Mad Max: The Most METAL Movie of the Year
I wasn’t exactly sure what I was getting into when I saw an advance screening of Mad Max: Fury Road this past Wednesday. The guy I was with is a huge Mad Max fan in general, and swore that “if we don’t get good seats, we are leaving”. Fortunately, we managed to get two pretty good seats, which was lucky because the theater was completely full. Unfortunately, we also discovered that the film would be in 3D. Sigh.
My hatred of 3D aside, we sat back and watched. The movie clocks in around two hours long, which initially irritated me, but once the movie started I hardly noticed. Seriously, this was a shockingly good movie to someone who enjoys violence, gore, and heavy metal. Also, freaks. They don’t shy from the apocalypse being filthy in this film, and there’s more blood and dirt than a mosh pit at Wacken. I was honestly expecting to be irritated by Tom Hardy as Max, who I will never forgive for making Bane into an eye-rollingly shitty character, but I digress. Max spoke very little (thank god), and seemed more of a side character to Furiosa (Charlize Theron), who was such an incredible display of bad-ass I would personally hand her a “most bad ass bitch” award if I had one.
If you don’t know what you’re getting into (like I didn’t), there’s a lot of violence, a lot of cars, and amazingly, there is a heavy metal element to this movie that made me squeal with fucking joy. The story itself revolves around a plot that I could totally see happening in the apocalypse; an evil dictator is hording water and has enslaved women as “breeders”, so Furiosa (Theron), one of his best drivers, betrays her master and embarks on a quest to free his ladies. The villain in this piece is Hugh Keays-Byrne, who was actually in the first Mad Max as “Toecutter”. Hugh plays Immortan Joe, the biggest baddest freakiest dictator this side of the Thunderdome. Heads up, you will totally see his butt at some point. Take it in!
We meet a lot of different characters from this horrible dead world; bad guys from “Gas Town”, bad guys from the “Bullet Farms”, and the coolest tribe of old ass feminists known as “The Many Mothers”. One of my favorite characters is Nux, played Nicholas Hoult (you might remember him from Jack the Giant Slayer?). His immortal line, “What a day! What a lovely day!!” will be heard for years, or at least after you leave the movie theater because I shared his glee throughout this film. All of the characters have their own distinct style, which I really appreciate because they easily could have been a bunch of one-dimensional throwaways. Even Splendid, played by Rosie Huntington-Whitley, (who we might remember as “the chick who isn’t Megan Fox” in Transformers 3), manages to make us care about her and her suffering. What a twist! As far as character development goes, there actually is a nice story here. People grow and people change, but it’s not overly dramatic enough to distract you from the madness. It’s a nice touch, enough to make you care about the characters when they (horrifically, brutally) die.
The one thing that everyone in this world has in common is their vehicles. Monstrosities put together with spit and duct tape, covered in weapons, driven by maniacs. The action sequences don’t bore me as they so often do because HOLY CRAP, they are insane. You’ve got guys blowing themselves up, guys on the ends of poles being swung around, guys strapped to the fronts of cars like hood ornaments, and guns. So many guns! No wonder they need to farm for more bullets, they shoot at everything that moves!
It’s difficult to say more about this movie without adding spoilers, but I can’t stress this enough; watching a dude chained to a moving truck play a guitar that shoots fire might be one of the highlights of my life. In fact, when the apocalypse happens, I might have to find a way to get one of those for myself. Now get your tickets, and go watch the fuck out of this movie.
PS: The 3D didn’t suck. What a twist!
