Earlier this week, The A.V. Club published its list of the 100 best movies of the 2010s. As expected, it’s prompted some reactions, ranging from nodding approval to white-hot rage over that particular film we unforgivably excluded. (You know, the one with Ryan Gosling, or Sandra Bullock, or Iron Man.) What I’ve also seen, though, is a more neutral expression of surprise from readers. Seems that plenty didn’t predict what they’d find at the bottom of the page and the top of our long list: the astonishing burning-rubber odyssey George Miller plucked from his imagination and sent speeding into ours.
On paper, Mad Max: Fury Road is not what you’d call a traditional pick for film of the decade. It’s a big-budget Hollywood action movie, and a sequel to boot—the kind of thing to which film critics, in theory, are supposed to be offering interesting alternatives. (The Master, our No. 2 choice and the film that “won” our mid-decade ranking just a month before Miller’s movie premiered, fits the prestige profile much better.) Yet I had a hunch Fury Road would shore up the necessary votes long before I received a single one of the 18 ballots that would eventually be tallied and channeled into the master list that went up Monday. The movie ended up appearing on all but four of them—the closest to a consensus favorite for our group, the closest to something everyone loved.
We’re not alone. Fury Road, which returned Miller to the mythic outlaw future he previously visited in Mad Max, The Road Warrior, and Mad Max Beyond Thunderdome, has been winning these kind of prizes left and right. Back in April, critic and entertainment journalist Jordan Ruimy got a head start on decade review by polling 250 cinephiles of different occupations (myself included) on their favorite movies of the past 10 years. Fury Road pulled out the victory in a photo finish. Since then, other websites—including Paste, Consequence Of Sound, and Film School Rejects—have placed Miller’s movie atop the 2010s heap; it currently sits in first place on Metacritic’s aggregation of various decade lists. Its lead will probably only increase from here.
No, I wasn’t surprised by Fury Road’s victory, any more than I was when it handily won our best-of-the-year poll back in 2015, a few months after rolling off the studio lot and premiering to rave reviews at the Cannes Film Festival. It’s an easy movie to love and a difficult one to hate. Anyone with working eyes can appreciate its flurry of chaotic but always coherent action; even those who don’t consider it a masterpiece tend to at least concede that Miller’s twisted-metal spectacle—that unbroken parade of often practically achieved vehicular mayhem—is jaw-dropping. And multi-contributor lists like ours, which reflect the convergence of shared tastes more than the idiosyncratic expression of individual ones, are going to favor a movie everyone likes (and many love) over more divisive passion picks. In other words, while, say, The Master or The Tree Of Life may inspire more rapturous devotion from the critics that vote for them, they don’t have the almost universal support of a phenomenon like Fury Road, whose less ambiguous and contested merits prove harder to deny.
Simple math. That’s the boring explanation of how this singularly acclaimed summer blockbuster became the movie of the 2010s. But I do think there’s more to its enduring popularity. And even its astonishing craft may not entirely account for how the movie has persisted in the years since it roared into multiplexes and stormed the Academy Awards (an achievement, I’ll confess, that did surprise me a little). Is it possible that Fury Road resonates even more loudly now than it did upon release because the world itself has crept a little closer to the dystopian future Miller found in the Namibian desert?
It’s not as though the blatant political dimension the writer-director laid over his panorama of cars, combat, and camaraderie has grown less topical. If anything, there’s an enhanced relevance to Miller’s portrait of a planet in the grips of environmental and refugee crises. And cue the chorus of groans, because as tired as we all may be of seeing Trump in the cracks and crevices of our pop culture, this is still a movie about an aging, lecherous, vainglorious fat cat with silly hair who holds rallies for himself, commands an army of slobbering man-boy followers, and has an idiot sycophant son riding shotgun at his side. (One month almost to the day after the film hit theaters, our own Immortan Joe announced his candidacy.) Fury Road also anticipated, abstractly but undeniably, the reckoning of the #MeToo movement, depicting as it does a caravan of women fleeing and then fighting back against a ruthless patriarchy. A wave of so-called corporate feminism crashed against the rocks of our divided culture these past few years, but there’s nothing pandering about the righteous, headstrong anger Charlize Theron pours into Furiosa, an instant icon of action-heroine cool.
Miller didn’t just presciently forecast the stormy weather of our cultural-political now. He offered an unlikely tonic for it. Fury Road is a dystopian vision that dares to chase a glimmer of hope across the wasteland. It offers a premonition of societal collapse—a worst-case scenario for tomorrow—and then dreams of a course correction, insisting that no matter how far we drift towards doom, we can still turn the truck around and go back. That’s the power of the movie’s climax: Max and Furiosa and Joe’s liberated harem ultimately don’t abandon society, they transform it. And they do so partially by actually changing hearts and minds, at least those of Nicholas Hoult’s reformed war boy Nux. Call it apocalypse optimism—naïve, perhaps, but heartening in an age when everyone seems to be teetering always on the precipice of despair.
Fury Road’s hope offensive goes beyond the road map it lays out for those taking it day by day in our hellscape present. It’s a beautiful mirage of reassurance for anxious cinephiles, too. The 2010s were the decade when Hollywood finally and almost completely abandoned any pretense of making art as well as product. Movies for adults disappeared from release slates. The studios doubled down on franchise master-plans, flooding the multiplex with shared-universe hopefuls and endlessly resurrected characters. Mid-budget movies became an endangered species, kept on life-support by a struggling Annapurna and a cash-flush streaming giant with dubious intentions. Things looked grim.
Of course, Fury Road fits right into that modern paradigm. It’s a reboot of a long-dormant intellectual property, inserting new movie stars into a template its backers at Warner Bros. hoped audiences would remember. And in the same year as fan-service revivals like Jurassic World, Terminator Genisys, and The Force Awakens, it found its own small ways to wink at the franchise past—most notably, though perhaps not noticeably, through an Easter egg of casting, with the role of the villain going to the same actor who played the bad guy in the 1979 original. At the same time, though, Fury Road showed what a filmmaker with real ambition and talent could do within the confines of the new studio system. The film feels self-contained, forgoing exposition, never recapping past adventures or teasing the plots of future ones. And Miller broke, too, with the reigning methods of spectacle delivery: At a time when directors are farming their big action set pieces out to a digital-effects division, he funneled his nine-digit budget into elbow-grease spectacle of an earlier and maybe better era—an unbelievable orgy of real automobile wreckage and human stunts.
Almost five years later, the results still feel like an impossible movie, the kind you can barely believe made it to theaters in this largely un-compromised form. I wonder if the unlikeliness of its very existence isn’t, on some level, a big part of why Fury Road is being so celebrated as a pinnacle. That, and maybe that pesky glimmer of hope. We have no signs that Hollywood is going to make like Furiosa’s fleet and abandon its trajectory; the future of studio cinema will likely be one of less movies, bigger investments, and smaller risks. What Fury Road almost touchingly suggests is that it’s still possible to make something awesome and bold and ultimately personal within the system—to do what the greats of the golden age once did and meet the mandates of an entertainment empire without sacrificing an ounce of artistry. If another movie pulls that off on the same scale and with the same rousing success, we’ll be damn lucky—and also possibly looking at the best movie of the 2020s.
234 Comments
I’m still of the opinion that it’s massively overrated out of Gen-X nostalgia for ‘80’s action tropes and cinematography. That may be influenced by the first review-comment I saw about it being “the best action movie since the ‘80’s.”
I am a filthy avocado toast eating millennial, and I was floored by Fury Road. I think it’s properly rated, but that any movie with such wide acclaim is going to have some haters, high on their own contrarianism, who call it overrated.
I had a similar thought but on the other end. I was born in the first half of the 40’s, and was a grumpy old man by the time 80’s rolled around, but I loved this movie. (I am pretty lukewarm on the other road warrior movies to be honest) Any movie being called the movie of the decade is somewhat by definition overrated. I mean whichever movie you the majority of people will probably have another favorite. (I mean I loved Fury Road but I not sure it is my favorite movie of the decade.) The poster below (Andrew) I think put his finger on this movies success a little better. I don’t think you need nostalgia for the 80’s to have wanted to a movie that was so different than the majority of blockbusters of the era. The ways it is different than other blockbuster might mirror an 80’s nostalgia play, but I think a lot of people in the audience it was being different that mattered. The movie was a real palate cleanser.
