Mad Max: Fury Road

[Flamekebab]

Perhaps this is the right place?

I would have thought I'd have liked the first three films in this series more but frankly they're only okay. I can't say I enjoyed the first one all that much but it might be worth revisiting. This latest one though. Wow.

I'd been looking forward to it but at best I thought it'd be a fun action film. Instead I found myself paying to see it in the cinema twice and then watching it repeatedly at home. I'm still utterly flabbergasted that such a film can exist in 2015.

Not since Waterworld have I seen a film commit so fully to attempting to realise a post apocalyptic world. Most people don't particularly like Waterworld, I know, but the sets and vehicles in that film were extremely impressive and the reason for its enormous budget (at least as far as I understand things).

The thing that might have been advertised but didn't reach me until after watching was the fact that the vast majority of the effects were practical. There was plenty of compositing to put it all together, certainly, and some things were indeed primarily computer generated, but it wasn't The Hobbit:


Instead it was this sort of thing.

For me the star of the film is the world it takes place in. My interest in the two protagonists is fairly minimal. Instead the amount we learn about the world and the society that exists through being shown and the occasional brief snippet of dialogue is remarkable. I've become so used to films hammering me over the head with exposition (which these days immediately brings this to mind) so to find a film that had a great deal of world building there to anyone interested in looking for it was remarkably refreshing.

[Jubal]

Shifted to Music, Arts, and Drama

I should really see this film, I've heard it's great.

And yeah, the Hobbit really overdid the CGI, the Orcs in particular ended up looking far too smooth compared to their gritty LOTR counterparts.

[comrade_general]

Hobbit sucked. Mad Max fookin rocked.

[Jubal]

I'm very impressed by the stunt stuff on Mad Max, from what I've seen of it. The actual tanker explosion must have been ridiculously impressive to film.

[Flamekebab]

And yeah, the Hobbit really overdid the CGI, the Orcs in particular ended up looking far too smooth compared to their gritty LOTR counterparts.

The Hobbit was just the most recent example that popped into my head. Sin City would be another example of "digital backlot" but I would expect the majority of stunts in many recent action films would rely extremely heavily on CGI.

I should really see this film, I've heard it's great.

It is great but I'm told that there's plenty of people that found it extremely dull. I would worry that it would miss the mark for you.

Shifted to Music, Arts, and Drama

I thought this subforum was for things being created 

[Clockwork]

Given how much I like post-apocalypse, cults, vehicular combat and Tom Hardy I was pretty surprised that Mad Max was bad.

A) The story was dumb as hell.

Spoiler

Drive one way to avoid Skull Guy, sure I get that to a point. But even then they're living a lot better than the rest of the city. Then when you get to wherever 'there' was, decide there's a better chance driving back towards a giant convoy of death is a better idea than continuing on all the while the cultist guys are half-arsing killing them because the girls can't die because they're what? It's dumb. I don't like it. It's dumb.

B) There was barely any Tom Hardy.
C)Too much actual driving and not enough action.
D) The characters were so underdeveloped it's ridiculous. There's almost no backstory for anyone. Which is probably 90% of why I didn't like the movie.

The Hobbit movies were still worse though.

[comrade_general]

I think you're being too hard on it. We don't want to know their name, we just want bang, bang, bang.

[Flamekebab]

Spoiler

Drive one way to avoid Skull Guy, sure I get that to a point. But even then they're living a lot better than the rest of the city. Then when you get to wherever 'there' was, decide there's a better chance driving back towards a giant convoy of death is a better idea than continuing on all the while the cultist guys are half-arsing killing them because the girls can't die because they're what? It's dumb. I don't like it. It's dumb.

It really depends on whether you prefer backstory spelled out or implied.

Spoiler

It's Australia - it's entirely reasonable that there is absolutely nothing out over the salt. The Vuvalini haven't travelled far from their original territory but Max has wandered extensively and as such would be better informed than they are. The girls are valuable because they could potentially carry a healthy heir for Immortan Joe. The amount of effort expended to get them back isn't proportional but the other leaders make it very clear that that is the case. If it weren't for their alliances they wouldn't be there.

[Jubal]

FK: I suspect there's another factor you haven't considered: I almost never watch films. As such, when I do I often get quite excited. Dredd for example really shouldn't be my kind of film, and if I was used to action movies it would've bored me stiff, but I watch so few action films that my rare doses of high-action and lots of explosions I actually get quite into

Also, M/A/D has traditionally been for both Exilian's own Music/Art/Drama and for discussion of that of others, it's a bit of a catch-all (and may become more so if we merge it with crafts!).

I'm mostly impressed with MM that it's been given endorsements by several people in my "I like explosions" friendship group and a lot of my social justice type friends, which practically never happens and is quite remarkable just for that.

[Clockwork]

Probably cg. I was excited for it and it turned out to be meh so I'm like to be overly critical.

@FK,

Spoiler

yeah I get that that was the reasoning but it's still dumb reasoning. It would make a lot more sense just to send out some fast cars and maybe like 20-30 dudes instead of 300 or whatever they did. Also just coming back to the city without skull guy is apparently enough to make you king? Like there's absolutely no chain of command at all, nobody else wanted to have a go at cyborg girl and declare themselves ruler?

[Cuddly Khan]

I liked it.

I don't care about plot holes.

Boom!

Bang!

Woosh!

It was/is a really awesome movie.

*runs away*

[Flamekebab]

For anyone interested there's a really excellent set of videos covering the making of the film. There's about an hour and a half split over five videos: