When I saw the Mad Max Fury Road trailer back in 2014 I thought “Well, here goes another dumb CGI movie.” I hadn't heard anything from Director George Miller since 1985s Thunderdome so I didn't know if he was even around anymore. But when I found out that not only was Miller still alive and kicking but that he directed Fury Road himself, I made it a point to see it and afterwards came out of the theater with no doubt as to what he'd been doing since 1985.
Mad Max Fury Road is the 4th installment of the post apocalyptic saga of Max Rockatansky, a former cop who wanders the scorched wasteland, a "burnt out shell of a man," after his wife and child are killed by a motorcycle gang. Max lives on the white lines of life and the road, scavenging guzzle-line from wrecked automobiles to feed his XB Falcon Coupe. After being captured by a cult, Max (Tom Hardy) becomes property of their leader Immortan Joe (Hugh Keays-Byrne) who enslaves women and uses them to breed warriors and produce milk to trade for fuel and bullets. Joe dispatches his top lieutenant and female warlord Imperator Furiosa (Charlize Theron) in an armored tanker to trade "mother-milk" for gasoline but Furiosa takes a detour east with 5 of Joe's wives 1 of whom is pregnant with his child. Immortan sends his minions after her along with Max as a portable blood-bag donor.
This is an unbelievably fun movie. Fury Road is a self-contained universe full of inventions that never cease to amaze. The hot rods in the film look like feral armor plated sand mutants improvised from anything salvageable. There's Max's XB Falcon Coupe; there's Immortan Joe's powerful Gigahorse, a pair of stacked '59 Coupe DeVille's mounted on double rear wheels; then there's Furiosa's 2000 horsepower War Rig. Production designer Colin Gibson said he wanted the cars to reflect the characters' attempts to salvage the remains of civilization after the war. George Miller's description of the film's aesthetic is that he wanted it to look like a western on wheels. What also contributes to the movie's unique style is the editing by his wife Margaret Sixel who chopped the film into 2,700 pieces so that Miller could manipulate each frame, speeding some up and slowing others down as needed.
Feminism is the film's main message. Charlize Theron's Furiosa is the standard-bearer of girl-power with her bald head, war-paint, missing arm, and battle scars liberating women chained to home and men who have reduced them to breeders and milk producers. After a rocky start and through a series of violent high-speed battles with Immortan Joe and his minions, Max and Furiosa grow to respect each other as a sort of symbolic truce between men and women.
George Miller won the Academy Award for Best Director for this film which went on to win 6 Awards in technical categories. Mad Max Fury Road is also a stand-alone film so seeing the previous installments aren't necessary. Between Furiosa and Ripley (from 1985s Aliens) I can't decide who is badder. Fury Road was well worth the 20 year wait and I hope it's not another 20 years before Miller comes out with another one. There's also a black and white "chrome" version of this film.
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