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Oh what a Blu-ray! What a lovely, lovely Blu-ray!
Mad Max: Fury Road blazes on to disc – and we chat to the Doof Warrior! Plus great films you’ve heard of ( Dog Day Afternoon), great ones you haven’t ( Turbo Kid) and a bumper edition of TV-on-DVD.
MAD MAX: FURY ROAD 12
OUT 5 OCTOBER DVD, BD, 3D BD, DIGITAL HD
Some films just make you want to scream. When the end credits rolled on the Cannes press screening for George Miller’s monumental Mad Max: Fury Road, one viewer on the upper balcony unforgettably let out what can only be described as a guttural roar of approval. It’s the sort of noise that seems entirely fitting for Miller’s primal, post-apocalyptic world: like a battle cry echoing around the arena. In an industry where ‘groundbreaking’ is common hyperbole, Miller’s movie earns it.
No question, this year the action movie changed for good. MM: FR’s $373m box office may not have bested Jurassic World or even San Andreas, but, when it came to sheer bravura, it roasted every summer blockbuster over a charcoal BBQ. Such is the film’s general level of insanity, it ceased to matter that there hadn’t been a Mad Max film in 30 years or that Tom Hardy replaced Mel Gibson in his most iconic role – the leather-clad Road Warrior, Max Rockatansky. If they were ever issues, they were swiftly forgotten.
This is the film where lizards have two heads; where humans double as blood bags; where a guitarist’s instrument conceals a flame-thrower. Rarely has a film lived up to the promise of its title (had it not been taken, The Madness Of King George would’ve been just as apt), with stunts so outrageous, there are times when you simply forget to breathe. The action largely real, with little CGI tinkering, it’s the biggest argument yet for old-fashioned in-camera FX (and for a Best Stunt at the Oscars).
Fire and blood
Yet that’s only half the story. The real question is how Miller so enthralled us with a nearplotless, sparsely scripted film that’s basically a chase and a race. And, for that matter, how he smuggled in a feminist agenda that, for once, didn’t feel like calculated political correctness. Oh, and how he managed to make a Mad Max film where Max is almost a bystander – initially little more than a muzzled emblem chained to the front of a moving vehicle.
The star is unquestionably Charlize Theron as the mechanical-armed Imperator Furiosa – arguably the best shaven-headed
female warrior since Ripley lopped her locks in Alien³ . It’s Theron who drives the story, quite literally, by rescuing ‘the five wives’ (including Rosie Huntington-Whiteley) belonging to the wasteland’s noxious leader Immortan Joe (Hugh Keays-Byrne – Toecutter from the original Mad Max). Stowing these brides in her armoured War Rig, Furiosa’s plan is Biblical – a Moses-like exodus to a Promised Land, gleaned from a distant childhood memory.
In pursuit is a desert armada led by Immortan Joe, riding his throne-like Gigahorse crafted from two Cadillac Coupe de Villes welded together. And Max? A luckless captive, he’s been brought along for the ride, tied to the vehicle driven by loyal lieutenant Nux (Nicholas Hoult, fabulously unhinged), who, vampirelike, is using Max like a mobile blood transfusion unit. By the time this crazy fleet hits the spellbinding dust storm mid-point, you’ll be as high as Nux inhaling his chrome spray.
Scales of justice
Does the second half live up to the first? Not quite. But you have to admire Miller’s chutzpah, as Max and Furiosa get so far and turn back to storm the Joe-less Citadel. Themes of sacrifice, solidarity and survival loom large, but in a script of few words, Miller and co-writers Brendan McCarthy and Nico Lathouris prefer to let the set-pieces do the talking; from bomb-throwing bikers to acrobatic polecat fighters, it’s like the most expensive circus you’ve ever seen.
Amid all the carnage, Hardy makes for a solid Max (he notes in the extras how Gibson didn’t seem that impressed) – telling his story with his eyes even better than he did as Bane in The Dark Knight Rises. Talking of the bonus bits, it’s a rather disappointing selection. Blu-ray offers three unremarkable deleted scenes and six featurettes of varying length, led by Filming Fury Road – the highlight being Hardy admitting how scared he was to film the scene with the bendy poles (“Respect to the polecat”).
The others deal with the cars, characters and crashes in more detail, though only Tools Of The Wasteland holds any real interest, showing the astounding level of detail that went into making the props and designing the sets. Where, though, are the stories of how the movie slowly but surely clawed its way out of development hell?
You suspect a deluxe edition may be on the way in the future. But for now, there’s featurette Crash And Smash: a compilation of all the very real, non-CGI stunts, it’s a frank reminder of the sheer barminess of Miller’s labour-of-love endeavour. Like he says, “Just because it’s the wasteland, it doesn’t mean people can’t make beautiful things...”
Extras > >
Featurettes (BD) Deleted scenes
‘In an industry where “groundbreaking” is common hyperbole, Miller’s movie earns it’