I wouldn’t call it my favorite movie of the decade either. Inside Llewyn Davis, Moonlight, and the Act of Killing were all in the top 25, and are all movies I love more. But as Dowd pointed out in the article, Fury Road ended up being a consensus pick, and I understand why. It has incredibly broad appeal. And the more broad appeal a movie has, the more the people who don’t like it feel the need to dismiss it entirely. So forgive me if I’m skeptical of takes like Whiggly’s. I understand not liking the movie, but trying to dismiss the movie as nostalgia bait reads to me like insecurity about not liking a thing that seemingly everybody else loves.
I am not a filthy avocado toast eating millennial, and I was bored by Fury Road, I think it’s not properly rated, but that any movie with a strangely wide acclaim is going to have some fake lovers, trying to tell themselves that they are not a contrarian, just so they will not feel left out.
The worst thing about the internet is people taking a statement, and reversing it and then saying, “Aha! Got you! The opposite is ALSO true!” Where’s that dril tweet? Ah yeah: I mean, on the AV Club of all places, I think we can acknowledge that contrarianism is way more rampant than some imagined epidemic of people pretending to like things in order to be cool. It’s the enduring legacy of Gen X. Liking things is not cool, but not liking things is VERY COOL.
impressive, you actually took the time to look for a 5 year old tweet, A+ for effort, movie still wasn’t that great, course neither were the originals.
I’m with you.It’s also about ten minutes too long.It’s fine but movie of the decade?That seems like a huge reach.
But is there any film where it wouldn’t be a huge reach. Good is easy, best of the decade is so subjective as to be impossible
Maybe not the BEST movie of the decade, but if you wanted to sum up the 2010s with a single movie, Fury Road is a pretty solid choice.
So what is? I’d accept The Dark Knight as a response. That’s about it.
In that case, what film or films would put over it?
10 minutes? Grow up.
I would argue that no movie deserves the title, unless you want to make a statement. A hard statement against excessive CGI and backstory bullshit seems quite apropos for this decade.
I think it’s still great even after accounting for it being a little overrated. Think back on how it opens. It sets-up the primary plot (chase) in about eight minutes. As for the swipe at my generation, we Karens can be correct sometimes. Deal with it, Homeland Generation. You weren’t around for the Downward Spiral or the birth of the World Wide Web. And you certainly weren’t where I was on September 11 2001. That was a real-life action movie. I escaped 1 WTC without about 30 minutes to spare. Now I know what it was liked to be yelled by Boomers about Vietnam…”You weren’t there, man!” LOL
I’m not sure I agree. One thing that strikes me is that none of your cited reasons is an actual flaw of the movie.Personally, I’m a little sick of how obtuse the canonical “critic’s top list” films are. I think 2001 is a masterpiece, but you can’t deny that the last third is boring and opaque as hell. I’m happy to see a movie set out to entertain is starting to pierce that veil, and I think a lot of knocks against it are trying to preserve the notion that a film isn’t great unless it’s nearly impossible to understand.
I mean, I don’t actually offer my criticisms (my big one is that it’s monotonous, having one speed, one gear: go, almost like how Michael Bay movies have every scene edited like it’s the most important scene of the movie), but rather my diagnosis of the discourse around the movie and a reason I might be biased.
Interestingly enough Miller very intentionally had his wife Margaret Sixel edit the entire movie. He stated something, not specifically citing Michael Bay, but how often editors for big action sequences are men and he knew a woman would bring a different eye to the details. After learning this I kinda understand what he means and can see how it differs.
Monotonous? Why they drove really fast and got chased going one direction for a while, but, wait for it, then they turned around and drove really fast and got chased going back the way they came. How can it be monotonous when they weren’t going the same direction through the whole movie?
And Murder on the Orient Express is just a one way train ride. All movies can be broken down into simplistic one sentence descriptions if you want to play that stupid game.
I deny that about 2001.
It’s nostalgia for action sequences that involve actual physical things, like cars, trucks, people on poles, and people jumping from car to car. The Marvel movies lack any real urgency or peril as it’s all CGI. Perhaps that’s good enough for the millenials as that’s all they’ve known. But there is a real tactile aspect to Fury Road that’s missing from the vast majority of movies today.
My general experience is that pre-digital physical effects tend to move unrealistically slowly due to all the rubber weight and are unrealistically constricted in movement due to safety precautions and all the rubber (as you can probably guess, this is mostly a problem with costumes and puppetry).
Seriously. I was worried about the stunt people just watching the trailers. The authenticity of it cannot be overstated.
Millennials range from 1981 to 1996, so to say that all we know are digital effects isn’t entirely true.
The Fast and Furious movies also meet your criteria there, as a ridiculous amount of their stunts are done with practical effects, and the Need for Speed movie boasted that all their stunts were real, but they don’t end up here.
Fast and Furious would be Exhibit A for overuse of CGI.
Did you miss the part where I said that they use practical effects for the vast majority of their stunts? Because they do. Your Exhibit A would be a really bad Exhibit to introduce.
My apologies, Doctor Professor. I guess I was misinformed: https://www.hotcars.com/what-the-fast-furious-movies-look-like-without-cgi/ But fanbois like you also think that iron man is for reals too. Hard to argue.
Thanks so much, ethics_gradient. That article from hotcars.com with some images of the actors being greenscrened into shots was really useful, because in other movies, the actors and stunt people are one and the same. Here are some articles about them actually doing the stunts with practical effects. Which is what I said.
https://www.telegraph.co.uk/films/0/insane-fast-furious-stunts-did/
https://www.thrillist.com/entertainment/nation/fate-of-the-furious-stunts-cgi-special-effects
“Perhaps that’s good enough for the millenials as that’s all they’ve known.”I’m a millennial and most of the films I grew up with had practical effects. It was a while before I saw any films that used CGI in a significant way.
This is why I tend to avoid reviews and try to avoid internet comments on things that I really want to see.Before this past episode of Rick and Morty I had seen a few comments that tainted the viewing experience. I thought the episode was fine, but while watching it I couldn’t escape the echo of the comments I had read, which ultimately are just one persons’ opinions.
That was why I got very drunk before watching the Ghostbusters reboot, lol.
That’s funny, the only time I saw it was on a first date and we were pretty buzzed too.
Ding ding! It has a painfully illogical plot where every character makes really poor decisions. The action scenes are also very drawn out and repetitive. I loved “Mad Max” and “The Road Warrior” (though I can admit they are imperfect), and frankly I feel like I could never watch “Fury Road” again and not miss it. Now it wasn’t painfully bad, but it was, IMHO, nothing special. I continue to be amazed that it has garnered so much effusive critical praise.
I’ll concede that Road Warrior works in large part because it’s willing to slow down and get quiet for meaningful stretches. It allows for better character development. Fury Road accomplishes its development through brief, wordless exchanges and the actions of its characters. People are going to react differently to the two.
I dunno – personally, I’m somewhat indifferent to some of the big 80s action movies (e.g. Point Break, Batman, Terminator, Indiana Jones) and there are others I haven’t gotten around to seeing (Terminator 2, Predator, and most pertinently Mad Max 3 or 4). But I thought Fury Road was pretty great.
WTF on Terminator 2 and Predator! Get on that, immediately!
Point Break and T2 were 1991!
Yeah, I kind of agree. Please watch Terminator 2 so I won’t be the only person on the internet who doesn’t like it.
You’re just full of wrong opinions. You really should keep them to yourself.
No one has to like this movie, but it bums me out reading takes like this because it completely neglects what a poetic, rhythmic movie this is with such a strong economy of character and a rich mythology that Miller actually trusts the viewer to intuit instead of belabor in reams of exposition. It’s a supremely confident movie and a joy to watch.Tho I do like the car crashes to.
This. Exactly. The confidence with which he builds the world without explaining or over-explaining everything. The weird things on stilts are glimpsed for a couple of seconds and not remarked on til later you realise that was the mythical Green Place that they were trying to get to. The fact that Furiosa has a prosthetic arm which NEVER gets mentioned or given an explanation for. The fact that the whole premise is summarised in a couple of lines: “All this for a family squabble. Healthy babies. [dismissive scoff]”That’s supremely confident, economical story-telling. That’s old-fashioned story-telling.And yes, the criticism that it only has one gear/speed is stupid. There are several moments of quiet reflection
I’ll agree with this. I’m an old millennial, but it’s funny that this is considered old story telling. I would offer that modern cinema has veered right back into ancient story telling, where every piece of the plot has to be explained via dialogue and belabored to death.
