Given its high rating at RT, some people were thinking it would blast out of the $48M opening weekend projection some had been giving it.
But it started with only $17M on Friday and some of that is Thursday showings. Maybe $40 tops for the weekend. Good but “bad” by Hollywood expectation logic.
(Pitch Perfect 2 really creamed it on Friday but that one is going to be so insanely front loaded the final gap will be smaller.)
Note that MM:FR is “only” a B+ CinemaScore. Quite surprising. That’s practically average.
VICE did a fairly good interview with Dr. Miller. It’s about 23 minutes long and it’s mostly him talking. I think it’s great to see an action film maker talk about characters and back stories and stuff. He seems to really enjoy making movies because he seems to really enjoy movies.
For better or worse, the film is not particularly feminist. The whole issue has been totally overblown by a bunch of partisan blogs on both sides and it’s overshadowed the fact that this is an over-the-top action film that focuses more on explosions that characters. Like most things, you can take whatever message who want from it.
There’s a lot of material both for and against this idea. On one hand, Furiosa had the moral fortitude to set the story into motion and captains the war rig through much of the story. On the other hand, most of the agents of the story are men, Max and Nux best Furiosa and the wives in a fight, and the wives are usually weak and feminine.
One question: When was the film supposedly set? Is it in 1980-ish, 2015, or somewhere in between?
See, that’s what kinda surprised me. From all the hype, I figured it’d be the women all kicking ass (and my dick’s not tiny, so I’m okay with that), but aside from Charlize and a the small amount of time the Vulvalini got, there was still a lot of Rugged Manly Man With The Sexiest Amount Of Facial Hair Rescues The Damsels, even if one of the damsels is quite capable.
Not necessarily a bad thing, and I enjoyed the hell out of it.
This was actually called out in-story, which I really liked.
During one pause from the chase, there’s one of the higher-ups within Immortan Joe’s government and he’s rattling off the numbers for all the fuel and resources being wasted on this chase. He doesn’t bother trying to actually reason with Joe, he just rattles off the numbers passive aggressively. It’s made clear that this chase is a drain on resources but Joe is obsessed with regaining his wives and the War Boys are just exhilarated to be put to use exercising their entire raison d’être.
As to the women kicking ass or not kicking ass, I actually liked this take on it in contrast to the typical fan service sexy female action heroines. Fioriosa and the the Vuvlalini are great when skill is put to use: driving, shooting, planning. But when direct hand-to-hand combat against larger stronger men comes into play they are at a disadvantage- as they realistically would be.
The wives wouldn’t naturally be ready for battle but show themselves at least to be brave- Toast is knowledgeable enough to match ammunition with weapons and on top of things enough to keep track of the ammunition supply and warn of their limits, Capable listens to Nux and counsels him rather than reacting in fear and because of her they gain a valuable ally, and one of the greatest moments for me was when Immortan Joe was about to get a clear shot at Fioriosa but the pregnant Splendid Angharad puts herself in the way knowing that Joe would fear for endangering the unborn child.
Yes, I have often thought that one hallmark of 2000-2015 (or so) cinema, which will date it in the future, is the trope of the small woman unrealistically kicking the asses of a bunch of larger men. This movie thankfully does not have that. It has realistically strong, and strong-willed, women.
After the first 30 minutes I thought I was watching the best movie released in years until the dialogue started. Theron and the WarBoy can act but the Breeders and Max not so much. Glad I saw it though and recommend it.
Russell Crowe should be confined to a windowless internet-less room where no one ever has to be subjected to his talents ever again.
I like Tom Hardy as an actor but Miller made a decision to really play up the “Max as an Outside Observer” angle in this one. Of course, Max getting swept up in someone else’s story was a major component of the other two sequels but Mel Gibson was given a more expressive character in the scripts. Max mostly just grunts, groans, and sighs in this one. Part of me wanted a more expressive playful Mel Gibsonlike Max, but Hardy did exactly the job the director wanted him to do and he did it well. Only the best actors can handle a role that requires all of the acting to be behind the eyes.
I agree that the acting was a bit weak among the Breeders, though Zoë Kravitz seemed like she could have given a better performance had she been given more to work with. The two blondes were terrible, the redhead was o.k.
My complaint was that they were way too pretty. Yes, in-story they were specifically selected for being the most beautiful and most likely to produce “perfect” offspring but I think they should have been presented as most beautiful among squalor-dwelling wretches living in a disease-ridden violent post-apocalyptic hellscape.
I actually liked his take on the character. For the first time Max is actually shown to be “Mad”, in terms of being insane! That wasn’t the case in the earlier films, where Gibson was more angry than crazy.
