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This topic comprises 2 pages: 1 2
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Author
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Topic: Mad Max: Fury Road
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Geoff Jones
Jedi Master Film Handler
Posts: 579
From: Broomfield, CO, USA
Registered: Feb 2006
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posted 05-15-2015 09:31 PM
Harkins Northfield, Cine Capri auditorium, 2D
- The image looked a bit soft. The focus on the end credits wasn't super sharp.
- The audio was good, but not terrific. Like the picture, it never felt super crisp, and there were a few lines of dialog I strained to hear.
(Those are minor quibbles - it was a generally satisfying presentation)
I liked the movie and want to see it again, which is rare for me these days.
- The action is over the top, but feels real.
- Production Design is spectacular.
- The script is lean and mean.
- The score is great.
I liked the callbacks to the earlier films. They were nice without being overdone.
- The appearance of the crows (a thematic element in MM).
- I think one of the flashback frames (showing a skull) was straight out of MM.
- Hardy wore the same leg brace and jacket that Gibson wore in TRW.
- Hardy's long hair at the start was reminiscent of Gibson's in MM:BT.
Complaints:
- The trailers show too much.
- Immortan Joe was creepy, but he wasn't threatening enough.
- I felt like something was held back in Immortan Joe's story arc at the end (trying to avoid spoilers).
See it on the big screen!
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Bobby Henderson
"Ask me about Trajan."
Posts: 10973
From: Lawton, OK, USA
Registered: Apr 2001
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posted 05-19-2015 10:57 AM
Cinema: Harkins Theatres Bricktown 16
Screen: Cine Capri
Format: 2D, Dolby Atmos
Presentation Problems: Immortan Joe needs to enunciate
Rating: 3 stars out of 4
Mad Max: Fury Road is a movie I really hoped would deliver that "movie high" you get from seeing something really kick-ass, like the first time I saw Die Hard in 70mm. The 98% score on Rotten Tomatoes might have raised my expectations a little high.
Mad Max: Fury Road is a good movie and I do recommend it. But isn't a great, four star caliber movie.
I won't get into the plot details too much, other than wondering how this installment fits into the saga of previous Mad Max movies. Tom Hardy did a decent job of playing Max Rockatansky, but he doesn't have the same charisma as Mel Gibson had in the same role. It's a very understated performance. Charlize Theron, as Imperator Furiosa, had a lot more to work with from the script. Same goes for Nicholas Hoult as a dying "war boy" Nux. Many of the characters had interesting names, but many of those names are only given in the credits. Hugh Keays-Byrne was the primary bad guy, Toecutter in the original Mad Max movie. He is more scary (and gross) looking in this movie as Immortan Joe. Unfortunately the story doesn't let Immortan Joe flex enough muscles to be a scary villain.
The Road Warrior (aka Mad Mad 2) remains the best movie out of the Max series. It seemed like Mad Max: Fury Road was trying to recapture some of the same greatness of the 1982 surprise hit. I think it kept missing the mark because it was overdone in a number of areas and just downright implausible in others. At times the movie felt a little more like an installment of Riddick or even a parody of the original Mad Max movies. The obvious 3D-oriented gag that tops off the climactic chase was 100% parody.
One touch of detail I loved about the The Road Warrior was the scene early in the movie where Max uses a hub cap to collect precious gasoline dripping out of a truck. There are people just up the road who want to kill him, yet he is sponging up that fuel anyway.
Jump ahead to this movie and it seems like fuel isn't a problem. The highly modded vehicles have unlimited gasoline and some of the characters have unlimited ammo. The world in Mad Max: Fury Road is visually apocalyptic looking in style. But its reality doesn't seem as desperate like a real apocalypse would.
I loved how most of the vehicles and motorcycles were real and the many of the stunts were real. Even though many of the vehicles and other elements of the production design were built, rather than CGI modeled, I couldn't help wondering where people in a post-nuclear apocalypse would find all the resources to build those things. Unfortunately so many other stylistic touches were layered on top of that to make the end result still feel like a CGI cartoon rather than reality. Fireballs color graded to brilliant red do look cool, but they also remind me I'm just watching a movie.
Last week David Christopher Bell posted this article at Cracked about why modern CGI looks surprisingly crappy. It's more than just the CGI, even when some of the CGI is really crappy, rushed and done by the lowest bidding firm. A bunch of it bleeds over into the story writing, editing, application of style over substance and almost complete abandonment of the story telling principals needed to get audiences to suspend disbelief.
BTW, I did watch this movie in Dolby Atmos. I was thankful the Bricktown 16 theater didn't stick Pitch Perfect 2 in the big auditorium, even though it strangely made a lot more money this past weekend. Mad Max: Fury Road had a pretty decent Atmos mix. The surrounds kicked in the most for the voices going on in Max' head. Lots of crazy surround positioning there.
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Carol May
Film Handler
Posts: 48
From: los angeles, ca, usa
Registered: Nov 2006
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posted 06-17-2015 02:15 PM
I just saw half of Mad Max at the Pacific Theaters at The Grove (Farmers Market). Three people present for a 10:10am Wednesday show.
Yes, this new MM channeled the original, but I'm no longer in the right demographic. An hour (presumably 2 hours, but I left) of non-stop chase, nearly non-stop, loud, violent. I went to see Charlize Theron save the world, I'll trust that she did just that, but my head was buzzing too much to stay.
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