It’s the best action movie ever made.
80s cinematography was often cheesy as hell. Fury Road’s, meanwhile, is incredible. This is not a shot out of an 80s action movie.
As for action tropes, it’s just hardly Gen X’ers who are sick of weightless CGI spectacle.
Yeah, I’m totally baffled by his cinematography comment.
I made my parents rent The Road Warrior on laser disc at least 20 times.I saw Mad Max Beyond Thunderdome in the theater.Fury Road is the only movie I’ve ever gone to see twice in a theater.It’s a very good movie that is one of my favorites.I also think it is massively overrated.
That’s kind of a meaningless statement. Any movie with as much acclaim as Fury Road is kind of by definition overrated. There will always be somebody for whom a movie doesn’t live up to its hype. And when there’s as much hype as there is for Fury Road, the gap between expectations and reality widens.So why bother calling the movie overrated? What are you actually saying that’s interesting? Or is it just pointless contrarianism?
Name a pure action movie made since the 80’s that is more rewatchable. I literally can’t think of one.
Terminator 2
Dialogue is garbage tho. “I know now vhy it is dat you cry.”
Amazing movie but more rewatchable than Fury Road? No. I’d put them on the same level.
Maybe not BETTER than Fury Road but The Raid: Redemption and The Raid 2 are two of the best action movies ever made.
You must have seen different 80s action movies than me. Fury Road, at least to me, didn’t touch on any 80s action tropes. And cinematography? In 80s action movies? WTF are you talking about? To me, Comando is the quintessential 80s action movie and FR has zero in common with Comando. As a Gen-Xer who saw a lot of action movies in the 80s I actually liked FR because it was different from all that.
All that being said I do think FR was, while a good film, overrated.
Commando is one of the WORST action movies of that era. You’re way the fuck off. Overrated my ass, its properly rated. It didnt win a fucking Oscar for Best Picture.
I’m of the opinion that calling something overrated or underrated is an utterly useless critique. You’re basically saying “This movie’s not the best of the decade because too many people liked it!” Okay. That tells us nothing about the movie itself.
Or maybe 80s action tropes and cinematography (or, more specifically, Fury Road’s use of these things) are just… good?
You’re grouping middle class milineals in with X’ers, you vainglorious fat cat! We grew up judging things by 80’s garbage because those were the (often pirated) VHS’s we had laying around.
Fury Road is essentially just one big car chase with a U-Turn in the middle.I suppose like any work of art you can see in it what you bring to it, but lets not make it into the the Mona Lisa or anything
I defy you to submit an ‘80s action movie shot as simply and beautifully as Fury Road was:
The comparisons between this and 80s action movies seem kind of dubious to me. Last time I checked Predator and Comando do not look or play anything like Fury Road. Indiana Jones might be slightly (and I do mean slightly) closer and obviously there’s the Road Warrior but the median 80s action movie is much less stylized and much more straightforwardly told than Fury Road.
Well I was born after gen-x, and I loved it. Shrugs.
Not long after seeing this in theaters, I was staying in a little cottage out in the countryside. After a full day of adventures plopped down on the couch and turned on the tiny 20-inch tube based TV, and came across Fury Road again. Even after having recently seen it, and watching on a tiny old TV, it was still completely engrossing for the full 2 hours.
I don’t base my judgment of a movie’s quality on its re-watchability, but this is one of the few movies I enjoyed watching again. It’s straightforward, but there’s enough detail that it’s still fun and beautiful on a rewatch.
…this is still a movie about an aging, lecherous, vainglorious fat cat with silly hair who holds rallies for himself, commands an army of slobbering man-boy followers, and has an idiot sycophant son riding shotgun at his side.Huh…Anyway, in less topical news, I recently watched the black and white version for the very first time and, wow, it’s a very different experience. Possibly even a better one (although the beautiful hi-def colourscapes of the “original” version are still a sight to behold).Great film, great choice.
The Blu-Ray version I have has the b/w version as well, though I haven’t watched it yet. I would imagine it makes the spare-ness of the dialogue and plot even more so, in a good way.
I’m curious about that because I haven’t seen it and while I generally trust George Miller, I have serious doubts about that movie being in black and white. The colours were one of the best parts of the movie in my opinion and while I see what he’s going for with the black and white version to me it just didn’t register as being as exciting as the colour version.
This is the last movie I bought a physical copy of as soon as it came out at full price. Everything else is bargain bin or streaming, but not this.
My film history and analysis professor from college would write in the margin of this article: ”try to avoid making absolute declarative pronouncements like this in the future”
But Dowd isn’t claiming that the movie is “the best.” He instead argues for why it was an understandable consensus pick. I don’t really see what absolute declarative pronouncements you’re talking about.
To be honest, I haven’t read it all yet. Just reliving some awful moments from my school days I guess. Also, I just like the original Road Warrior best and to me nothing can come close. Just plain spiteful, I’m being…
I should preface this by saying that I really like Fury Road. I’m a fan of it.But I think this line from Dowd really cuts to the core of the discussion: I wonder if the unlikeliness of its very existence isn’t, on some level, a big part of why Fury Road is being so celebrated as a pinnacle. This has been my sense from the beginning. That Fury Road, while a damn good movie, received such adulatory praise in large part because of what it represented, and not just because of what it was (the first John Wick had a similar dynamic). Critics are tired of plot-heavy, shared universe CGI spectacles, and along comes a straight-forward, old-style action movie proudly dependent on practical special effects and with a simple story that still touches on some important themes. And so the movie, in a way, becomes The Last of Its Kind, and reaction to it is freighted with that legacy.And that’s not illegitimate. We all react to art based on a range of things, including issues completely outside the work itself.
You’re not entirely wrong, but it’s a better movie than John Wick, for example, in part because of the much more subtle character development and the more clever setup-and-payoff of all the different elements.
Fury Road differs from John Wick and the MCU in one crucial aspect: you can die in Fury Road. There are no moments where a character gets dropped onto a concrete floor and isn’t paralyzed or killed. Mad Max doesn’t get thrown six blocks into the side of a building and is simply winded.Most MCU characters just don’t die, even the human ones who should turn to liquid when they endure 100 G’s when their iron suit/coffin falls 200 feet. John Wick can survive almost as much. There’s a terror in seeing someone almost die, and anyone in Fury Road could die at any moment.
I think this subtly minimizes the achievements of the movie a bit. In one sense I agree with what you’re saying, but there’s some nuance. Yes, I too was and am tired of CGI franchise fests with arching plots I could care less about, but I can recognize that group still has good films in it. Fury Road isn’t so good of a movie just in contrast to that group, it’s an excellent movie on its own merits and because Romero realized that Fury didn’t need that extra baggage of current movie-making tropes and that those things would have actively detracted from his movie. It’s an excellent movie for what it does and what it chose not to do. Your point is that if I sit down to eat a simple but excellently crafted pastrami sandwich at a deli that makes them just like the sandwiches I loved as a kid, I’m only liking the sandwich I’m currently eating because it reminds me of my childhood sandwich. Yes I can see the nostalgia appeal, but also no because it’s still an excellently crafted sandwich. People who never had my childhood sandwich are still lauding this contemporary sandwich for how good it is, because the Sandwich Director made excellent choices in crafting it
Your point is that if I sit down to eat a simple but excellently crafted pastrami sandwich at a deli that makes them just like the sandwiches I loved as a kid, I’m only liking the sandwich I’m currently eating because it reminds me of my childhood sandwich. Yes I can see the nostalgia appeal, but also no because it’s still an excellently crafted sandwich. People who never had my childhood sandwich are still lauding this contemporary sandwich for how good it is, because the Sandwich Director made excellent choices in crafting itI wouldn’t frame the Fury Road conversation in terms of “nostalgia,” really. Instead, I think it’s more about a backlash to current cinematic trends – a backlash that makes Fury Road’s particular approach and aesthetic more appealing. “More” is the critical word there – it’s not that the movie can’t stand on its own merits, even without that context. But the context does make the movie feel like a breath of fresh air, which informs the reaction.To extend your analogy, it’s more like you’ve been eating a lot of really over-stuffed sandwiches with a ton of ingredients before sitting down at the Old School Deli, and that makes the experience of eating a straight-forward pastrami sandwich even more enjoyable than usual.
