Mad Max: Fury Road – 2015
Holy dear God… What did I just watch? This has got to be the most bizarre movie that has ever been nominated for the Best Picture award. Everything was so over-the-top, so strange, so… I’m having a hard time finding the right adjectives to describe this one. The movie was about sixty percent action, thirty percent story, five percent drama, and five percent insanity. Most of it was incredibly confusing. It took me about twenty minutes to even understand what was happening. So, where do I even begin?
Let’s start with the plot. In a post-apocalyptic desert where everyone suffers from radiation sickness, bad guy, Immortan Joe, played by Hugh Keays-Byrne, is a monstrous tyrant who controls all the fresh water in the land, a harem of wives, and an army of bald young men called the War Boys. Imperator Furiosa, played by Charlize Theron, goes on a mission in an armored semi-truck to get gasoline. But she is really betraying Joe by fleeing across the desert with his five wives, taking them to a mythical green place of peace and freedom. In the meantime, the tough wanderer, Max Rockatansky, played by Tom Hardy, is captured by the War Boys and is forced to be a constant blood donor Nux, played by Nicholas Hoult. When Joe learns that Furiosa has betrayed him, he sends out the War Boys to bring back his women. Nux joins the pursuit with Max strapped to the front of his vehicle.
Fast chases! Cars being overturned! Things blowing up! Guns! Men getting killed! An awesome mutant with an electric guitar riding on the front of the big-rig war vehicle, totally shredding it through all the death and carnage! Wait… what??? Yeah, but he has flames shooting out of the top of his guitar!! Oh, well I guess that makes sense, then. Nope. No, it doesn’t. Anyway, they get away, forcing Joe himself, along with his son, Rictus Erectus, played by Nathan Jones, to go after them. More explosions! More car chases! Guitar!!
Max gets free from Nux who changes sides and begins helping the fugitives because he believes he has failed in his duty, and thus not worthy to enter War Boy heaven. Also, Joe’s very pregnant wife, The Splendid Angharad, played by Rosie Huntington-Whiteley sacrifices her life to save everyone. When Furiosa finally reaches the land that is supposed to be green and peaceful, she finds that it no longer exists. What they find is a group of elderly women who still kick butt with the best of them. They make a plan to return to Joe’s lair and take it over for themselves.
More car chases! More action! More explosions! More guns! More death! More… yeah, more heavy metal guitar. The good guys kill all the bad guys, Furiosa almost dies, and Max saves her with a blood transfusion. Finally, they arrive back where they started and give water to everyone. Furiosa smiles and watches as Max disappears into the crowd to continue his eternal wandering. The end.
This movie barely took a moment to slow down. It was ridiculously fast-paced from beginning to end. Does that mean that I didn’t like it? That it wasn’t a good movie? No, but it wasn’t the kind of film that the Academy normally nominates for the top prize, which is all for the better. I would love to see the Academy open its considerations to include more than just dramas and romances. Would I have nominated this particular movie? Probably not, but I have to applaud the Academy for being so daring.
In my research, I have learned that many critics call this film a feminist movie. I’m not sure if it was or not. True, the film is the fourth installment in the Mad Max franchise, and it is the first one in which Max shares his status as the protagonist with someone else. And true, that character is a female character, the hard-as-nails road warrior, Furiosa, who is able to hold her own against any man she encounters. But does that make this movie a feminist film?
So, as I often do, I have to ask, what was it about this film that earned it its Best Picture nomination? Was it the spectacular special effects, many of which were practical effects, as opposed to CGI effects? And make no mistake, the action sequences and visuals were hugely phenomenal and wildly awesome. Was it the miniscule bits of drama that centered around Furiosa’s past as she had been abducted from her home as a child, and Max whose family had been killed, and he was forever searching for a way to go on living without going crazy? Or was it that feminist angle that showed a powerful woman saving a group of oppressed women and defeating their male enemies… with the help of two men?
No, I think it must have been the idiot with the guitar. Seriously, I can’t figure out why he was there. Just think about how impractical his presence on the front of a battle truck would have been. Was he like a bugler in a cavalry charge? And if fuel was so precious, why was it being wasted to make flames shoot out of his instrument? Maybe he was some surrealistic form of comic relief. If that was the case, it worked because I laughed every time he was on the screen, though I don’t think I was supposed to.