Adrenaline to the Max
Sensational photography, set design and other technical attributes that bring this fourth Mad Max into the 21st century will hook old, new fans
George Miller’s Mad Max: Fury Road is not just a great genre movie.
It is not just Miller’s clever reboot of his original trilogy from 1979 through 1985.
It is not just an adrenaline-charged, sexually potent, well-acted thriller co-starring Tom Hardy and Charlize Theron as duelling road warriors of the new millennium.
On top of that terrific stuff — all of which will turn this version of Mad Max into a 2015 summer blockbuster that could even rival the box office of the latest Avengers episode — Fury Road is a savage commentary on contemporary society. The 70-year-old Miller’s robust script is that smart. It was co-authored with actor-writer Nick Lathouris (who played Grease Rat in the original Mad Max) and comic book artist Brendan McCarthy (who once wrote for the Canadian animation series ReBoot). Together, they conjured up Australia’s angry answer to George Orwell’s 1984 or Ray Bradbury’s Fahrenheit 451. In their case, the Mad Max co-authors lampoon everyone from new age fascists to suicide warriors brainwashed by terrorists into thinking that their deaths will mean something rapturous and worthy.
In the post-apocalyptic world depicted in Fury Road, Hardy is the new Max Rockatansky, replacing Mel Gibson as the former highway cop who finds himself trying to survive the madness of hooligans, scavengers and murderers on the road.
The major twist this time is that Theron is his equal, and his rival, and perhaps his noble partner-incrime. As a second, powerful Road Warrior, she gives the new movie its femme fatale power. Theron’s character, Imperator Furiosa, has only one complete arm. So she uses a mechanical hand mounted on her stump that turns her into a feminist Terminator ... when the occasion calls for it.
The set-up is fairly simple. It is 2060. We find ourselves in a parched landscape devoid of vegetation ( Fury Road was photographed in Australia and, for most of the outdoor sequences, in the gorgeous deserts of Namibia in southern Africa when the original deserts where Mad Max was shot were turned into a verdant paradise after monsoon rains). The territory known as The Wasteland is ruled by a despot named King Immortan Joe (played by Hugh Keays-Byrne, who gave us Toecutter in the original Mad Max).
Behind his Darth Vader-as-a-clown mask, Big Bad Joe rules by controlling the flow of water. His totalitarian regime has given rise to the War Boys — young men like the wide-eyed, white-faced Nux (the wonderful Nicholas Hoult) — who willingly and routinely die to maintain Joe’s regime. But things start to unravel and Joe is mightily angry when Imperator Furiosa, a trusted lieutenant, goes rogue by driving off with a critically important 18-wheeler rig. Worse still, she takes Joe’s five young wives along for the freedom ride.
The roster of hotties includes redheaded Riley Keough, an American actress and model who happens to be the eldest grandchild of Elvis and Priscilla Presley. Keough’s character, known as Capable (because she certainly is) ends up having a complex relationship with Nux, even though he first appears to be her enemy in this conflict.
Fury Road is essentially one long chase movie done at breakneck speed. As Furiosa rumbles across the desert in the big rig, as Max becomes her unwilling accomplice, as the Five Wives become the object of everyone’s desire, as secrets and lies are revealed in shattering ways, this new Mad Max becomes a hypnotic trance that turns viewers into participants.
Of course, if you do not like action pictures, then you might want to run screaming from the theatre and escape into the nearest Hollywood rom-com. But fans of the original Mad Max series — especially the first two — are legion.
Fury Road, with its sensational photography, set design and other technical attributes that bring this fourth Mad Max into the 21st century, will only add more legions of fans to the now-legendary franchise.