Well I think we’ve arrived at a good pastrami agreement point here. Cheers!
I’d agree with that . Having an affinity for Max and knowing his history as reluctant hero certainly adds to the depth of Fury Road (his flashbacks indicate that helping the tribe escape in RW was just the beginning of his good-guy exploits), but is in no way necessary to fully enjoy the movie. That’s especially true since he’s been separated from the Mad Max >> Road Warrior >> Thunderdome timeline. He still has his Falcon Interceptor, which was blown up in Road Warrior, a film that takes place not long after the end of Mad Max. By the time we get to Fury Road at least a couple of decades have passed. So if you think too much about continuity then you’ll be annoyed pretty quickly. This movie might benefit from the goodwill towards the original trilogy, but sure doesn’t rely upon it. As a bonus, we don’t have to argue about “canon.”
I don’t know where I’ve heard it, but I’ve heard that Miller views these movies as variations on “folk tales” about a wandering hero. The stories all have a family resemblance to each other but aren’t part of a pre-planned story arc, they’re each they’re own quasi-independent thing. Maybe that’s someone else’s view and not direct from Miller, but it seems like the right idea.
I haven’t heard Miller say it directly but it’s the only thing that makes sense. There’s no scenario where FR fits into the chronology of the first three. “The Max Chronicles” sounds like an awesome idea to me, you could cast someone different (and destroy the Intercepter anew, it could be like Kenny dying in South Park) in each installment.
Ah yes, The Ratatouille effetct.
“because Romero realized that Fury didn’t need that extra baggage of current movie…”Miller, not Romero, wrong George and wrong indy franchise.
Oh man, total brain fart
I thought casting pastrami was a little on the nose.
To expand on your Sandwich Metaphor, while others may not experience your sandwich nostalgia, they may share your hunger, even unknowingly. In this case that hunger is for, “a straight-forward, old-style action movie proudly dependent on practical special effects and with a simple story that still touches on some important themes.” After all, hunger is the best spice… be it for an actual meal or food for one’s soul. Oh and this was the first thing that came to mind, when I read your post.
um, I believe they’re called Sandwich Artists
“What an excellent sandwich I got from this Sandwich Artist at Subway” – No One, Ever
I love this comment. I also agree with you both but your take resonates with me more. If anything, it’s proof that Fury R truly is a amazing movie as it appeals to different people for different reason. In addition to being well executed!
Indeed!
Sorry, I meant to say “mostly liking the sandwich” not “only liking” but the edit timer got away from me
Wait – wasn’t Fury Road hailed as a masterpiece because it had a strong female lead? Have we now changed our reasons as to why it was the best movie ever released in the history of human kind?I saw it, I liked it, but I was not floored the way I was supposed to, I thought later, as I read the rave reviews. It was one long, silly car chase, with no plot, no story.
I can’t remember it ever being put forward as masterpiece *because* of a strong female lead, although the female lead was discussed a lot as part of the movie in general. The reasoning in this article (and the comment section) is pretty much what I’ve been hearing (and saying) for years.
This has been my sense from the beginning. That Fury Road, while a damn good movie, received such adulatory praise in large part because of what it represented, and not just because of what it was Agreed. Which is especially funny when you consider that a number of movies were left off the list entirely despite what they represented.
I posted something similar. Also, Furiosa is such a no holds barred, no excuses bada–.
Badadook?
Putting a world-class beauty like Theron in a film wearing tight-fitting clothes and not having it be at all about her sexuality is quite a statement. Unless she’s covered in ugly-lady prosthetics and wearing jacked-up fake teeth, of course.
I think a very good litmus test for “movie of the decade” is, how okay would you being with having to see it ten more times?I LOVE the MCU, but I cannot think of one Marvel movie I’d be cool with seeing ten more times. A few of them are super good, so say 1-3 more times, some none more times. Mayyyybe Guardians of the Galaxy 1. Not many movies fit that “infinitely rewatchable” category for me. The Departed, Shawshank, The Usual Suspects, Children of Men, Heat, The Matrix, The Hunt for Red October, Star Wars IV-VI, Caddyshack, Fight Club, Seven, Jaws, Up, Braveheart, The Dark Knight, Pan’s Labyrinth, Close Encounters, Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind, Mulholland Drive, Donnie Darko, Super Troopers.
Lotta movies from the 90’s and 2000’s in there, not much from the past decade.Fury Road I’d add in a heartbeat. Movie does not get old.
I LOVE the MCU, but I cannot think of one Marvel movie I’d be cool with seeing ten more times. A few of them are super good, so say 1-3 more times, some none more times. Mayyyybe Guardians of the Galaxy 1. Yeah, I don’t think that any of the MCU flicks hit that bar. I think the griping was that none of them made the cut at all, which is what it is.
Yeah, and it’s a fair point.The Dark Knight hit that bar, but Kevin Feige hasn’t shown that to date he’s willing to take risks with the MCU, and nor should he as Endgame made more money than anything ever.Would I love to see a Marvel movie that took real risks in drama and acting and had a hero or villain on par with Ledger’s Joker? Sure. Will we ever get it? No. I predict the closest Marvel will ever come is with whoever they finally pull in to do Doctor Doom, who will have to be incredible. I’ve never read the comics but know about Doom and if they can do even half of the character I’m picturing it’ll be a big step forward.
Oddly enough, they could probably make something like Sentry work (original concept, not the Bendis version). But yeah, I think even Marvel has realized that the MCU formula got real old, real quick.That said, I maintain that The Avengers should have made the list based on what it represented and what it accomplished.
Totally get that but there’s two camps of movie rankings:1. Movies that deserve their rankings because of what they represent, groundbreaking things they did that hadn’t been done before – this is the “Citizen Kane is the best movie ever” school of rankings2. Movies that people just really fucking enjoy the shit out of watching – – this is the “The Empire Strikes Back is the best movie ever” school of rankingsI get that because of what it did, The Avengers deserves massive recognition and credit.As an enjoyable movie to rewatch, tho, I’d put it in the bottom third of the MCU.
I also think that a lot of the pro-MCU or pro-comic cheerleading is due to the fact that the AVC published a 25 best comics of the 2010s list with one superhero title on it. In a decade that saw the rise of Tom King, Jonathan Hickman, G. Willow Wilson, Ta Nehisi Coates, and some genuinely great superhero material.It’s like…come the fuck on, man (not you). Just say you don’t like superheroes.
I don’t like superheroes.
Actually I’d watch Spiderman Into the Spider-Verse 10 more times. Which is Marvel, but not MCU.
Could definitely see that.
Last decade: Sicario, John Wick, Get Out, Creed, Rogue One, Wolf of Wall Street, Gone Girl, Zero Dark Thirty, Inception, Social Network, Moneyball, The Martian…I’m sure I’m missing quite a few. There are some good ones.
See, I’ve watched and loved all of those. All terrific movies. I’ve rewatched John Wick four times, Rogue One four times, Inception three times, the rest I’ve seen 1-2 times and they’re freaking awesome. None of them do I have any desire to see again.Also put Arrival on this list. I’d see it another 1-2 times but that’s it.The Departed or Fury Road or Empire Strikes Back I’d watch again tonight.Or the The Money Pit.
YOU WHORE!
Hell, I saw Fury Road over a dozen times in theaters.
I think what it also represents is a very good example of what you might call the fundamentals of filmmaking, a sort of masterclass focus on what sets movies apart from the other performing arts. Yeah, the story is solid and the acting is great, but it’s really a tour-de-force of cinematography, aiming for that visceral sense of experience that movies have been evoking in audiences since someone showed a film of a train pulling into a station. It’s a very reasonable thing for critics to get giddy about, and a thing that it shares with a lot of the true greats, but perhaps turned up to 11.
