Tag Archives: 2016 Oscars

Now that the Oscars have been handed out…

…time to reflect on who was robbed!

First up, Katherine Trendacosta offers her opinion that…

Mad Max: Fury Road Won All The Oscars, Except the Ones It Really Deserved

I’m the last person in the world to go to with regard to opinions about the Oscars.

These were the films nominated for Best Picture:

Spotlight
The Martian
Mad Max: Fury Road
The Big Short
The Revenant
Bridge of Spies
Brooklyn
Room

Of these, I saw a grand total of…wait…let me recount to make sure…just a second… aaaaand…

I saw exactly one of them: Mad Max: Fury Road (I have The Martian sitting next to my BluRay player and will get to that film, hopefully, tonight).

In my review of Mad Max: Fury Road (you can read it here) I overall liked the film but I have to say I didn’t come away as enraptured by the experience as so many others, including Ms. Trendacosta, did.

Understand, I’m a Mad Max fanatic.  If pressed, I’d say 1981’s The Road Warrior, the second Mad Max film made, is my all time favorite action/adventure film ever made.  I still recall the chills I felt in the theater when I went to see it.  The film was rated “R” and I was in High School and too young to go into the film “unattended” yet managed to sneak in not once but twice to see it, a rarity for me to see films multiple times while they’re still in theaters.  (The third time I tried, alas, I was turned away).

I was absolutely blown away by it each time.

I’ve seen the film so many times since and so much of it resonates still.  It’s very difficult for me to watch the concluding/climactic car chase sequence because, dammit, I wound up caring so much for so many of the characters who SPOILERS FOR A THIRTY FIVE YEAR OLD FILM met their end (especially the noble Warrior Woman).

The Road Warrior was a film that was relentless and could be mean, but that was because the world it was depicting was mean.  Good people were preyed upon and the focus of the story was on a once noble person (Max) and his journey back to nobility after losing his way.

God, I love that film.

Mad Max: Fury Road, while a good film, also confounded me.  The main element of my confusion -and the thing that wound up irking me the most- was the fact that Max wasn’t the main character.  But it was even more than that.  Not only was he not the main character (despite the movie’s title) but the more I thought about it the more I realized the film would probably have been better if it had done away with the Max character entirely and focused exclusively on Furiosa’s journey.

She’s a great character and deserved to be front and center instead of having to make room for Max.

Thought I’m going to engage in a little “mind reading” here, I can’t help but think Director/Co-Writer George Miller started this project as a full fledged Mad Max film but, over time and as the screenplay was worked on, realized there was more meat to Furiosa’s story and therefore shifted the focus more and more towards her story.

As an author, I know how this goes: You begin a project thinking you’ll go a certain way but somewhere along the line realize there are more interesting paths to follow than you originally considered.

If I’m clever enough, I spot the movement and realize I have to make the changes necessary to improve the overall work.  In my latest novel, for example, I spent some 30,000 words (quite a bit considering my novels usually clock in around 90,000-110,000 words) on elements I ultimately discarded.

Unfortunately, Director George Miller and company were clearly committed to making another “Mad Max” film and even as their story moved away from the character of Max they kept him in.  Even as his purpose within the work proved minimal, they nonetheless kept him in.

Even when the film might have been better without him, as I stated above, they nonetheless kept him in.

Anyway, here’s another article, this time by Germain Lussier and (back for seconds!) Katherine Trendacosta first posted in January following the initial listing of Oscar nominees.  In this posting, the authors discuss…

The Biggest Oscar Snubs of 2016

Can’t disagree with many of the choices listed.

Now, getting to the meat of the matter: Was this song really worthy of winning the Oscar?

I thought the song the producers of Spectre commissioned but ultimately rejected, Radiohead’s Spectre, was better!

Ah well.