Standard Spoiler – This discusses details of the movie Mad Max: Fury Road. If you don’t want to know what happens then stop here.
This review if fairly late. I actually watched this movie on opening weekend and never really meant to review it but since then there has been some controversy stirred up around the movie and I felt compelled to address it as well.
Fury Road is the fourth in the Mad Max franchise and follows the adventures of former police officer, Max Rockatansky or “Mad Max”, as he struggles to survive in post-apocalyptic Australia.
It’s unclear where in the franchise continuity this film falls in but from what I can piece together this comes in somewhere between films 1 and 2 though that’s not definite and some have suggested that this doesn’t fit in at all in the original trilogy continuity.
Max has run afoul of a group of desert scavengers led by Immortan Joe, a cult like leader living in the only town for hundreds of miles. Immortan Joe captures Max and plans to use him as an involuntary blood donor for his army, the War boys. However just as Max’s fate seems sealed one of Joe’s Generals, Imperator Furiosa (played by Charlize Theron), stages a rebellion and runs off with Joe’s wives. Max suddenly has a chance to escape by joining forces with Furiosa.
Although people know the franchise due to Max, Furiosa is actually the protagonist of this story. Furiosa’s life has been patterned and altered by Joe since she was kidnapped as a child and forced to do his bidding. Now she has the perfect opportunity to gain revenge on Joe by helping his unwilling captive wives to escape with her.
This is where the alleged controversy comes into play. A blogger writing for a “Men’s rights” movement called for a boycott on the film claiming that the film was “feminizing America” by portraying strong female characters and that the film makers had ruined a good film property by “forcing an agenda” on the storyline.
My response to this is that it’s a patently ridiculous argument. It’s such a ridiculous argument that at first I thought this was an Onion article or from another spoof website but as it turned out it was real.
If you think that this is true then go see the movie for yourself and see if this storyline is in any way forced. As to strong female characters in a post apocalyptic setting? What other sorts of characters are supposed inhabit a post apocalyptic setting if not strong?
Like I said ridiculous arguments.
The movie itself is a lot of great eye candy. The car designers went above and beyond to create a lot of weird and working car contraptions that got used and wrecked in the movies. The only real and pleasant surprise is that director George Miller opted to use mainly live stunts and pyrotechnics in the film’s most exciting scenes instead of CGI effects. Moviegoers have become somewhat jaded by the constant stream of CGI special effects in modern blockbuster movies and it was refreshing to see the live stunt work done by professional stuntmen and Cirque du Soleil performers.
So is it worth seeing? For the eye candy? Yes, very impressive. For the storyline? It’s a good strong storyline. A few holes here and there but solid. For the controversy? What controversy?
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