Yeah. I think this is what is intriguing about it. The film doesn’t include any “wacky spinning camera move flying all over the place because we did it all in CG anyway so we can awe-inspire you by moving a camera through a series of gears in a pocketwatch and up and down a chimney” kind of thing. The camerawork is incredibly efficient. I mean, there’s still a lot of “we’ll do something in CG at this point later” in the movie, especially regarding color correction and the dust storm scene. But at no point did I feel like they “cheated” by putting the camera in a location where the camera couldn’t logically be. And by doing that, the whole movie winds up feeling a lot more real. We aren’t dizzyingly flying around amazing vistas…we are simply shown those vistas.
And even in the dust storm scene the vehicles looked like they had real weight behind them, and the storm was struggling against gravity to lift them off the ground.
I think that the dust storm sequence at the end, what makes it feel real is that the camera stays at a distance at vehicle level, pretty much like any footage you see if a tornado from tornado chasers. Typically, in our CG based movie world, the regulard big budget director at this point would be normally saying “swirl the camera around in close up on those bodies, make the audience feel like they are hopelessly swirling around with them with a lot of flag and sizzle!!!” I guess that approach might be “more exciting” but it definitely would’ve felt less real and more “okay, here’s where 10 million of the Effects budget went to.” but by keeping the camera so far away, the shot of everything getting lifted slowly away is actually really frightening.
That’s an excellent point. Impossible camera angles or placements are one of the things that annoy me to no end with CGI. When the FR vehicles were being lifted, you were watching from the car next to them, which is why even though they were CGI they looked like they could be practical effects (except for the long shots).
Seeing it from the what is essentially Max and Nux’s vantage definitely was the right call, it kept the CGI grounded in a human perspective.
And it takes advantage of the medium for subtle visual storytelling too. So much of the relationship that develops between Furiosa and Max is little looks, facial expressions, how they move in each other’s space. I have talked about it here endlessly, but that little moment when Max gives Furiosa the rifle and wordlessly let her steady on his shoulder communicates so much about them coming to trust and depend on each other and recognize each other’s strengths and skills.
I felt so seen during the rifle switching scene, and I praise the efficiency with which the relationship is portrayed.
Perfect response. Its central appeal is exactly what you describe. Its not really about its story or subtlety or whatever else, or simply its profound technical proficiency, but how that relates to the fundamental experience that could accompany motion pictures. Its technical aspects are the main selling point, but not in any cold way, but rather because of how they are used to tell and enrich the story, which is cinema itself.
I agree wholeheartedly, but people don’t like to admit that their opinion might be influenced by something other than the subject matter itself.It’s a great movie but greatest of the decade? For real people?
I think this is a really good takeaway. I also think its simplicity as a film contributed to its wide praise. Strong imagery, killer performances, simple plot. Not to mention, unconventional heroes.
I think that dynamic was definitely at play with John Wick. The simple fact of its success was positive reinforcement for action nerds like me that people still appreciate practical stunts and choreography that doesn’t devolve into CGI nonsense, and for mainstream audiences it felt fresh because they don’t seek out the foreign or straight to video action stuff that has been delivering this kind of action while Hollywood refused too.Fury Road, though, as impressive as its existence is, I really do think it delivers as one of the greatest action movies of all time. It could come out in any era and I would have been amazed.
I’m surprised the same external factors didn’t play into making Wolf of Wall Street a higher rank than its #24. The movie was made with stolen money from greatest financial fraud ever, aka the 1MDB scandal.
Wolf felt like it would never end. I kept expecting there to be an intermission. Obviously not everyone felt that but it might have been a factor in why it’s lower on the list.
Well it was (for me at least) so refreshing to watch after so much sh*t this decade. Like a big budget pallet cleanser of a film.
Agree completely. It is massively overrated. People defend it by thinking “a good idea” is the equivalent of a “great movie”. It is a pretty good action movie that surprisingly rebooted a franchise. The action scenes are good, but the characters are one dimensional to no dimensions. The plot is almost ridiculously straight forward. The action and the plot are literally not different at all from the first three movies.The “message”? It is literally the same as the other two Mad Max movies. Protecting a group of innocents. Mel Gibson’s last movie was protecting a bunch of children from post apocalypse bad guys. The first was protecting a bunch of peaceful people surrounded by the exact same villain as fury road, a bunch of post apocalypse bad guys. I do not see, and I guess will never see, how replacing the victims with women instead of peaceful civilians or kids is some political game changer. It is literally the same formula..a group of victims being chased by post apocalypse bad guys. Just pop in a new “victim” to protect, and it is the same movie as the previous ones..but this is the BEST OF THE DECADE? I will never get the love this movie has. I think it is frankly like a “B+” movie at best and way too many people are reading into it stuff that is just not there at all.
I hadn’t seen it since it was first on TV following it’s theatrical run, but it was on TV last night so I left it on and damn I forgot how good this movie is.
This was a good pick
Just watched it again last night. Could not finish watching. It was too tedious for me.
You’re too old.
Historians of the future are going to lose their goddamn minds when they realize that “Fury Road” was written, shot and filmed before Trump even announced his candidacy.
Just wait until they find out about Hadestown.
…. or Pink Floyd’s “The Wall”
Or Joffrey Baratheon.
Or “Animals”…
Idiocracy is the correct answer here.
Or Parable of the Sower.
lol @ there being a future, let alone one with historians…
Fury Road put Hollywood on its ass and stunned everyone. Absolutely deserves number one. WB even gave Miller MORE MONEY after they saw a rough cut. I still think the first comic-con trailer for it is the greatest trailer ever made.
Not only is Fury Road a great movie, it’s also the first Mad Max movie to go…Beyond Thunderdome.
Not only is Fury Road a great movie, it’s also the first Mad Max movie to go…Beyond Thunderdome.Obligatory…
Also obligatory…
I loved the whole movie!.. except Charlize Theron. She was fine until a) she had to show feelings (she is so wooden) and b) it was revealed that she came from that tribe of women with accents (in a world replete with vaguely Aussie accents)… and she had no accent whatsoever in her monotone voice. I would’ve liked to have seen Milla Jovovich in that role.
But it was still great, I saw it multiple times, I own it, and I’m glad it’s getting recognition.
Paul W.S. Anderson, everyone.
Jesus Christ there are some abysmal takes in these comments.
its flurry of chaotic but always coherent action“Huh? I hadn’t thought of that.”- Michael Bay
Lindsay Ellis talked about how Miller and his crew made sure all of the action was generally at the center of the frame, so when they passed footage off to Margaret Sixel to edit, she could make as many quick cuts as she wanted and you could still follow the flow of the action.
Michael Bay…doesn’t do this, needless to say.
The director of a local showing of the Black and Chrome discovered this part of the movie when he taped the movie to VHS for his movie club. You lose nothing but vistas if you drop it straight down to 4:3.
This pair of sentences is Very 2019 and I’m here for it!
Obviously this is a film that not everyone loved but it’s very special to me and I’m glad to see it written about like this. I’ve heard it derided for being just action set-pieces or too steeped in nostalgia, none of which sounds right to me. I think it’s a beautifully shot, beautifully written character driven piece that pulls off the simplest trick that almost no movie can: it’s thrilling, perfectly paced, and engrossing every time I watch it.
So yeah, we can debate the merits of every detail of it and its place in the culture forever, but to me, yeah, it’s something transcendent.
Accusing Fury Road of being ‘steeped in nostalgia’ seems extremely dubious to Kang— even as a child of the ’80’s, Mad Max didn’t seem to me like a very in-demand franchise in 2015. And the film made absolutely no gesture towards involving Mel Gibson.‘Fury Road’ deserves its place in the canon because it was—IS—an absolute masterpiece of its genre. It is pure cinema to such an extent that it almost would be just as good as a silent film with title cards.It seamlessly folds politics, character development, and world-building into a 2-hour chase scene, that also manages to be the most viscerally involving action sequence ever filmed. The dunderheads who call its plot ‘simple’ imagine they are insulting it but in fact are delivering a compliment of the highest order.On these very boards, when it opened, I described it as ‘A women’s studies class taught by Macho Man Randy Savage—while he’s on fire’. If you don’t REALLY FUCKING want to see that, again and again, then it’s your loss.
The scene with immortan joe speech and then he rains the water down on the faithfull. When I saw that scene for the first time I knew it was gonna be a special movie.. just a mindblowingly good scene. Still gets me today and I’ve probably seen the movie 6 or 7 times.
Because it was one of the rare one in the recent film histories – it’s a proper fiction that wasn’t derivative of anything other than its own self. If you really think about it, it’s a very rare commodity these days.
