Remember Mad Max? He’s back, in Tom Hardy form.
Thirty years after the events of Beyond Thunderdome, Max returns in Mad Max: Fury Road, another dystopian jaunt through the Wasteland helmed by long-time series director George Miller.
Now, I wasn’t initially sure how I felt about Max being played by someone else. And couldn’t he have been played by an Australian this time – someone like Sam Worthington? Tom Hardy’s Australian accent isn’t all that good, so it’s probably good that Max is the strong silent type throughout the majority of the film.
That’s not to say that Hardy’s performance is bad – it’s quite the opposite, actually. Sure, Mel Gibson’s absence is felt, but Hardy does a good job of portraying the grizzled lone wanderer as a character kind of Gibson-adjacent. It’s not really Max’s story, anyway. Mad Max: Fury Road is really the story of Furiosa, played absolutely brilliantly by Charlize Theron. Furiosa is tough, resourceful, and could (and does) give any character in the franchise a run for their money. Move over Toe Cutter, move over Aunty Entity; you’ve got nothing on Furiosa.
The story of the film is pretty slim, but that’s not a bad thing. Mad Max works best when it’s streamlined, as evinced by the best film in the franchise, The Road Warrior. The plot is pretty typical Mad Max fare – someone evil is in control of a necessary resource in the Wasteland and Max has to help someone fight back. In this film the evil person is Immortan Joe (Hugh Keays-Byrne, who also played Toe Cutter in the original Mad Max), the resource is water, and the person Max is helping is Furiosa (although she’s doing a pretty great job of taking care of things herself).
Furiosa is helping to rescue all of Immortan Joe’s “wives”, a group of attractive young women essentially held hostage and forced to breed with Immortan Joe. Of course, he’s not particularly happy that his “breeders” have escaped, so he sends a tribe of War Boys after Furiosa and the other women in order to get back his possessions.
One big criticism of Beyond Thunderdome is that it didn’t have enough of the franchise staple, car stunts. Well, for this film Miller was like “you want car stunts? Have all the car stunts in the world!” Most of the film is taken up with this sort of action, but that is not a bad thing at all. The car stunts are absolutely thrilling, full of absolutely insane elements (the War Boys travel with a dude strapped to a vehicle playing guitar in front of a series of enormous amps) and all take advantage of the modern technology now available to the film crew. The vehicles are as bombastic as ever, but have moved with the times – no longer are 70s muscle cars the flavour of the film, it’s all monster trucks now baby!
Speaking of effects, Mad Max: Fury Road is visually stunning. There are so many striking shots it’s impossible to list them all, but one that really blew me away was the shot of the vehicles disappearing into a fantastically-realized CGI sandstorm. The original Mad Max films had some nice visual flair to them at times, but nothing like this.
The trademark wackiness of costume design seen in the other Mad Max films is a bit more subdued this time around, unfortunately, except for the War Boys, who have a sickly mutated look and cover their mouths with silver spray-paint when driving into battle. It’s a bit of a shame, because the other films seemed to have such fun with the crazy costume designs, but there’s enough wonderful weirdness in the rest of the film to make up for it.
The War Boys are pretty tragic figures, none more so than Nux (Nicholas Hoult). He’s doomed to die, but he doesn’t mind, so long as he can go down in flames whilst driving. The War Boys worship at the altar of the V8, and to die in battle whilst driving is the best thing that could happen in their miserable lives. Deathly pale, bald and sporting some awfully prominent mutated lumps, Nux follows the classic path of villain turned hero, and does manage to find some happiness in his life, even if it is only for a short moment. Hoult, like Theron, does a fantastic job of totally absorbing into the role he is playing, and although many people have said that Hardy is the stand-out male character in this film, I disagree – Hoult is, and Nux is a much more interesting character than Max is in this film.
So, is Mad Max: Fury Road worth your time? Absolutely. Even if you haven’t seen any of the other films in the franchise (which you absolutely should, by the way), Mad Max: Fury Road works fine as a stand-alone film, and is a great entry point to the franchise. Witness it.
BEST BITS
- A neat, efficient story with a fantastic message about the strength of women.
- The guitar guy. What a concept.
WORST BITS
- I just can’t get onboard with Tom Hardy’s Max. Sorry! I just love The Road Warrior too much!
- Who was the girl that Max couldn’t save? I’ve seen this film twice now and I just… did I miss that information somewhere?
FINAL RATING: 7.5/10
More like this: Should You Watch Mad Max?
