It wouldn't surprise me in the slightest if we find out one day that writer-director George Miller contemplated, at some point in the early stages of developing what became MAD MAX: FURY ROAD, setting the film in the world established in MAD MAX, THE ROAD WARRIOR and MAD MAX: BEYOND THUNDERDOME but taking Max Rockatansky (originally played iconically by Mel Gibson) out of the film entirely. After watching FURY ROAD, it's not difficult to imagine a version of the film without him, or a version of the story in which he dies halfway through, leaving the true star of the film, Imperator Furiosa (Charlize Theron), at the true and proper center of things.
In truth, former police officer Max was never the most interesting character in any of the MAD MAX movies. He was the relatively stable center of these stories, around which various versions of insanity and eccentricity revolved. Even his vehicles of choice were classic cars with very little external flair. With FURY ROAD, Miller attempts to push Max (perhaps a little too hard) into the realm of the tormented, filling his mind and eyes with flashes of those he loved but couldn't save from death, primarily his wife and child from the first film. These visions haunt and distract him at crucial times during the FURY ROAD tale, but these moments seem like desperate attempts to give Max (played here by Tom Hardy) depth, which has never been particularly important before and adds very little to the mix.
The possible explanation for this tortured-soul emphasis is that Max doesn't seem nearly as interesting this time out, especially when placed next to Theron's Furiosa, who actually has a horse in the race she's trying to win. Furiosa is a war-rig driver for a territorial dictator named Immortan Joe (Hugh Keays-Bryen, who played the nasty piece of work Toecutter in MAD MAX), who controls the water supply in this small, burnt-out corner of Australia. On a water run from Joe's fortress to the oil refinery nearby, Furiosa commits mutiny and diverts her fortified truck off course in an attempt to steal its actual cargo: Joe's fertile wives (including the likes of Rosie Huntington-Whiteley, Zoë Kravitz and Riley Keough), essentially the only women left on a poisoned planet who can still have children. In this society, it isn't water or gasoline that has become most precious; it's the ability to breed that gives someone the most power in a dying world.
Although we aren't provided a proper backstory on Furiosa, that makes her far more interesting. Assuming she's barren, she's been stripped of conventional feminine tropes. She's a warrior in Joe's army and little else. But she is appalled seeing these wives being used as baby factories, and she knows there's a better place in the world for them (she refers to it as the "Green Place," although green is not a color we see in this film). Theron does fiery quite convincingly here, but she's far more intriguing when she's quiet and plotting her next eight moves.
Perhaps most importantly and impressively, Furiosa is the star of this film, with Max as her constant companion (although thankfully, Miller ignores any romantic possibilities between the two), despite a rough start between them. She's fighting for the future of women in this social structure, and her mission carries far more weight than Max's trumped-up internal angst. And MAD MAX: FURY ROAD is a far better film because of that. If you love great filmmaking, you'll be in heaven for two hours. If you are upset that said filmmaking isn't solely centered on a male character, feel free to eat a dick.
So why am I focusing on the socio-political aspects of FURY ROAD instead of the action? Aw hell, you know the action is going to great. Miller has been making these things for decades, and while he's hardly resting on his laurels or sleepwalking through the action sequences, we know he's going to get those elements just right. If anything, the director has outdone himself as a stager of mayhem and destruction. Everything feels faster, looks like it hurts more, and makes louder noises when things go boom. Shot mostly on the southwestern coast of Africa, even the desert looks more evil. Rather than the washed-out tan color from the previous films, here the sands look positively scorching, as if even stepping on it would melt your feet. There's even an amusing sequence in which the various characters must deal with muddy bogs, and suddenly those 10-ton trucks don't seem like such a good idea. The terrain is as much, if not more of, a character as it has even been in these films.
One of the film's more interesting subplots involves a low-level follower of Joe named Nux (Nicholas Hoult), a dried-out husk of a man, clearly diseased by whatever caused the end of civilization ("Who Killed the Earth?" is a frequent battle cry in FURY ROAD); and he's of a firm belief that if he dies he'll find paradise in Valhalla and eventually be reborn. He literally steals Max's blood in his attempt to strengthen himself enough to chase after Furiosa, but he eventually begins to see the error of his ways and becomes a reliable ally. Nux is maybe the only character in Fury Road who has an arc, powered in part by his attraction to one of Joe's wives, and Hoult (from the current X-MEN movies and WARM BODIES) does a remarkable job of conveying his character's fanatical mindset along with his slow transformation into something closer to human.
Despite the fact that Miller hasn't visited the MAD MAX realm in 30 years, FURY ROAD doesn't feel like he's treading tired ground. He's clearly decided to up both the action and the human stakes with this film. He's quite gifted at digging through the wreckage and rubble he creates to find the heart and soul of his characters; it's one of his absolute strengths. And I don't think we've seen him pull it off quite as bravely and significantly as he does here. It's a little sad that Hardy's Max is reduced to little more than a grunting, screaming mess for a great deal of the film, but Max was never one for many words. But what Gibson could pull off with a cold stare, Hardy feels the need to overcompensate with a twitchy performance that makes Max seem brain damaged, rather than the king of the brooders. It's a minor complaint, but you'll notice it and feel the difference.
Let me be the guy who splashes a little cold water on some of the hyperbole that's already been gaining steam about FURY ROAD. First of all, it is not a two-hour chase scene — not even close. There are plenty of breaks in the action, as you probably need just to catch your breath and figure out what the hell is going on. But it's more than just about taking a moment to decompress. Miller's pacing is remarkable, and what happens during these pauses in the action are important to the bigger picture and messages of the film. When Furiosa and her crew get where they're going, it opens up the truer meanings of FURY ROAD in remarkable ways.
The other myth I want to dispel is that there is no CGI in FURY ROAD. That's just not true. I might be convinced that the car stunts are all 100 percent real, but the idea that CGI isn't a major part of the storytelling here is just nonsense. The difference is that Miller doesn't use special effects as a crutch to support a weak film. He uses it to convey scale and enormity; he's expanding his world not creating it. I'm certainly not against filmmakers using a whole lot of CGI, but let's not turn Miller into some kind of anti-CGI warrior. That said, the practical stunts in FURY ROAD are like nothing you've ever seen, both as pure cinematic violence eruptions and from a purely technical standpoint. Miller has turned car crashes, people getting sucked under the wheels of a semi, and fiery explosions into works of art that will stand up against anything hanging in The Louvre. Yeah, I said it. Now go have yourself a destructive good time.