To add a little to Dowd’s point about how Fury Road offers a tiny nugget of hope, it also does a great job describing what feminism really looks like. Furiosa, the Vuvalini, and the rescued women all get their rightful praise for being powerful, interesting characters, but Max is a pretty great male ally. He immediately figures out that Furiosa knows what she’s doing and that his best chance for suvival is to go along with her plan, he offers feedback but never mansplains, and never talks down to or leers at any of the gorgeous women he’s stuck in a truck cab with. His relationship with Furiosa is based on mutual professional respect and they both get pretty much equal chances to be the hero. A lot of men falsely equate feminism with a loss of their power or agency so this was a very refreshing message to see in an action film.
On an unrelated note, it’s also fascinating that despite being so well-loved Fury Road has had little impact on the direction movies have taken. I remember there being a push for “practical effects”, but movies in 2020 are going to be bloated CGI franchise productions in the same way that movies in 2015 were bloated franchise productions.
Agreed in full; it’s equality without any attempt to beat you over the head about its equality, for the very simple reason that the characters make the choices they make because they are trying to survive, and don’t have time for this bullshit. There’s no great and grand moment where Max hands the rifle to Furiosa to show that he trusts her. He hands it to her because the Bullet Farm people will kill them all if they catch up, the rifle is the only thing that will stop the Bullet Farm vehicle from catching up, they have five bullets for the rifle, and Furiosa is the better shot. The only calculus at work is “How do I maximize my odds of survival in this situation.”To me, the most feminist part of the film was the introduction between Max and Furiosa, precisely because there’s no swagger or sex involved at all (which is especially impressive, given that it’s a bunch of women in see-through whites getting hosed down). Max wants the water, and he wants the truck, and his eye is drawn not to the models in post-apocalyptic lingerie, but to Furiosa, because he immediately realizes “oh shit, this person is by far the biggest threat”. Which she then immediately verifies:
I love that there’s no wasted words. When Max changes his mind and follows the women before they go through the salts to tell them they should turn back to the Citadel, there’s no heavy infodump about why he followed them back after all. The movie has established their characters so well that we already know why Max comes back to aid them and why Furiosa believes in the plan. These are character actions so organic, they don’t need a screenplay spending a page explaining it to us.
This. The writing is SOOOOO spare, which works so well for this film. Furiosa is steely-eyed and practical, and Max is practically feral at times, and the lack of dialogue really does convey how fucking bleak that world is.
Furiosa is heroic in such a unique and, dare I say, FURIOUS way. God I fucking love that character. Is there a more badass action hero in the history of cinema?
It also doesn’t shy away from the fact that Max has his own best interests at heart when he chases them down. He knows the women will die in the salt flats and has no intention of following them there, but also knows he needs them for his own survival. They mutually benefit one another.
Hard not to get swept up in the urgency and the intensity of that scene, especially when it’s on the big screen. No acrobatics, no cleverness—just two people trying hard to kill each other: Max and Furiosa each realize that the main thing standing between them and survival is each other.
For me, the immediate follow up to the famous rifle-handoff scene is also hugely important. They’re still being chased by the Bullet Farmer, he just no longer has a searchlight to find them. So Max leaves with some chains and tells them to take off if he’s not back in half an hour. Next thing we know, Max is back with the Bullet Farmer’s weapons. We don’t know how he took down a jeep full of men armed with guns using only a few chains, and he doesn’t tell us. Max doesn’t care about credit – he wants to survive, and has no time for bluster.
Max’s MO is survival. No more, no less. If the Terminator is a relentless killer, Max is a relentless survivor. He’s not that deep, but he doesn’t need to be.
What I like about him stumbling on the brides is you can see, rather than being aroused, he’s putting the pieces together in his head. He sees Furiosa, he sees the harem, he sees one of them is pregnant and they’re all discarding their chastity belts. Then he just demands the water because whatever’s going on here isn’t his problem and he just wants to survive while he’s out in the desert.
What’s interesting about the moment with the rifle is I feel a lesser movie would make that a longer plot point. Like Max would stubbornly hold onto it for whatever reason (sexism, stubbornness, etc) and it’d be a big moment when he finally passes it to Furiosa during the finale. Here, it’s just a quick “Fine, here” and we move on with the rest of the film.
I also like that it doesn’t fall into the “they escaped to utopia” end that it seemed to be steering towards for the first 3/4 of the movie. Utopia didn’t exist, there is no Sugar Candy Mountain. They have to fight back to their own world, and work to make it better. That’s a deep message for an action movie.
Maybe it’s a males view of feminism, but I really love how this movie establishes it. It doesn’t need to turn the male into a bumbling idiot in light of the “smart women”. It’s a legit partnership with both having strengths and weaknesses, it also shows the weakness of all out bro culture without a woman’s perspective in the pursuing party. Unchecked patriarchy leads to poor decisions when it turns into a frat like culture.
I haven’t seen a movie since Fury Road with an action sequence or style that it did not influence. Hell I don’t think we’d Dunkirk done the way it was without Fury Road. Nolan, who never met an exposition he didn’t like, for once dropped it – and that’s not the only similarity between the two. Shit even Moana – which came out a year later had a whole homage to Fury Road. I keep hearing and seeing its influences in film and television alike. EDIT: When I have some time, I could compile a list if you’d like- not necessarily to prove my point, but to have a means of study. I definitely agree about practical effects – but given how little risk is involved in CGI the business aspect will continue to limit the use of practical effects in cinema for the foreseeable future. EDIT: Shit, I think even one of the more recent MCU movies opened without exposition – and that is something to behold.
I think it helped to bring some craftsmanship back to action films. More films are willing to put in the work for practical effects and not rely so much on CGI
I loved that this was the pick, personally. The thing that I love most about Fury Road is that it’s a blast of “pure cinema”- not weighted with elaborate stories or character arcs, but just an adrenaline rush of images and sounds and editing. The movie has very little actual narrative. It’s literally just a group of people traveling from point A to point B, and then returning from B to A again. The world building, characterization, and narrative are incredibly sparse, but in that limited economy, all those things remain surprisingly rich and compelling. I bristle when people talk about film- and all its elements- as merely being “all in the service of a good story.” Granted, that’s the general gist of commercial film-making and, given how people invest emotionally in film, it’s pretty natural. I’d be the first to admit that more non-narrative films have a higher bar to meet to not bore the viewer. But, still, that is not to say that film is just intrinsically a vehicle to tell stories. Film is constructed with composition, editing, sound, cinematography, and so forth, and these elements can be used to create complex visual and thematic endeavors that are minimally or not at all narrative in nature. Because we care so much about stories and the connections we make with them, we over-privilege narrative in that many now think a film must be judged solely on how well it tells a story. I don’t think that’s necessarily true at all, and Fury Road is a case in point. Fury Road eschews a detailed narrative and just gives us a blast of these filmic elements- beautiful imagery, rich mise-en-scene, editing, stunts, sounds- what I mean when I said “pure” cinema. And despite this relative lack of narrative, the film still achieves great thematic resonance. It’s simply glorious film-making.
Fury Road became the movie of the decade is because it whoops ass and it rules.
Couldn’t have said it better.
I think one reason Fury Road is so different from Marvel or other franchise CGI movies is the lead time and the nature of preproduction processes. A lot of the franchise movies have their big action sequences pre-visualized and that previz becomes a fairly strict road map for the finished sequences So you have a production that has half the movie locked in, the SFX crews are squeezing your movie in between three other tentpoles at any given time, and you are working with a fixed release date. There’s less space for the craftspeople to hone their crafts, is what I’m getting at. And Fury Road made everything feel tactile, even when there’s tons of CGI and composite shots, because Miller took the time and isn’t working to hit targets so the movie can proceed to the next locked in sequence.
With the exception of things that just couldn’t be done practically like the big lightning storm chase scene near the beginning, Miller uses CGI to add backgrounds and the occasional flames (always behind some real ones), plus some touch-up effects to the big crash scene at the end. It’s the ideal way to use the technology.