I read somewhere that in this film Max has supposedly not talked to anybody in years, hence the reasoning behind the mumbling and gestures, he had actually gone insane out in the wasteland and had forgotten how to communicate. I also read that there was originally even less dialogue for Max, a lot of the grunts and mumbling were added in later.
A batshit insane Max who had forgotten how to talk to people, I think Hardy portrayed that character pretty well.
I’ve long considered The Road Warrior one of the greatest movies ever made, so was very anxious to see this one. It certainly started out promising, with the striking appearance of the Citadel and its bizarrely stylized, almost alien inhabitants, but between the pummelling soundtrack and relentless, aggressive strangeness of the characters, I felt deafened and worn out by the end.
I’ll grant the production design and the stunts were amazing, and Charlize Theron, Nicholas Hoult and the various villains were quite good, but for me Tom Hardy didn’t really work as Max. Well, he probably would have if I didn’t have the image of Mel Gibson from the three previous films conflicting with this take on the character.
In the end, beautifully filmed and quite a worthy attempt to make art out of kitsch, but I think the film may feel fresher for those who haven’t seen the previous entries in the series.
I did enjoy the little callbacks to the previous films scattered here and there, including, but not limited to:
The sawed-off double-barrelled shotgun with the worn-out cartridges that fizzle when fired; one of the wives playing with a little wind up music box; the cartoonish bulging eyes (from Toecutter’s demise) in one of Max’s flashbacks; one of the vehicles (a tow truck) being a Mack R-series (same as the tanker’s tractor in The Road Warrior, Max’s plan to de-chain himself from Nux being somewhat reminiscent to the choice he gave Johnny the Boy in the first film. I’m sure there were others.
I agree. Ok, since we’ve shed the Australian setting anyway with most of the main characters not even attempting the accent why not Kurt Russel? He rocked Soldier which had him deliver maybe two sentences worth of dialogue.
I appreciate that the director hid Max’s face for the first exciting 30 minutes, it let you get comfortable with another person playing Max. When his face is revealed you’ve already been an a roller coaster with him so it makes the transition easier.
I was surprised the Breeders even had names, I fully expected ‘Hot Girl 1’, ‘Hot Girl 2’ in the credits. Sure they couldn’t really act, but its not like they had characters to portray. Scared cupcake wants to get away from nasty obese maniac X 4
ETA: Checked out the imdb and Rotten Tomato rating for Soldier…apparently I am nearly the only one on Earth that liked that movie.
Saw it, liked it a lot. I wasn’t sure how well they could sustain a two-hour-long chase, but things were shifting the whole time, and there was never a “…well, gee, here comes another whole bunch of vehicles… sigh…” moment. There was lots of creativity poured into all the little details.
I liked that the primary characters were well-drawn WITHOUT a lot of expository backstory - they were defined through their actions (consistent with their motivations) and by their emotions. They were real enough that I was invested in their situation, and that’s missing from a lot of movies nowadays.
The humor was unexpected and fantastic. The Doof Warrior and the Doof Machine were hilarious - I cracked up whenever they were onscreen. (They also worked on multiple levels, highlighting the absurd masculinity of a tribe of warriors riding around the desert with its own soundtrack, and, on a more meta- level, the ridiculousness of the whole series’s concept and conceit.) There was Max frantically filing away at his mask every chance he got. His continual refrain of “That’s my car!” interspersed with the occasional “That’s my head!” Max and Nux’s (and Furiosa’s) fight while chained through a car door window managed to be logical, inventive, and slapstick at the same time. Nux getting caught by his chain as he sprints along the top of the War Rig made me laugh out loud. And lots more I forget.
I liked the altar/big pile of steering wheels being issued to the drivers. Simultaneously providing good security for the vehicles while further turning them into objects of veneration. It seems like the Mad Max flicks (after the first) have all had a strong religious/ritualistic component. This one really hits it hard with all the talk of Valhalla and the silver paint in the mouth as prelude to the suicide attack.
And also, it’s interesting that the three settlements were specialized in the three vital elements of survival: Water, Gas, and Bullets.
The one thing that confused me was the relationship between the three settlements – at first, I thought Furiosa was leading a raid on Gas Town… but then they all joined up to chase after the fleeing women. Perhaps the original mission of Furiosa was just a show of force to support an exchange of water and milk for gas.
Why did the Bullet Farmer and the People Eater join up for the chase? Were those five women really the only actually fertile women in the whole region?
I too cracked up every time the Doof Machine turned up, but it’s worth mentioning that both Kelly’s Heroes and Apocalypse Now previously mined that particular vein, to memorable effect.