I said I’d see the film while it was in the theaters and early this morning, at the 10 A.M. 3D showing, I caught Mad Max Fury Road.

aaaaaannnndddd….

While I’m overall pleased with the film, I also have certain mixed feelings regarding the overall work, which I’ll get into below.

There are parts of the film that absolutely enraptured me.  Hell, there were parts where I shed a tear or two (it was the dust in the theater…right?), yet despite so much to like, and there was an awful lot to like, I still feel the best Mad Max film remains The Road Warrior.

Having said that, I loved the fact that director/co-writer George Miller returned as strong as he did to the Mad Max universe.  Sadly, we’ve recently seen damn good directors return to past triumphs and unfortunately fall on their faces (Spielberg/Lucas with Indiana Jones, Ridley Scott with the Alien universe).  In this case, Mr. Miller delivers a film he has clearly thought about and tinkered with in pre-production for a long time.  Word is that it took him ten years to get this film done and that thought process shows with a deceptively simple plot that nonetheless gives you plenty of characterization in its quiet moments and a logical story progression that continues the previous films’ exploration of mythology (Like The Road Warrior, Mad Max Fury Road is essentially an apocalyptic western with steel instead of flesh horses).

For those like me who wondered how this particular movie would fit in with the other three and the answer is: It doesn’t.

Mad Max Fury Road is a “soft” reboot of the Mad Max story.  We get bits and pieces of Max’s (Tom Hardy taking over the role that made Mel Gibson famous) past in the form of flashbacks but these flashbacks don’t necessarily correspond with the other movies in the series, especially, the original Mad Max.  Yes, Max is still a burned out ex-cop who lost his family and now roams the wasteland as a solitary soul, but the flashbacks point out something slightly different than what we saw in the previous films, including a much older daughter he lost (in the original Mad Max, he lost his wife and baby child) and an attack on him that was bigger in scale than the motorcycle gang that attacked him originally.  Finally, Max still drives the car (mild spoilers) that was absolutely destroyed in The Road Warrior.

As the movie opens, Max is chased, captured, then taken to an oasis run by a fearsome fascistic individual named Immortan Joe (Hugh Keays-Byrne returning to the Mad Max universe as the villain of this movie…he was the badguy Toecutter in the original Mad Max!).  Immortan Joe, to my eyes, is a mild re-tread of Auntie Entity in Mad Max: Beyond Thunderdome.

Shortly after Max’s arrival, Imperator Furiosa (Charlize Theron) heads off to transport a truck from the Oasis to a fueling station but, it turns out, she has other plans and leaves the designated route.  This in turn causes a series of events to occur which eventually bring Max and Furiosa together as they try desperately to escape the forces of Immortan Joe while in search of a green paradise Furiosa insists still exists out there somewhere.

I don’t want to get into too many more spoilers but I will say this: Mad Max Fury Road’s story winds up using elements from both The Road Warrior and Mad Max: Beyond Thunderdome.  In fact, one could say the film is something of a mash up of those two films.

If you’re as familiar with those earlier films as I am, you’ll see these similarities (like the one I pointed out above regarding Immortan Joe) and, while it does take away a little in terms of Mad Max Fury Road’s “originality”, given that it’s been some thirty years since Beyond Thunderdome’s release, you can sorta forgive this.

Now, to details: How is Tom Hardy as Max?  I feel he was good in the role.  Having said that, I can’t help but think Mel Gibson would have been better.  Sure, Mr. Gibson’s much older now, perhaps too old for some of the stuntwork, but when he played the character he managed to convey something Mr. Hardy, as good as he is, never quite captures.  It is my understanding Mr. Miller wanted Mel Gibson back but the actor declined, so I suppose its worthless to worry about that now.

Regardless, Max’s character in this film is interesting in another respect because despite the movie’s title, I would argue he isn’t the movie’s protagonist.

I won’t pretend to be the first person to point this out, but Mad Max Fury Road could just as easily been called Imperator Furiosa Fury Road.  In fact, and I know I’m about to say a MAJOR heresy here, but I think the film might have been better had it NOT been a Mad Max film and instead a “sideways” sequel to the Mad Max films…set in the same universe but without the presence of Max.

Not that Max’s presence is unwelcome, its just that the contortions of getting him into the story early on could have been eliminated and I don’t think it would have hurt the film.  In fact, it might well have helped it!

However, once he was part of the story things were fine, right?

Well…

In The Road Warrior, Mel Gibson’s Max was very much in the eye of the hurricane.  Everything happens around his character and without him you wouldn’t have the movie.  But in Mad Max Fury Road the eye of the hurricane, even when Max joins up with her, is Furiosa and it is she around which all occurs and it is she who is the core of the film while Max just kinda helps out after a fashion.

Mind you, this isn’t necessarily a terrible thing, but given the fact that I came into the film expecting a Mad Max feature and getting a Imperator Furiosa feature does take a little adjusting.

The second, somewhat smaller problem I had with the film was the admittedly incredible stuntwork.  I’ve noted before reading a quote from a director or stuntman who stated something along the lines that with respect to stuntwork in movies, what you present should be about 30% more than what can happen in real life.  The implication of this statement was that if you push things too far beyond that 30%, you run the risk of making a cartoon of your action scenes rather than something audiences might still take as “realistic” and therefore dangerous.

There are an awful lot of great stunts and effects in Mad Max Fury Road, but after a while (another heresy!) I felt they got so broad and exaggerated that it was hard to take them very seriously, especially toward the end when people are jumping from car to truck to car while engaged in a high speed chase.

This is, obviously, a personal issue to me.  Others might not mind and your mileage, as they say, may vary.

So I’ve spent over a thousand words here and its time to wrap it up: Is Mad Max Fury Road worth your time?

Absolutely.

Despite the negatives mentioned above, the film nonetheless shows director George Miller remains one of the premiere action directors out there.  While Mad Max Fury Road may not quite capture the lightning in a bottle magnificence of The Road Warrior, it nonetheless gives you a potent, grueling, and ultimately uplifting story that should have you on the edge of your seat.

Recommended.

A quick note: Since the movie’s release some far right conservative talking heads have criticized this film as a “feminist” work.  Loathe though I am to agree with anything those on the far right say, they’re right here.  Mad Max Fury Road does carry an undercurrent of feminist empowerment in it, up to and including the hot button issue of fertility and (yes) abortion.  In this movie, we see a society run by a man who controls fertile women and forces them to have children against their wills.  The movie’s central plot involves these same women, led by Imperator Furiosa, rebelling against this tyranny and taking control of their destiny and, yes, their bodies.

I absolutely applaud that element of the film!