Exactomundo. It’s not like there’s anything necessarily bad with the standard Hollywood action scene. It’s not like you can’t create something unique and creative within that framework. Just within the Marvel stable, Winter Soldier’s frenetic fist fights, or Doctor Strange’s creative subversion in the “Dormammu, I’ve come to bargain” scene, shows that the action film is hardly dead in the new era.It’s just that underneath that skin, you can always find a very familiar set of ribs. And even with good superhero or action films, you often have to shrug off the weightless third-act bang up drama, because nothing’s going to hurt anyone permanently, until the script says so. You’re watching beats that are locked into the film.Fury Road, on the other hand, felt like a special-effects coordinator was handed a hundred million dollars, and was told “Okay, you remember the truck chase scene from Raiders of the Lost Ark? Make me a film version of that, and don’t be afraid to go nuts.” And then, on top of that, we got a brilliantly-simple, yet mesmerizing, character study of two badasses who start as enemies, and become battle brothers/sisters.
You’re watching beats that are locked into the film.“I know we’re making a movie pitting the Black Panther against the bad guy who actually has legitimate points about how this super-advanced-society is failing people around the world by staying secluded…. but we’re going to need the 3rd act resolution be a CGI battle including battleships and people riding rhinos, because that’s what always works. Thanks.” – Disney notes
I feel like every MCU film has those notes in it. “Yes, we love how you’re planning to show woman empowerment and so forth, but make sure we need a 3rd act resolution with heavy CGI in it”
My understanding (and I could be wrong) from some feature i saw was that Miller actually story boarded *everything* out almost in comic panel form before filming.
I’d guess the difference is setting a movie in a tangible world with actual physics and no aliens. Hard to imagine, right?
I thought it was… fine? Haven’t felt the need to go back and watch it a second time.
I enjoyed the movie but this idea that it was the best of the decade is so wrong. It’s not even top 10.
Now I’m in the mood to rewatch this tonight or tomorrow. The question now is should I watch the color version or the black and chrome version?
I saw it in theaters in 3d and found it more a punishing of the senses than a movie. The 3d was really a disservice to the movie (which I guess I should’ve expected.)
Very timely as it was on Syfy last night, and it was still spellbinding on the 10th viewing as it was on the first. Gorgeous, immersive, heart-pounding, touching, powerful, exciting (REALLY FUCKING EXCITING), it’s hard to find registers it didn’t hit.
Ha, same. I had to pull myself away quickly so I wouldn’t get caught up AGAIN.
It’s thrilling, in a way that very few movies are.
I remember watching it in the theater and impulsively doing a watch check at one point feeling like only a half hour had passed.An hour and ten minutes had passed and the energy was so high and engrossing, time was flying by.
This might also be the most overated film of the last decade.
The Road Warrior is one of my top 5 favorite films. I found Fury Road really kind of boring to be honest. It was merely ‘ok’ to me and has been VERY overrated. I know Mel Gibson has been something of a pariah in Hollywood, but he most certainly should have starred in the fourth Mad Max movie (this one). This one was just…meh.
It amazes me how certain jaw-droppingly terrible movies are praised. Or at least pull in buku bucks at the box office.Avatar: so cliched, so boringly predictable, that I nearly fell asleep in the theater. Saved by its stunning CGI animation, but could its utter dullness explain why there’s zero interest in the sequels? I’d say so.Empire Strikes Back: not a movie. A flick has a beginning, middle and end—thesis, antithesis, synthesis. Empire is all middle—just filler linking the first movie to the third. So it’s just Star Wars porn—not unlike the 2nd gen Charger porn in the F&F flicks.The Christopher Nolan Bat flicks: other than Heath Ledger’s performance as the Joker in the 2nd one, all three of these wildly overpraised flicks suck. Nolan is incapable of shooting fights and doing it right. (Watch Arrow, a TV show budget, for how someone does it right.) Music that’s ultra-loud drilling itself into your skull. And the third flick is just a copy/paste of bits from the other two—the spectacular plane stunt from the first one and the Mexican standoff from the second. Tons of Batstories and that’s all Nolan could shoot?Mad Max: Fury Road: so plotless I’d like to know if Miller even bothered writing a script. A woman takes other women to another location while being chased. Max doesn’t do shit. Hey, that’s some “plot”. Miller must’ve really killed himself coming up with that pathetic chase passing itself off as a movie—it’s as if the Charger/Mustang chase from Bullitt was expanded to fill the entire film length—gimme a break. It’s utter Dull City.Face facts: the reason Fury Road enamors so many people who don’t know any better is the triumph of its production design. Completely spectacular but production design does not a movie make. All Miller did was jangle car keys in front of ignorant babies and the babies loved it.So what is a good flick in my book now that all you Fury Road lemmings are pissed? Moneyball takes my breath away. A movie about Excel spreadsheets and crappy ball players turned into a masterpiece—holy crap. But then Sorkin is a genius.
My opinion if the article, on the whole, notwithstanding; equating the orange idiot to Immortan Joe is spot on, and I don’t know why there aren’t more memes to show this. Fury Road was MILES better than I thought it would be….but I don’t agree that it’s the movie of the decade. It’s post apocalyptic Smokey and the Bandit. Theron and Have Dy elevate the material, but this is a very well trod premise. Hello, it’s almost the premise of The Running Man.This, in no way means I dislike the movie. I’ve watched it half a dozen times.
“…it’s almost the premise of The Running Man.”Whoa. *stares into middle distance for an entire hour*Apropos, I just (re)watched The Running Man a few weeks ago and somehow I found it weirdly fascinating. I mean, it’s kind of terrible in, gosh, any number of ways, but this time I came out it of feeling like there’s a lot in there to unpack.
It’s really worth comparing the movie The Running Man to the book it’s based on (by Stephen King, no less!). Two very different experiences.
There were a ton of Trump/Immortan Joe memes
Though I’ve come to find it one of the most impressive things about the film, at the time I had a lot of issues with the “practical effects!” boosterism in connection with Fury Road when those effects were delivered within some of the most aggressive digital color correction I’ve ever seen, so that it’s so shiny and chrome it looked computer generated regardless. Like I said, I do like it now, but in 2015 it was one of the more abrasive disconnects in aesthetics I’d seen in a legacy sequel, and kind of still is. (BR2049 looks nothing like BR, but there is kind of a narrative point to it, versus Fury Road’s Orange and Teal For Its Own Sake vs. the gritty Australiana of Broken Hill in Road Warrior; TRON: Legacy was designed as a tech showcase just like the first no matter how different it looks; Halloween ‘18 and Terminator Dark Fate don’t have a ton of aesthetic similarities with their franchise progenitors, but there’s a zillion Halloweens and Terminators of varying looks and feels so they didn’t much bother; okay,I’ll give you Abrams’ Star Trek as probably more completely distinctive, and The Force Awakens is plastic and ugly.)Anyway, I kind of wonder if coming from 2015 helps. That was a terrible cinematic year, probably even worse than 2019, because while 2019 has no Fury Road (or Ex Machina), 2015 would punch you in the face on average once a month with something gruelingly bad, like Fantastic Four or Spectre or Star Trek Into Darkness or Terminator Genisys or, not to pick on big ticket sequels, Tangerine (I find that movie abominably trabsphobic, and don’t see its appeal, at all). I do love Fury Road, but I wonder if the lack of real competition in its year of release helped.Also the distinction between art vs. product is useless, but that’s another discussion entirely.
I am perplexed this movie was awful from a story telling point of view I literally have no idea whats going on in this film but the special effects were great
When I watch it, I just ignore the beginning narration. That’s when it moves up to A++++++ status. (a la A Christmas Story)
Honestly? I found Fury Road pretty meh. I’m honestly not huge on car chases, so having them take up 75% of the film didn’t interest me much. I adored the scenes where everyone took a break and allowed plot to happen, but that stuff happened far too little for my tastes.
Two words: Flamethrower guitar
I actually am very surprised it’s topping most lists, but as you say, I think it has more to do with being a broadly liked consensus pick benefiting from staff-wide votes. I imagine it will drop down as more individual lists are tallied, perhaps giving a boost to Boyhood and, what I consider the far-away pinnacle of the decade, The Tree of Life.
This movie was terrible
It DID?It was an unwatchable mishmash of undercranked action and over-the-top acting. Just horrible.
The movie was ok. Not great. Not even good. Tolerable is the best way to put it.
