD MAX, civilization is losing. He loses friends on the force, he loses his wife and child and he loses a bit of his own humanity.
In MAD MAX 2 aka THE ROAD WARRIOR, we join Max as a scavenger on the road, killing for gas, soaking precious drops of the fuel with a rag that he wrings into a broken bowl. Never a word about where he’s going. Max’s only drive seems to be to simply move forward. For me – these first two films… they show Max as the ultimate Humphrey Bogart from CASABLANCA, he sticks his neck out for nobody. He doesn’t care anymore. If he needs something, he takes it. The trash on the road are dealt with as they cross his path, he doesn’t seek trouble, he ends it. But then he meets the people at the refinery and he doesn’t soften, I think he wants the gas he was promised, but he sees them all as people to forget and leave. UNTIL his CAR is blown to smithereens, then he enters a new chapter. He steps up to do something heroic.
With MAD MAX BEYOND THUNDERDOME… well, I’m less of a huge fan of that film. It’s fun and kitschy… but for me, it wasn’t a profound film upon the character of Max. MASTER BLASTER and Aunty Entity are great… but ultimately the film disappointed me in the same exact fashion that RETURN OF THE JEDI disappointed after the magnificent perfection of EMPIRE STRIKES BACK. When you come right to it, it couldn’t live up to what came before. Those first two films forged an image of a savage future that THUNDERDOME didn’t quite solidify for me.
Those that consider themselves Warriors of the Wasteland, aka hardcore fans of the world that George Miller created, for many it isn’t so much MAX that they latch onto, so much as the mad bands of rogues ruling the endless dried and deserted lands of the post-Apocalypse. That all began with The Knight Rider and Toe-Cutter in the original MAD MAX, then was taken to new and more dire levels with the Lord Humungus. It wasn’t just the crazed take what you will, punish the weak, live for the kill mantra that drove these people to disengage from every social grace we’ve ever known in modern civilization.
MAD MAX: FURY ROAD… it stands apart from what came before. This film shows us a future that George Miller claims is 45 years from next Wednesday – but let’s examine this world.
At the start, we see Max lose his car, freedom & mind. He’s the kind of man that would injure a two-headed gecko and then slurp it’s wiggling body down without a moment’s thought. When stripped of his old uniform, his machine and weapons, he’s analyzed by this mad civilization in the Wasteland as being a Universal Donor… he’s nothing more than a blood bag for this diseased mad population of in-bred zealots raised to worship the mechanical wizardry of its people. Also… the place they call home feels ancient, less something from 45 years and seemingly something ancient… something miraculous in the Wasteland… that somehow – something or someone forged the will to not just survive the Wasteland, but to own it.
Out of this dusty nightmare of roads and vehicular insanity, this world has reformed upon an Escarpment jutting out of the wasteland. A society that makes its way through the worship of the godlike IMMORTEN JOE, played by Hugh Keays Byrne aka THE TOE-CUTTER from the original MAD MAX. He has mastered the Wasteland. He’s once again conjured the notion of VALHALLA, without a touch of its Norse roots, instead retro-fitted from Vehicular worship. Women are used to create more people to serve the society. Once producing Milk, they become Milk Mothers – helping boost their world’s antibodies – as this wasteland is bringing with it a decay of the flesh. You see this illustrated to perfection in the body of IMMORTEN JOE himself… How many of these War Boys are his? His brothers’?
If all of this was built in the 45 years from next Wednesday, then you really have to give it to these guys. They win SURVIVOR forever.
What exactly happened? How could the world take this kind of turn? IMMORTEN JOE controls Water, Gas, Food, Blood & Medicine in his unassailable keep! He hoards the remnant beauties of the past world in his kingdom. He has formed a new religion based on a warrior peoples that reign supreme amongst the various wasteland pirates that each have their own reputations.
Now – I know… it seems like there’s a lot to discuss in this film and there is. Most films you see, especially blockbusters – they’re safe. They don’t feature women hooked to breast milk pumps creating the nourishment for their peoples. It is savage, brutal, unhinged.
All of this is set up of the world you’re going to thrown into at a speed you can’t really imagine. Take Max’s attempted escape that we’ve seen in a ton of trailers – what you haven’t seen yet are his nightmare visions and voices. How Max gets thrust into action is as a Blood Bag, with a tube of his blood running to the driver of the car he’s strapped to the front of. I’ve never seen anything like this before. MADNESS. Glorious shiny madness.
You have to understand, MAD is the aesthetic driving this film forward. When you strap yourself down for this journey it will attempt to throw you through the roof of the cinema, so hold on to your seat, you’ve got to see this 6 or 7 times.
This is the type of film that us Film Geeks clutch our St. Welles Medallion and pray for all the time. I remember when Siskel and Ebert were reviewing the original STAR WARS and they came to the Cantina scene and it was just so much wilder than anything anyone had ever seen in film before, that it blew their minds.
Now – I want you to think about the vehicles of the previous MAD MAX films – and I want you to realize… that was child’s play. For the past 12 years, George Miller has been working with a team of folks to bring real vehicular madness to life. This isn’t going to look like anything you’ve ever seen before.
We all dig the FAST & THE FURIOUS series – but they’re trying to pretend be crazy, George Miller has actually done it. These drivers don’t have shows to watch, they don’t have races… it’s LIFE & GLORIOUS DEATH out there!
