The return of Max Rockantasky, with a new story and a new person in the role. Makes sense. George Miller took a fews years off from the series since Thunderdome, but you know what? He returns with style! And cars. And trucks. And a lot of fire and crashes and explosions. Just as it should be.
Plot? Basically just Max out in the wastelands, doin his loner thing and eating mutant lizards. Caught up with by a big marauding party, it’s Not good….Immortan Joe in his Citadel of relative decadence and his army of paint-huffin War Boys while the peoples struggle below with no water. Max gets caught up in the War Boys hunt for Imperator Furiosa, a lieutenant driver who’s apparently gone rogue. Max’s singular survival instinct has to deal with a lot of new peoples as tons of shit starts getting blowed up around him. But the dude with a flamethrower guitar in front of a mobile thunderocalypse of Marshall stacks is the coolest.
I give huge credit to George Miller here. What he started as a low-budget Aussie post-apocalyptic flick with crazy car stunts with his first film 36 years previous, he took his odd directorial path since Thunderdome in ‘85 back to here 30 years later to continue his tales of one Mad Max. Desolate loner with a killer will-to-live mechanism after losing everything including himself. Here? CGI shenanigans of course but still a lot of great old-school practical stunts and splosions and pure action. The dialogue? Minimal and somewhat suspect, but that’s not what we’re here for. Turns a decent dramatic arc despite those failings, the whole chick subplot is what it is. Tom Hardy does a good turn as this incarnation of Max. His mental torments may be a bit overplayed, but hey, subtlety isn’t a necessary requirement in what is a pretty kick-ass action flick. Charlize Theron is okay as basically his female counterpart in the role of Furiosa. The 2024 film Furiosa: A Mad Max Saga tells her origin story. Not sure that’s really necessary, but there it is. My completist ass will probably watch it, because Miller did that too. And the guy’s like 80 years old. He must have a bet with Clint Eastwood or something. Also cool note, Lead Baddy Immortan Joe is played by Hugh Keays-Byrne, who played Toecutter in the first Mad Max. He is quite villainy here, I must admit.