Fury Road exemplifies what they try to hammer into your head in film school – a great movie doesn’t need a bunch of dialogue, exposition, or flashbacks to tell a good story. Of course you can also have a great movie despite of (or because of, in some cases) those things. But just like the best silent films, good story/characters/actors should be recognized as such without the film telling us they are.And while Theron deserves much praise and credit for her role, because she’s awesome, casting Tom Hardy as Max was just perfection. Just watch an episode or two of Taboo to see what that man can do and say without saying much of anything. All of the other actors were fantastic as well.Also! Visually…the world and look they establish is coherent and consistent. It’s all fully believable within these confines. Audio too, absolutely brilliant.
Of the decade. No.
It was a great film… bookended by nonsense that only made it worse. The showing of how bad the bad people were in the start never made any sense on any level. They could have cut it down to guy gets captured, ladies want to not be in harem, convoy need to leave because reason. Yet they spent entirely too long fleshing out all kinds of nonsensical stupidity as extra reasons. Then the ending where they waste all the water and exile a man because men are bad. What? Just have the guy chose to leave and distribute the water in a normal fashion. Distributing the water like a sane person would be an even better display of how things were going to be better compared to before.
“I’m not surprised this movie won, because a) it’s my favorite, b) I ran the poll and asked friends who I knew loved it, c) we all did this once before in 2015 and picked it then, and d) our 2nd favorite is probably the only movie as critic-baity as this one.”It was unlikely, and memorable, but was it … good? It ain’t what you said – a reworked damsel-in-distress plot is not an anticipation of MeToo, and a careening pompous baddie with toadies and goons is equally familiar territory – hardly a unique or sharp insight into our politics or world. I get the read that critics love how this happened, and that it happened at all, so much that they’ve elevated what it actually is beyond what everyone else saw on the screen. It was an awesome cartoon, with cars that never run out of gas and heroes who never go to the bathroom, and dudes on sticks and that guitar/flamethrower guy. Best of the decade – nah. That’s still the Great Beauty.
I must be really dense, but I just don’t get all the gushing over this movie. I watched it and afterwards was like, “meh, it was ok”. It’s not a bad movie, but best of the decade, really? It didn’t evoke any emotion. It didn’t wow me with visuals I haven’t seen a hundred times before. The action sequences were good, the writing/script/dialogue fine, acting good, but nothing amazing or even close to that. I acknowledge that there’s a lot of different opinions on everything. I’m just so confused about being so far off in the minority on this one. To each their own…
It’s not the #1 movie of the decade for a few reasons, but one of them is that people felt the need to write an essay justifying their decision to present it as such.
So all the MCU folks who felt the need to write an essay justifying why their films belong in the top 100 fully by your logic justifies to me that they’re way the fuck off.
Lol, as if any of those films sniff the top 20. The best ones, Winter Soldier and Civil War were really good COMIC BOOK movies, but they all bow down at the altar of Fury Road.
Hell yeah and fully agree
Absolutely – I wouldn’t put a single one of those in the top 100 films of the decade.
Fury Road is a perfectly enjoyable movie, but it has really become stupendously overrated.
Become? The moment it was released plenty of people were saying it was one of the best, if not THE greatest film of all time. It’s overrated exactly the same amount now as it was in 2015 (not gonna lie, I’m one of the people I mentioned so for me that amount is 0, but I respect your opinion)
Fury Road and Gravity are the only two movies I can think of that I left the theater feeling like I’d just taken a shot of espresso. Those movies had an infectious electricity.
For a feature-length adaptation of Rob Zombie’s Dragula video, it’s okay.
Deep critical analysis;This movie was the fucking shit, my son! Hell yeah!!m/…(>.<)…m/
Put it in all caps and you got ZMF’s review…
Still waiting on the guitar dude’s spin-off movie.
Tales From the Doof Wagon
I’ve seen Fury Road 3 times in theatres. Seen all the vehicles live, with Coma the Doof Warrior (aka Australian cabaret performer iota, who does an awesome Hedwig & the Angry Inch). Been to behind the scenes things, etc.It’s perfect. Action, storytelling, editing, political messeging…. once I was high and watching the movie ritually returned me to earth
I enjoyed it. I think I’ve seen it twice? I’ll probably watch it again at least once in the next decade. Cool effects, cool stunts, decent story, it was good. But not THAT good. Hell, if we’re talking post-apocalyptic action movies of the 2010s, I enjoyed Book of Eli more. It didn’t have the same production values or cinematography, or stunts, but I like it better nonetheless. I am in no way saying Book of Eli is the best movie of the decade (or even close), but I liked it more.I feel like most people who disagree with it as #1 movie are giving much greater weight to plot and writing. Fury Road wasn’t BAD in that regard, but it wasn’t anything special either. That’s why I don’t agree with ranking it top movie of the decade. But I’m not a film critic, so I don’t know. I guess it’s just weird for me to see a popular action flick (that I’ve seen and appreciate for what it is) get ranked best film of the decade.On one of the other posts someone talked about how it’s the best action film ever and I claimed Robocop is. If Fury Road is supposed to be a return to form of the 80s action movies, I think it falls far short of Robocop. I also think that that Fury Road isn’t even the best Mad Max movie (and probably not even 2nd best either).I’m rambling now, but if a big driving force behind Fury Road’s acclaim is practical effects, think of other movies famous for their practical effects, like The Thing. Is The Thing a fantastic movie? Yes, but I also don’t know if I’d rank it best movie of the 80s. Jurassic Park? Again, great movie, but not the best movie of the 90s.Is it just the epic-ness of it? The sheer magnitude of it? I mean it’s cool, it’s definitely cool, but, to be honest, that’s all. It’s cool. Like the freakin’ guy playing a flamethrower guitar on a monster truck. Cool as hell! But seriously? It’s equally stupid as hell. I just don’t get it.I liked the movie. I’ll definitely watch it again and enjoy it again. But I just don’t get the hype.
ZZZZZZZZZZZzzzzzzzz
I think one of the smarter moves the screenplay makes is allowing Mad Max to become a sidekick in his own film. Beyond the first film, he’s a bit of a cipher, a survivor who just keep going because its the only thing he knows anymore. Yet Furiosa remains hopeful that things can change, if she can channel her anger, skills. and resources into a better future. We also get Nox, which handily gives us a look into the interior lives of all those disposable antagonists of the post-apocalypse; his reformation is another sign that there’s hope yet.Really, it’s no surprise that people draw parallels from this film to our current situation. We want to believe that there’s always a way back, no matter how shitty things may get.
Heck, Max is almost completely unnecessary. As a fan of the Gibson films, that was a little disappointing at first, but I eventually enjoyed what is really more of a film “set in the Mad Max universe” than a true sequel.
But with the exception of the first film, Max has always been pushed around by forces larger than himself.
Love it, but I’ve always felt it had one action sequence too many.
Consider this: Fury Road was cinematic storytelling in its purest form. Get rid of all the dialogue and you still know exactly what’s going on. Moreover, the viewer is are excited by it. A lot of those action sequences are edited so they’re perfectly choreographed to the music.It’s arguably an opera – the enjoyment of which can be enhanced by a theater with rumble seats.
Miller wanted the movie to be both silent and in black and white. Both decision nixed by the studio. At least he got to release his Black and Chrome edition later.
Fury Road may very well be the best movie of the decade. But The Road Warrior is still better.
I think what bothers me with film criticism these days is that so much weight is put into the story of the movie rather than what’s on the screen. It’s a fine action movie. Film’s context within their times are important to understanding them, but they shouldn’t create their worth.It’s cool that they used practical effects, that they made an effort to focus on female characters, that the themes reflect our current times, that Hollywood allowed a big budget passion project to be made But those things don’t make the product on the screen better.
It should be far from it for me to disagree with this pick, as I am currently wearing custom made Furiosa and Max pins that I got from last week’s screening of the Black and Chrome edition – the sixth time I’ve watched this movie now. But for me the best film of the decade still goes to that other 30 year later sequel that surpassed the original(s): Blade Runner 2049.
Corporate Feminism???
I’m late to the party with this comment. I just want to say, when I saw AV Club’s post a week ago about their 100 greatest movies of the decade, I was like “hmmm… well, mine would have to be Mad Max, but that’ll never show up on this list.” And voila! Well earned! Well played! Let’s all go get drinks.
The dude with the flaming guitar is the unsung hero of this film and probably what pushed this over the line as best of the decade.