For Your Consideration: "Mad Max: Fury Road"

This movie is a miracle. Having just rewatched it for the first time since I've seen it in theaters last year I was a little afraid that it wouldn't translate well to a smaller screen. Could it be that the mad intensity and sheer exhilaration from that first viewing was simply a fluke? Nope. It is still an overwhelming, almost constantly brilliant action movie.

In light of its staggering 10 Academy Award nominations I couldn't help myself but wonder how this movie could have happened in the first place. Let's recap: We're talking a third sequel to a movie franchise born Down Under in the late 70s that hasn't seen an entry since the mid-80s, so in 2015 this was not a hot commodity by any means. Its original star Mel Gibson has since gone off the deep end and director George Miller's biggest achievements in the meantime involved a talking pig and tap dancing penguins. Add to that a reportedly troubled production that stretched through years of reshoots, and you have something that studios would normally bury in the movie graveyards of January. So with all that said, how the hell did Mad Max: Fury Road turn out so incredible?

What it boils down to is a film that's two hours of exhilarating car chasing. Even in its quietest moments it never slows down, so strong is its forward momentum. But where other vehicle-based franchises have already shed its original framing by either transforming into elaborate and ridiculously OTT heist movies (see the evolution of The Fast and the Furious movies) or gone off the deep end by throwing annoyingly undecipherable action set pieces at us (see the Transformers movies) Fury Road is an affirmation and celebration of what has come before.

If you haven't seen the original movies, here's what you need to know: The first and third Mad Max movies get the tone right but it's the second one, The Road Warrior, and especially its unforgettable final chase that's the blue print for this latest installment. But instead of simply creating an uninspired retread of what has come before, George Miller ups the ante, cranks the volume up to 11 and has gone all-out in almost every way possible to create a movie so full of pure kinetic energy that even occasional movie snobs like me can't do anything but clap thunderously once the credits start rolling.

Let's start at the beginning, shall we? We see titular Max, this time played by the currently omnipresent Tom Hardy, getting chased down and captured by some maniacs. Why are they chasing him? What do they want from him? And why are they shaving his head and tattooing his back when they catch him? I don't have a clue. But you know what, it makes for a stellar beginning. You'd expect to get some kind of exposition further down the line but nope, next to nothing, nada. In that regard one could be worried that this would alienate anyone who's never seen a Mad Max movie. Hell, even if you HAVE seen the previous movies, that won't give you any kind of advantage here. But then again, none is needed, we all enter this funhouse of a movie equally unprepared.

We then see Max having flashbacks to a little girl. Again, who is she? How does she relate to Max? Guess what, the movie never bothers to tell you, it is so confident in its ability to overwhelm you with the spectacle of itself. Max then fights off a bunch of bald, whiter-than-white fellows before getting recaptured and put into a cage. That's when we get to one of the big attractions of the film, our main villain, gloriously named Immortan Joe. And yes, he looks just as awesome as his name makes him sound like.

Well, hello there, beautiful.

Here we get another case of Fury Road upping his predecessors. If you thought Humungus from The Road Warrior was the end-all-be-all for iconic Mad Max villains you ain't seen nothing yet. Long, frizzled white hair, a see-through plastic chest, a giant breathing balloon on his neck and a face mask that makes Bane from The Dark Knight Rises look like a joke, it all adds up to an instantly memorable bad guy. Oh, and that is before he has spoken a single word.

His claim to power is that he's residing over seemingly unlimited water resources in the middle of this post-apocalyptic wasteland. He also has women hooked up to machinery that sucks out their breast milk, and on top of that he got a group of women that he simply uses and abuses for, let's say it politely, the preservation of future generations. This is where one of the more heavily discussed topics of the movie gets introduced, addressing the issue of equality and feminism. Lesser movies would just use Immortan Joe's treatment of women as a backdrop to underscore how freakin' evil he is. In Fury Road, on the other hand, it is the catalyst and focal point of the movie.

Believe it or not, Max might be the titular character, but our main protagonist is actually Imperator Furiosa, played with hard-ass determination by an almost bald, one-armed Charlize Theron. She's using a supply run for gasoline to hijack a truck and go off-road with Immortan Joe's women to escape his tyrannic empire. If you haven't gotten that, let me put it a little more bluntly: This blockbuster that is so deeply rooted in the testosterone-driven action cinema of the 80s is led by a woman who is fighting a man for the freedom of other women. You might not have realized it at the time of watching Fury Road, but this makes it more timely and relevant than almost any other big budget movie in its weight class, also because it cleverly avoids degrading the women by throwing ridiculous love subplots at them. Just look at the Hunger Games movies that eventually devolved into a better version of Twilight, but instead of Team Jacob vs. Team Edward we got Team Peeta vs. Team Insert-Lesser-Hemsworth-Brother-Here.

Once Furiosa gets off-road Immortan Joe starts chasing after her with his platoon of madmen in tow. Max gets dragged into this mess as the living, breathing blood supply for warboy Nux, played with mad intensity by prettyboy actor Nicholas Hoult. At this point in the movie the big chase that dominates the rest of the runtime has started, and it is a spectacle that has to be seen to be believed because it is exactly here that George Miller is pulling the biggest possible ace out of his sleeve: Almost all the action that ensues is shot with actual cars, actual actors and stuntmen, and with actual speed and danger. The physicality and oomph of it just leaps of the screen. This is not a gimmick, we're not talking a terribly edited car chase from one of the Bourne movies, no, this is the real thing, and a testament to the dedication of everyone involved. It boggles my mind how much care, time and planning must have gone into this endeavor. Even if you're one of the few folks who would not love the hell out of this film, you cannot deny how impressive it is for tackling this beast of a movie hands-on, down-to-Earth on such an epic scale.

And I haven't even talked about the guy with a bass guitar that is also a flame thrower!

So, to bounce back to the beginning of this entry, how could this film ever become the critic's and audience darling that it is? Short answer: By not half-assing it, it goes the whole nine yards. Oh, and then it goes some yards further. I read a smart comment from someone on Letterboxd, let me paraphrase it here: After Mad Max: Fury Road, the CGI extravaganzas of our times don't have an excuse anymore, no excuse for their stupidity, no excuse for their shoddy effects that feel dated by next week, no excuse for their lack of relevance or commentary. Give me a hundred Avengers, give me a hundred Avatars, give me a hundred Pirates of the Caribbean, they don't amount to anything compared to this perfect blend of old-school filmmaking craft, perfect pacing, and forward-thinking ideas.