There’s a moment – where ZEALOT is redefined for all time in cinema for me in this film. A War-Boy is hit in the face and slightly above his heart with arrows… at first, you presume death… but then, you see his eyes open, he sprays his mouth and teeth with this chrome paint, so he can be shiny upon his entrance to VALHALLA – and then he grabs a spear with some explosive charge and he leaps from his car into the enemy vehicle which then explodes crashing into others. Pure Kamikaze Madness!
This is observed by Max, still strapped to the front of the car serving as a blood bag for Nicholas Hoult’s NUX – a War-Boy that longs to serve Father, the IMMORTEN JOE, and gain honorable and glorious entrance through the fabled gates of VALHALLA. Max is muzzled brutally, chained with his blood being drained at will into NUX and all at Nitrous speeds that no speedometer is catching sight of. All NUX wants is to serve his family/tribe proudly – having only ever known that life. MAX recognizes the madness around him and is just trying to survive.
MEANWHILE – All of this madness is kicked off by the IMPERATOR FURIOSA (Charlize Theron) who, to my way of thinking, is actually the main character of the film. Actually, there’s 4 main characters to me. IMMORTAN JOE, MAX, FURIOSA & NUX. Furiosa drives this War Vehicle to Gas Town and back, a brutal stretch called THE FURY ROAD. She rules it, having successfully driven its stretch untold amounts of time. She leaves that road behind, in the hopes of some fabled bit of green that she remembers as her home long ago.
She carries Immortan Joe’s stash of prized breeder women in her cargo and as fate would have it, Furiosa, Max and Nux will all be working together by the end of this tale.
I have avoided giving you a real sense of structure or what happens beyond the set-up, because if I went into trying to describe the action this film will assault you with, I would fail. Words can not touch the unbelievable mayhem this film unleashes. It all feels as though it is going wrong. Nothing that anybody does goes according to plan. Victory is always ripped out from under those attempting to grasp it – even if that victory be the death you want.
This movie isn’t about half-measures or saving some in the tank for later. This film tries to capture on film the savage abandon of ancient warrior peoples atop vehicles flying at furious speeds driven by maniacs and madmen, at the behest of maniacs and madmen in a world that is clearly always mad!
This isn’t really a continuation of what we’ve seen before, so much as an artist who put this wasteland in a drawer unopened for years. He’d considered it a work that was complete, until MAX clawed his way back into George Miller’s mind and showed him that he had not yet even begun.
MAD MAX: FURY ROAD is the exact film you didn’t know you needed. All we could think was about how sweet it’d be if Mel Gibson made another MAD MAX film. When you walk out of this film, or roll, or are dragged screaming in ecstatic madness from the theater… all you want is GEORGE MILLER to just keep the stories of the Wasteland coming! It’s important.
The unhinged vitality of creativity on display here leaves everything else naked by comparison. This isn’t so much a movie as an experience. When MAX is strapped to the front of that car and driven by a death seeking madman into the fray you’ll see. That’s us. All of us. George Miller is strapping us to the hood of a car, and he’s going where no one has gone before. And that fucking rules!
After the screening I was at of this, Robert Rodriguez did a Q&A, where Robert felt absolutely unworthy next to George. Watch this film and try to deconstruct how it was made – and realize… most is practical. In Namibia. We’re told nobody was harmed, but I like to think there are mass graves hidden in the wilds of Namibia where this was shot. The roads they made are going back to nature and the madness that Miller raged there will be preserved for all time on this film. This film wasn’t conceived as words on a page, but IMAGES. The words would come later. Like many great comics. Where the artists allow the impossible to let loose within their minds and upon the paper.
If this movie feels differently than nearly everything you’ve seen – it is because it is. George Miller has stuffed us all into his mind and let us see what he has been trying to get on that screen for over a decade now.
If only we had 1000 car drive-ins for every city to see it in! My only regret about the screening I saw it at is that it wasn’t in 3D. George loves the 3D for this movie and personally supervised it for a very very long time. Friday, I’ll be back for another go at this one!
I can positively say, you’ve never seen a movie this hardcore crazy awesome like this before! It makes you want to get shiny and chromey and have Immortan Joe grip your meaty hand and escort you freaked out and happy through the magnificent shiny chromey gates of Valhalla! Where you will feast & fuck & frolic with Valkyries astride fantasies of flame spewing, rocking & rolling madness throughout eternity! MAD MAX FURY ROAD is just a glimpse at the afterlife George Miller promises us all.
Seriously – climb on board for the ride of your life!
Just realized… I never really talked about any of the acting above. There are no performances that derail any moment in the film. It all works to perfection. Hugh’s Immortan Joe comes out of George Miller’s motorhead nightmare operas and smashes our screen with his visage. He is perfection. Charlize is in the best film of her life. MONSTER might contain her best performance, but Charlize kicks so much ass as Furiosa that she will command your respect as well. Nicholas Hoult has the best character in the film – having the most ground to cover – going from being a brainwashed zealot to understanding having something real to fight for… how to be a man of his own after he’s exceeded all hopes and wishes for his own existence. Then there’s Tom Hardy’s Max. He only really becomes our Max again at the end. His most epic moment of MAX-ness is something down at night, in the distance, from which he returns. You’ve no idea what happened, only that ONLY MAX could’ve done it – and even now as Wagner fills my ears, I imagine how in hell Max took down what he must’ve taken down. It’s glorious. I’m not going to compare him to Mel – these are massively different films, all I know is that I not only want more Tom Hardy Max films – but I’d kill for one last Mel Gibson Max Film, showing Max in his UNFORGIVEN era. Max will crawl, walk and ride his way through the Wastelands as long as Miller takes us, after this – I hope to all the vehicular saints that we get more.
Nothing will be right in this world till we learn we can have more.
